Positive Worlds, Negative Spaces presents selected self-published and online comics from the practice of Kristina Stipetic between the years 2010-2024. It’s an interesting project in intent given that it acts as something of a chunky print portfolio of Stipetic’s output, pulling together mostly sequential art but also including examples of single illustration.
Each section begins with a short introduction where Stipetic puts the following pages into career and historical context. Here we get reflections on creative process, artistic development and the period-specific challenges that affected each entry. Social commentary plays an important role in much of the work here. The first story ‘Yasha Lizard Ruins the Neighborhood’ (below), for example, uses the titular character – an oft-revisited protagonist in Stipetic’s early work – to explore themes of home ownership and the property ladder by juxtaposing a kind of visually anthropomorphised Victorian world of whimsy with the stark realities of its subject matter.
Stipetic proves a versatile visual storyteller. A brief dream sequence excerpt from graphic novel 14 Nights shows a remarkable command of perspective; a haunting, almost otherworldly environment of intricately interconnected thoroughfares looking down on a natural world below. An extended section from webcomic Alethia (below) takes us to a planet where robots are the only inhabitants, having been abandoned there when their creators left. What works so well here is the depiction of a community that has interpreted and redefined the everyday through their own tentatively developing societal lens.
The collection is rounded out with two shorts. ‘Black Deer’ (below) is undoubtedly the most technically accomplished offering in the book. A cryptozoological foray into the forest slowly transforms into something more dreamlike and erotic. Page layouts and pacing are used to great effect here as intense sapphic imagery takes over from environmental pursuit.
Finally, and in stark contrast, we get ‘Squiggle Squad’, a quick strip recasting Stipetic’s guinea pigs as semi-super-heroic types. It’s the most throwaway comic in the book in terms of its brevity and simplicity but it underlines the artist’s ability to shift narrative and genre gears. Ultimately, that’s the greatest strength of the focus of Positive Worlds, Negative Spaces. While for s0me readers the collection may feel a little disparate in terms of presentation it makes up for that in the way in which it showcases the diversity and experimentation of Kristina Stipetic’s approach to the page.
Kristina Stipetic (W/A) • Self-pubilshed, £25.00
Review by Andy Oliver
