Haha #3 // Review
It can rough life for a street mime. It can be a rough life for anyone. Sometimes the greatest challenge happens without anyone saying a word. W. Maxwell Prince tells the story of one mime and his struggles in the third issue of his clown-based anthology Haha. The issue is brought more or less silently to the page by artist Roger Langridge. The silent issue has been an enjoyable departure from more traditional comic book storytelling for years. With a mime in the center of the frame, the silent issue of Haha feels like a perfect match in a largely nonverbal excursion into the dark world of Prince’s clowns.
He’s a classic-looking mime black pants. Red beret. Red and white striped shirt. White gloves. Whiteface paint. He’s a visual cliche. And he’s about as successful...as a visual cliche. He lives in a sparsely decorated apartment. He sleeps on his own couch. He’s behind on his rent. One morning he’s assaulted by a flyer advertising the possibility of making money from copper wire in scrap heaps. There he finds a friend who just might help him turn his fortunes around. Can success last for a humble street mime?
Prince paces this story quite well. The opening scene in which the mime’s situation is outlined feels every bit as oppressive as it needs to be in order to establish his misfortunes. The largely solitary nature of the mime allows for a very natural reason as to why there wouldn’t NEED to be too much dialogue. All of the basic plot points hit the page in a remarkably vivid nonverbal way that carries the story from one scene to the next. The story wouldn’t have nearly the kind of impact it does if it were told in a more traditional way.
Langridge’s balance between weird sci-fi cartooning and heartfelt drama carries Prince’s story with a deft touch. It’s cute, but in a cleverly earthbound way. Langridge’s stylize cartoonish-ness amplifies the effect of the story while throwing just the right visual distortion on the darkness of Princes’s story. With no dialogue, the entirety of the mime’s emotional reality is written across the mime’s face. He’s a valiant hero in the face of adversity. The world he inhabits has a cuddly springiness to it that hides the deeper darkness of the story in plain sight. In Langridge’s hands, the mime isn’t just relatable--he’s inspiring.
The series feels like it could go on forever like this, with Prince telling a different clown story every issue. Haha seems interested in telling only stories that are strikingly different from each other in every way other than their darkness. The pairing of Prince and Langridge feels more or less perfect in what stands as one of the best issues in the series so far. A silent issue in any comic book series is a rarity. A silent issue in clown-based darkness feels like a more perfect match for the perfect match of talent.
