Happy Birthday, Anyway - Matt Huynh

Ethan Switch - Monday, 11 May 2009 - Print Version

Chewing through another candle, the teeth plead, "No more!" as the coating waxes the enamel without song or fanfare. The stomach ponders the meaning of strife as the delivery makes its journey out the other end. What comes back splashing isn't quite the sparkles and well wishes of the icing days before. Birthdays, eat them up while the mind is playful enough to know it's not all downhill every day.

Years now after the initial cake release, Happy Birthday, Anyway finds a chance meeting with sunshine behind clouds on an overcast afternoon. Strong of will, the pages hold on to the spine with just a single staple. The fork punch pierce of the other end never there in the first place. Environmentally stepping a stone on the recycling process. Staples throw a kink in the paper pulping process.

Everything is background noise eventually

Written and drawn by Matt Huynh, a vision waits after the day to bubble up a week later. Affecting a subtle wink, the story burns slowly—despondent—greying out the shadows. Ghostly in appearance, the characters in Happy Birthday, Anyway leave a fluid remark as they skip through the dull existence of life. Lines of their faces, their world and all its places warp the perpendicular. There are no parallels. Wriggling a tunnel that irks at the same it pleases. Rough and raw artwork in the sense of bleeding out hearts. Not in the grass of the unfinished.

And yet, there is that too.

Wonderful technique in adding another layer of sparse, right to the back of the knee, dialogue. Life is about obsessing on the right path while any path will eventually lead to the core truth of each individual. Unsettling. As it should be. Not a horror or gothic escape.

Presence is all too short, perfunctory first breath leaving a bearded lady to ask for change to buy lunch at an hour when most would question the exact name of the meal just before dinner but after the afternoon repast. Turn the back cover and the matryoshka dolls lie there open, questioning in a sense. And that's it?

So it is in the middle of the stream where the river bends around and takes a deliberate turn. Creating a world from local surrounds. The being of the setting is lonely and feeling broken. Depressing is a whole lot of emotion, like it's raining all the time. Sad and coasting by on life's harm and undone, the story leaves for more.

What fate of hope?

Ethan Switch