Fleep

by Jason Shiga, Chopan (Traduction)

Fleep is a complex and subtle yarn about a young man trapped in a phone booth. The Comics Journal says "His drawing, and his wit, makes his projects not just an exercise in the amazing untapped technical aspects of comic but a uniquely satisfying reading experience." Eisner Award winner! Reclusive math genius Jason Shiga vanished from world attention on the verge of his most amazing breakthrough in June 1967. Twenty years later he resurfaced, having abandoned his scientific background for, of all things, comic books. Shiga has managed to create the most thoughtfully beautiful comics since 1997, including the fish-out-of-water story Double Happiness and the critically praised Meanwhile. "Shiga's most recent book, "Fleep", mixes his love of puzzles with the more straightforward kind of story. A man wakes up inside a phone booth encased in concrete. With no memory of how he got there and slowly losing oxygen, he utilizes scientific principles and the contents of his pockets to discover where he is and how he got there. "By my calculations, the rate of torsion on my pendulum indicates my latitude to be roughly 37 degrees - 49 degrees North," is a typical insight. One setback after another must be overcome with ingenuity. Naturally, as a Jason Shiga book, the man's story proves to be far from predictable. "Fleep" has the kind of ingenious plot that would be worthy of Arthur Conan Doyle." - Andrew Arnold, Time Magazine

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Mystery, Fiction, Bande Dessinée, Graphic Novels Comics

44 pages

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Jason Shiga is an award-winning Asian American cartoonist from Oakland, California. Mr. Shiga's comics are known for their intricate, often "interactive" plots and occasionally random, unexpected violence. A mathematics major from the University of California at Berkeley, Mr. Shiga shares his love of logic and problem solving with his readers through puzzles, mysteries and unconventional narrative techniques.

Jason Shiga's life has been shrouded in mystery and speculation. According to his book jacket, he was a reclusive math genius who had died on the verge of his greatest discovery in June 1967. However, upon winning a 2003 Eisner award for talent deserving of wider recognition, a man claiming to be Jason Shiga appeared in front of an audience alive and well only to tell them that he had been living on an island in the South China Seas for the past 40 years. The man who accepted his award was Chris Brandt (also known as F.C. Brandt), who had disguised himself as Jason Shiga, and accepted the award at the behest of Jason's publisher (Dylan Williams of Sparkplug Comic Books) and Jason himself.

At the age of 12, Shiga was the 7th highest ranked child go player in Oakland.[citation needed]
Jason Shiga makes a cameo appearance in the Derek Kirk Kim comic, "Ungrateful Appreciation" as a Rubik's Cube-solving nerd. Shiga is credited as the "Maze Specialist" for Issue 18 (Winter 2005/2006) of the literary journal McSweeney's Quarterly, which features a solved maze on the front cover and a (slightly different) unsolved maze on the back. The title page of each story in the journal is headed by a maze segment labeled with numbers leading to the first pages of other stories.
Jason Shiga's father, Seiji Shiga, was an animator who worked on the 1964 Rankin-Bass production Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Reviews

[Mza · Rating 4 out of 5]

... nerdy, corny, ingenious in a Christopher Nolan sort of way ... mathematical but not in a story-killing way ... but also innocent and sweet and, because of its sweetness, chilling ...... bug-eyed, fat-bodied drawings with production seams showing -- grey washes making stray splash marks and splotchy texture, paste-up shadows ... Shiga misspells it "explaination", but in the end I liek it more for its handmade flaws and handmade care. The entire thing takes place inside a phone booth -- 44 pages, 6 panels per page inside a phone booth -- and doesn't get repetitive -- it uses repetition in the good hypnotic way ...... Shiga cheats on perspective so that the phone booth's interior is roomier than it actually would be. Fleep performs a similar trick on psychic space -- it echoes deeper and longer than its modest suspense/thriller container would suggest.

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hey it's the same plot as Restart only for adults and 20x Geekier.


http://pussreboots.com/blog/2018/comm...

[Kyle Dougherty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, fun little read. Ends on an interesting hook.

[Suhrob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite good graphic short story. Interesting twist on the hero with amnesia trope. Demonstrates rationality and mathematical thinking in an extreme situation. Available at amazon or for free here:

http://www.shigabooks.com/strips/flee...


Edit: Actually the final explanation undermines a bit the rationality of Jimmy. He is a cool headed rationalist when facing running out oxygen, yet he has chosen a path of terrorist attacks as a (possibly sublimated) revenge for Jenny. I'm willing to grant that a terrorist action might sometimes be the rational choice (likely only in case where the competing agents are not fully rational themselves), but his personal motivation smells of irrationality (e.g. he is not even Simban...). It's OK though, it's not implausible (not less than the rest of the story), but a small gripe still.

[Dufus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short webcomic that makes one think while one reads it. Jaosn Shiga's protagonist Jimmy Yee is stuck in a telephone booth enclosed by concrete in a foreign country, and he tries to use a number of logical tricks to get himself unstuck and back out to the real world. If one has limited resources, who would one contact and say his/her last words to? I'm still thinking about it two weeks post-read.

[Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is amazing. Starting out like a contrived riddle and ending in a pretty plausible and heartbreaking way.

[Anthony Lacroix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, une maîtrise du scénario incroyable.

[Patrick Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this. A little confusing. A little disturbing. A little touching. All in all, very worthwhile.

[Nutkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well done with quite the unexpected twist!

[Dav · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Just, wow. Impressive bit of art there. I recommend avoiding any spoilers and just reading it cold as I did. Happy to loan my copy.

[Warren]

read online at http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/fleep/