BURYING SANDWICHES
by Rob Sato

Wow.

Rob Sato had a table caddy-corner to ours at APE. He was selling his Xeric award-winning "Burying Sandwiches." I was a little bit afraid to read and review his work because he was such an incredibly nice guy (and his girlfriend was very nice too), that the idea of tearing his work apart seemed like such a small gesture. Then I realised that, at heart, I am a small man. Then I read the book, and it was great. Just great. And my inner small man will have to starve for attention a little bit longer.

While I appreciated every autograph and sketch I recieved at the show (often done unsolicited), the one thing I appreciated most of all were the free sandwiches being given away as a promotion for this book. Peanut butter (check that—CHUNKY peanut butter) and jelly (ahem! STRAWBERRY jelly) sandwiches. If I were a love vampire, these two would have been driving a stake into my sensual heart. Particularly on Saturday, with no food in the belly. I can still smell those wonderfully goopy sandwiches. Mmmmmm...

Also, before getting to the book, each purchase came with a free hand-letterpressed, two-color bookmark that is both disturbing and beautiful to behold. A cave-faced girl is cutting herself apart with a spade, revealing the title of the book through the holes. Great-looking and wonderful to run your fingers over.

This 56-page, 8.5" square graphic novel features an equally disturbing, if more abstractly surreal cover. The featured character's mouth is hyper-extended, revealing shovels for teeth, each shovel holding a piece of moldy bread cut into the shape of the letters of the title.

Fans of Dave Cooper's science fiction work and Sam Keith (among others) will find a new frak-master in the cutaway diagrams in Sato's end pages. Inky, surreal, psychadelic, anatomically twisted and featuring the type of details that amuse even more with each revisit.

It's been said that the Xeric awards tend to reward accomplished, stylistic art over good writing (take THAT Dave Heatly!), but the real test of the grant is in providing an opportunity for cartoonists as strong in one as they are in the other. This is cartooning afterall, not an illustration showcase. Well, Sato can stand shoulder to shoulder with people in both camps. "Sandwiches" is a dark-black humorist's best friend. And it is dark-black.

Scanned, reduced and it still looks lovely.

The inks are richly reproduced, each page framed in black all the way to the bleed. The panels are a mix of black, greytones and whites so bright in contrast to their surroundings. The drawing is reminiscent of Mark Kalesniko, Frank Quitely (I keep opening the book up to that image of the father's knee as he stands over the toilet?it's like opening up a phone book in a strange hotel and always coming right to the escort service section. Try it!), Keith, Cooper and the sort of animation you never see in Disney films. His compositions and framing are pretty much flawless. Each panel a piece of work on its own, but never encumbering the storytelling. Sato switches easily from a storybook presentation to wordless comics to a more standard word-balloon cartooning like a great switch-hitter who can also field the ball. His science fiction is inventive and fun, his fantasy vibrant and funny. His reality is exagerated and twisted, the perceptions of his young protaganist fully realized.

Janice Takeda is a Shel Silverstein/Garbage Pail kid come to life in this biography of a young girl after my own heart. Janice hates food. She hates the very idea of eating. She hates the taste, the look, the texture of food. She feels nauseous at the sight of other people devouring?and devouring is just what they do. She can't savour, she can barely subsist. She wishes she could find food appealing, and goes to great lengths to do so, but she only finds revulsion.

Rather than eat, she buries her food on a hill near a tree. And her plans work until the ghosts of that food comes back to haunt her. And these ghosts are delicious. She wants to be normal. She wants to be like evryone else, but only she can see these ghosts and only she knows the secret ecstasy of their tastebud-thrilling flesh. She's a girl entering puberty and the metaphors of her dilemma are so potent that Sato should be praised for not tackling them directly. It would be hard to find him even hinting at them, and all subtext is left hidden in the entrée, something only a connoisseur would find (like how I complimented myself there?).

The book ends with credits, thank you's, jokes and comentary, all presented like a supermarket circular for people who only use their coupons at 24-hour stores and take advantage of the times when they are mostly empty.

Personally, I hate food. I hate the fact that not eating is fatiguing to both the body and mind (how exhausted must Janice's mind been?). Growing up, it was incredibly trying on my mother as each and every night I'd reject most everything put on the table in front of me. It was like some small miracle when I'd find something edible, and a cause celebre when I actually liked something. While I've outgrown it a bit, the list of foods and ways I won't eat (some will cause me to leave the room or restaurant) continue to simultaneously amuse and annoy both friends and family. I hope that Janice never completely outgrows either her dislikes or her passions, but that she does, oneday, stop digging that hole of hers.

I also hope that Rob Sato doesn't outgrow his. This is his first book, and the guy's got to be fresh out of college. If this is just the appetizer (or the cocktail hour beforehand), I will savor each and every course that follows, in what I hope is a meal fit for a king.

—Justin J. Fox