"Narratives" # 1 is a collection of sexy ladies, tough ass men with purpose and a litlle bit of beer guzzling! If there were one theme that would tie all five of these drawings together it would be the realm of the dream. Ackerman's "Shoe Salesman" renders two surreal male, suited, figures swirling above and below a heavenly set of female legs. The smoking coin head is, well, "heads" you win! While the other male strokes a pet sea serpent. Myth, commerce and the everyday interact in a miasma of dreamy possibilities. Meanwhile Ben Marra's "Terror Assaulter" plays out the adolescent fantasy of sex & violence, like only comics can. Here it's a litteral rendering of dream language; chasing after the bad guys and being rewarded by a sexy broad's embrace. The litteral qualities are amplified through his asymmetric arrangement of schematic vignettes. Santiago Solis' mean, sad men are full of the stuff of nightmares. One out-sizes the other and he seems to be the dominent one, evident through the brutish visual cues he displays: whip, bloody shirt, soiled pant leg. Kenny Cole (yours truly!) added the embyo in the wheel chair, the George Wallace quote and the tank, pushing the literal brutishness into the socio-political realm of war, anti-abortion and racism. Things begin to lighten a bit with Niklas Nenzén's drawing "Through a Straw". Niklas drew the seven raised beer mugs and the duck powered air bus, for which Cole then created a more dreamlike context, by rendering clouds, an oversized beer sipping head and the ubiquitous flag waving in the breeze. The fifth drawing is by Kenny and presents a tormented scene of a nude pole dancer twisting herself into a pretzel as the real twister ravages the distant landscape kicking up red dust and black smoke.