DESHABILLE
With Deshabille, creator Emma Connolly does indeed attain a state of partial undress, but shrouds herself in a puff of conjured strip vignettes that are captivating and disarming, and mysterious in the way that Mauretania Comics were always mysterious, with answers ever just on the tip of one's brain. Deceptively aimless yet deceptively ambitious, this reserved publication is embroidered with an ethereal idleness that just manages a fey sophistication when twee melancholy lurks with intent. Written and drawn to pass through you like an eidetic memory of childhood, Deshabille is the Bagpuss we all craved - where Professor Yaffle remained a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker, and where the mice knew no life other than that of mere ornaments on the mouse-organ.
Deshabille is A5 with 20 pages and colour cover - for one pound plus postage, from: Emma Connolly, 6A Station Rise, Tulse Hill, London, SE27 9BW. (Email: the_unhomely@hotmail.com) Or from Smallzone.
Review by John Robbins