Ranxerox by Tambourini and Liberatore

I ended up reading Ranxerox and it was startling how different it is from most popular American comics. It definitely reminds me of underground comics with how graphic and sexually explicit it was, but it’s funny to think that this was probably widely circulated in Europe whereas over here this sort of content would be limited and niche. I think the assumption that the graphic novel audience in Europe is mostly adult allows the story to go to crazy places that most American comics don’t. Honestly, this made the story kind of hard to follow for me. A lot of it seemed to be sexual or violent just for the sake of being sexual or violent. It seemed like a lot of it didn’t actually add to the story at all. Ranxerox would randomly murder people for no reason and although it is part of his character as an impulsive robot without remorse, it was so excessive that it just came off as the artist goofing around just because they could. There were also a lot of random circumstances that didn’t line up and made the whole comic seem like a dream or someone’s fantasy rather than a clear story. For example, Lubina is captured and then a lot of crazy things happen and Ranerox kills some people and then they end up in New York somehow and Ranxerox gets caught up in a race to the death after becoming a taxi driver. It’s so out there that it seems like the artist just threw caution to the wind and made whatever they felt like without any regards to believable characters with clear goals and experiences that link together to create a clear story with a clear message. It could be argued that Ranxerox’s goal is to please Lubina and Lubina’s goal is to get money and drugs and that all their experiences are a result of trying to attain that goal, but the story is still so incredibly far-fetched that I couldn’t connect to it. It was still a super interesting read though and I enjoyed the art style a lot. I just couldn’t really get into it and connect to the characters on an emotional level. It could be because of cultural differences in media and the fact that I’m not used to content like this. But I still thought it was interesting and something different to read; it was refreshing compared to the usual standard American story structure of the good guy fighting the bad guy and saving the day. It inspires me to break away from what a standard story is supposed to be. I don’t think I’d go as far out of the box as Ranxerox does, but it’s something I’d like to keep in my when coming up with my own stories.