Dolores “Dolly” Sanchez is not doing well. She’s stopped practicing gymnastics. Her parents are going through an acrimonious divorce. Dolly is isolated, lonely, and bordering on actively self-destructive. She finds a lifeline in a rumor. Allegedly, there is a strip club called Heaven on the edge of the edge of town. Half the time though, it doesn’t seem to exist. As Dolly’s mostly-estranged friend Jenny notes, a customer who had their world rocked one night found the club gone the next. Jenny and her pals Sheila and Alex are curious. But, if Heaven is real, they’re underage and cannot legally enter. Dolly, being 18, can. Dolly is starved for life outside her head, and the mystery intrigues her.
Sure enough, Heaven exists. Lover, its sultry owner/operator/star, takes an interest in Dolly, and offers her a job. Not as a dancer, but as Lover’s shadow and all-purpose helper. She needs someone to change lightbulbs, restock the bar, clean the poles, and handle other odds and ends. It will give Dolly a chance to get a feel for the club and get to know the women who dance, bounce, and tend bar, to see how she fits in. Heaven’s clientele can be sketchy, and Lover is intense. Nevertheless, there is something about the club that draws Dolly in. Maybe it’s the cash, or her affable coworkers. Maybe it’s the fact that she gets to wear a Dracula cape, and Dracula capes make many things better. Whatever the case, Dolly’s interest in Heaven soon runs deeper than wanting to learn the deal with the rare interesting thing in her nowheresville town. Lover, likewise, is just as interested in Dolly.
Fantagraphics
Heaven, from comicsmaker Katie Skelly, is a darn good book. Its mood is impeccable. Its character work is economical and effective. Its craft, particularly the way Skelly frames characters and action, is consistently excellent.
Skelly pays careful, skillful attention to presenting the seen and the unseen in Heaven. Dolly is introduced through a poem she has composed, lamenting her loneliness and her despair at the future. Skelly juxtaposes that poem with a series of panels focused on Dolly’s fellow students. With one exception, they are shown in groups, and even the one who’s shown on her own is actively participating in class. None of them are shown in full. Their lives are passing Dolly by. She only sees fragments, never enough to put a complete face to a name. When Skelly fully introduces Dolly at the end of this sequence, she does so with a full-body shot that is larger than several of the preceding panels put together. Dolly knows herself, and so the audience gets to see her in full. She feels empty and stuck, and so the panel that introduces her has her standing still where her fellow students were shown in action. It’s elegant storytelling that makes good use of comics’ ability to frame and specify what the reader sees and how they see it.
Indeed, Heaven as a whole thrives on the differences in perspective between Skelly’s characters and her reader. The comic opens with an act of merciless violence in Heaven. The first thing the reader learns about any of the comic’s cast is that Lover is able and willing to kill, and her staff know this. Dolly, meanwhile, never learns of this. There is plenty that she finds off-putting about Heaven, and plenty that draws her to continue working there. She is both intrigued and unnerved by Lover’s charisma. She’s also glad to have a well-paying job with a boss who’s clear about her responsibilities and respects her staff’s boundaries. Dolly’s friends cannot enter Heaven, and only know what they can see from a distance. They lack the context Dolly has, just as she lacks the context that Lover and her staff have. The reader sees more than any of them.
Fantagraphics
No one in Heaven knows everything, though, not even the reader. The world is bigger than any one night, no matter how massive. No one person is all-seeing, no matter how long they’ve lived or how piercing their gaze. Skelly shares bits and pieces of her cast’s histories, enough to ensure that their actions read as genuine and motivations are coherent. She also deliberately leaves a great deal unexplored. This gels nicely with her work on Dolly’s coming of age. Dolly’s hardships are significant. Her youth, isolation, and comparative lack of life experience make them feel especially big to her. The connections that Dolly builds and the perspective she gains help her build a bigger world. It’s engaging, well-executed character work.
Skelly’s work with Heaven’s core mysteries is similarly strong. The first thing she reveals is that Lover and Heaven are wrapped up in the supernatural and violent. Weirdness does indeed abound. That’s the mystery Dolly and her pals want to solve, but it isn’t Heaven’s mystery. It’s one thing to know what Lover and company are up to, and another entirely to know why they’re up to it and why Lover is interested in Dolly. The answers, both grand and intimate, are satisfying.
Heaven has style to burn and strong character work. Katie Skelly frames both with very fine craft. The result is a compelling, grindhousey coming-of-age tale.
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