A young couple is stuck in traffic, reading a book aloud to each other
to pass the time. The relationship is already strained, but between the
encroaching road rage, and a novel that hits way too close to home,
tensions are running especially high by the time they arrive back at
their apartment. When one of them leaves to get takeout and a movie,
each of the young lovers is individually forced to confront loss, grief,
fear, and insecurities in unexpected and shocking ways.
Crane's formal use of the comics medium -- threading several timelines
and the interior and exterior lives of its protagonists together to
create an increasing, almost Hitchcockian sense of dread and paranoia --
is masterful. But as the title hints, there are dualities at its core
that make it one of the most exciting works of graphic literary fiction
in recent memory, a brilliant adult drama that showcases a deep empathy
and compassion for its characters as well as a visually arresting
showcase of Crane's considerable talents. Keeping Two is ostensibly a
story about loss, but by the end, it just might also be about finding
something along the way -- something that had seemed irredeemable up to
that point. In that way, it's also a deeply romantic book.
Cartoonist Jordan Crane has been one of the most quietly influential
comics-makers of the past quarter-century - in multiple senses of the
word: as a cartoonist, a designer, an editor, a publisher, a printmaker,
an advocate, an archivist, and more. But Keeping Two is his biggest
project in close to two decades and will be one of the most anticipated
graphic novels of 2022.
