Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in lately, but my first reaction to “Cottonfluff Hollow” was … how cute! Adorable little (and not so little) purple dragons, floppy-eared rabbits, and a teddy bear with a Snake Plissken complex. Done up in bright colors, in easy-to-follow panel breakdowns, with clear dialogue and captions. A nice way for me to return to the fold of Comic Fencing.

Of course, there’s more to the story than that. These aren’t discarded stuffed animals (like those poor denizens of the Island of Forgotten Toys in the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer cartoon), nor are they outgrown imaginary friends (like the insanely antic denizens of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends). As forgotten dreams, they fall somewhere in the middle: they have the cuddliness of old beloved toys, but the rough edges of well-worn recurring dream characters.

The chapter one storyline progresses nicely. Cuddles (the bear with the Plissken eyepatch) is the newest arrival in Cottonfluff Hollow, but he cannot accept that he is forgotten. He is determined to “go away” (but not “far away,” which we’re told is very difficult to get to at this time of year) and some of the other lead characters try various things to delay his departure. The individuality of the characters comes out in the second half of the chapter.

Chapter two takes a complete turn. None of the established main characters appear; the new characters (mostly unnamed) seem to be more nightmarish (authors notes bear this out). Where the art of chapter one was airy and open, the art for chapter two feels to me claustrophobic. Of course, it probably helps that the focal point of chapter two seems to be a mime that the worst of the nightmares implies is much worse a thing to fear than the worst nightmare himself.

I personally think mimes are freakier than just about anything out there. And I’m the guy who had recurring nightmares as a kid about having to escape from the clutches of KISS by trying to fly. (Yes, I was afraid of KISS. And yet I owned all of their action figures. Gene Simmons should be proud on both counts.) So this chapter, with it’s long dark spaces, Lovecraftian mega-nightmares, and mimes … it feels completely discordant with what chapter one established. Will that be a benefit or a detriment in the long run? I can’t tell yet. It could swing either way.

Still, I’m open to the possibility that these two wildly different feels can be incorporated into one overall arc, and I’ll be checking back to see how things go.

Three point five stars for this one; intriguing enough that I’ll add it to the bookmarks and give it more of a trial run.Rating:

Phillipe St. Gerard’s “Cottonfluff Hollow”
reviewed by Anthony R. Cardno

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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