Justin Giampaoli reviews MY BODY FEELS AMAZING by Elevator Teeth

MY BODY FEELS AMAZING by ELEVATOR TEETH
Published by TINY SPLENDOR 2019 
26 pages, 7.5" x 10.5"
Risograph w/ clear coated cover 
Purchase: https://hardcoreambient.storenvy.com/products/26518209-my-body-feels-amazing

My Body Feels Amazing is the latest offering by the enigmatic Elevator Teeth. To my knowledge, this is the largest physical object published by the creator to date, confidently charging into your consciousness at near-standard-sized comic proportions. The paper stock is immediately noticeable, thick with a coarse sheen and overall heft lending a workmanlike quality to the whole affair.

Although rendered in old-school 2D, My Body Feels Amazing, like many Elevator Teeth projects, feels like a fully-enveloping 3D sensory experience that washes over you. It seems to vibrate off the page with energy, pulsing with rhythmic sexuality, as organic forms ebb and flow, geometric patterns repeat and recede, bright pops of color punctuate emotional responses, and carefully chosen phrases sear themselves into your brain. 

"I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO DISAPPEAR" is an early example of words juxtaposed against a symbolic crimson horizon that seems to simultaneously communicate sorrowful resignation with a hint of the exciting unknown that awaits us. Elevator Teeth has never followed traditional comic book craft, eschewing common construction, distribution, and narrative methods, perhaps reflecting a similar rejection of personal social expectations. 

To wit, much of the book culminates in a double page spread intentionally placed at the exact mid-point of the book, which is a daring mental billboard of slightly off-kilter thought-graffiti. "NOT BEING WHAT THEY SEE" functions as an ethos, perhaps for this creator, and perhaps for those that the sentiment will surely resonate with, a continual exercise in reconciling the heartfelt dichotomy between our self-image and acquired public perception, a dynamic endemic to the human experience.
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Justin Giampaoli grew up on 1970s Bruce Springsteen tracks and Green Lantern comics by Len Wein and Dave Gibbons. The first movie he saw in a theatre was The Black Hole. The first mini-comic he ever read was Henry by Tim Goody