The protagonist of Modan's "Your Number One Fan" is the not-quite-deserving object of a middle-aged Englishwoman's fannish love (the echo of Annie Wilkes' obsessive mantra is worth noting — especially since it isn't the fan who erupts in a violent rage in this story). A would-be singer/songwriter, Eitan Shabtai thinks he's finally made a big step into the limelight when he's invited to fly from Israel and perform in Sheffield, England, home of Joe Cocker and the Arctic Monkeys. Eitan, who has one self-made CD to his credit, has visions of a starmaking debut, but actually he's been invited by a lonely divorcee named Jackie to play for a small crowd at a Jewish cultural center. Though the singer struggles to maintain a game face, in the end his despair and frustration spur him into violently lashing out at the pathetic Jackie.
Modan builds to this character revealing moment carefully and believably. Though her art is a trace more cartoonish than cover artist Kolton's (Eitan's wife has a nose reminiscent of the old DC Bob Hope comics caricatures of ol' ski nose), her panels are as rigorously composed. The panels where the singer opens his show to a largely indifferent crowd are quietly excruciating; in its own way, Eitan's experience isn't much different from the pre-adolescent discomfiture of "Summer Story."
Yirmi Pinkus' "8:00 to 10:00" ends the volume on a much less melancholy note. A largely wordless piece, it captures one man's early morning routine as he gets up, watches his neighbors and then rouses his sleeping male lover. Slight and sweet, it provides a suitably optimistic finish to the Actus collective's knowing reflections on love and its pursuit.
If the six artists in this collection never explicitly tell us "How to Love" (you didn't think they really would, now did you?), taken together, they provide a crisp set of snapshots of the attempts.
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