Salinas’s gray-washed illustrations look like something you might find in a precocious child’s notebook: which is apt, considering the blend of naive fantasy and adult angst that he’s working to evoke here. I’m less enamored by his decision to use type font both for the book’s narration and his characters’ speeches, but, then, I’m old-fashioned in this regard. (But if we’re reading from a rat’s journal, wouldn’t it be claw-written?) Still as a debut work of art comics, Within the Rat proves poetic and refreshingly open-faced. Would like to see what Salinas can do with characters who aren’t manifestations of his shadow self.
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