A Visual Grammar of Affection

P+O is a 62-page wordless comic by Richard McGuire, published by Éditions Cornélius in October 2002. Working entirely through shape, color, and movement, McGuire constructs an abstract narrative of intimacy between two figures drawn from the golden age of cartoons — unmistakably Popeye and Olive, though stripped of plot and reduced to pure visual choreography.

The humor in the work is inseparable from McGuire's evident reverence for his source material. Rather than pastiche, he produces something original: a sequence that reads as both tribute and transformation, the familiar silhouettes becoming vehicles for a precise, playful study of closeness. Minimalism here is not austerity — it is economy in service of feeling.

McGuire (b. 1957) is an American illustrator, cartoonist, and musician. His 1989 strip Here, which fractured a single domestic space across multiple time periods, is widely regarded as a landmark of the form. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and Le Monde, and he has published with Pantheon Books. P+O belongs to the Artbooks & Artist Publications strand of the Lokator100 catalogue — works where the visual and the sequential are inseparable.