The Arrival

Now to start off talking about this comic, it must first be stated that it contains no words what-so-ever. Ok, so, since the pictures have to tell the entire story the drawings a beautiful and refined. The color scheme is monochromatic and the drawings are so detailed and refined that it makes the comic seem like a photo album. The photo album feel is a very interesting contrast to the events this seeming format presents, which are more fantastical and fair tale like then any real life event. It should also be noted that as you go through the piece, signs, labels, and other objects that should have text on them all have a made up language written on them so we couldn’t read it anyway. The photo album feel is easily identifiable and accessible to the reader, while the foreign text found in the format helps give the piece such an odd, other worldly feel. We identify with the characters and we even recognize the world, but when the strange text, the alien creatures, and the very unusual everyday household items are added we suddenly fell out of place in this world. In the end this is a story about human emotion that’s completely accessible to anyone, just like any good fantasy story, if there are characters and an emotional core you can connect with, you’ll accept just about any crazy thing that goes on in the world.