Reading Through 2021 15: The Golden Age, by Roxanne Moreil and Cyril Pedrosa

 The Golden Age, by Roxanne Moreil and Cyril Pedrosa

2018, translated 2020

This is an incredible book! I can't believe I never heard of it until I saw it on a single best of 2020 list.

I bought it based on this cover, which reminded me of the Disney's Sleeping Beauty

This is a translated edition of a French book, with a second book promised this fall. I may be guilty of hyperbole, but I think this is a masterpiece work, or at least the a near-flawless start to one. Of course, it all depends on where future books go, but between the writing and the art, I have no doubts that this team knows where they are going and are capable of pulling it off.

The colors verge on gaudy at first, but once you're in the frame of things, it's entirely natural

The art in this is incredible. I have long lamented the use of computers in comics, but it wasn't an inherent problem with computers; it was how they were used. Pedrosa uses computers everywhere in this and I think it's incredible. He's using them to produce artwork that would just be impossible to do in a timely manner in a traditional method. He's not simply leaning on computers to cut corners in the creative process. He's using them to create complex images and unique color schemes.

The double page spread with characters moving through it is a regular motif

Pedrosa worked for Disney as an animator in the 1990's, and you can see it in the character design, which is expressive and every character is pretty much immediately distinguishable from others. But he adds a far more artistic layer to the work, with design that calls back to the illustration of the 1950's, and also to woodblock print works, which aggressively work with negative space. In certain sequences, the art breaks into expressionism and it all works together as a whole. The feeling of the book is like watching a movie more than with most comics. The flow from panel to panel is languid, and each scene is given the space to breathe.  Personally, I'm not a massive Disney fan, but to see an artist commanding the page as Pedrosa does, I have nothing but respect.

The art gets much more expressionistic that this, but I think this captures the woodblock tone

Moreil's story is rooted in a medieval/renaissance era kingdom, with the king dying being the story catalyst. The peasantry is suffering the greed of the lords, and everything is unstable. The story is very much about the personal though, and the plight of Princess Tilda. The narrative of her with her childhood friend is a properly dramatic arc that goes to a very interesting place, but all the characters have personality and motive. Very quickly, you have an understanding of who everyone is.

The plot of the story is very political, perhaps more than even more so than it should have to be. The book focuses a lot on the division between the peasantry and the upper class, and if it were written in the 1950's, it would merely be a fairy tale, but with the middle class being destroyed in the world as I type, and the uber-rich not caring one bit for the growing number of poor, the book can't help but feel political in a contemporary sense. I guess the rich abusing the poor makes for a timeless tale. And it can be dark. As much as the Disney tone looks like it's made for kids, there are deaths and hangings in this. 

What's in the trees? Not something from a Disney book

It's book one of a series, advertised as such, and I'm all in on number two. I already pre-ordered it. Hopefully it's only a two or three book series, as I'm not excited to wait a decade for a seven book series, but I want to read it regardless, which is saying something. This book is a bold, mature, virtuoso product. 

English speakers need to read more European comics.

The Color Kittens from 1949. Remember when we had good art in kids books?