Reading Through 2021 76: 5,000 km per second, by Manuele Fior

5,000 km per second, by Manuele Fior

2009, English edition 2016

All of a sudden, I have a hankering to call up my high school girlfriend.

I thought this was just more digital paint at first, but no, this is real, analogue art

This artist was brought up on an Internet thread, while at the same time that I've been trying to explore more European works, so I took the plunge on it. It's a short book, a breezy 135 pages, and when I closed it, I had a lot of emotions.

The illustration has a design/fine art sensibility that is not found in most comics

Before even looking at the story, you have to take in the art, and Fior is channeling a number of different influences, all working off of each other. The big one is Disney, and there are a few explicit Disney images in the book, but that just seems to be an anchor for the characters and storytelling. It's all done in watercolor, and he embraces the looseness of the medium. He's not tightening the color with an ink outline, he's rendering it all in paint. He does work reminiscent of 20th century modern art, like some Picasso or German Expressionism. And there is a quality of illustration from 20th century fashion magazines. It all has a feeling and flow, without ever veering too far into the abstract. I'm a little jealous, to be honest.

Fior captures a moment that will rightfully never leave the memory of either person

He frames each image in a white frame, and you can feel that the picture extends beyond the frame in part by the unpainted pieces that peek through. It's a technique that embraces the medium rather than try to create an illusion. 

On top of that, he uses a different color scheme for each scene and location, letting the reader instantly make associations just at a glance. Fior either had a lot of experience before making this, or incredible intuition.

The book attempts to convey multiple languages, with some challenge as the original text was in Italian

There is a story too. Piero and Lucia meet as teens in an Italian town. Just as they meet, the story ends, and we're transported years later to Lucia visiting Norway. When it returns to Piero, he is working an archeological site in Egypt. The two are separated romantically, but are still tied together emotionally.

This set of panels is painfully good

I don't want to tell more, because part of the pleasure of reading this book is seeing time unfold. The title 5,000 km per second isn't any literal thing in the book, but would seem to be an acknowledgement of how quickly "now" can become "then." Seeing where Lucia and Piero's lives go and getting an understanding of their inner life definitely made me reflective of my own. Just typing this brings up the feels. This is a book that unlocks the memories that will always make you feel good.

Egypt gets a different color palette than Norway or Italy

The closest comic I could relate this too was some of Jaime Hernandez' less straight forward stories. Some of his Maggie and Hopey books have time jumps and changes in setting, and it's up to the reader to get the clues and fill in the details. At one or two points in this, I had to flip back a few pages to check if I missed something. The main issue was that I hadn't remembered the main characters' names, but once I realized this was a book that jumped in place and time, I was with it. Like Hernandez's books, Fior captures regret, longing, frustration... moods that often come out of having love in your life. Life would be much easier if you never cared.

Time passes

I liked this, and I'm interested in seeing if Fior's other books are similarly emotional. The other European artist I discovered last year, Paco Roca, is much more methodical in his art and story, though both artists have something similar in their sensibilities.  They both make a very mature type of full color story that is appealing to adults in a way that likely would be unappealing to a teenager.

This kind of work feels like a breath of fresh air, and reminds me of what life is about.