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 |
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 |
This set of panels is painfully good |
Egypt gets a different color palette than Norway or Italy |
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.
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