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This is a brilliant graphic novel, most noted for its intelligence, successfully met ambtitions, scope and humanity. The characters range from an Athenian temple maid to a defender in the Crusades and beyond. A shepherd out of a fable meets a miner direct from ''There Will be Blood''. Who knew that the tale of a modern day junkie could answer back to that of a prehistoric hunter-warrior so well?! All are woven into the wider picture, which uses a very poetic, slightly surreal stance, in combining each one. There can be times when it becomes a little too difficult to follow them all, and some of the stories do get lost in the general mix - for me it was the wronged highwayman and the wronged slave mostly. But beyond reading and exploring the over-arching tale we can then return to peruse eighteen little flipbooks, all of which are five minutes' duration, to get their tales alone.
But it is the way Fawkes has stuck to his measured, strict, rule, and provided us with such a spiritual book that strikes the reader. There are several obvious connections - black water, a thunderous encounter, but there is still so much that is understated for the reader to explore. His very clear, black-and-white-and-nothing-in-between, ligne claire, style contrasts with his prose being very low in punctuation, and in stacatto staccato little bursts that can link up with anything said elsewhere on the spread, or just before or just beyond. So this is not the most easy easiest to read graphic novel, but it is definitely one of the most genre-breaching, thought-provoking and memorable ones I've ever met.
This will forever stand as proof the graphic novel format is not restricted to superhero stories. Another collection of black and white short stories, however, that knows that heritage and plays with it completely successfully, is [[Demo: v. 1 by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan]]. You might appreciate [[Dreams and Everyday Life by Aviv Ratzin]] but we had our reservations
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