If you haven’t guessed, I like graphic novels. It wasn’t always that way, but they opened up to me unique experiences. I used to recommend them to my customers and had to overcome the “they are just comic books….” (sneering the whole time). No, they are much more (and besides, what’s wrong with a comic book? Your child is reading, right?) Anyway, I found a new graphic novel series and have almost finished an old one. Both of them are fantasy, but dig deep into multiple subjects that are real and relatable. Not only do we get coming of age themes, but there is religion, friendship, family, politics, racism and more. Yet, it is all done for a younger audience, who might not get all the subtleness, but will realize even baby bats and dragons have struggles, too.
Kenneth Oppel several years ago started The Silverwing Trilogy. Recently, the first one, Silverwing: The Graphic Novel has been adapted into a graphic novel. Christopher Steininger takes the story, and with their illustrations, brings things to life. Both text and art create a world where humans and bats (and other creatures) live parallel, overlapping, but only occasionally connecting in mysterious ways. Overall, this is a sweet story, but one that has some serious edges. Our cast of characters include bats, owls and even pigeons. There are mature images such as bats eating other bats, the vampire bats’ faces are “Hollywoodized” and the colors are used to set the tone of a scene (red is very important). Mostly the colors are dark and/or more earthy, but there are brighter colors as well. The details can be crowded or busy and that can make things a bit hard to distinguish. Yet, there are also very open images as well. The images vary from beautiful and are not so subtle hints at spirituality and freedom; whereas others show the darkness that is in the world. The story itself is darker with talk of death, war and banishment but still, is accessible to most readers.
This series is similar to Wings of Fire, Warriors and other similar series. Plus, it is a younger Redwall and Watership Down.
And speaking of Wings of Fire, the seventh graphic novel Winter Turning: A Graphic Novel (Wings of Fire Graphic Novel) by Tui T Sutherland and illustrated by Mike Holmes has made my journey with some special dragons almost complete. There is at least one more coming, but that does not stop me from saying I’m almost done with what is “out there” in graphic novels. You can read Wings of Fire in novel or graphic novel format, but either way you will get how the dragons of this world have had two major adventures. The first few were about the original dragons, each one taking their own book and showing what they did to try and bring peace to the lands. In the second group, we take the children and smaller characters of the first one and show how now they must band together to stop old enemies, and a few new ones as well.
The nice thing about this series is that you get the themes of friendship, war and coming of age with dragons. This allows the fantasy reader to get themselves the best of both worlds. Even when colors are darker, they still are shiny and bold. The tone of the illustrations usually tone down the more serious nature of the story. They are also fairly formulated so you know the flow of things, but there are still surprises. In this one we learn more about one of the tribes of dragons we have not really followed up to this point. You do need to read in order, but it is worth the time.