One of the big stories making the rounds at the San Diego Comicon was the Image graphic novel Flight, an anthology by a variety of cartoonists most folks had never heard of before. Having now read Flight, I think the hype might have been a touch on the exaggerated side, but just a touch, as there is indeed a stunning array of talent here, and I marvel that these creators have put together a full-color book with gorgeous production values and a higher strike rate than most anthologies achieve. It reads more like the kind of thing you'd see from Top Shelf than from Image, which means that it broadens my idea of what Image can be (and I thought I already had a pretty broad idea) as well as exposing me to the work of a variety of talented cartoonists. When I started reading Flight, I knew only a couple of these creators, but after reading the stories in this volume, I expect to be looking for more work from a lot of them.
With the theme of flight, and the beautiful cover that calls to mind Hayao Miyazaki and Moebius, the illusion is that all of the stories here are going to deal with the literal act of flying through the air. To be sure, there are a fair amount of stories that focus on that type of flight, but there are also tales that are slice-of-life with a flight element, a few that explore the notion of spiritual flight and, to be honest, a few that don't necessarily fit the theme unless you're being exceptionally generous in your definition. At any rate, though, it's a good theme, and provides a strong central focus for the creators, but I'm glad that the creators were given flexibility to branch out, because some of my favorite stories really had little to do with the theme when all was said and done.
Notable in this category are three tales: "Taj Mahal" by Neil Babra, "Maiden and the River Spirit" by Derek Kirk Kim and "Migrations" by Kean Soo. Babra's style reminds me of a pleasant mix of Craig Thompson and Paul Pope, and though his tale involves a flight only in the loosest sense (the character takes a flight to India), the story of someone spending time with some distant relatives and enjoying a trip across the world really hit the spot for me. Derek Kirk Kim's story has no flight connection at all that I can see, but it does have a nice Aesop's fable tie-in, Kim's usual beautiful artwork and a down-to-earth and hilariously funny punchline, and is, ironically, one of my favorite stories in the book, despite having nothing to do with the theme of the book. Kean Soo's story, meanwhile, features a raven as a sort of background element, but is more of a grounded story of lost and found love. Also notable in this category is the one-page strip "Create" by Erika Moen, which is the last story page of the book and so neatly encapsulates the joy of creation that no doubt spurred the anthology that I can't begrudge her the tentative connection to the flight theme.
There are two dozen comic book stories in this volume, and I loved over half of them and liked most of the rest. My favorites were Vera Brosgol's very human and yet fantasy-tinged "I wish...," Jen Wang's meditation on kites in "Paper and String," the pulp-meets-kid-adventure of Bengal's "Formidable," the uplifting and funny tale of penguins in Phil Craven's "Deep Blue" and the stories mentioned above, but those are just my personal highlights. There are stories that feature airships, stories of fantastic flying creatures, stories of blighted futures, stories of fanciful pasts, funny animal stories, imaginative new fables and even a meditations on the concept of faith that really resonated with me. These folks have taken the concept of the anthology and put it to its best use, giving the reader a real variety pack of comics. What's surprising is that despite that variety, there's not the usual variance in quality or personal connection that usually makes any anthology about half satisfying to me. There are tales that didn't connect with me in Flight, but they are few and far between.
Flight also features a delightfully wide and varied array of different art styles and influences. I expected everything to have a bit of a cartoon or anime influence, given that many of the creators involved are animators, but that's hardly the all-encompassing style I expected. There's work here that reminds me of stylists like Ben Templesmith, Ashley Wood and David Mack, there's work that calls to mind great cartoonists like Walt Kelly or Harold Gray, there's even work that takes a more realistic tone. Which is not to say that the influences of anime, European art or animation aren't to be found here, just that there's a variety of styles at work. About the only uniting factor is that the color work is just amazing on every story, even the ones where the art didn't really connect with me.
