I wasn't really a fan of O'Malley's work on Hopeless Savages, but I've been waiting for this book, because the online strips at the Oni site had a sort of quirky and funny quality. Lost At Sea is a story of a group of high schoolers on a road trip, but that's really not what it's about. Instead, it's about a girl trying to sort out her past and her relationships and her personality, and it's very very strange and a little slow to start, but undeniably gripping the further you get into it. It reminds me of previous Oni work, specifically Arthur Dela Cruz's Kissing Chaos and Neal Shaffer's Last Exit Before Toll, but at the same time it's a very unique story, unlike anything I've seen before.
To be honest, as I read through Lost At Sea, I wasn't sure about it at first. O'Malley has created a compelling voice for his protagonist, but the story really did seem to be sort of meandering. Raleigh, the lead character, narrates the story by writing a letter, which at times feels like breaking the fourth wall and which sort of moves the story along at her leisurely pace. We're viewing the story through her recollections, which means a certain amount of jumping around in time, and O'Malley relates the story according to what Raleigh wants to talk about. The resulting story is sometimes maddeningly mundane, as we get Raleigh's current state without context, but it's deceptive, drawing the reader in and making them ask questions so that when some of the more unusual elements of the story rear their head, they don't seem out of place in the realistic and grounded psyche that Raleigh presents.
Lost At Sea is really hard to describe, and that quality is one of the things I like about it. There are elements to it that could be called supernatural, except that those elements seem to be largely in Raleigh's head. There are comedic elements, but they're balanced against a dramatic and even tragic tone, although again the tragedy seems to exist in Raleigh's head to a large extent. O'Malley does a fantastic job of capturing the self-loathing, the uncertainty and the angst of being a teenager without making it seem trite or self-indulgent. You feel for Raleigh, even though so many of her problems seem to be mostly of her own making.
O'Malley reveals his story slowly, but I discovered by the time he started making revelations that I was completely hooked by the book. Raleigh's reasons for thinking she doesn't have a soul, or the bizarre activities that she drives her friends to as a result, made perfect sense in the context of the sort of altered consciousness that we had become privy to through her narration. Her reason for being on the road trip aren't really huge shockers or anything, but they pack a certain impact, largely because O'Malley reveals them after he's established all the factors that lead up to it. This unusual pacing is actually perfect for the book, and is responsible in no small part for hooking me in.
Then there's the artwork, which I didn't think was very fitting for Hopeless Savages but which is just perfect for the story here. O'Malley's characters are somewhat childlike, looking more like preteens than teenagers, and that innocent, youthful quality contrasted with their coarse language and other more mature habits gives the book some of its contrasting, unusual feel. The storytelling is exceptional, though, very self-contained within panels and rarely spreading into a splash, giving the whole thing a sort of restrained energy. And though O'Malley's work is not done in a realistic style, he does very effective backdrops, giving a real feel for the sort of "lost in America" style of the setting.
