5 out of 5

“Kids stranded in an adult-less world” is a concept stretching back however long, with Lord of the Flies variants and more tame ‘dang youngsters learn they need their parents after all’ versions littering the movie / book / comic landscape.  Even the more sci-fi twist of the French ‘Alone’ series – featured kids wake up one day with everyone else vanished – has its iterations, most leading to disappointing explanations or extrapolations.

The explanation for Alone has yet to come, so the jury is still out for the reason Ivan, Leila, Camille, Terry, and Dodzi find themselves in the eponymous state one morning.  However, extrapolations have begun, and writer Fabien Vehlmann and artist Bruno Gazzotti accomplish the amazing, both regarding the familiarity of the setup and in terms of the comic medium: over a relatively short 60ish pages, each of the five kids – who range in ages and attitudes – are given three-dimensional personalities and the way they settle into an initial rhythm is organic and believable.  And when a first note of fear (outside of the Why of things) is introduced, Vehlmann and Gazzotti position it perfectly as an oddity that sets our brains a’spinning in the same way the kids’ do, cycling through the various “normal” reasons such things could be happening, only to dodge to another, much more satisfying path.

The notes of subtlety in the writing and art are what make the above praise come to fruition: word choices; framing choices: the book breathes life.  And thanks to less restrictive foreign views on what can be included in children’s lit, Alone can go places – fully acceptable, in my mind – that keep the stakes gripping.

Can’t wait to continue on in this series, though curse my wallet if Vehlmann proves to be another author whose work I’ll want to explore more.