5 out of 5

I wish I could tell you why this is so addictive.  That would be, like, an effective review.  Alas, it sneak attacked me: I didn’t realize how much I wanted to be reading this until I’d reached this thick, square-bound tome’s final pages, and found myself completely absorbed in a world I desperately wanted to know more about…

Kazimir’s output is scant, unfortunately, and we’ve only gotten one more volume of this series, which I’ll be getting to as soon as I can… and I guess hanging on to a blog post in 2016 suggesting that comics is hard but he’s still working at it.  In the meantime, I flip back through the pages of this 5″ x 5″ book – the Jim Rugg-like art and action with the Stokoe / Hewlett-ish character design; absorbing the bits and pieces we learn about a destructed world post “the heaven star’s” collision with its surface.  There’s the ruffian Rule group of bullying leaders; foreign speaking, back-packed Westenders; a ‘snipper snapper’ brawler with amnesia; dream eating ghosts; and maybe our main characters Klavir and Wilm, stumbled together in their travels to seek out loves lost during the past year’s travails.

That’s some wild fantasy stuff, eh!  Plenty of maps and fancy language and world-building, eh?

Nope.

Or not directly.  This is Strzepek’s aforementioned sneak attack: the story floats by incredibly casually, humorous at points, and flippantly depicting violence – seeing as how the baddies can apparently stitch themselves back together – while giving us a legit bond between Klavir and Wilm and, by dropping us mise en scene with various characters but leaving us there for long enough stretches to get our bearings, allowing us to feel out the above story elements at our own pace and comfort.  That we’re vaguely following this duo on their travels incites a Bone vibe, which is very fitting as Jeff Smith’s masterpiece wove the same magic of seemingly simple storytelling that blossomed into a full-on world.  This is very much like that, only with an eye on an older crowd.

More, please.