4 out of 5

A visually succinct contemplation on living: what drives us; what stalls us; our inherent limitations. Marco Fontanili’s Moth uses the artist’s intense and precise linework – crafted here, I imagine, with some digital touches to handle some backgrounds and motifs – to map poetic beats to words to take us from start to finish in “our” life in a cage. Fontanili asks if it’s a cycle, with the beginning of the comic echoed in the end, and whether or not there are freedoms within that cycle.

While I think the “life is a prison” concept can be a bit tired, and Fontanili’s style has a creepy-crawly horror to it (especially when presented in white-on-black art) the preciseness of his words (at least as the Italian was internet-translated for me an English speaker) and patience with the imagery gives the tale weight, as does an afterword which fleshes out a bit that he’s not trying to be nihilistic in questioning such things. Structurally, though, the concept stalls once his metaphorical encaged human hits adulthood, and Fontanili kind of switches up the framework a bit while we watch the subject grow old. You could read into that – that not much changes during that time – but I guess I prefer narrational balance.

Powerful visually even if untranslated, I do think you get a gist here just on pictures, but at the same time, it is worth reading as well – whether you’re already of the language, or want to take the few minutes to port it to a tongue you speak.