4 out of 5

Working in his risographed, minicomic format, Matt Emmons’ The Winter King is a short but impactful graphic novel, printed in shades of light pinks and gentle blues, which I promise is much less Miami Vice than that color scheme may sound. The touches of color are rather gentle, the base blue providing the chill of our winter setting, but toned with a pink sky and highlights to add notes of warmth.

Matt returns to his blending of the naturalistic world and Something Beyond, but that “something” isn’t necessarily cosmic – just beasts and concepts right outside of our knowledge. With a wordless protagonist – a dog – in this book, that knowledge discrepancy is taken in stride, and effected beautifully, as our (perhaps) titular king views all threats to his survival on the same level, whether they’re two-legged, winged, or maybe walking skeletons.

This is a beautiful, striking book that has visuals and themes worthy of taking the time to sit on a page and ponder, but at the same time, it wholly can function as just a thrilling picture book, taking us on a day of a hunt for food in this dog’s (wolf’s?) life.

The sold knock to the rating is to a scene that temporarily took me out of the flow, and it’s exactly the same issue I took with a short from Matt, Down Below: eyes are very important to this story, and there’s a character whose eyes are covered, paired with another character whose eyes are not. The former, to me, is purposefully “faceless”, and requires communications from his pair to proceed; but there’s a moment where Matt gives us a closeup on the eyes-covered character such that we can see his eyes, and it felt like a narrative hiccup. We can piece together some Whys for this shot, but they don’t quite follow to me; the moment felt stronger without this moment. Truly subjective, but it was the only scene that broke the story’s immersion.

A wholly lovely lil’ GN, though, not only in terms of visual and story quality, but as a printed curio it’s a wonderful thing to hold and read.