So I Read Some of Moebius's Strips...

I'm sure the pun in the title has been made countless times in the past, and I'd even put money on it happening more than once in this class's round of blog posts. So... sorry about that. But anyway, this is one of those times when I'm really just not sure what I've read. Typically that pertains to a single reading, but as all of the Moebius strips I read (oh ho ho) were fairly short, I can safely say I was continuously unsure of what I was reading. It was pretty darn great, though.

Weirdly connected universes, strange handling of continuity, various artistic styles, dark humor, nudity, giant monsters, and tanks; is there anything more that I could ask for in a night's reading? My particular favorite may have been "Free Fall", an all-pen work in which a man falls through what appears to be, in order, a giant forest, a cave, a temple, an otherworldly elevator shaft (at which point he is recorded by the attendant), and finally the western United States circa 1800. The man's collision with the ground creates a blast resembling that of a nuclear bomb, and there's no explanation for why it happened. Do I even need a backstory, though? As someone always critiquing classmates on things like "the rules of your world" and character motivation, I'd think I would -- but no; dead wrong. I just immediately accepted that the man was falling and nuked some cowboys. It was visually appealing and I legitimately wanted to know what happened next, without any dialogue or semblance of a plot. I guess I like it so much because it managed to capture my attention whilst slapping my usual criteria for an interesting story in the face.

Another tale I'd like to talk about is "Ballade", which reminds me of... well, several things. The world is highly reminiscent of "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind", a film directed by Hayao Miyazaki that was once a manga by the same name. Vast, dense jungles teeming with giant insects one moment and endless plains populated with modern military at another. Compelling stuff; and hey! There's nudity! Something that caught me off guard was that the characters appeared to be rendered in an Art Nouveau-like style, while the background switches between that and a style that made me vaguely nostalgic for Johnny Quest for some reason.

And SWEET BABY JESUS, the way that the pages are divided up during the scene at night, when the first-introduced character is in a cave. The panels are divided seamlessly with aspects of the actual scene, like the entrance to the cave or the back of the giant scorpion -- perhaps the best example, though, is the smoke billowing from the campfire that splits a page clean in two.

Perhaps this particular post was more of a random stream of consciousness than an analysis, but hey... typically, when I see something that I just genuinely like and have no problem with, I rant about it instead of talk about it. Off to read more, then.

-Will Avery