Flipping through the pages of a volume of Flight is like holding a rainbow of joy in your hands. It’s like looking into a magical crystal prism, or swimming in the center of a school of silvery fish.
It fills your heart with a childlike glee, because maybe you just found the one tiny slice of magic left in the world.
You haven’t, of course. It’s just a book, in full color, of comics by multiple artists based on a similar theme: flight. Each short story lasts only a few pages and some have no words at all. Are these the best stories ever told? No. But they are incredibly beautiful to look at.
As of today there are seven volumes of Flight, but I have only read the first volume. I came across this series when I saw the latest volume at the Fantagraphics office and had the opportunity to quickly look through it. Overwhelmed by its bright interior and captivating images, I quickly ran out to Half Price Books here in Seattle and bought the first and third volumes (the only ones they had available). This first volume was enjoyable but I am excited to get to the most recent one as it’s stories seemed more fleshed out than in this first volume.
All of the stories are very different- they range from a text-free story about a penguin who dreams of flying to a story about two girls meeting in a park and talking about kites. There’s another story about a daredevil who solves the mystery of the missing circus python. Each tale is beautifully illustrated and in full-color (printing costs for these books must be incredibly high!) which gives even the simplest story a magical quality.
So help yourself to a slice of magic comic pie and pick up a volume.
Bent Shelf Book Reviews 