Bayou

by Jeremy Love

I'm feeling pretty squarely on the fence about this book.  I'm not a fan of reading my comics on-line, and so stay away from web comics.  I find that the whole process of reading them just doesn't work for me.  I remember trying a few pages of this book back when Zuda got its start, and they interested me enough to pick up the print version.

Bayou is a strange little story set in the 1930s deep south, on the edge of a large swamp.  Lee is the young daughter of a sharecropper, whose only friend is the daughter of her father's white landlord.  From the beginning, Love establishes this swampy land as having many fantasy elements, which seem largely unnoticed by the adult population.

When Lily, the friend, loses her locket in the swamp, she blames Lee.  Later, she goes to retrieve it, and is abducted by Cotton Mouth Joe, a Solomon Grundy-type figure.  Lee's father is blamed for the disappearance, and is arrested.  This being the time and place that it is, he's in danger of being lynched, and so Lee sets out to rescue both Lily and her father.  Along the way, she meets Bayou, a big green Solomon Grundy figure (there are a lot of those it seems), who she convinces to help her.

This slim volume only contains the first four chapters of this story, which feels like it's going to be a long one.  The end of this book feels more like a beginning, so some of my dissatisfaction comes from just not having read enough of the story.  The world of Bayou is interesting, but is it interesting enough?  I don't know....

The art in this book is gorgeous, but either the process of transferring it to print, or the original colours, have caused it to look very muddy and dark in places.  I don't usually complain about paper quality, but that may have something to do with this problem as well.  I think this would have worked better in some gigantic collected edition...