Friday, August 26, 2016

ApocalyptiGirl: An Aria for the End Times

by Andrew MacLean

I enjoyed Andrew MacLean's Head Lopper, so I decided to pick up his earlier graphic novel, ApocalyptiGirl, when I saw him exhibiting at TCAF this year.

This is a fairly typical post-Apocalypse kind of story.  Aria is on her own, aside from the cat that she found who now travels with her everywhere, searching the ruins of a major city for something.  Her day usually consists of singing the arias that she is named after, and trying to get Gus, a large robot of some sort, working again, while also chasing any signals she happens to pick up.

She's not completely alone in the city though - there are two warring groups, the Blue Stripes and the Gray Beards, who she mostly avoids.

This not being a very long book, it's not long before there's a lot of mayhem going on, as a Stripe finds her makeshift home in the subways, and she has to fight for her survival, just as she finds the thing she's spent years looking for.

MacLean has a refreshingly minimalist approach to his artwork.  The drawings are lush and colourful, and while they are detailed, they are also very stylized.  It was his artistic approach that attracted me to Head Lopper, and it works well here too.  This was a decent read.

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