Seaweed: Lush, hilarious oversized indie graphic novel
Ben Balistreri's Seaweed is a gigantic, gorgeous indie graphic novel with all the hallmarks of a pull-out-all-the-stops personal project from a very talented, very demanding creator. The oversized hardcover book is absolutely gorgeous, from endpaper to endpaper, and the spreads and layouts ooze care and delight.
Balistreri is an award-winning animation veteran with a genius sense for comic timing and character design. Seaweed Book 1 tells the story of Mildew, a tubercular, blind, dying bat who charters a scow called the Salty Sugar from Seaweed (a bitter, crippled pelican sea-captain) and Poisson (his mate, a French sardine with a flamboyant personality) in order to locate the "cure for death," contained in the Devil's Cookbook.
The adventurers are beset by mercenaries, sarcastic dolphins, monstrous chieftans, and horrible frogs, and the story ends on a cliff-hanger that has me slavering for book two.
Balistreri's layouts have to be seen to be believed. Dense with sight gags and possessed of an enviable cleanliness of line, each of these pages justifies its giant, oversized presence (this book is so tall I had to sit on the sofa to read it -- I couldn't fit it between me and my desk).
There's plenty of scanned pages to appreciate on his site, so don't take my word for it. Salty Sugar: Seaweed Book 1
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It looks rather like Jeff Smith's BONE. Which my seven-year-old loves and is a lot of fun to read together.
That one image above reminds me of Dragon's Lair.
Wow, I -do- like the look of that ... perusing the site, too, it's rather cool that if you buy it there it (apparently?) comes signed and with an original sketch ... hmm, mighty tempting!
I bought this great book a couple weeks. Totally worth it... Actually I spent much more than the book is worth getting a frame for it made (No glass, so you can take it out and read it). It is gorgeous and compelling. I'd be lying if I said the storytelling was perfect. So far I'm not hooked on the characters, really, but the story is interesting enough and the art wonderful enough to keep me buying them.
it is tarrible