Red Koi’s concept is very simple: a woman realizes her family is evil and runs away to find a new way of life. It’s a concept that’s simple, hard to get right, and heartbreakingly hard to get wrong. This is the sort of story that has to be sharpened just right.
Red Koi is more than sharp enough.
A good writer/artist in comics is a rare treat. Most of the time the writer has to communicate to the artist what he sees in his head when he looks at the imaginary page, and the artist then has to imagine that page in his head and then has to be good enough to produce the page as a single unit; comic books are really hard work! A good writer and artist learn how to communicate what they want and need to each other over time, and usually once that pairing has been established it's absolute magic. Now, in theory if the writer and artist are the same person this problem would go away, right? You'd think. Actually the opposite is usually true, because most people are not actually writer/artists, they're a writer who can draw or an artist who can plot. That means that such works usually become overindulgent one way or another, because there's nobody to check the writer/artist from screwing up; a writer can't tell the artist that the page simply isn't what he had in mind, nor can an artist tell the writer that a page simply isn't feasible. So they usually err on one side or the other. And, to make things worse, there isn't a guarantee that the writer/artist will stay perfectly balanced all the time! Like I said before, rare treat.
Tyler Wentland almost perfect lands the balance. Almost. The thing that jumps out at me is the atmosphere. The air is charged. Potent. The writing is slow in the best way possible, letting you stew in the forlorn atmosphere just long enough before dropping you into a whirlwind of violence and regret. Most of the non-action pages are jaw-droppingly good. It's moody and hand painted,; the colors more than make up for some of the seeming limitations of the art’s line work. And let's not beat about the bush on that point: the line work is middling. But the atmosphere Wentland achieves despite this failing is masterful. It's like looking into someone else's dream. I used the word charged before, and I'll reiterate: holy crap the atmosphere is charged! One of the ending scenes you can practically feel the wind on your face and in your hair. Well, if you have hair.
The problem starts whenever action is required. The storytelling of the art, at best, becomes serviceable. While I didn't really lose the plot throughout it always took me at least a glance or two to really get what was going on in the panel, action-wise. Remember, folks: the page, not the panel, is the standard unit of measurement in a comic book. Panels have to add up to readable pages. And a lot of the action scenes suffer from not adding up to more. There's good motion and if I only focus on the panel I can figure out what's going on, but that then breaks the flow and I have to get my bearings. But keep in mind that this is a relatively small gripe, considering just how amazing the rest of the art really can be.
So the writing itself is masterfully done, and this is where Wentland really shines. The writing feels like a landscape: characters are presented as they are Not a single character in here is wholly good or bad, but a heartbreaking combination of both, leading to conversations entirely human. There's a sympathy for the characters that I pretty much live and breathe off of in stories, and it hangs in the air with the already-powerful artistic atmosphere. The feelings are so powerful that they practically merge with the colors. It's in these conversations where the distinction between writer and artist vanishes. The story is the art. The art is the story. That it happens at all is special. That it happens as often as it does in this book is really cool.
Red Koi is the sorta premise I’d run for a Burning Wheel campaign, and I mean that as an absolute compliment. Its darkness and emotion meld really well with its dreamy art. Some of the pages just stick in my brain, and they won’t leave. There's a beauty and mysticism to A Samurai Reborn that's only really absorbed by looking at the page.
Which, like I said before, is now stuck in my brain.
It’s certainly not the worst problem in the world to have.
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