A review by georges
Set to Sea by Drew Weing
4.0
It is hard not to rush through Weing's gem of a book. His one-panel-per-page approach allows his wonderfully nuanced art to tell the story of how the life we imagine for ourselves can never approach the life we actually get to live. In Proustian form, Weing's poet acquires his wisdom painfully via life - how nothing is really learned properly until there is a problem, until there is some pain, until something fails to go as planned - and finds significant contentment on the other side of difficult truths.
There is a certain exaggerated roundness to Weing's style that is simultaneously sweet and disturbing. The main character is grotesquely disproportioned, a visual representation of the disparity between the notion of reality and actual reality. Each image, though rendered in simple black and white, conveys a sense of careful attention - be it the hundreds of tiny cross-hatch marks or the meticulously detailed bindings of books in a bookshop - that is easy to miss on the first read.
Set to Sea does not reinvent serial story telling, but it is a quietly delightful debut that charms as it spins its simple yarn about a poet who became himself.
There is a certain exaggerated roundness to Weing's style that is simultaneously sweet and disturbing. The main character is grotesquely disproportioned, a visual representation of the disparity between the notion of reality and actual reality. Each image, though rendered in simple black and white, conveys a sense of careful attention - be it the hundreds of tiny cross-hatch marks or the meticulously detailed bindings of books in a bookshop - that is easy to miss on the first read.
Set to Sea does not reinvent serial story telling, but it is a quietly delightful debut that charms as it spins its simple yarn about a poet who became himself.