Beautiful Darkness
by: Fabien Vehlmann & Kerascoet
...unsettling and gorgeous anti-fairy tale is a searing condemnation of out vast capacity for evil writ tiny. Join princess Aurora and her friends as they journey to civilation's heart of darkness in a bleak allegory about surviving the human experience. The sweet faces and bright leaves of Kerascoet's delicate watercolors serve to highlight the evil that dwells beneath Vehlmann's story as pettiness, greed, and jealousy take over. Beautiful Darkness in a harrowing look behind the routine politeness and meaningless kindness of civilized society. {cover copy}
This was another graphic novel I picked up while at The Strand. I opened it randomly to what turned out to be the prettiest, most innocent-seeming spread in the book, quickly fanned through the rest just taking in colors and nothing else, so I was actually really caught off guard by this one. The description is really accurate. But I didn't read it before I dove into the book. So it was much darker sadder and weirder than I was prepared for. Having said that, its actually a great version of what it was meant to be, I think. It really gives you that sense that you sometimes feel in society/politics where there's something that makes you feel icky, for lack of a better term, going on under the surface of something that comes off as the exact opposite. This comes out in many ways through the story. The most obvious being that the dolls have made a home inside the corpse of a young girl who dies somehow in the woods. They don't find this odd or gross, just go about their lives doing weird crap and living with the corpse. It was a weird one, I'm not gonna sugar coat it. But if you like allegory and the type of stuff the cover copy mentions, and you don't mind the, what I would call "Juxtapoz Magazine Artist" creepiness, it's actually worth a read. {I used to get that magazine every single month. There was a lot that I found beautiful that was also weird AF and my husband had no problem telling me so every time I was looking through a new issue. This would be right at home in that magazine.
Again, with graphic novels, I don't tend to mark quotes, so this ends here!
...unsettling and gorgeous anti-fairy tale is a searing condemnation of out vast capacity for evil writ tiny. Join princess Aurora and her friends as they journey to civilation's heart of darkness in a bleak allegory about surviving the human experience. The sweet faces and bright leaves of Kerascoet's delicate watercolors serve to highlight the evil that dwells beneath Vehlmann's story as pettiness, greed, and jealousy take over. Beautiful Darkness in a harrowing look behind the routine politeness and meaningless kindness of civilized society. {cover copy}This was another graphic novel I picked up while at The Strand. I opened it randomly to what turned out to be the prettiest, most innocent-seeming spread in the book, quickly fanned through the rest just taking in colors and nothing else, so I was actually really caught off guard by this one. The description is really accurate. But I didn't read it before I dove into the book. So it was much darker sadder and weirder than I was prepared for. Having said that, its actually a great version of what it was meant to be, I think. It really gives you that sense that you sometimes feel in society/politics where there's something that makes you feel icky, for lack of a better term, going on under the surface of something that comes off as the exact opposite. This comes out in many ways through the story. The most obvious being that the dolls have made a home inside the corpse of a young girl who dies somehow in the woods. They don't find this odd or gross, just go about their lives doing weird crap and living with the corpse. It was a weird one, I'm not gonna sugar coat it. But if you like allegory and the type of stuff the cover copy mentions, and you don't mind the, what I would call "Juxtapoz Magazine Artist" creepiness, it's actually worth a read. {I used to get that magazine every single month. There was a lot that I found beautiful that was also weird AF and my husband had no problem telling me so every time I was looking through a new issue. This would be right at home in that magazine.
Again, with graphic novels, I don't tend to mark quotes, so this ends here!
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