Ancient Astronauts

by Vincent Pompetti, Andrew Benteau (Editor)

Developed over the course of 10 years by classically trained, European comic artist Vincent Pompetti, Ancient Astronauts is a 168 page hardcover graphic novel, hand painted entirely in watercolor. It's a blend of science fiction and fantasy, taking place on Plaine, a highly developed planet-nation. Following its successful campaign on Kickstarter, Ancient Astronauts is the first title published by independent graphic novel publisher Black Panel Press. "Millions of galaxies are scattered across the cosmos. Lost among them, a world similar to ours develops in its own solar system. On Plaine, a highly developed planet-nation, the dawn reveals Onys, a young and daring archer. She emerges from sleep, short of breath, alerted by something heavy and dangerous lingering around her. An imperceptible but undeniable entity, defying the laws of physics, manifesting itself like a cloud of smoke, almost palpable. A presence whose mysterious nature would soon shake her perceptions of reality."

Genres: Comics

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Vincent Pompetti vit à Rennes. Diplômé de l'école de Saint-Luc, il réalise seul son premier album, Planète Divine. Il dessine ensuite la trilogie Raspoutine, et le one-shot Œil brun - Œil bleu. Dans cet album, son style devient plus réaliste et ses cadrages cinématographiques impressionnent. Sa complicité évidente avec Tarek en faisait le dessinateur idéal pour reprendre le cycle II de Sir Arthur Benton.

Source: http://www.epeditions.fr/node/202

Reviews

[Christine]

The art does not work well when there is action. Long on things that are suppose to be neat and cool, but really short on the plot and reasoning for such things.

[Nuno]

This seemed interesting going in, but in retrospect I should have saved my time. The artwork is interesting, but seemed to lack in terms of facial expressions and dynamic situations. Landscapes and such look great, but characters' emotional status and action sequences are not well portrayed. And then the story and dialogues... This is where I felt the book was at its weakest. Could it be the translation? Perhaps, but I definitely didn't find the plot to be very meaningful or well constructed, and the dialogues are very dry.
For me, this is a book to skim through in 30 minutes, to appreciate the art and get a sense of what the story is about. Plenty of other works out there more deserving of our time.

[Sue Loh]

I appreciated it more for the art than the story. There's a bit too much unfathomable magical stuff going on, both by the good guys and the bad guys. The result is that we drift through an unpredictable world that does not become more understandable / clearer by the end, so the events appear arbitrary. I am impressed by the amount of work that went into building all the artwork. The artwork is pretty decent.

[Stephanie (Gorelenore) Cover2CoverBlog]

I received a review copy of this from the publisher with a wonderful email about the artwork throughout being wonderfully hand-painted in watercolor. I found this unique and the sci-fi plot sounded interesting. Since reading through this graphic novel I have learned that it was originally done in French, which may have led to some of the issues I had with it. Don't get me wrong, the art is what saved it, so props for that, but the story fell very short for me. Maybe it was a lost in translation kind of issue or maybe not, I am not sure.

The story was imaginative and interesting to some extent but I felt like the author tried to pack too much in to too -short of a medium. A novel with this much world building and detail would be good, a graphic novel... I think it was too hard to read through the text and not feel like it was slow and dragging. If you are a sci-fi fan it might be easier to read, I don't read it often, so there might be techniques used here that I just don't understand as well.

Some other notes:
It was REALLY hard for me not to call it "Ancient Aliens" ... isn't that a US History Channel show? I don't know, but I kept calling it that.

And

What on earth was the main character wearing? Are you telling me that in the future women don't just wear pants? But instead just underwear and a split dress/tunic thing over them? I found that very hard to believe and don't think it furthered the plot at all or even enough to be a justified artistic choice.

I tried to like this one, the art brought it up a star in my rating, but I just could not get into the story like I wanted to.

[Ery]

A kickstarter project translation I backed, originally in French. The artwork is superb. Unfortunately can't say the same for the storyline, which is thin and at times rather daft. We have a magical woman turn up out of nowhere to help our erstwhile main character, who then makes decisions which are probably not in her best interest.

The worldbuilding is great, but this story was too ambitious for the few pages it was told in. Everything was so rushed.