Rare Creature

by Kelley Seda

Join Amelia Mire a fragile girl on a bizzare journey through love, surprises and paranoia with the boy next door, who is anything but, and his cast of unusual friends and mysterious secrets. Will this journey help her start a new life? or will it be the last piece in the puzzle of her undoing? Pin ups by-Jim Mahfood, Mike Huddleston, Scott Morse, Andi Watson, Troy Nixey and more...

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Chris Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surreal adventure that begins to make sense once you get used to the unique form of storytelling. This often feels like a dizzying hallucination, but without the cool self-destructive rock star vibe. The story follows Amelia, a tiny person with all sorts of insecurities and paranoid fantasies. Everyone around her is a "freak" (or she just obsesses over characteristics that are outside the "norm" in others, it is not clear). It turns out she is pregnant, and her fear for how her baby will turn out borders on psychosis.

This fairly short book is worth reading through in its entirety twice. The second time you will realize the author was being much more straightforward than it seemed on the first pass.

[E. Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll warn you, its weird. Watching a pregnant lady's dream weird. But its good if you are willing to accept that the normal rules of storytelling don't necessarily apply in Kelly's tale. Kelly uses the written word as another brush stroke, adding accents to a graphic story, which disregards many standard notions of sequential art. Worth checking out. If for no other reason than the art is good and the main character is quite adorable.

[Kristopher Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's amazing what a true artist can do with sequential panels. Some of the pages here as so good, I almost want them enlarged and put on my walls. Having recently read Geek Love, I found Kelley Seda's gem of a book to be an almost perfect chaser. So why the missing star? Simply because sometimes, the sparseness did lead to confusion. But what I understood, I loved.

There are a lot worse ways to spend a half an hour to an hour of your life than savoring the work Seda's done here.

[Dave H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weird and quite nice.