The gull yetin

Opening on a young boy's idyll of happy home life before taking a sharp turn into tragedy, followed by a journey into the unknown, this dark wordless fairy tale from Kessler (Windowpane) makes a perfect if ineffable kind of sense. Watched from afar by a curious, loose-limbed, and vaguely humanoid gull, the boy barely survives a raging fire that destroys his home and seems to kill his parents. The boy is then spirited by the gull from his hospital bed and the two embark on a strange voyage. A woman who believes the gull to be a monster rather than a guardian tries to kill him and takes the boy into her home. Saddened to be separated from the boy, the gull--which shape-shifts into a grotesquely lumpy leafy tree and other forms, its transfigurations often yanked by storming emotions, like a trickster god of folktale--plots revenge. Events don't follow neatly proscribed dramatic or moral arcs, with random acts of kindness nearly equaled by jolts of cutting cruelty. The blocky and primary color art, which recalls Dash Shaw and Gary Panter, helps give the loose-framed hero's journey an emotional tug, rendering the fire with a blasting fury that singes the page at one point, and at others amplifying the characters' loneliness by smothering them in darkness. Transcendent and eerie, this story of the ties that bind exerts a primal force. (May)

A supernatural creature takes interest in a young boy, and both suffer ordeals and wrestle with their worst instincts in this wordless, psychedelic graphic novel. On a family outing in the city, a young boy tosses a button to a sea gull, attracting the attention of a lanky, long-nosed, humanoid creature who follows the boy and his family back to their home and perches in a tree outside. That night, an explosive fire orphans the boy and lands him in the hospital. After holding vigil from a nearby branch, the creature escorts the boy out the window of his hospital room, and they set off on a long canoe ride through a gaudy, abstract landscape. The creature provides what comfort it can as grief and hunger overwhelm the boy. Eventually a storm swamps their canoe, and the creature struggles to shore with the boy in its arms, where a woman--distressed by the sight--strikes the creature with a pitchfork and absconds with the boy. She nurses the boy back to health and grapples with the reality of raising a young child, even as the recovered creature sets up shop in a tree outside her home. After the woman and boy become close, the creature takes its gruesome revenge, which reverses the caretaking roles of boy and woman. The boy and now-disabled woman set off on a journey that tempts the boy with a new, thrilling-but-frustrating life among his peers and presents the creature with an opportunity to atone for its brutality. Kessler's art is a striking mix of heavy, kinetic lines; simple but expressive faces and bodies; and a riot of mostly primary colors--like the trauma drawings of a child with a keen grasp of both color theory and sequential art. Mesmerizing. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.