We3: the Deluxe Edition – Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely, 2011

When my mother found me reading comic books, she would always say, dismissively, “Don’t strain your brain!” That came back to me ironically about this graphic novel (originally issued as 3 comics)–it is a strain for me to read image-heavy/text-light books. The creators described this as “Western Manga,” which captures the type of wordless narration. Three pets–a dog, a cat, and a rabbit–have been kidnapped and turned into experimental cyborg soldiers who escape. Very violent and gory, yet studded with some amazing images. I don’t have a lot of passion or time for the genre usually, but love for Franco-Belgian comics (Asterix, Tintin, Lucky Luke) and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics keep me coming back to dip a toe in here and there. Particularly interesting in this one is exploration of the “pop-out effect,” which the after-matter in the deluxe edition explains:

We chose to treat the page not as a flat 2-D surface upon which panels were “pasted” down flat but as a virtual 3-D space in which panels could be “hung” and “rotated” or stacked one on top of the other. … This is a completely new way of depicting high-speed action which only comics can do.

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