30 in 30: the Barefoot Serpent by Scott Morse

#10: The Barefoot Serpent
Storytellers: Scott Morse
Publisher: Top Shelf
Year Of Publication: 2003
Page Count (can be approximate or in # of issues format): 128 pages

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT WRITING / STORYTELLING:

This showed me a different way to look at a comic. The main comic narrative is in the middle of this book, relating the story of a young girl and her family visiting Hawaii to forget about the tragic event that has befallen them.  This story is in black and white with grey tones. Bookending this story is a brief biography of filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.  These pages are lush, vibrant paintings with text. Despite these two very different stories, told in very different manners, Morse manages to weave them together to produce a book that is elevated by the threads binding the two narratives. 

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT ART / STORYTELLING:

Using a sublime approach to the dialogue with animation-style art, one can make serious and tragic experiences within a comic narrative resonate long after the end of the book.  This is something that Morse does in many of his works and that juxtaposition  of a “weighty” scene with the “fun” style that Morse uses really makes these scenes more emotional, in my opinion.

 
RECOMMENDATION: A