An Ideal World

This verbose fantasy comic from China is part Alice in Wonderland and part self-help manual. A You is a depressed 19-year-old forklift driver who dreams of chasing rabbits, but it takes him nearly half of the book to fall down the rabbit hole to a wonderland. For the first 60 pages A You’s friends and co-workers tediously lecture him in an attempt to pull him out of his slump. A born complainer, A You thinks he has the worst luck; “Why is my life so boring... and so hard?” he asks. His visit to a utopian fantasy world changes his outlook on life as he watches a dancing street sweeper and a building painter/would-be artist enjoying their menial jobs. At the heart of the comic is a very upbeat message about entrepreneurship delivered by a humanoid zebra named “The Master of Universal Love.” The venture capitalist zebra’s explanation of how he rose to the top is unfortunately told in the uncanny voice of a pyramid scheme leader or an Avon salesman. Peng and Chen are excellent artists, but the book gets bogged down in talky heavy-handedness, as if someone put nice fantasy illustrations into a business self-help book like Who Moved My Cheese . (Mar.)