Drooker’s postindustrial “silent ballad” of man’s place within a planetary life cycle is back in print with this lush new softcover edition. Also known for his New Yorker
covers, Drooker’s wordless comics and graphic novels follow the traditions of politically motivated woodcut-novelists including Lynd Ward and Frans Masereel. Drooker infuses those artists’ emblematic approach with comics-specific narrative forms, fluid storytelling, and gracefully animated drawing. Less frenetic than his darkly urban Flood!
this book moves at a stately pace matched to the grander rhythms and cycles of a living world. In the highly symbolic and sharply pointed narrative, a rural Southeast Asian woman’s budding maturity dovetails with her awareness of a larger, technological world—forcibly manifested by a platoon of familiar-looking, heavily armed GIs. The woman escapes in an epic journey that takes her to a cosmopolitan city, where she discovers both the creative and oppressive possibilities of civilized modernity. This contemporary fable is expressed entirely through the intense artwork, combining dark, inky scratchboard with sensitive and judicious watercolor, crisply and brightly reproduced. The high production values of this affordable paperback edition are perfectly calibrated to communicate Drooker’s universal message with maximum clarity. (Dec.)
