Blue Sky Through the Window of a Moving Car: Comics for Beautiful, Awful and Ordinary Days

Bolton, a graphic designer, debuts with a striking portfolio of reflections about human connections and failures to connect. The collection is divided into three sections—“In Public,” “In Transit,” and “At Home”—that reflect how people’s actions and their meaning change according to context. Bolton’s cool, diagrammatic art, suggesting a sort of instruction manual for life, contrasts with the brashly heartfelt text written over these scenes. In the title piece, for example, the narrator’s description of a rare loving exchange with his father appears over impersonal images of trees and power lines as seen from a car window. Other interludes capture simple, familiar moments—a teenager chewing gum to hide the alcohol on her breath (“Peppermint”), a woman acknowledging the practical gestures of love from her husband (“Range Life”), a feuding couple talking past each other at the store (“Furniture Shopping”)—with restrained, static digital art that seldom shows faces. The effect is distancing but also imbues the stories with a certain universality; it’s easy to project one’s own experiences onto these glimpses of other lives. The story “Ghosts” discusses the relief of “talking with someone about mundane things” in times of trouble, an attitude that sums up the volume as a whole. These delicate tales capture the vitality of everyday. (Nov.)