An incredibly impressive debut graphic novel from Finland, with music, love and relationships and some added fantasy/horror elements, in a mix that strangely works really, really well.
Story/content:
This is the story of a band in Finland trying hard to break out, following mostly the main guitarist and his endeavours to "keep it real" and at the same time keep up with the relationship with his girlfriend. At least that's what it starts out like, and then it slowly gets more surreal, as in the drummer looking like and acting like a big bear among all the human characters, or the baseplayer seemingly sincerely reminiscing about playing with some of the biggest bands in history, And then it gets even more strange, moving into the realm of fantasy and horror, but there I draw the line. You'll just have to read it for yourself.
Art:
The art is fantastic and even though this supposedly is Ahonen's debut graphic novel, he has been drawing comics and making illustrations for a long time, which shows in the professional design and fluid line work. The style is semi-realistic, with faces drawn in the modern Asian/American mashup style that has become really popular, but with a definite personal touches.The colours are beautiful, vibrant, often emotionally charged and adds several layers to the reading experience. This is comics art that is just a pleasure to look at.
This is a story with music at it's core, and something that Ahonen does brilliantly is depicting music visually. Several scenes are stunning displays of how to do what is essentially impossible, i.e. to make you feel music through drawings. Here, again, the colouring is key, often foregoing realism for a more emotive way of showing what is happening.
Critique
As you can tell (I couldn't keep my feeling in check fully in the above texts, which are supposed to be a bit more objective...) I really liked this. The quirky combination of different genres makes the story interesting and I could feel myself getting emotionally involved in the life of the main character and his strife for the perfect band, no matter what. The thing that lowers this from a top rating in my book is the somewhat strange twist in the end, which was just too overplayed and elaborate (if you need to add four full pages of the bad guy explaining what is going on, then you've written yourself into a dead end...). For my money, the story didn't need such an action packed climax, I was already hooked by the far more subtle story leading up to it.
Anyway, there is a follow up graphic novel in the making to this international hit, so well see where the story is heading soon enough. I'm hoping for more music and less fantasy...