Convoy

by holly Stocks

Convoy is the first comic by holly Stocks. Young siblings in a rural community bond and bicker over a Kris Kristofferson film and a tin full of snails.

Pastoral cartooning, a pitch-perfect evocation of life in the English countryside and nostalgic for the bittersweet innocence of childhood.

Saddled-stitched

Reviews

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Convoy is a short comic detailing a lazy afternoon spent by two young siblings in a bucolic countryside. The elder brother, Sam, collects snails and ascribes to them names and personalities associated with his younger sister. Sam quickly develops deep bonds with the snails, keeping them safe in a tin box and speaking to them as if they were genuine friends. Part of the afternoon is spent watching the 1978 film Convoy starring Kris Kristofferson, which Sam's snails soon recreate by trudging along in their own "convoy" like formation.

And that's pretty much all there is to the story. Molly Stocks' artwork is delicate and endearing, cultivating the cozy vibe of a pleasant afternoon in the vast, sweeping countryside. The minimalistic story works because Stocks so easily frames it through the eyes of young children, where the adults remain off-page and everything is carefree. It's easy enough to forget that these smaller, quaint moments can be so readily captured in comic storytelling, but Convoy delivers on this seamlessly.