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Comet Club
Yi Yang, già autrice di Easy Breezy e Deep Vacation, torna con un romanzo grafico che sfrutta le stesse atmosfere dei suoi lavori precedenti, costruendo una trama a più livelli. A scuola c’è un nuovo club, che si occupa di studiare gli avvistamenti degli UFO. I suoi membri sembrano avere motivi molto diversi, per prendere parte alle riunioni del club, e le loro vite non potrebbero essere più diverse tra loro. Famiglie disgregate, padri assenti o che si sacrificano oltre l’immaginabile per i propri figli, in un racconto dove i legami familiari sono importanti quanto gli elementi fattuali della trama. Lo spopolamento dei piccoli centri, le speranze per il futuro, il bisogno di costruirsi un percorso di vita e la realizzazione che nessuno si salva da solo, che senza veri amici tutto è molto più difficile e spaventoso. E poi… quella buca nel terreno, nei boschi, e le macchie di sangue. In quale mistero sono inciampati, cercando gli alieni, i membri del Comet club?
192 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2024
About the author
Yi Yang
11 books9 followersYi Yang, classe ’94, ha una grande passione per Kon Satoshi e per il cibo… tranne la rucola! Si è trasferita in Italia nel 2013 dove vive e lavora. Nel 2016 è stata selezionata per l’Illustrators Exibition del Bologna Children’s Book Fair e ha pubblicato Aiuto! (BAO Publishing), illustrato A colorful day (TianTian Publishing) e Sasso il pittore, sempre per il mercato cinese. Collabora con svariate riviste e Case editrici tra cui: ChunFengWenYi e Holding Limited.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 22, 2025
Humbling plot twist
September 2, 2026
Yang Kuaikuai lives in a mountainous region of China. It’s a small industrial town getting smaller, located by a forest and cut off from much of the world. Educational and employment opportunities lie elsewhere. The protagonist Kuaikuai and his best friend Li Yu are 14 years old and near the end of their time in middle school. They are behavioral opposites: Kuaikuai taciturn, Yu garrulous—garrulous to the point of being oblivious to social conventions; he is impulsive, inadvertently rude, and gullible.
Yu sees a flyer for the school’s Comet Club and coaxes Kuaikuai to come with him to the next meeting. Upperclassmen interested in alien life and UFOs have created the organization. They meet in a shabby, abandoned classroom with only a few members attending. The club leader is Qi Ming, an older boy whom Kuaikuai regards as his intellectual rival.
At the meeting, Qi gives Kuaikuai and Yu a map of the local mountains, indicating a point where, he implies, they will see a UFO.
They go to the spot during the middle of the night and instead witness two men furtively dig a pit and bury a human-sized duffel bag. The boys return the next day, police in tow, and find nothing: the pit is empty, and only trace amounts of deer’s blood are found, as later analysis reveals. This is the book’s turning point.
In the Comet Club’s attempt to solve the mystery, they learn things about themselves and their parents that will alter their lives. We discover, for instance, that Kuaikuai’s mother was only 16 when he was born, and not emotionally ready to be a mother. She left her husband and baby for better employment opportunities than their small town could provide. After an absence of 10 years, she returns and suggests that Kuaikuai come live with her, since he will have more educational and employment opportunities in a bigger city.
Li Yu—the reckless, impulsive kid who frequently skips school and steals cars (we learn late in the book)—lives alone with a perpetually drunken father. Qi Ming, the book’s intellectual peer, lives with his grandmother (no grandfather, no mother) but receives occasional letters and checks for his education from his father who has been working in Japan for Ming’s entire life. Readers will judge for themselves whether his father’s sacrifice was worth it.
Yi Yang varies the story’s visual perspective: Each panel may show the action from a different perspective, a character’s body might extend beyond the panel’s frame, or panels across a two-page spread may be scattered over a larger image that is the focus of the story at that point.
In China, the plight of these children will have particular resonance and emotional impact. The background to these children’s lives is more than geographical. During the 1990s—when the events of the book occur, amid China’s economic boom—many parents left small towns and farms for the cities where jobs were increasingly concentrated. Because of China’s hukou system, merely moving to a city does not give migrants the same access to public services as locally registered residents. For parents who brought their children with them, that could mean difficulty enrolling them in local public schools.
The left-behind children phenomena of the 1990s has not gone away. In some rural communities, some children are left behind without any family to care for them. Not surprisingly, many of these unsupervised kids—like Li Yu—get into serious trouble with the law. For Chinese readers, Comet Club is not historical fiction.
What does this book have to do with UFOs? Well, like a lot of 14- and 15-year-olds, they have questions about true and false, reality and make-believe, fact and fiction, opportunity and fate. The search for answers shouldn’t feel so alien.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
Yu sees a flyer for the school’s Comet Club and coaxes Kuaikuai to come with him to the next meeting. Upperclassmen interested in alien life and UFOs have created the organization. They meet in a shabby, abandoned classroom with only a few members attending. The club leader is Qi Ming, an older boy whom Kuaikuai regards as his intellectual rival.
At the meeting, Qi gives Kuaikuai and Yu a map of the local mountains, indicating a point where, he implies, they will see a UFO.
They go to the spot during the middle of the night and instead witness two men furtively dig a pit and bury a human-sized duffel bag. The boys return the next day, police in tow, and find nothing: the pit is empty, and only trace amounts of deer’s blood are found, as later analysis reveals. This is the book’s turning point.
In the Comet Club’s attempt to solve the mystery, they learn things about themselves and their parents that will alter their lives. We discover, for instance, that Kuaikuai’s mother was only 16 when he was born, and not emotionally ready to be a mother. She left her husband and baby for better employment opportunities than their small town could provide. After an absence of 10 years, she returns and suggests that Kuaikuai come live with her, since he will have more educational and employment opportunities in a bigger city.
Li Yu—the reckless, impulsive kid who frequently skips school and steals cars (we learn late in the book)—lives alone with a perpetually drunken father. Qi Ming, the book’s intellectual peer, lives with his grandmother (no grandfather, no mother) but receives occasional letters and checks for his education from his father who has been working in Japan for Ming’s entire life. Readers will judge for themselves whether his father’s sacrifice was worth it.
Yi Yang varies the story’s visual perspective: Each panel may show the action from a different perspective, a character’s body might extend beyond the panel’s frame, or panels across a two-page spread may be scattered over a larger image that is the focus of the story at that point.
In China, the plight of these children will have particular resonance and emotional impact. The background to these children’s lives is more than geographical. During the 1990s—when the events of the book occur, amid China’s economic boom—many parents left small towns and farms for the cities where jobs were increasingly concentrated. Because of China’s hukou system, merely moving to a city does not give migrants the same access to public services as locally registered residents. For parents who brought their children with them, that could mean difficulty enrolling them in local public schools.
The left-behind children phenomena of the 1990s has not gone away. In some rural communities, some children are left behind without any family to care for them. Not surprisingly, many of these unsupervised kids—like Li Yu—get into serious trouble with the law. For Chinese readers, Comet Club is not historical fiction.
What does this book have to do with UFOs? Well, like a lot of 14- and 15-year-olds, they have questions about true and false, reality and make-believe, fact and fiction, opportunity and fate. The search for answers shouldn’t feel so alien.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
[ 3.5/5 stars ]
Rural China - COMET CLUB follows two middle-school best friends who have to decide if they want to stay or move from their small town. And they join their school's 'Comet Club', a nerd club obsessed with UFOs.
Told in form of vignette, the story is about adulting and pursuing dreams while later it echoes expectations and sacrifice. The messy art sharply conveys the dramatic vibes in a dynamic plot that feels both atmospheric and grounded. With a touch of sci-fi, I personally appreciated the cultural elements. Despite the cast's age range, the narrative is approached in a rather mature way and I think this book is impactful and shows the author's skill even for those who didn't enjoy the read.
COMET CLUB (tr. Jamie Richards) is a coming-of-age and metaphorical story about relationships that is quite niche. I particularly enjoyed the metaphor.
[ I received a complimentary copy from the publisher - Fantagraphics . All opinions are my own ]
Rural China - COMET CLUB follows two middle-school best friends who have to decide if they want to stay or move from their small town. And they join their school's 'Comet Club', a nerd club obsessed with UFOs.
Told in form of vignette, the story is about adulting and pursuing dreams while later it echoes expectations and sacrifice. The messy art sharply conveys the dramatic vibes in a dynamic plot that feels both atmospheric and grounded. With a touch of sci-fi, I personally appreciated the cultural elements. Despite the cast's age range, the narrative is approached in a rather mature way and I think this book is impactful and shows the author's skill even for those who didn't enjoy the read.
COMET CLUB (tr. Jamie Richards) is a coming-of-age and metaphorical story about relationships that is quite niche. I particularly enjoyed the metaphor.
[ I received a complimentary copy from the publisher - Fantagraphics . All opinions are my own ]
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This was excellent. The thing that's so fun about reading works in translation it that you get a glimpse into the minds and anxiety of people who live a world away. And big surprise... they're not all that different from ours. These teen are concerned with figuring out who they are and who they want to be. Set on the back drop of a smaller Chinese mountain town, where it always feels like everyone wants nothing more then to leave. Our main cast are the members of the local school's Comet Club. Each kid has their own struggles at home.
The art is vivid. The panel work is dynamic and you can feel the weight of the story as it starts to build. There is a moment in the climax where they are outside clime up a mountain and one of the kids is filming. The art switches to the camera's perspective in a way that makes you feel as if you are there with them. It is a very fun bit.
The art is vivid. The panel work is dynamic and you can feel the weight of the story as it starts to build. There is a moment in the climax where they are outside clime up a mountain and one of the kids is filming. The art switches to the camera's perspective in a way that makes you feel as if you are there with them. It is a very fun bit.
August 7, 2026
Chasing comets turns from chasing dreams to confronting nightmares for a group of rural teens in China. It's a hard and fast lesson in growing up, and one I'm not sure I enjoyed, although the author's skill is undeniable.
May 18, 2025
Un libro di sentimenti buoni molto ben disegnato, incredibilmente empatico
May 30, 2025
[Comet Club - Yi Yang → ☆☆☆.25]
June 16, 2026
lu à la va vite pendant la pause de midi c'était intéressant
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Mature, slightly off beat, interesting story.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews