Lapsos

by Inés Estrada

Lapsos is a psychedelic, science fiction epic starring a couple of friends who encounter themselves messed up in between Mexico City and other dimensions. Their unexpected adventures help them discover that somehow, everything in this universe is connected, …But how does that even work?

Genres: Comics

148 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Inés Estrada is a cartoonist and sort of a nomad. She is the editor of the comics section of Vice Mexico and she also manages Gatosaurio, a webshop where you can find her stickers and comics. She has inhaled enormous amounts of car smog biking through her home town of Mexico City, which has surely damaged her brain into seeing the psychedelic colors and shapes you can find in her work.

Reviews

[André Habet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love how Estrada experiments with scales of perspective here in ways that never feel self serious. At its heart, a story about navigating a complex friendship and searching for a purpose in life across dimensions. Really fun and loved the burst splash pages into full color. Always felt warned and well executed.

[Katie Maher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read of a favorite. :) I was not able to get over how well the author plays with perspective back when I was in high school and it still hits all of this time later.

[Fredrik Strömberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

The transformation of the magazine C'est Bon Anthology into a regularly published series of graphic novels by different artists is really, really working. I've enjoyed CBA through the years, but it's always been a mix of interesting and less interesting comics in each issue. Here, I get new books, graphic novels by artists I've mostly never heard of before, and I just love it. This doesn't menat that I think each and every graphic novel is perfect, just that I love the fact that I get books that I didn't specifically order, but because I trust the editorial team. That makes for interesting, new reading experiences.

That said, over to the second book, Lapsos by Inés Estrada. I've seen shorter comics by Estrada before, and found them interesting, so getting the chance to read a whole graphic novel was very welcome. This story is a trip, visually and storytelling wise. We follow two persons, a young man and a young woman from Estrada's Mexico as far as I can tell, who gets sucked into vortex that moves them around into different realities.

Estrada's art changes from iconic to realistic, from two color to four color, in order to capture the feelings of the characters, as they wander through different realities. There is a character, a black catlike creature, that just has to have been inspired by the art of Jim Woodring, but mostly I think that this is a truly fresh, new and different voice in comics, which is a good feeling for someone who, like me, who has read far too many comics and graphic novels...

Lapsos is not a prefect graphic novel, but it is interesting and entertaining. Had I been given the choice of half stars, I would probably have given it a ranking of 3.5.


I've so far reviewed two books in CBA's new graphic novel series:

* All Saints (CBA #23)
* Lapsos(CBA #25)

[Ángel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am madly in love with Estrada's style. She has an incredible imagination and her creativity does not cease to surprise me. However in Lapsos, I perceive the characters to be unidimensional, and therefore I wasn't able to relate to them, and my desire to engage in the story was null. I would much rather just look at the illustrations, than having to follow the story in Lapsos. The plot is interesting, but it's not quite well developed.

[Kim]

first half is great