Comic Thoughts: October Haul - Stages of Rot, A Frog in the Fall, Shuna's Journey
I happened into a comic shop yesterday, and allowed serendipity to lead me to some new reading. A stand near the front of the shop sported a visually stunning book, Stages of Rot by Linnea Sterte, and nearby an equally attractive butterfly-bound vibrant green book called A Frog in the Fall (And Later On) by the same author. While I didn't initially intend on purchasing multiple comics by a single author, flipping through both revealed a wonderfully distinct pair of works.
Stages of Rot was a lush visual spectacle, sporting colour-coded chapters grouped by the phases of a giant mythical sky whale rotting -- a play on the very real biological phenomenon of a "whalefall". While sparse on coherent story and fairly short, I enjoyed every page of this bio-mystical feast.
A Frog in Fall on the other hand is a much more humble, almost childlike story of a young frog traveling with some vagrant toads seeking a path to "The Tropics," where they will be free from the winter. The book is in monotone, simple drawings that elicit calmness. The trio meet many creatures from mice to dogs to persimmon nymphs. It is a relaxing twist on a cautionary tale -- nothing bad actually happens to the frog despite his lack of caution, and while the world around him is filled with the natural death that accompanies winter, it all feels peaceful rather than ominous.
While perusing the shop I also accidentally stumbled into the Ghibli section, which was filled with various art books and tie-ins. Shuna's Journey caught my eye -- a manga by Hayao Miyazaki himself which sports the famous elk from Princess Mononoke on the cover. I hadn't heard of the work before, and bought it without much hesitation.
This was a lovely little manga, fully coloured and with very minimal dialogue, that has in it so much of Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke. It feels like a seed from which the other stories grew out of -- much simpler and less refined, but equally magical and poignant. It reminded me how much I enjoyed the Nausicaa manga back in 2023, and prompted me to immediately order a physical copy of that larger work to accompany this one on the shelf.
I need to go comic shopping more frequently.