Crenshaw's Books & Decks

There are graphic books that enchant because of the quality detailed artwork, others because they have one's favourite characters in them, and others because they are like an entertaining movie that one truly enjoys and cannot put down. However, sometimes one come across books that we love despite not having any of that, books that one loves because they are fresh and refreshing, funny and full of wisdom, all at the same time.

The alien in this graphic novel is like a small child with poor literacy skills to whom the world around has never been explained except for a few generic facts, and who discovers it on its own. Its clean eye notices the idiosyncrasy and contradictions of human nature without any judgement, just puzzlement at times. Sadness, happiness, personal identity, and the fear of the unknown are some of the themes posed to the reader throughout this comic. My favourite characters are the egg that wants to be a frog (an analogy for so many existential quests) and Nothing(ness) and its God-like wisdom. The texts are naive, witty, hilarious at time, sweet and wise; the book ends with the cute alien's travel log, which contains some philosophical witty tweets to ponder about. The drawing is simple, purposely child-like. I thought that the book feeds on some premises we can find in some of the stories in Lem's The Star Diaries.

The Kindle edition was not good, at least in my tablet. Images could not be zoomed in or out, and neither was the lettering. One can use double tapping for vignette individuation, but since there aren't vignettes in this comic, what one sees is the letters augmented a tiny bit. Despite that, some of the texts are very difficult to read without a magnifying glass.