Comics fans of all ages, you are cleared for takeoff on FLIGHT: VOLUME FIVE, the latest craft in a series of utterly sublime graphic trips to the outer reaches of imagination. Each volume of this acclaimed anthology series is deeply rewarding, even if it they have ventured away from the loose flight theme to an almost anything-goes approach.
Luckily, most everything that goes into it is really good, beginning with Michel Gagné’s “The Saga of Rex,” the first part of a “to be continued” tale involving the implosion of a star and a small pink fox with some sort of magical horn on its head. Or something like that. It’s told without words, but absorbing all the same.
Tony Cliff’s “The Aqueduct” is a rousing, old-style adventure of two occupants who outsmart an army after their airship crashes. “Béisbol 2″ is a sequel to Richard Pose’s standout story from FLIGHT: VOLUME TWO. Here, that Cuban boy has grown up to be a big-league baseball player who’s not respected by his teammates and is shunned by the fans, yet becomes a hero to one youth obsessed with the game. It’s a charming statement on celebrity status and not-so-random acts of kindness.
FLIGHT creator Kazu Kibuishi always provides a highlight, and “The Courier” is another, about a kid charged with delivering urgent messages in the near future. On the sillier side of things is Scott Campbell’s “Igloo Head and Tree Head,” which is as wonderfully absurd as it sounds, followed by the nicely skewed “Evidence,” Graham Annable’s story about a dog who, much to his owner’s dismay, digs up that skeleton in the yard.
Phil Craven goes wordless with “N.” a brief actioner between baby-looking ninjas. Sarah Mensinga imbues a painterly quality to “The Changeling,” which struck me as a modern take on the Gothic ghost story. “Timecat” is Joey Weiser’s hungry feline, who mistakes sleeping for tripping the time barrier. A real heartwarmer with palpable pain can be found in Svetlana Chmakova’s “On the Importance of Space Travel,” in which a little girl in grade school is convinced she’s from the planet Pluto, so of course, her classmates alienate her.
My favorite of the entire bunch was Dave Romero’s “The Chosen One,” in which a boy wakes up to find a menagerie of animals in his room, and they deliver a scroll to him containing a prophecy stating he will “save the world from great peril.” It sounds like a lot of work to him, and besides, he’s got chores to do. But he flaunts his new title at school and eventually gets around to doing what he’s supposed to do, drawn in sequences that remind one of ’80s Nintendo games.
Runner-up is Ryan North and John Martz’s self-explanatory “Scenes in Which the Earth Stops Spinning and Everybody Flies into a Wall.” It’s essentially the same joke told about half a dozen times, but damned if the word “Suddenly!” didn’t make me laugh every time. Cast in pastels, its ending is pretty sweet, too.
Heck, what’s not in this volume? Precious little. —Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• FLIGHT EXPLORER: VOLUME 1
Related posts:
- Flight Explorer: Volume 1
- Showcase Presents Legion of Super-Heroes: Volume 1
- Out of Picture: Art from the Outside Looking In — Volume 2
- Showcase Presents Batman and the Outsiders: Volume 1
- Showcase Presents The War That Time Forgot: Volume 1
