K. Lynn Smith

There is a lot going on here, some good but some not so good. I loved the world building of a post-apocalyptic world after something called the "Glowing" which changed the world. I think based on context clues, it's basically worldwide radioactive contamination. The story follows Lacey, an orphan with a giant pet cat. Her town is less than thrilled by her antics related to her late mother's prophecies. This short graphic novel shows her eventually finding her place in the world and being accepted.

I liked the story arc but it was a bit too fast. Also I would love a volume 2. This felt like the start of a series but there doesn't look like there's a second book.… (mais)

The last few months I’ve been in the habit of going to Kickstarter and just browsing the comics projects to see what’s there and that’s how I found this little gem of a comic, Plume. K. Lynn Smith had started the Kickstarter to publish the first issue (and chapter) of her comic and after checking it out I quickly fell in love with it (and donated to the project.) Plume is set in the old Wild West and follows the adventures of Vesper Grey and her mysterious companion Corrick.

Vesper and Corrick have just had a somewhat…wild experience. They’ve managed to defeat a large number of armed gunmen to find “The Mask of the Seraphim”…a mask that allows the bearer to reach godlike speeds with the seven celestial wings of fire. But let’s back up a bit and tell how they got here. Vesper’s life before Corrick entered the picture was…well we’ll say boring to be nice. Her father was off in the world being an archaeologist and Vesper was left in the care of her maiden Aunt who believed women should always be proper, never slouch or anything else. And it was driving Vesper crazy! Everything might have come to head until one day when Vesper’s hat blew off and landed on a frozen lake. Vesper hated the thought of losing the hat and ran out to retrieve it…and the ice cracked and she fell in. She was certain she was going to die when her necklace began to glow and pull her upwards out of the lake. And there waiting was Corrick…and Vesper’s life changed forever.

Like many comics, the first thing that caught my attention about this comic was the artwork. It is computer generated, as best as I can tell, but it has a quality that reminds me of good animation…like the type of animation that I saw in “The Secret of Kells” movie. It’s just the way that the characters are colored and the little details that make them stand out. Like when Vesper falls into the frozen lake and her necklace begins to glow. And as she looks up at the surface in one panel you can see the outline of a mysterious figure viewing her from above. It’s just a nice little touch that helps sell the story. I also really like the use of shadows in the comics, not only does it help bring the characters to life but adds a nice little tension to the story. Such as on a page where Vesper and her Aunt are looking at each other out of two different panels, the shadows fall across their faces in a way that heightens the tension between the two. And that’s something that I’ve found a lot of artists struggle with. I also like the character design, with one exception–Aunt Agatha Murdock. It’s not that I don’t like her, I just don’t think she looks old enough or perhaps frumpy enough to be the maiden aunt complaining about everything. Perhaps there’s more to her story to reveal what causes her to act like this and we just haven’t heard it yet, but it bugged me a bit.

I really enjoyed the setup of the story, with introducing us to Vesper and Corrick in the “after” (after Vesper meets Corrick) so that we have a starting point to see what kinds of things that we can look forward to, before diving into how everything began. It’s just a nice little selling point to the story so that readers don’t become bored with thinking that it’s going to focus on a young teenage girl and her becoming proper, which is what you would think if you skipped the intro pages. Instead we get to see that there’s some greater adventure waiting for us. And even though it’s a relatively short story, it genuinely feels like we get a good view of who the characters are and what motivates them. We see that Vesper’s life is rather boring and her aunt…well her aunt is a bit old before her time. And so far I really like Corrick’s character and the air of mystery that surrounds him. And the fact that he treats Vesper like a younger sister. Even though the story doesn’t have any machinery in it (at least not yet) it has a somewhat subtle steampunkish quality to it, with the mysterious mask at the beginning of the story and the necklace that Vesper wears. I look forward to seeing what happens next.

I recommend this comic to folks that like westerns, archeology, Indiana Jones and steampunk. I look forward to reading the continued adventures of Vesper and eagerly wait to see where K. Lynn Smith takes us next.… (mais)