Molly Mendoza

Now, I love weird, surreal, crazy graphic novels, and beautifully heavily illustrated graphic novels. That's basically my favorite genre, but it's a tricky one: there's a very thin, very fine line between "surreal and challenging" and "too complicated and confusing," and Skip, unfortunately, falls into the latter category.

It starts off well enough; a young child is left behind by his parental figure and elsewhere a young creature feels isolated and misunderstood by their friends (and there's show more honestly really great nonbinary representation in this). But after they meet and go on their skipping-into-parallel-worlds adventure, it loses me. These worlds are hard to parse, visually, and don't really impact the plot (except one or two). Bloom and Gloopy spend most of their time alternately whining and bolstering each other, regardless of which world they're in, and only spending a few pages/panels in each world. It really feels as though the (pretty basic and predictable) plot is in service to the art, which, like, just make an art book instead. show less

The art is STUNNING. Part of me wonders what the experience would have been like if there was no dialogue whatsoever. At times, it felt like the dialogue took away from the storyline, rather than propelling it forward. Highly recommend checking it out for the visuals!

Lots to take in with this one. Art can be overwhelming at times (it’s both stunning and beautiful), but overall the story is worthwhile if you keep an open mind.

Extraordinarily lush and genuinely heartfelt.