Flight, Volume One

I love storytelling through graphic art and was fairly excited to dive into this compilation of up-and-coming artists. Like other readers, I found the volume to be a mixed bag. I loved the theme "flight" and enjoyed the creative manner in which some of the artists worked with it. However, I found one nagging problem with most of the stories - lack of narrative development. Of the 24 stories, I felt that two (Jake Parker's "Hugo Earheart" and "The Bowl" by Clio Chiang) stood head and shoulders above the rest, succeeding both in narrative and in art work. There were a few - particularly Jen Wang's "Paper and String;" Jacob Magraw-Mickelson's "Dummy Brother;" and Chris Applehan's untitled - that I really enjoyed for the impressive artwork show more but not so much the stories. "Taj Majal" by Neil Babra; Enrico Casarosa's "Air and Water;" and Bengal's "Formidable" seem like a works-in-progress and left me wanting more. Catia Chien's two submissions, "Fall" and "Tumbleweed" are beautifully rendered vignettes. I was suprised by how much I liked both "Outside My Window" and "Beneath the Leaves: Jump" by Khang Le and Rad Sechrist, respectively; I give the stories props for being sorta cutesy but still managing to win me over. And I give special mention to Joel Carroll's "Wing" because it reminded me in a good way of the original (dialogue-less) Aeon Flux - before they ruined it with words. That's slightly over half that interested me in one way or another, which is not to say that the others were bad, but they didn't impress me in any sort of way. As a final note, I will add that Scott McCloud's afterword is pretty lame, though I get what he was trying to do - lauding the new generation for their innovative ways of coming together, using new mediums to work with old mediums, gender balance, and diversity. I'm glad I picked it up, but I would probably be hard pressed to peruse subsequent volumes unless one just happened to come my way. I think fans of sequential art will appreciate it more overall than people who don't consider comics legitimate artistry for adults. show less

The art in this book was fantastic. It's an anthology of vignettes that relate in some way to flight, either directly or indirectly. The best ones in the book are the ones that play with the format, like having no text at all and just telling the story through art panels or playing with the way the panels are set up, or even making the panels and text look like part of a yearbook. It kind of feels like an experimentation books that just happens to feature a lot of different artists. It'll be interesting to see how later volumes mix it up.

This was a well done anthology of graphic novel short stories all somehow involving flight. The stories involve a wide variety of styles and themes. Some of them I loved and some were just okay. Some were really well done stories and some were very abstract.

I really loved the two Copper stories by Kibuishi. I also really enjoyed the following: Hugo Earheart by Jake Parker, Outside my Window by Khang Lee, and The Bowl by Clio Chiang.

There really is an incredibly wide array of styles and themes. There are fantasy stories, ones about friendship, and ones that are completely abstract. The illustration styles are just as varied, from classic cartoon style to very artistic soft styles to very abstract images.

I loved the variety and the show more surprise of not knowing what type of story I would be reading next.

Overall I enjoyed it and plan on checking out more volumes in Kibuishi's Flight series. This volume spanned an incredibly variety of styles and themes and was very eclectic. I would recommend to those who enjoy graphic novel short stories and don’t mind being surprised by some different varieties of stories. show less

Summary and Review: The Flight anthologies are collections of short comics by young artists, most about 10-20 pages long, and each telling a brief snippet of story (mostly fantasy, but with a wide variety of themes and tones.) Because I've been reading the Flight anthologies out of order - not that there really is an order; only one of the stories is even sort of serialized, but in any case, I read 4, then 3, then 1, then 2 - I was sort of surprised by the earlier volumes.

In the later volumes, the stories are mostly wordless, relying entirely on the visuals to tell the story, but in the early volumes there are words all over the place. I found this kind of disappointing; it took some getting used to, but the wordless stories really show more show off the artists' skill at conveying story and character and emotion and movement through pictures. With the addition of the words, the stories felt somehow more... regular. Not bad, but not so unique, and the early volumes as a whole didn't have quite the same impact for me. The later volumes really made me sit up and take notice and say to myself, "Wow, that's something incredibly creative that not every writer - or even every comics artist - can do," whereas my reaction to the wordy early volumes was more "Huh, so, it's a bunch of short-form comics."

Volume 1 also had a distinct theme, something I haven't noticed in the previous volumes, in that most of the stories actually have to do with flight of one form or another. My favorites were "I Wish...," by Vera Brosgol, which despite all my earlier bitching was actually fairly wordy but whose topic will I think strike a chord with anyone who ever wished they could fly; "The Bowl," by Clio Chang, which was wordless and somber and will make me think twice about my next visit to a natural history museum; and "Deep Blue" by Phil Craven, which involved penguins and just made me giggle.
3 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I think the Flight anthologies will appeal to comics aficionados and newbies both, as a means of sampling a variety of artists and styles, and for the gorgeous production and lovely artwork, as well as the stories. show less

The first in a series of graphic anthologies edited by Kazu Kibuishi, Flight provides a showcase for dozens of new illustrators. From airplane and kites to balloons, all of the stories involve some aspect of flight. Although my favorite illustrator in the book is still Kazu Kibuishi, there are others that I'll be looking for in future book.

This book would be a wonderful jumpstart to creative writing in a high school setting. Young people could choose their own theme for the stories and use a variety of comic tools to create their graphic stories.

I was originally attracted to the Flight comics partly because they're edited by Kazu Kibuishi, renowned for his amazing Copper webcomics, and partly because they have this most incredible covers. I would do hideous, depraved things in exchange for a hypothetical (but thick) graphic novel chronicling the beautifully drawn adventures of whoever that lucky prick is riding the bird on all the Flight covers.

What you get instead is an anthology of very short comics, some of which are good and some of which aren't. There are two Copper stories included in this anthology, Maiden Voyage and Picnic (which you can read for free at www.boltcity.com), and Khang Le (who has some excellent paintings on his website, www.khangle.net) has a nice story show more in there as well.

The rest are mostly okay but nothing special, ranging from wacky detective mysteries to typical plotless, epiphany-driven narratives. They all share a common theme of flight, whether literal or metaphorical, and in some of the stories there's a brilliant capture of the nostalgic childhood spirit of adventure. On the whole, though, Flight is mostly about style over substance, with a lot of very pretty but ultimately pointless stories.

Those covers sure do kick ass, though. show less

Nice way to showcase the talents of many different graphic novel artists; there was some gorgeous art in here.

I wasn't as impressed with the stories. Even the ones I liked were just too short and often felt like they had been cut off because they'd reached a page limit or something.

Vera Brosgol's was my favorite of the collection, and I will continue to seek out her work, and probably longer individual works by other artists in the collection.