Review of 'Adventures of Augusta Wind' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I wanted to like this book more than I did. It's not that I disliked it, but I wanted it to be something more.
J M DeMatteis has a bit of a track record when it comes to all ages comic books. Most notably perhaps with the sadly short lived Abadazad series of books illustrated by Mike Ploog.
The Adventures of Augusta Wind delves into similar areas to Abadazad, but in addition to the Oz elements, we also get some Alice In Wonderland inspired material. Delving into the notion of stories layered on stories remains though.
We are first introduced to a girl by the name of Augusta Webster who tells stories of being from another world to her siblings. She is tormented by dreams though and seeing a therapist. Soon her dreams intrude on waking life as a Snabbit (half snake, half rabbit) arrives to tell her that she …
I wanted to like this book more than I did. It's not that I disliked it, but I wanted it to be something more.
J M DeMatteis has a bit of a track record when it comes to all ages comic books. Most notably perhaps with the sadly short lived Abadazad series of books illustrated by Mike Ploog.
The Adventures of Augusta Wind delves into similar areas to Abadazad, but in addition to the Oz elements, we also get some Alice In Wonderland inspired material. Delving into the notion of stories layered on stories remains though.
We are first introduced to a girl by the name of Augusta Webster who tells stories of being from another world to her siblings. She is tormented by dreams though and seeing a therapist. Soon her dreams intrude on waking life as a Snabbit (half snake, half rabbit) arrives to tell her that she is really his dear, dear friend Augusta Wind!
From there the story get's steadily more surreal as one bizzare creature after another attempts to either stop or help Augusta. Now at this point you're probably thinking this all sounds pretty good.
But there's nothing really grounding the surreal elements to the story and the character of Augusta Wind herself seems to be entirely reactive to what is going on around her. So it's a little difficult to care about what's happening, even when the larger picture begins to emerge in the form of the "Terrible Something" (I do like the naming).
Art wise this is some pretty amazing stuff. Vassilis Gogtzilas goes all out to illustrate the weird and wonderful creatures that exist in Augusta Wind's life. And he does so in a busy, almost frenetic style. The effect somewhat reminds me of Sam Kieth's work on The Maxx. But Gogtzilas doesn't stick to a single style or even medium, using several in order to represent the changes that occur during the story. It's quite remarkable, if occasionally overpowering.
There is one major design criticism I would level at the book. The chose to have a large number of narration boxes in light blue with white text was a bad one. In the PDF I was reading it made it extremely hard to read some of the story. Very unfortunate choice.
Since there's a limited number of imaginative all ages fantasy comics, particularly ones with a female protagonist, I'm definitely going to recommend checking this out for your kids. It's good. I was just hoping for great.