Climbing Out
November 20th, 2002by Brian Ralph
ISBN: 0970085850
This book a sequel of sorts to Cave-In, Ralphs’s fascinatingly wordless first graphic novel. Here the monkey-boy hero speaks and so do the characters around him; that is the big change, as the visual style is consistent with the first book. I was afraid that adding speech to the mix would result is a serious loss of charm, but that was not the case.
Monkey-boy’s “We are destined for something better” is a heartfelt cry, and the best thing about it is as a reader you know you are going to get to see the journey to what/where that something better is.
The answer to the question turns out to hinge on the when, not the what or where, and doesn’t go exactly as planned. A third volume scheduled for publication in January 2003 might answer some of the questions here, the biggest of course being “what’s next?”
Bottom line: worth reading, carries over the special charm of Cave-In, though it falls just (picture finger and thumb hovering less than a half-inch apart) short of the former’s emotional payoff. Looking forward to the final volume in the trilogy.
