I’ve mentioned before that when I was younger, and comics was considered a more disposable medium, it was easy to miss them. Thanks to the vagaries of what the comics industry called the “direct market” for comics shops, and a couple of boom-bust cycles, there were comics that potentially enthusiastic readers didn’t have the opportunity to purchase until it was too late. That could be true for individual issues, or entire series that were short-lived or just flew under the radar.
But then the graphic novel revolution happened, and the webcomics revolution happened — and finally, there were alternatives to the direct market, and there were ways for readers to find those comics, and great work didn’t become unfindable, right?
Well, no. Or rather, yes but. Maybe kindasorta?
Although the marketplace has changed, it can be just as difficult for potential readers to find comics, even excellent ones that they’d probably love. I imagine that most Skiffy & Fanty readers already know about the Discoverability Problem — how challenging it can be to find new books online, outside of browsable, physical bookstores. The media ecosystem has fractured and broken down, and taken much dedicated criticism with it, making it harder to learn about outstanding new works.
Webcomics have their own, unique challenges: A long-running webcomic can become its own barrier to entry, when the archive of previous installments becomes so long that, even though each is just a page, it becomes daunting for potential new readers. Imagine trying to get caught up on the 1,341-page Order of the Stick? Or all 5,796 installments of Questionable Content? Those are two of my favorite webcomics, and I don’t know if I’d have the time or inclination to get caught up on either if I first heard about them and started reading today.
All of which is to say: Making people aware of comics they might have missed, and making that work available in more easily-accessible formats, really matters.
This month I want to talk about exactly one of those comics — an acclaimed long-running webcomic that’s precisely in my wheelhouse; that I never heard about until its archive was dauntingly long; that’s newly available in print from a publisher that I’m familiar with, in a format that’s accessible, readable, and satisfying.
Let’s talk about Vattu Book 1: The Name & the Mark. (This review contains spoilers!)
Vattu Book 1: The Name & the Mark
Author · Artist: Evan Dahm
Managing Editor: Kel McDonald
Prepress · Book Design: Hye Mardikian
Publisher · Editor-In-Chief: C. Spike Trotman
Vattu Logotype: Andriy Lukin
Game Design Assistance: Malcolm Christiansen
Publisher: Iron Circus Comics
Evan Dahm’s richly imaginative work of epic fantasy and culture clash is finally collected in a beautifully packaged four-volume trade edition!
The river Ata grants the nomadic Fluters all they need to survive. That is how it has been since the dawn of time. But every year, that becomes less and less, and their hardships grow. Vattu was the only child born that cycle, and late at that. With an empire encroaching, if the Fluters are to survive, they must change, and Vattu is that change. Soon, she is thrust into the new world of the imperial city, leaving behind all she has ever known.
But Vattu and the Fluters aren’t the only ones suffering. A chance encounter with an intimidating band of silent warriors will spark a fire in Vattu, one that may engulf the entire realm.
My wife always mentions, with a laugh, that she can tell when I don’t have much to say about a graphic novel, because that’s when I resort to re-stating the plot. So, FYI, there isn’t going to be a whole lot of plot re-stating this time out.
Vattu: Book 1 introduces the title character, and in fact essentially starts with her birth, and establishes the world as she knows it via her childhood spent as part of her people, the nomadic hunter-gatherer Fluters.
It’s important within the story that Fluters isn’t actually what Vattu’s people call themselves; it’s a rather dismissive name applied to them by their colonizers, the Sahtans. The world as Vattu’s people know it is such that they’ve never needed a word to describe themselves in contrast to another people, making the the arrival of the Sahtans so far outside of their experience that it becomes what Iain M. Banks called an Outside Context Problem. So, like the summary above, I’ll be using Fluters in this review for lack of another succint term.
This is an exceptional work of comics and of fantasy, where the story, theme and art work seamlessly in alignment. It won’t surprise readers, just from what I’ve already quoted and written, that this is a narrative exploring imperialism, colonialism, and the different responses to it by the people it oppresses. But the way the other elements of the story all serve the theme is rare and admirable.
The distinctive art includes lush and vivid settings, especially the river valley that the Fluters have lived in and wandered through for longer than they can recall as a people. The character art, in contrast, is cartoony and accessible, while still being detailed in key ways. Accordingly, the Fluters are distinct to one another but all look very much alike to the the Sahtans, echoing the racism of real-world colonizers. It becomes plot-relevant, in that the Sahtans can’t even interpret Fluter genders correctly, and assume that Vattu is a boy based on their own views of gender roles, and honestly based on their indifference to Fluters as individuals.
The adjective ‘Tolkienian’ gets thrown around way too much in conversations about secondary-world fantasy, whether works are being framed in alignment with it, or opposition too it. And honestly, I don’t perceive a lot of direct influence from Tolkien and his successors or imitators in Vattu (or the influence of Tolkien’s conscious detractors, for that matter).
But there are nonetheless elements here that, regardless of their inspiration, scratch my Tolkienian itch: This is a narative that deliberately and consciously takes its time moving through its imagined world, and makes that journey meaningful and compelling.
As the old joke about the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies goes, there’s a lot of walking in Vattu Book 1. But as the jokes about all the walking never mention: The walking works. It matters. It shows the scope and grandeur of a world in the midst of massive changes. It provides a sense of place. Character is revealed along with setting as we watch how different people inhabit and interact with their environment — how the Fluters’ world is shaped by and bonded by natural cycles and its tempo, how that stability has begun breaking down, and in contrast how the imperialistic, colonizing Sahta relate to the world as something to be possessed and controlled.
If I were to express one criticism — and it’s not much of one — it would be that the publisher’s summary, up above, might imply a somewhat plottier first volume of Vattu than readers actually get. This is very much a slow build, a story that takes its time to show the world of the Fluters before the catastrophic disruption that takes Vattu away from her people and into the heart of the Sahtan Empire. That quiet, methodical, thoughtful start comprises much of the book. It’s powerful, but it’s not for the impatient.
I opened this review with a perhaps overly-lengthy and inarguably defensive preamble, the point of which was that… it’s weird, really, that I hadn’t read any of Evan Dahm’s work until now. It aligns significantly with my own interests — secondary-world fantasy in the comics medium that’s thoughtful and deep without sacrificing the personal? Sign me the heck up!
This is another example — it seems to be a bit of a theme this year! — of a graphic novel that pushes at the form to encourage readers to engage with the work. As such, it may not be for everyone, but it’s definitely for me. I’m glad this remarkable comic is now available in a format that makes it discoverable, and accessible. I recommend it, and I look forward to Book 2.
Disclosures: I have no personal or professional relationships with the creator or publisher. A publicist provided a complimentary electronic copy of the graphic novel for review.
