Review:
On a Sunbeam, by Tillie Walden
| Publisher: |
Tillie Walden |
| Copyright: |
2016-2017 |
| Format: |
Online graphic novel |
| Pages: |
544 |
On a Sunbeam is a web comic that was published in installments
between Fall 2016 and Spring 2017, and then later published in dead tree
form. I read the on-line version, which is still available for free from
its web site. It was nominated for an
Eisner Award and won a ton of other awards, including the Los Angeles
Times Book Prize.
Mia is a new high school graduate who has taken a job with a construction
crew that repairs old buildings (that are floating in space, but I'll get
to that in a moment). Alma, Elliot, and Charlotte have been together for
a long time; Jules is closer to Mia's age and has been with them for a
year. This is not the sort of job one commutes to: they live together on
a spaceship that travels to the job sites, share meals together, and are
more of an extended family than a group of coworkers. It's all a bit
intimidating for Mia, but Jules provides a very enthusiastic welcome and
some orientation.
The story of Mia's new job is interleaved with Mia's school experience
from five years earlier. As a new frosh at a boarding school, Mia is
obsessed with Lux, a school sport that involves building and piloting
ships through a maze to capture orbs. Sent to the principal's office on
the first day of school for sneaking into the Lux tower when she's
supposed to be at assembly, she meets Grace, a shy girl with sparkly shoes
and an unheard-of single room. Mia (a bit like Jules in the present
timeline) overcomes Grace's reticence by being persistently outgoing and
determinedly friendly, while trying to get on the Lux team and dealing
with the typical school problems of bullies and in-groups.
On a Sunbeam is science fiction in the sense that it seems to take
place in space and school kids build flying ships. It is not science
fiction in the sense of caring about technological extrapolation or making
any scientific sense whatsoever. The buildings that Mia and the crew
repair appear to be hanging in empty space, but there's gravity. No one
wears any protective clothing or air masks. The spaceships look (and
move) like giant tropical fish. If you need realism in your science
fiction graphical novels, it's probably best not to think of this as
science fiction at all, or even science fantasy despite the later
appearance of some apparently magical or divine elements.
That may sound surrealistic or dream-like, but
On a Sunbeam isn't
that either. It's a story about human relationships, found family, and
diversity of personalities, all of which are realistically portrayed. The
characters find their world coherent, consistent, and predictable, even if
it sometimes makes no sense to the reader.
On a Sunbeam is simply
set in its own universe, with internal logic but without explanation or
revealed rules.
I kind of liked this approach? It takes some getting used to, but it's an
excuse for some dramatic and beautiful backgrounds, and it's oddly freeing
to have unremarked train tracks in outer space. There's no way that an
explanation would have worked; if one were offered, my brain would have
tried to nitpick it to the detriment of the story. There's something
delightful about a setting that follows imaginary physical laws this
unapologetically and without showing the author's work.
I was, sadly, not as much of a fan of the art, although I am certain this
will be a matter of taste. Walden mixes simple story-telling panels with
sweeping vistas, free-floating domes, and strange, wild asteroids, but she
uses a very limited color palette. Most panels are only a few steps away
from monochrome, and the colors are chosen more for mood or orientation in
the story (Mia's school days are all blue, the Staircase is orange) than
for any consistent realism. There is often a lot of detail in the panels,
but I found it hard to appreciate because the coloring confused my eye.
I'm old enough to have been a comics reader during the revolution in
digital coloring and improved printing, and I loved the subsequent
dramatic improvement in vivid colors and shading. I know the coloring
style here is an intentional artistic choice, but to me it felt like a
throwback to the days of muddy printing on cheap paper.
I have a similar complaint about the lettering:
On a Sunbeam is
either hand-lettered or closely simulates hand lettering, and I often
found the dialogue hard to read due to inconsistent intra- and interword
spacing or ambiguous letters. Here too I'm sure this was an artistic
choice, but as a reader I'd much prefer a readable comics font over hand
lettering.
The detail in the penciling is more to my liking. I had occasional
trouble telling some of the characters apart, but they're clearly drawn
and emotionally expressive. The scenery is wildly imaginative and often
gorgeous, which increased my frustration with the coloring. I would love
to see what some of these panels would have looked like after realistic
coloring with a full palette.
(It's worth noting again that I read the on-line version. It's possible
that the art was touched up for the print version and would have been more
to my liking.)
But enough about the art. The draw of
On a Sunbeam for me is the
story. It's not very dramatic or event-filled at first, starting as two
stories of burgeoning friendships with a fairly young main character.
(They are closely linked, but it's not obvious how until well into the
story.) But it's the sort of story that I started reading, thought was
mildly interesting, and then kept reading just one more chapter until I
had somehow read the whole thing.
There are some interesting twists towards the end, but it's otherwise not
a very dramatic or surprising story. What it is instead is open-hearted,
quiet, charming, and deeper than it looks. The characters are wildly
different and can be abrasive, but they invest time and effort into
understanding each other and adjusting for each other's preferences.
Personal loss drives a lot of the plot, but the characters are also
allowed to mature and be happy without resolving every bad thing that
happened to them. These characters felt like people I would like and
would want to get to know (even if Jules would be overwhelming). I
enjoyed watching their lives.
This reminded me a bit of a
Becky Chambers
novel, although it's less invested in being science fiction and sticks
strictly to humans. There's a similar feeling that the relationships are
the point of the story, and that nearly everyone is trying hard to be
good, with differing backgrounds and differing conceptions of good. All
of the characters are female or non-binary, which is left as entirely
unexplained as the rest of the setting. It's that sort of book.
I wouldn't say this is one of the best things I've ever read, but I found
it delightful and charming, and it certainly sucked me in and kept me
reading until the end. One also cannot argue with the price, although if
I hadn't already read it, I would be tempted to buy a paper copy to
support the author. This will not be to everyone's taste, and stay far
away if you are looking for realistic science fiction, but recommended if
you are in the mood for an understated queer character story full of
good-hearted people.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Mostly everything in life boils down to the same troublesome issue: people are reading different things into what they read, and interpret them regularly in a way it wasn't meant to. It seems that in certain areas a culture of interpreting things in a bad way instead of good or asking how they were actually meant has established the rules of (not) working together but rather against each other and around each other. At times I would like to account it to language barriers, or cultural differences, but it happens with people from all areas so that reasoning would be too easy.
Even artists manage to do that, and in that certain area it creates something extremely creative and thoughtful. This blog entry thus contains three songs and six videos: Two different interpretations of the same lyrics. Maybe this is able to stir some thinking process whether the interpretation that one found for a given situation might be biased or even just looking from the wrong angle.
From 
There are many reasons why I love