Comic Book Galaxy
Review of Blood Song: A Silent Ballad
by Alan David Doane
October 2002I'm most impressed by my first exposure to Eric Drooker's work--at once stark and lush, this wordless graphic novel is a fable-like telling of the story of a young woman torn from her native village and cast by fate into the industrialized world of factories and faceless conformity.
Just as the invasion of a war-making culture into her peaceful land drives her into that very war-making culture, though, the young woman brings some peace and joy into a bleak, virtually hopeless world, providing a sense of balance and in a sense joining the two cultures.
It doesn't take long to describe the bare bones of the story, sub-titled A Silent Ballad, but Drooker's Peter Kuper-inspired drawings (if you've read Kuper's The System I think you'll agree) are perfectly paced, each page gorgeously depicting a single moment in time, from the gigantic majesty of the galaxy to the microscopic torrent of red blood cells coursing through the veins.
Mostly told in shades of blue, black and white, Drooker expertly splashes in colour when needed, and it calls brilliant attention to itself every time. I was most impressed by Drooker's cityscapes, which are very clearly influenced by Kuper's design sense, and which create tiny little universes, a sense that if you stepped into any of these panels, you would be able to explore an industrial landscape fully realized and astounding in its complexity. The panel borders suggest not a limit to Drooker's imagination, but to our own. Drooker knows it's all there, but that our eyes can only comprehend so much, and that's what he gives us. Tiny little universes.
There's a dream-like quality of this work, perhaps because of its wordless narrative, perhaps because the tale is more iconic than representational. Unlike some wordless stories, though, this graphic novel holds your eye and your attention, and invites careful reading rather than a quick zip through its pages. Full of love and hope and danger and despair, creating its own 21st century myth, Blood Song is a remarkable graphic novel.
Grade: 4.5/5