by Emma Kubert, Rusty Gladd
Publisher: Image Comics
Format: Paperback
Genre: Fantasy
Release Date: 13th April, 2021
Rating: 3/5 Stars
Volume 1 of Inkblot collects issues 1-6 of this cute story. A cat causes havoc as it travels through time and space, focusing on a family of…I think immortal beings? Who went out exploring different realms and possibly claimed them for their own? It’s not clear, and therein lies the biggest problem with this graphic novel.
The artwork is cute and I liked the cat, but there’s a lot lacking here. I wanted to know more about the main character and her family, but we get very episodic issues that don’t really tie together except for the cat jumping through. We barely spend any time with characters, and it makes it feel disjointed – I ended up not particularly caring for anyone.
I get that the pair working on this are doing things “in a different way” based on their little thing at the back of the volume, but I don’t think it quite works It ends up with a lot of text included to explain things, and we jump around so much it’s not always easy to follow. It’s an interesting, fun concept, but not one that quite works in this format. It feels like there are parts missing, and where it jumps around it takes a few moments to work out who people are.
Throughout, there’s a sense of falling in partway through something else. Again, nice idea in concept, but not one that quite works as we scramble to understand what’s happening and who all these new people are.
I will try and check out volume 2 – I’m just about intrigued enough to see how it continues, but if the second volume doesn’t improve on the first, I don’t think I’d continue the series.
Unwrapping Words 