Soulwind, Hardcover Edition

The complete Soulwind collection from Oni Press is a welcome addition to the pantheon of truly great comics. It’s science fiction, it’s epic mythology, it’s one of those books that makes you stop and realize that this was something exceptional and different. Told in black and white, the art often looks almost like watercolor, without the color. Telling a variation of the King Arthur legend, it starts with a Japanese boy at a monastery that finds a sword in a river and then moves out into space where another boy finds himself a proclaimed savior for aliens on another planet. How that meets in the end is what makes Soulwind an Eisner and Ignatz award nominee.

Soulwind is a broad story, with many threads, and not really told in a linear fashion. While it does eventually tie together, the threads often are dangling, leaving the reader to keep them all in mind as the story reaches the end. In many ways, the best way to read this story is here, in the complete collection, where you can stay on top of each twist and jump as it moves along.

Other than being in black and white, Morse reminds one of some of the phenomenal arts that work in a mixed medium; like Dave Mckean or Bill Bill Sienkiewicz, who use their art to drive the story and provide placement in multiple storylines as much as the dialog or expository text. And as a writer, Moore creates as deep and complex story as expected by Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore. Soulwind is a book that shows the capability of the comic medium to tell deep stories with the unique combination of art and words that cannot be matched in TV or books.