Blacklung
*Starred Review* Wright’s first full-length graphic novel is not easy to describe or digest. At its widest angle, it’s a pirate tale about a captain determined to dole out as much evil as he can so that he might be reunited with his dead love in hell. His theological musings are recorded by a dandy schoolteacher who was press-ganged aboard and introduced to a life of misery, maiming, and madness. The first mate kills for erotic pleasure, the preacher rambles on about apocalypse, and a seasoned gangster boss becomes downright civil in contrast to the brutality on board. Sounds pretty grim, and it is, but what’s stunning is how Wright slashes through it all with genuinely funny dialogue, reminiscent of the deep-black humor of Norwegian cartoonist Jason, and powerful insight about how any sort of god could unleash humanity upon itself. Wright contrasts his doughy figures with densely crosshatched textures in a visual style that’s about halfway between the sorta-animals of French comics master Lewis Trondheim and the lummox hero of Drew Weing’s poetic Set to Sea (2010). And when he fully lets rip with a sequence of experimentally tricky panel arrangements and disjointed narrative structures, Wright shows he’s got a deep arsenal of storytelling weapons at his command. Unsettling, upsetting, and strangely touching, Wright’s story arrives at something humane and emotionally true through a sea of aberrance and terror. --Ian Chipman