Archive for March 23rd, 2008

Birth, by michael s bracco

March 23rd, 2008 by Martin

Birth coverAnyone familiar with my taste in comics will tell you that it is unusual for me to pick up a black and white comic book. What got me to make Birth an exception was the awesome alien artwork I witnessed while paging through it at the comic shop. Few books transcend what I consider to the be sort of modern popular “comic book art” style, and still manage to remain comic books, that is, books that tell a story with pictures.

Birth tells a very compelling story of two races of intelligent life, not all that different from one another, at war. One lives on land, and one lives in the sea. One whose fathers die in the act of procreation, and one whose mothers die in childbirth. There are very few words.

The author and artist, Michael S Bracco, also maintains spaghettikiss.com (with his wife), where they sell interesting looking apparel, ceramics and comics. You can read a relatively interesting interview with him over at ComicNews.info. You can also find a bunch more of his artwork at http://michaelbracco.websiteanimal.com/.

Birth is a prequel for the Novo series, which I have yet to read. (I will be very interested in picking up the forthcoming Novo Vol.1 TPB when it gets released.) Bracco has a very long arc planned out for Novo, so I for one hope it does well, and that it is as interesting as I found Birth to be.