There are comics that mark a before and after because of the daring nature of their approach and because they are nothing like anything we have read before. The Color of Things (Reservoir Books) is one of those comics. An amazing, unprecedented and fascinating narrative experience. However, behind its groundbreaking and almost intimidating appearance, this album is also a very entertaining book, with an adventure that captivates us from the first pages. A kind of black series road movie, full of twists and surprises.
You don’t have to be afraid of The Color of Things. This is a comic that specialists in the medium will study at conferences and analyze in academic articles. No doubt. However, it reads in a much simpler way than its appearance might lead us to assume. This confirms the greatness of this album and the talent of its author, the Swiss Martin Panchaud, who has made a comic that is unlike any other.
The book tells the story of Simon Hope, a 14-year-old English boy who is bullied by the neighborhood kids because he is shy and a little plump. One day he bets all of his parents’ savings because a fortune teller has revealed to him which horse will be the winner of the Royal Ascot, the most glamorous equestrian competition in the world. He will win 16 million pounds and then his real problems will begin.
Comics are a medium that is difficult to define – impossible, according to one of those who has studied it best, Thierry Groensteen. The comic creates a story through the sequence of images. Vignettes that refer to each other and coexist in the same space: a page, a book or a computer screen. The language of the comic borrows resources from the novel, cinema, and painting and adapts them to its interests. But at the same time, comics influence these and many other media. If the definition of a comic is elusive, the limits of the comic are also blurred.
The color of things is an example of this permeability of comics to other disciplines. And it is also a good example of the flexibility of this language and its immense possibilities when used with talent. That is what Martin Panchaud does in this unforgettable work. Panchaud approaches a terrain little explored by comics until now despite having many points in common with him: computer graphics. Infographics allow you to explain information in an essentially visual way. It is a format very present in the media and La Vanguardia, without going any further, often uses it in both its paper and digital edition. With infographics it is even possible to tell a story or a sequence of events chronologically. In short, explain a story.
Panchaud relies on the possibilities of infographics to explain this story that leaves you breathless as we discover the twists and turns that the story of young Simon Hope takes. Each circle is a character in the story and they interact with others in an almost abstract environment, in a scenario with precise but simplified elements that are always shown from a top-down point of view.
The infographic resource does not detract from the interest of the story and we soon forget about its strange appearance and simply allow ourselves to be carried away by a story that leaves us breathless. However, Panchaud wisely uses the possibilities of infographics to specify details that are often not explained in this type of stories, such as the force of a blow, the characteristics of motorcycles, the composition of a chocolate cupcake or the rhythm. to which one of the characters drinks a pint of beer.
Disruptive and radically new, The Color of Things has been recognized with several awards, including the famous Fauve d’Or at the Angoulême Festival and the prestigious Grand Prix of French Critics from the ACBD association. A book that links with the daring that other authors have had before when proposing comics, moving away from the more conventional format of comic books. We think of Chris Ware and works like Jimmy Corrigan, Making Stories or Rusty Brown, or what Martin Vaughan James did in La Cage by proposing a comic without characters. We also think of authors like Fred and works like Philémon, who broke the classic page format, following a path that pioneers like Winsor McCay or George Herriman had previously explored.
One of the pieces of evidence that The Color of Things demonstrates is that more than a century after the works of McCay or Herriman, the language of comics still holds many surprises for us.
