Flight Volume Six

The latest installment of this comics anthology collects the work of 17 up-and-coming comic creators in one glossy volume, cramming in a dizzying variety of works. The book opens with Michael Gagne's beautiful and deeply alien “The Saga of Rex—Soulmates,” in which two small, foxlike creatures, deeply in love, follow each other through a series of increasingly strange and symbolic transformations; next is J.P. Ahonen's “The Excitingly Mundane Life of Kenneth Shuri,” the charmingly cartoony tale of a suburban ninja's search for a new job. Flight tends toward the wordless and the surreal: small animals pilot mechanical birds (Andrea Offerman's “Mate”) or an undead rabbit looks for love (“Dead Bunny” by Nikki Damon and Justin Ridge). Particular standouts in this volume are Rodolphe Guenoden's “Dead at Noon,” for the expressiveness and incredibly strong visual storytelling ability of his wordless art, and Graham Annable's “Magnus the Misfit,” for its loony sweetness and sheer vitality. (July)