cover image Wings

Wings

Shinsuke Tanaka, . . Purple Bear, $14.95 (80pp) ISBN 978-1-933327-19-8

While good-humored in its portrait of a winged dog, this wordless fantasy comes to a troubling climax. Its events, expertly penciled in warm charcoal tones on a cream-white ground, begin quietly with an old farmer pedaling a bicycle down a sun-dappled country road. When the man notices an abandoned puppy in a box, he doesn't stop at first, but his own dog glances back curiously, and splashy shapes suggest the puppy's piercing yaps. The man stops his bike and turns his head, and the view zooms in on his expression of amazement: white wings protrude from the pup's shoulders. The farmer and his cheerful, caricaturish wife adopt this unusual pet, which flutters in the air to play and sleeps on a shelf high above the bed. In a high-speed action sequence, the pooch takes the farmer on a wild ride over croplands and through a fishing village. This mischief angers the villagers, so the farmer ties the dog's wings with a dark ribbon. Now unable to fly, the dog meets a tragic end in a road accident, although a cloudy heavenward whiz, and no evidence but the untied ribbon, imply that it angelically transcends a mortal fate. With airy white spaces and dense leafy panels (the shady trees are especially nice), comics creator Tanaka moves between fast-paced and contemplative moments. He offers a consoling flash-forward to a litter of winged puppies too, but after the initial buoyancy and deflation of hope, readers may not trust this feel-good conclusion. All ages. (Apr.)