Welcome to the table,
Sometimes when you get into a pool, it’s really cold and makes you feel super uncomfortable. For a few minutes, you debate getting out of the water and just returning to the comfort of the chair and the softness of the towel. A strange thing happens though, after a little bit you get used to the water and you enjoy just kinda floating around.
Mariko Between Worlds is like that, but a graphic novel… and drier of course.
From Mad Cave Studios, Mariko Between Worlds is a story of breakups. Well, it’s the story of one breakup. It’s the story of Mariko and Rem who are breaking up because they are in different places in their lives. Their last evening as a couple is spent drifting through very surreal spaces that the first read-through got me totally turned around and confused and not in a way I really enjoyed.
It got better though, once I had time to sit with it I tried it again and it felt like every time I read Mariko Between Worlds, it was like one of those magic eye posters from the 90s that the longer you look at it the more the picture of what is actually going on comes into focus. That is where I think this book shines.
Artist Liana Kangas and writer Matthew Erman come together to create a strange weird multidimensional space of emotional exploration and outer-dimensional entities that sparkle in their own unique ways. The whole yarn is very existential and dreamlike and will leave you thinking about the nature of relationships and what one means to oneself, others, and the space between spaces.
Until next time, you may really like Mariko Between Worlds, but it may take you a few minutes to get acclimated to the strangeness of it all… and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Welcome to the table, Sometimes when you get into a pool, it’s really cold and makes you feel super uncomfortable.COMICONRead More