psocoptera

Drome, Jesse Lonergan, 2025 graphic. Stunning fantasy epic that blew me away with what it did with color and formal structure. Lonergan establishes a five by seven grid of square panels and then combines and subverts them in fascinating ways, bringing the gutters in to become motion lines and new divisions. The comic opens with an invocation of the four colors of printing, cyan magenta yellow and black, in a creation of the world sequence, and returns to that in a very meta way in the climax. There is *so much* going on in the character and world design and paneling and the way panels act as both time and space and the use of negative space and callbacks to sword-and-sorcery comics and retro superhero costuming and amazing vivid action sequences and mythological weight (no spoilers but there was definitely some "wait, is this... ??", except not exactly). Funny moments and touching moments and sometimes actually manages to hit larger-than-life heroic grandeur. But really it comes back to the art. Everyone else is writing free verse and this thing is a villanelle. Damn.

So, if Drome has catapulted its way to the top of my Hugo graphic nominations, where does that leave the rest of the list. To recap, I have read: The Nefarious Nights of Willowweep Manor, Second Shift, In the Land of Simplicity, Flip, The Other Jay & Eve, Who Killed Nessie?, Testament, A Song for You & I, Strange Bedfellows, part of A Garden of Spheres, and Drome. From which I guess, picking in more or less favorite order, I want to nominate: Drome, Nefarious Nights, Flip, Testament, and then... maybe Song? for the last slot? Or maybe Simplicity has more of a shot at the ballot, and it would be neat to get that on? Hmmm.