Every month we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

Handily reprinted recently by Oni in order to provide an outlet for all those Scott Pilgrim fans fresh off the back of book five and jonesin’ for another Bryan Lee O’Malley fix, Lost at Sea offers the opportunity to see the Canadian writer/artist honing his technique in the format with which he would subsequently enjoy stellar success.

Despite the similarities in form, though, Lost at Sea is a wildly different proposition to Pilgrim. It’s a more thoughtful and introverted work, centering as it does on a more thoughtful and introverted lead character. It’s a little hard to get a handle on to begin with, as its largely symbolic nature isn’t hugely clear – coming into it off the back of Pilgrim, you’re fully prepared to take shy teenager Raleigh’s musings about what’s happened to her soul entirely literally. It’s also perhaps a surprise just how light on jokes it is – there are definitely funny moments, still (I was particularly fond of the cigarette packet warning), but it’s certainly not really a comedy.

Instead, it’s a gentle meditation on loneliness, and missing someone, and never really feeling like you click into anywhere. As such, it’s probably a less easily accessible and identifiable story – it’ll certainly strike a chord if you’ve ever felt like Raleigh does, although even then, in much the same way as Pilgrim is probably best read if you’re of a similar age to the lead character, so too is this. Reading it from my wrong-side-of-twenty-five point of view, it does at times come off as a little… juvenile’s probably not the word, but there’s a touch of naivety to it – and its characters feel a little less defined than Pilgrim’s immediately-perfectly-formed bunch of miscreants.

It’s beautifully atmospheric, though, and even if the more obvious stylistic elements that would make O’Malley’s name aren’t in place, the storytelling ability and craftsmanship certainly are. He employs a more distinctly unconventional character style – all high foreheads and small mouths – but he’s consistent with it, and it works well. Even at this early stage in his career, he’s a master in shade and greys, one of those artists who clearly grasps working in monochrome to the extent that it feels far more a deliberate choice than a practical necessity. It’s also something of a surprise to discover that, contrary to the evidence offered by Pilgrim, he can

actually draw cats – they’re fairly simply-drawn cats, it’s true, but they exude a clear sense of that intangibly catty

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character, and the cat-hunting sequence (er, not as alarming as it sounds!) is one of the book’s high points.

If you’re in any way interested in O’Malley’s work, then the book is of course a must-read – and while it’s almost entirely devoid of plot, it’s nevertheless a charming and fairly engaging piece of work. The occasional foray into teenage angst is made up for by the chance to see a truly gifted visual storyteller displaying his flair for tone and atmosphere so early in his career.

Buy Lost At Sea from Amazon (UK)

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