So I have this vague, half-formed idea that there can be too many pages in some wordless stories. Wordless minis are fine, wordless comics are usually at least understandable, but once you get into wordless graphic novel territory, you pretty much need to be a master of the craft to come away with anything coherent. The other option, of course, is that I’m a dummy who can’t understand longer works unless they’re spelled out for me. You may be right about that! But I can only write reviews with the brain that I’ve got, and this poor old sucker basically tapped out halfway through (but I did read it to the end; I am a professional, after all!). Positives: this is a wildly imaginative world, and while I know there’s no way it was financially possible, a lot could have been glossed over if he had the resources to color this sucker like he did the cover. The only synopsis we get are brief descriptions of the two types of creatures: Norks and Mogz. Norks are basically teletubbie looking things with worms in place of their stomachs and faces. Mogz are roughly the same thing, but with robot bodies instead. Or I could have just said that Norks are on the cover image and a Mogz is on the sample page. Anyway, they’re both fighting over the tree of life, and when Norks take fruit from the tree and put in in their heads in place of their giant eyeball, they get super powers. Basically. This is where words would have come in helpful, because how do they stay alive without an eyeball? Sometimes their worms get removed and they’re fine, sometimes they die. Why? This volume also contains at least three stories, but in an entirely wordless book you at least need to clearly delineate when that happens. My only clue was that “the end” showed up a few times, but then the book launched right back into the world. I get the impression, and this could be completely wrong, that this book was produced over the course of years online, probably with a lot of feedback from his readers, and they most likely spent some time talking about who was who, what was happening, motivations, etc. But for somebody like me coming in cold, this one failed to grab me. Maybe if I spent more time with it, maybe if I talked to the author and had bits explained to me, as there are a number of genuinely interesting sections. But as it stands I can only recommend this to people who are looking for a puzzle to be solved, or something that leaves a lot of room to talk about in your book club. And if you do pick this for your book club, please invite me, because I’d love to see that conversation. It’s listed at $22 on Amazon, which is the only place I see it these days…
