Titled after the city it depicts, Ismyre couples two disparate issues and brings them together for a magical conclusion.
Ed is a sculptor living in the city of Ismyre who is burdened with a couple problems. First someone is stealing small figurines out of his apartment and second he has been commissioned for an ice sculpture by the prime minister. In regard to the second, Ed doesn’t have much inspiration, partly because he doesn’t work in the ice medium, and he spends a lot of frustrating time racking his brain to figure out how to do what he has been asked to do.
As far as the first problem goes, Ed doesn’t have much of a clue, but a chance encounter at a bar where Ed has gone to do some brainstorming puts him on track to solve the first problem, and may even lead to fixing the second one.
But there are other things going on in Ismyre that may or may not be related. There is a mysterious group of ecoterrorists who are causing government buildings to explode into bursts of flowers and vegetation. At the same time a number of citizens have gone missing and the prime minister blames the ecoterrorists.
British cartoonist B. Mure does an alluring job of world-building here. The action takes place entirely in Ismyre, but it is filled with nooks and crannies, corners to be turned and heights to be witnessed, and plentiful people, each of whom hints at their own considerable story. The vivid coloring comes in bursts and swirls and blotches, painting a reality far from our own, inhabited by animal people and magic and mysteries that stretch through its streets, alleys, apartments, and official buildings, unifying this reality as one engulfed in the unreal.
Comments are closed.