ISBN 978-1-932664-16-4 Oni Press

Lately I’ve been catching up and working on my gigantic pile of books and graphic novels, including titles that have been out for quite a while. One such that I finally read last week is Lost at Sea, by Bryan Lee O’Malley. I’ve been a huge fan of Scott Pilgrim for years (I loved both the graphic novels and the movie adaptation), so when I came across this earlier work of Bryan’s I was definitely interested. After reading the back cover, I was sold:

It’s a charming coming of age story about a girl who’s trying to make sense of herself.

First off I should mention the art – it’s black & white and absolutely adorable. It’s simple, clean and cute, and probably my favorite part of the book.

I also must say that the quality of the book I got was super high. Both the cover and pages are really thick and great quality. The cover price is only $11.99, which for 169 pages of art is a really good price.

Most of the text is in the thoughts of the main character Raleigh, often as if she’s writing to a certain someone (as usual I’ll steer clear of any potential spoilers), and even the fonts themselves are fun and unusual while still very easy to read. I personally found Raleigh to be weird (in all the best ways – I love weird) and lovable.

Raleigh and the 3 other main characters seem to wander aimlessly for the majority of the story, and the ending wasn’t at all what I was expecting or hoping for, but it’s one of those stories where it’s more about the journey than the destination.

Lost at Sea was a really quick read for me – I actually finished it in one sitting.

One last thing I should make mention of is the strong language. F-bombs aplenty are dropped, usually casually. So often so, that I was surprised that the book (at least the edition I got) had no age rating printed on it. What seems like a good story for young adults of any age would be more appropriate, in my opinion at least, for older teens and up, if only because of the language.

In conclusion, it’s a short, sweet story, at a good price point with wonderful art and super quality printing.

4/5

-Clint