Funnybook Babylon

Grady Klien
The Lost Colony, Book One: The Snodgrass Conspiracy
First Second

Lost Colony didn’t work for me for the first two thirds of the story. It throws a lot of characters at you, and the setting - an island where slavery is abolished in early colonial America - is weirdly defined. The art was jarring as Klien’s simplified yet highly stylized drawings made it hard to follow along. It was not until the last action set piece that everything started to fall in place. I ended up getting pulled back in because Klein’s cartooning worked fantastically here. The sequence is full of chaos and animation. I walked away feeling much better about the purchase of the book due to this. It’s not strong enough to recommend buying at full price and barely at half, but if Klien plays to his strengths in later chapters, this would be a series to follow.

Preview available here.