Aster of Pan v1

Put together a laundry list of tropes and package it with some watercolored manga-influenced art, and you get “Aster of Pan.”

It’s a charming book with a great look. In the first of two volumes, we spend half the book meandering around the world, and the other half in discovering the plot.

Post-Apocalyptic Dodgeball Credits

What’s Going On?

This feels like two books in one.

In the first half, we’re introduced to a post-apocalyptic world of some sort. It’s an insular world of Pan, where they take care of their own and drive the outsiders out. There’s a system of trade going on. Payment is in rice. People live in makeshift houses and treehouses, and are often hungry.

Aster definitely is.

Aster is our point of view into that world. She’s living in a treehouse, eating little, and exploring the world around here while wearing a racoon tail. She scavenges for things to sell for rice to eat. But she’s also an outsider. She’s only half-Pan, and many hold that against her. She has a grudge she’s well within reason to hold.

She has one good friend in the world, and that’s her pal, Wallis. He’s the bookish pal who is always hanging out with her and is very nice to her. He shares her misadventures in scavenging, though she’s not bad at it, at all. She just has different boundaries from him in her quests. She’ll go places he won’t. He’ll do things that she won’t. They complement each other nicely.

About halfway through this 100 page book, I realized I was enjoying the world building and all the art that went with it, but not much had happened. As if on cue, that’s when the main plot started.

There is politics and there are pirates and, suddenly, tough decisions need to be made. Representatives from a neighboring land visit and make the residents of Pan an offer they can’t refuse: Join us and pay us part of your rice yield, or else.

It’s a total shakedown, but an alternative is reached: Pan can compete for the right to remain free in an ancient and competitive sport that looks something like Dodgeball. Win and remain free. Lose and pay half of the total yield.

This is where the action starts to come in. This is where the Hunger Games comparisons start. This is where real and immediate stakes that threatened the livelihoods of all of Pan come into question and become something worth protecting. Pan’s residents, a closely interwoven small town of a fantasy world, is suddenly on their heels, trying to scratch and claw their way back up.

It’s all coming down to a game of dodgeball. It sounds silly and ridiculous — but why not? Is it as crazy as any of the rest of the book? Accept it, enjoy it, and run with it.

While it was nice to see and explore the new world, it’s almost uncanny how well timed Merwan’s shift was in the book. It’s like he knew just when my attention would start to wonder and when to snap a plot reveal into place.

Individually, there aren’t any really unique or innovative story points here. The book reads like a collection of tropes from many of the most popular media blockbusters from the last twenty years, from post-apocalyptic survival tale to sports story and the ragtag band of losers assembling to make an underdog victory.

It is, however, well done. The pieces are put together well, the characters are inviting, and the whole package is fun to read and look at. Merwan is a strong artist, and his style is not like much of what you’ve likely read from North American comics.

Merwan’s Franco-Manga Stylings

Merwan’s style is heavily manga-influenced. I would have sworn, in fact, that “Merwan” was the pen name of an early-30s woman who grew up on manga in the 2000s and enjoyed doing watercolors. “Aster of Pan” feels like the work of someone in that demographic, with that now familiar background.

But it’s not. Merwan is a 44 year old man who knows how to draw books that might appeal to Young Adult readers raised on a steady diet of manga and anime. He has an animation background, in fact.

The book carries the same feelings that many of the manga I’ve read do. It’s character first. There’s a strange new world to explore, and there are strong and interesting characters inhabiting it. Through them, we’ll see what things are like, but it’ll unfold at its own pace. Those smaller character moments will just add up.

Sometimes, it’ll be a bit goofy and over the top. Sometimes, it’ll be a small moment where a character’s small decision shows us so much about them. There are a lot of quiet moments in the book where Merwan can give the story some air, yet still get a point across. I think it speaks to Merwan’s animation background that he can pull off those visual moments. It’s one of the ways so many animators have proven to be great comic book artists: they know the power of visual storytelling, through actions and not dialogue.

Purely on the surface level, the characters move, dress, and often feel like the constructs of manga artists. The page size may be greater and so there might be more panels per page, but a lot of the visual trappings are still there.

Overall, though, none of that is what you’ll even notice first. No, the most obvious thing is the coloring of the book. Merwan watercolors the entire book, and it looks beautiful.

Some of the press surrounding this book compared his art to Tim Sale, and I can definitely see that. Merwan’s art is open, with an ink line that can get thick and globby at a moment’s notice.

There’s a raw power in his ink line, in fact. He can use a consistently thin line to delineate detailed architecture, but he also gets more diverse with his ink brush on the more organic forms. He creates solid, three dimensional forms and lights them well, two things which Sale excels at.

Recommended?

From a visual standpoint alone, yes, I could recommend this. Merwan’s art is inviting and beautiful.

I’m a little worried that the elements that make up the plot of the story are such an obvious collection of familiar tropes that I can likely write the second half of this story in my head right now. I’ll be reading the second book keeping those expected plot points in mind. It’ll be interesting to see which tropes he sticks with, and where he diverges from the expected to create something truly new.

Even if he doesn’t, though, a well constructed series of building blocks can still be fun to read. Harry Potter did ok with his collection of sports games, magic spells, and school drama. “Aster of Pan” can do all the same, with any luck.

(My review of “Aster of Pan” volume two is now available.)

Available Today In Print

Magnetic Press picked up the book and successfully Kickstarted a collection of both volumes in English into one book. (That Paris 2119 campaign paved the way.)

It is available now on Amazon, as well. (That’s an affiliate link. I get a tiny percent of the sale, but it doesn’t cost you anything extra. Plus, you get a great book.)