“Shangri-La”: A Great Manga Influenced Sci-Fi OGN

I’m super excited about this book.

It’s over 220 pages. I took three days to read it, but wish I had read it all at once. So I read it a second time to make sure I understood it well enough to write about it.

That helped. You won’t need to do all that, though. It’s an occupational hazard for someone like me who has to form opinions and write things up. You can read through this in one day or three and still get a lot of enjoyment out of it.

“Shangri-La” is a manga-inspired science fiction adventure and social commentary book. It’s beautifully drawn with a very cinematic eye. If Bryan Hitch was French and wanted to draw manga, this would be the result.

What’s Going On?

A lot. An awful lot. It’s a long book, though, so that’s OK. I’ll see if I can summarize it for you:

The planet earth is no longer habitable. Humanity has moved into a space station in orbit around the earth, run by a company (Tianzhu Enterprises) that is the de facto government. That company also sells cell phones that control everything in the space station, including the lives of the sheep who rely on them. (There’s a terribly not very subtle analogue here, you might have noticed.)

There’s trouble under the surface, though. We meet Scott, who is a contractor for Tianzhu. He flies off to various places (usually with the crew of the Delacroix spaceship) to investigate a curious series of destructive incidents that the company won’t tell him any details about. He remains loyal to Tianzhu, though, even as his curiosity causes him to poke deeper.

He’s a good worker bee, he accepts his orders, and he wants what’s best for the society stuck together on this station. But there’s something about their secrecy that isn’t rubbing him right.

His friends on the Delacroix are less enchanted with the situation. They think there’s something going on that’s not good, and they are much more suspicious of Tianzhu than Scott. That includes his brother, Virgil.

At the same time, an underground rebellion is starting to take place, led by the mysterious Mr. Sunshine. This is the group that wants their freedom from Tianzhu, and has a remarkably patient plan to do it.

This is not to be confused with the rebellious group that wants to create life on another planet because — well, they want to play God.

There are a number of large questions in the mix here, as you might imagine. The biggest one has to do with asking if humanity can survive as peacefully as they do now without that controlling influence of Tianzhu? Is true freedom something that will destroy the colony?

There are some deep philosophical discussions interspersed in this book between the action and exploratory parts.

And if the Tianzhu company can see and hear everything going on in the station, why aren’t they squashing these rebellions before they gain momentum? They’ve already eliminated war, protests, and religion. Why do rebellions fester?

What’s It All About?

Besides the not-at-all-subtle iPhone references, the book also touches on issues of animal rights, environmentalism, capitalism and communism, general human rights, and much more.

In other words, it’s classic science fiction, taking current world politics and throwing them into the future and putting a new coat of clothes on them. It’s not always subtle and not entirely new, but it’s well put together and a fun ride from start to finish.

It’s not a lop-sided attack on one political side or the other, as such divisions occur in different parts of the world. This is just the kind of high minded philosophical questions given shape and form by a futuristic setting that science fiction has long traded on.

It’s a large story with a small enough core cast of characters, some of whom look too much alike from a distance, but are otherwise easy enough to follow.

It feels very much like a novel in many ways. It’s a complex story with a few points of view, and overlapping characters and motivations that focus the reader to explore the world everything is set in. It’s also a complete story — beginning, middle, and end.

It starts at the end, though.

Pipeline Cheat Sheet

Here are the characters of Shangri-La, to help you keep everything straight in your head:

I Hope You Like Backgrounds

No, seriously. Lots of backgrounds. I don’t think there’s an extreme closeup to fill a panel or a silhouette against a plain background in this entire book.

I’ve heard the complaints before that too many backgrounds on a page could make a comic look cluttered or too busy. If you’re one of those people, you’ll likely loathe this book.

On the other hand, if you’re like me and love to see characters with their surroundings at all times, this book is glorious. It looks like Bablet made an incredible number of 3D models to help make these backgrounds. I imagine that would be the only way he could keep from going insane drawing all the stuff that’s there.

On the other hand, I can find nothing to back up that assumption. There’s one page of original art from this book at ComicArtFans, and it’s all penciled right there on the page. Did Bablet really draw all this without a 3D model to guide him? That would be insane.

However it’s done, this book is impressive. Those omnipresent backgrounds set every scene up beautifully. This is a book about the experience of immersing yourself into the world. It’s not enough to have characters just walking around. You want to feel what they feel while living in a big metal box.

“Shangri-La” is about a colony of people confined to an insane space station that looks like something Francois Schuiten might design after a few too many drinks with a lifetime’s supply of mechanical pencils.

Once you get past that initial awe factor, though, you’ll accept those backgrounds for everything they add to the book.

Those backgrounds are not just drawn well, but they’re also colored with purpose. Much of life inside the station is a sickly green color, indicating a world that you might not want to live in. But there’s also plenty of texture and detail to show us that this station is lived-in. Things accumulate a certain level of muck and grime over the years..

With the overpopulation of the station, space is also at a premium. The designs for everything from the laundry room to the individual quarters are well thought out. The living quarters, for example, are tiny and vertical, leaving little room for anyone to accumulate too many things.

It’s just a natural part of living to these people. It would be hellish for us in the long term, but it looks like an interesting place to visit for a week. After that, I bet it would get to be too confining. But, then, can any space craft be made to feel truly open?

There are many design decisions Bablet had to make for this book. I bet everything in here happens for a reason, even when we’re not explicitly told.

And, of course, when you get to the launch pads and docks and all that space station science fiction stuff, it just looks cool. And that’s OK.

You’ll also see that Bablet frequently uses one point perspective to show you the long corridors, with lots of detail. He can give you the pipes along the ceiling that no doubt help carry power or water throughout the station. They line up with the tracks for the vehicles and the lights that show the way.

It’s a book you can easily get lost in.

Knowing When to Use What

Bablet has a very cinematic style. That’s obvious right from the opening scene, with a man alone on a planet, hiding from the sun. The wide angle shots not only show us the scope of the planet and just how barren it is, but also shows us how small this singular man is amongst it all.

Inside the space station, Bablet chooses the angles that show the story to the reader best. There are, again, lots of wide angles to establish the heck out of all the areas of the space station. Even in simple two shots, the angles are specific and considered.

The story often takes a breath between scenes with some beautifully rendered wide-angle/panoramic environment shots. Bablet wants his reader to feel at home on the station and to get the enormity of it all. This station is all of humanity, after all. Take it all in.

It might take some work, but that awe and wonder — even in a slightly dirty and not always happy place — helps position the book and the story in it. This is definitely one of those books where the environment and setting are co-stars.

Not Quite Completely Translated

All of the dialogue is translated, but the signs in the station are baked into the art. They’re drawn in the perfect perspective and coloring to blend in. This isn’t like your typical assembly line comic, where the letterer goes in to add a layer to the art with their best skewed lettering to fit the perspective of the sign.

It’s impossible to reletter the signs without making the art look bad. So this book takes the option of not changing those signs.

You can get away without knowing what those signs say, but it is a fun part of the art. Namely, the ads and the signage from the Tianzhu company start to look like the kinds of things you’d find from any state looking to control its people — lots of repetition, orders in the form of strong verb choices, etc.

“Live, Work, Buy” is a common motif.

The signs above include such motivational instructions as “Buy, Use, Buy Again” and “Work, Sleep, Work.” I wonder if they borrowed those signs from Amazon’s warehouses…

It’s so simple and straightforward that it’s almost humorous. Bablet is clearly riffing off the kinds of things we’ve seen in the past in totalitarian regimes. When filtered through the economics of a technology company, it takes on a new life. It almost feels satirical. One would hope it is, but then you often wonder just how much people today let their phones control their lives and it becomes less funny….

The really big billboards feature naked women — of course — selling Tianzhu phones. It’s standard copywriting stuff that’s plastered across that sign. I do like the lead headline: “Good and Not Expensive.” Sometimes, it’s like they’re not even trying anymore… They don’t need to, though, they’re a monopoly that the entire population drools over. Direct copywriting FTW!

One of the ways the company controls people is with its product release schedule. If there’s a problem politically or an impending (and illegal, naturally) demonstration coming up, they can just have a sale on their phones or release the next version a little early and everyone will be distracted by that. Problem solved! (Or, at least, pushed back a little bit.)

Prior Art

Does that name, Mathieu Bablet, ring any bells? It might for the Pipeline Faithful.

Bablet also drew a book called “A Beautiful Death” that Statix Press published last year across four issues. I reviewed the first book.

That’s another book that starts off with one guy alone in the world. My complaint with that first book in the series is that nothing happened, besides one particular twist. Having read “Shangri-La” now, I have to think that the problem with “A Beautiful Death” is most likely that it needed to be read as one big book. The first “chapter” is just not a complete enough segment of the story to hook readers. I want to go back to it now and read through.

The art is beautiful in it, as well, and I also name-checked Otomo and Schuiten as possible inspirations for it there, too.

So, yeah, at least I’m consistent on some things.

Recommended?

Yes, just keep in mind that this is a novel and not a serialized short story. It’s a very entertaining read with a good mystery at the core and characters with strong motivations acting out on them. The ending is a bit — mysterious — but it took away none of the excitement and awe the rest of the book gave me.

You can see the original print edition of the book in this video interviewing Bablet. It looks like it printed incredibly well. They didn’t go cheap on it in France, that’s for sure. (He does flip through the whole book, so if you’re spoiler averse, you may not want to watch it too long.)

— 2019.013 —

The Teaser Trailer

I’m not usually a big fan of book trailers, because I know most of the tricks they’re using to create the animation and most of it seems weak. I think they cut between shots quickly enough here and throw in a bit or two of real animation to make it work.

Reading Suggestion

May I make a suggestion? Read this on the biggest screen you have. If you’re reading it on your desktop computer’s larger monitor, read it in double page mode. There are a few isolated double page spreads that are beautiful when they unfold in front of you. You lose that effect when you don’t realize it’s a double until you turn the page and realize you missed half the image.

On Izneo, though, there’s a white border around all the pages, even on the spreads. The images don’t bleed into the binding, so you get the double page spread, but it’s broken by a thick white stripe down the middle. See (digital) pages 186-187, 148-149 (and its predecessor on pages 98-99). Oddly, the two page spread across 210-211 gets it right.

If you’re reading this on an iPad, I suggest reading it in landscape mode. You’ll need to do a bit extra to scroll down each page, but the art and all of its detail appears so large on the screen that way.It’s bright and beautiful. (You’ll lose out on the double page spreads, but it’s a small price to pay.)

Buy It Now

I’d love to see this in English in a huge oversized print edition on bright paper that wouldn’t soak up the darker tones and destroy the ink lines.

As soon as I can find a Chinese investor (they’re all the rage in comics), I’ll get right on that.

In the meantime, if you want to buy the book, you’ll have to use Izneo. The book has disappeared from comiXology. Maybe a North American publisher picked up the print rights?

Bonus Panel

There are so many stand alone beautiful panels and pages in this book, I couldn’t fit them all in this review.

I’ll end this review with an appropriate message: