Description

Kingdom/Order by Reid Psaltis is a wordless comic, but the main character -a bespectacled businessman who seems stuck in the rat race of the big city- hears the animals around him talking. In what could be hallucinations -though we can’t tell- the protagonist is communicated to by the pigeons and rats of the city, and when he goes driving off in the country, he is confronted by a crow who gets him stranded in the woods!

Beyond Reid’s unparralleled skill at drawing animals in a lush brushy style, what strikes me about Kingdom/Order is his use of word balloons. There are no words in the comic, but each animal and machine has its own symbol to represent its sound. The pigeons’ worrbles are represented by circles of various size bubbling around like seltzer water. The crow’s caw is a jagged white circle in a black balloon (while the sound of a leaf falling is a jagged black circle in a white balloon). A beatifully rendered comic, with clever ideas, Kingdom/Order is full of mysteries we hope will be answered in the remaining two comics in the series!