Sorte

By Cav Bøgelund
abenmaler.dk

At times in the past I've wondered if something I've reviewed on this site counts as a minicomic. I will admit right away that Sorte does not count in any way except actual size (it's small!).

Sorte is part of a series of small, square comics put out by Aben Maler as part of the 676 series of work by Danish artists. Lots of them looked pretty interesting but this is the one you should get because it's entirely silent and thus you need absolutely no knowledge of Danish to understand what's going on (I think every other book I looked at had at least some Danish in it somewhere).

Sorte features a soul stealing monster of some kind (who appears on the cover) traveling through a creepy city full of tall, dark buildings at night, and seemingly killing poeple and stealing their souls. What does this creature have in mind for the souls? You'd probably guess that it's not very positive, and while to be honest writing this sentence made me wonder if maybe it could actually be positive, all I will tell you about the rest of the story is that it features a body in a box in a tree, some sort of weird mystical magic stuff, and a costume change.

Bøgelund's art here is really fantastic. It reminds me of a number of different creators, none of whom I can remember the names of right now but at least one of whom is European. Everything is drawn in a stark black and white, the cities seem empty, the landscapes seem desolate, the creatures seem kind of scary.

The detail in each panel varies, with certain ones using more simplified character designs that still manage to keep hold of the character's apparent traits and have them be recognizable. Other panels manage to show the emotion of the cover character, which considering he only has a beak and huge pupil-less eyes seems like quite a difficult task. All of them manage to create a great sense of mood.

I kind of wish I'd used a page that featured multiple panels instead of the one below, but here's a pretty rad drawing of Batman that Bøgelund did.

Anyway, if you can find this somewhere it's worth checking out, and I'm certainly going to be on the lookout for more of Bøgelund's work.