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Reading Tom King comics is like reading an opulently illustrated novel.
So it doesn't seem at all unusual that he is now adapting George Orwell's Animal Farm. And here, how could it be otherwise, he excels again. Because Animal Pound #1, the first of 4 issues, is not just a copy or a transcript in a modern setting.
Animal Pound stands on its own, independently, as an individual piece, but one in which you can easily and obviously recognize the underlying inspiration.
In this fable, it's not the cultivated assets, the farm animals, that rise up against their oppressors to form a society based on equality and freedom.
This story is primarily a criticism of the way we treat our oh-so-best friends, our beloved pets.
And so I - someone who has almost always had animals by his side throughout his life, and who tends to give them more priority than his fellow human beings - vacillate on the first pages between remorse about how, as a human being, you always put yourself above the animal and sadness about the many abandoned and unwanted animals that spend the rest of their lives behind walls and bars.
However, King then very quickly manages to morph the reader into a perspective in which he is no longer human, but rehearses a furious uprising with the cats and dogs, driving the humans out of the pound.
And here lies the particular strength that King has in common with Orwell, he makes me, the reader, forget myself, and you soak up all the emotion - the grief, the anger and the will - of the protagonists and become part of the pack. Angry, determined and finally jubilant.
While I was initially a little irritated by the thinness of the issue - one of those comics that gets creases in the spine just by looking at it (the pain point of many comic collectors and the horror of every comic dealer) - I realized early on that there is still more content (that is depth) here than in any 10 euro oversize from a major.
Which has to do not only with the depth and richness of Tom King's writing, but also with artist Peter Gross and colorist Tamra Bonvillain's fantastic, emphatic and spine-chillingly atmospheric illustrations.
Animal Pound is already an impactful work of art.
(You can subscribe to this series at Walt's Comic Shop through Manage Comics. Simply click HERE).
Animal Pound #1 (Of 4) Cover A Gross (Mature)
€7,00
When animals grow tired of being caged, killed, and sold off-it's only a matter of time before they've had enough... When an uprising puts a pound in control of the animals, they quickly find themselves as comrades, united against everything… read more
