Review added November 11, 2007

Korgi (Book 1): Sprouting Wings!

Review by Jouni Pohjola

Christian Slade hails from USA and is a freelance illustrator and a pembroke welsh corgi aficionado. Sprouting Wings! is his first comic book effort and the first volume in a "woodland fantasy" series (projected for a total of ten parts at this time of writing) created by Ann & Christian Slade.

SW tells a mostly wordless tale of an alternative world where the fairy or gnome-like Mollies share their little town in the woods with creatures called Korgis that are outwardly very pembroke-like but seemingly larger and naturally tailless. The town is named Korgi Hollow in the honour of the latter, but both parties of the companionship have hidden and apparently complementary talents of fantastic nature. The forests and the fields of the Korgi world are also peopled by other creatures lifted or extrapolated from fairy tales and fantasy, including a huge benevolent crocodile-dinosaur-dragon hybrid and a fairly disturbing-looking, wizened, two-headed being of undisclosed nature.

The story itself is a fairly simple adventure beginning with a young Korgi called Sprout chasing after a dragonfly-like thing. His equally young owner/companion Ivy follows the errant almost-dog and both end up in more trouble than they ever expected. In the course of the adventure they both discover at least a part of their special powers. This simple tale is enriched by various hints and omens of a deeper past and potentially more frightening future.

Slade is a talented illustrator and his artwork is very good throughout. His past as a Disney animator and his intimate knowledge of corgi anatomy shows strongly in the more active scenes where the line truly comes alive. Korgis are naturally extremely cute and cuddly, but unfortunately if predictably the other good guys are a little bland lot – Ivy especially is nearly an archetype of a “cute fairy girl” – whereas Slade’s pen erupts into a frenzy of expressiveness with the baddies. The close-up of the bloated ogre Gallump on page 39 is a particularly good example of this.

Touted as a graphic novel in the sleeve, clocking in at less than 90 small black and white pages SW is far too slim to be considered as such. This, in addition to relative simplicity of the story, is perhaps the foremost weakness of the book for an adult reader. The main demographic, children that is, should however enjoy this effort and I imagine would delight in making up the dialogue for the characters as well.

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Review added November 11, 2007