The first Sea of Time #1 review is incredibly generous. Courtesy of Charles Hatfield at The Comics Journal today:
“I can’t tell whether this is a continuation, companion, or sequel to Bak’s Island of Memory, a nearly decade-old (2013) graphic novella with the same subject: Georg Steller, the 18th-century German naturalist who traveled under the aegis of the Russian Empire and explored Alaska and Kamchatka. Bak has been obsessed with Steller for years, and has long promised a complete graphic biography of him under the title Wild Man. He has referred to Sea of Time as the second volume of Wild Man, but also as “the serialized graphic novel follow-up to Island of Memory.” I don’t get how the two books fit together, or what is supposed to come next. What I do know is that both books are lovely, and that, taken by itself, Sea of Time is hermetic and hard to parse, but stunningly beautiful and transporting. I’m glad that more Sea of Time is promised, because no one else is doing quite what Bak is doing at the intersection of comics, history, and the natural sciences. He treats comics as a way to feed his knowledge of the natural world yet is likewise alert to the political and cultural snares inherent in his subject matter, especially the fraught interchange between imperial and Indigenous ways of knowing. Bak’s sharp, rugged style somewhat evokes the woodcut technique of early Russian lubki, which could be either an apt or ironic framing of the imperial adventurism that underlies Steller’s story. In any case, Bak’s art is getting lovelier, and his graphic worldmaking is something to behold. At only 24 pages, this booklet makes me impatient to see more!”
STOP, THE YEAR CANNOT END UNTIL WE HAVE DECLARED THE BEST COMICS.
