The Clouds Above

Jordan Crane, currently one of the best indie comic creators, is releasing The Clouds Above through Fantagraphic Books sometime in March. The 300 page book is supposed to be beautifully packaged and is predicted to become an instant classic. I think that one of Jordan Crane's artistic assets is his incredibly ability to work with silkscreens. Everything he produces has at least part of it which was silkscreened at some point, and this gives his art a very personal and individual sort of quality. He works with fantastic color coordinations and has a very good sense of design and spacing. No page is too overwhelming, but nothing is underwhelming. Everything of his in balance.

But I have talked about why Crane is so good before. The Clouds Above is supposed to be artistically inspired by The Wizard of Oz and Where the Wild Things Are, but with a plot similar to an adventure like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it should have a pretty different story. It is about an alternate fantastical reality that the protagonist find accidentally while going to school.