I just finished Aaron Renier's graphic novel The Unsinkable Walker Bean and found it to be the most enjoyable, fun, and exciting graphic novel I have read this year.A nautical adventure beset with magic, mystery, pirates, puzzles, and mythology, the text is exquisitely colored and drawn in a style reminiscent of the Tin Tin adventures but with a contemporary, harder edge.
Pudgy protagonist Walker Bean, innovative, clever, endearing and driven, is instantly relatable and lovable as the youngster who seeks to save his sick grandfather while battling his dad's disinterest, among many other fantastical foes.
The friends he makes along the way are well-developed characters, and the story has a well-paced build. While this text doesn't end, except to mention the upcoming book 2, it does wrap up nicely and does not leave one with a sense of being tricked out of a complete narrative experience.
While I don't mean to degrade this wonderful book when I suggest that so far 2010 hasn't been as impressive a year for graphic novels as 2009 was, The Unsinkable Walker Bean has definitely made my list of the year's best graphic novels.
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