Comic Review: Riding The Stars With The Little White Mouse - Page 3

Sizer works magic with his prodigious array of penciling and inking skills, taking full advantage of the book's black and white format. From cover to closing, Little White Mouse looks like something laid out by a graphic design major with a penchant for breaking the bell curve. He uses broken panel borders to convey heightened emotion, smaller panels to speed up action, larger panels and splashes to slow down and freeze time. The Fever Dream section of the second collection particularly stands out as he uses a comical Manga format (a la Ben Dunn) cut with his own drawing style to highlight the difference between dream and reality. He takes a minimalist approach to backgrounds which serves to focus your attention on the characters and the story they are telling. Sizer's art style is unique, blending Geof Darrow's exacting line work with Masamune Shirow's sense of layout and design. The result is a melding of Japanese and American graphic sensibilities that is a delight to the eyes.

The artwork is amazing, but what makes Little White Mouse great is its narrative. Like the first line of any good story, the art is the "hook" that draws you in, but it's the story's job to keep you there, and this tale will keep you turning pages well past your bedtime. Sizer takes one of the most overused tropes in science fiction, Robinson Crusoe in space, filters it through the eyes of an impossibly brilliant teenage girl, and succeeds in telling a tale that is unique in its vision and well stocked with vibrant, interesting characters.

The primary narrative is told by Loo Th'eng, affectionately nicknamed Little White Mouse by her grandfather (hence the title.) She and her sister escape from a transport ship shortly before it explodes, only to crash land on a mysteriously deserted mining asteroid. The station is still operating under the control of the central computer system which doesn't seem to realize that its human crew is dead. Loo's sister is killed on impact, leaving her stranded and alone. Her basic needs of food and shelter are provided, and Loo soon realizes that there may be hope of resurrecting her sister into a robot body from scraps of her personality that were imprinted onto the main hard drive of her shuttle's wrecked computer. It's a Herculean task that becomes an obsession for Loo that often overrides her driving need to escape her situation.

Article Author: Dan Traeger

Dan Traeger has been a sporadically published short story writer and essayist for longer than he cares to admit. After finally caving in to external pressures he finally broke his long running and quite comfortable writers block and started his own blog. …

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