The Gull Yettin

(Paperback)

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Description

The life of an orphaned boy is shaped by the devotion of a fantastical Gull in this lovingly rendered, entirely wordless graphic novel by a contemporary comics innovator. Joe Kessler is at the forefront of European comics. Co-founder and art director of UK's Breakdown Press, and winner of the Angoulame International Comics Festival's Fauve Revelation for his breakthrough comic book Windowpane, Kessler rejuvenates the form once again with his vivid and moving The Gull Yettin. Told in striking colors and loose but confident lines, The Gull Yettin's story begins when a young boy awakens late one night to find his home on fire. The boy is saved by a lanky, shapeshifting Gull. Orphaned by the fire, and now adrift in a boat piloted by the Gull, the boy faces an uncertain future, one that will be both helped and hindered by his new attendant. Without a word, Kessler builds a strange but recognizable world, using it to explore all the forms that grief, jealousy, longing, and love can take in our lives, and the compassion and cruelty that can dwell in a single heart.Filled with all the warmth and poignancy of a great folktale, The Gull Yettin proves that Kessler is pushing comics to new heights.

Reviews

"Kessler eschews the conventional materials and styles of contemporary cartooning, drawing some backgrounds with broad, rough crayon lines, for example, and others from abstract watercolor gradients that bleed into one another.Taken as a whole, 'The Gull Yettin' resembles an alien artifact, the product of an intelligence largely perpendicular to our own. But to that very extent, it represents an attempt to understand our ways of coming together, living with each other and caring for one another. In its very incongruity, it serves as an act of love." Jacob Brogan, The Washington Post

"The artist Joe Kessler has developed a distinct visual language for telling the story and is doing interesting things with narrative via pictures only. The Gull Yettin makes for very nice work from an artist who bears paying attention to." Tom Bowden, The Book Beat

[Kessler] doesnt need words at all to hit the mood hes aiming it, of fragile happiness and primal sorcery drawn in a wash of living colour. Tim Hayes, Tripwire

This dark wordless fairy tale from Kessler (Windowpane) makes a perfect if ineffable kind of sense. . . . Transcendent and eerie, this story of the ties that bind exerts a primal force. Publishers Weekly

Kessler truly leaves everything on the page, adjusting his drafting approach and rendering style to fit scenes in a way that feels almost instinctive. . . . That Kessler maintains a consistent sense of wistful melancholy through such exuberantly molting displays of artistic flash proves that, words or none at all, his talent as a writer isn't being sidelined. Matt Seneca, The Comics Journal

"Joe Kesslers drawings are radical, beautiful and glimmering. The Gull Yettin is my favorite thing in contemporary comics. I love this bird!" Anna Haifisch

"Kessler thinks of everything." Ed Park

"Nobody told me a book could be like this: ethereal and nearly abstract, yet so legible and concrete. A page-turner, and a huge accomplishment." Dash Shaw

"Kesslers art is a striking mix of heavy, kinetic lines; simple but expressive faces and bodies; and a riot of mostly primary colors. . . . Mesmerizing." Kirkus starred review

Author Bio

Joe Kessler is a cartoonist and co-founder and art director at Breakdown Press, a London-based comics publisher. His book Windowpane won the Angoulame International Comics Festival Prize for First Comic Book in 2020.