August Moon


By Diana Thung (Top Shelf)
ISBN: 978-1-60309-069-8

Diana Thung was born in Jakarta, and grew up in Singapore before eventually settling in Australia. She is a natural storyteller, cartoonist and comics creator of sublime wit and imagination who seems to have a direct hotline to the limitless thought-scapes of childhood. Every single thing populating her astonishingly unique worlds is honed to razor sharpness and pinpoint logical clarity, no matter how weird or whimsical it might initially seem.

The sentiment is pure and unrefined, the scenarios are perfectly constructed and effectively, authentically realised. …And when things get tense and scary they are excessively tense and really, really scary…

After a few tentative dabblings, Thung catapulted to (relative) fame in 2012 following the release of her first graphic novel: a superb blending of eastern and western comics influences that remixed a few standard elements of fantasy into a superbly fresh conjunction for young and old alike.

Rendered in stunning, organically enticing black and white, the scene opens in the Asian township of Callico: an isolated little metropolis in the midst of lush jungle verdure and a place with a few strange secrets…

Reachable only by one solitary bridge, generally cut off from the wider world by dense surrounding forests and innate unchanging dullness, the town moves at its own pace. Life is slow, existence is bucolic and the biggest deal for the people is the perennial debate over whether the strange dancing lights seen in the trees at night are actually Soul Fire – dead ancestors watching over the town – or just some unexplained scientific phenomenon…

Answers start coming for a select few folk after ugly, business-suited strangers begin buying up empty shops for a company named Mon & Key. Some of the older street vendors are understandably anxious but only Grandma and her peculiar little associate Jaden know the appalling threat the interlopers pose…

Events start to spiral out of control when the newcomers murder a hitherto unknown “animal” and news of the bizarre beast’s corpse leaks out into the wider world. The amazing discovery brings college biologist Dr. Gan back to the town his dead wife grew up in for the first time in years, dragging teenaged daughter Fiona with him.

Reluctant to be there, Fi keeps to herself; spending time snapping photos with her instamatic camera. The dull old backwater suddenly becomes more intriguing after she captures a candid shot of a boy leaping like a grasshopper over the rooftops…

When she finally meets the incomprehensibly enigmatic Jaden, Fi is quickly drawn into his bizarre struggle against the ape-like invaders. After meeting the clandestine forest creatures who are the true source of Soul Fire, she makes their struggle her own…

The cruel and cunning interlopers of Mon & Key worship commerce and progress. Their agenda involves destroying the forests to build factories. Ruthless and multi-resourced, they retaliate by killing all objectors in the know, whilst attempting to dissuade and eventually assassinate Fi’s father.

However, with the aid of Callico’s street children – and a few clued-in, sympathetic adults like her Uncle Simon – Fi and super-powered, magic moon-boy Jaden lead a spirited secret war to destroy the rapacious deforestation machines of Mon & Key.

As the holiday season nears its end and the town prepares for its annual Soul Fire Festival and parade, Mon & Key’s forces assemble for one final deforesting assault, but they have totally underestimated Jaden’s resolve, Fi’s ingenuity and Callico’s desire to remain unchanged and unchanging…

A funny, scary, magical and thrilling modern fable, August Moon seamlessly blends ecological themes with beguiling myth to tell a captivating tale of child empowerment and rebellious wonder. This is a truly enticing young reader’s epic every lover of comics and storytelling should take to their hearts.
© 2011 Diana Thung.