By Diana Thung (Top Shelf)
ISBN: 978-1-60309-069-8 (PB)
Here’s a mysterious thing. For a while, a few years back, Diana Thung was a glittering name and shining prospect in graphic storytelling, but after two brilliant all-ages fantasy triumphs she dropped out of sight. I don’t know why – or to be honest have any right to. But it is a shame as her work was superb. I hope she’s well and happy, but I’m not going to stop recommending her delightful creations…
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 with a direct hotline to infinite thoughtscapes 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; scenarios are perfectly constructed and effectively, authentically realised …and when things get tense and scary they are excessively tense and really, really scary…
After SLG published debut series Captain Long Ears in 2010, Thung catapulted to (relative) fame two years later following the release of her first graphic novel. August Moon is a magnificent blending of eastern and western comics influences that remixed many 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…
Accessible 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 after ugly, business-suited strangers begin buying up empty shops for a company named Mon & Key. Some older street vendors are understandably anxious, but only Grandma and her peculiar little associate Jaden know the appalling threat these interlopers pose…
Events start spiralling 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 unhappy 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 far 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 forests to build factories. Ruthless and multi-resourced, they retaliate by killing all objectors, 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 spearhead a spirited secret war to destroy the rapacious deforestation machines of Mon & Key.
As the holiday season nears its end, the town prepares for its annual Soul Fire Festival and parade. As Mon & Key’s forces assemble for one final deforesting assault, they have totally underestimated Jaden’s resolve, Fi’s ingenuity and Callico’s communal desire to remain unchanged and unchanging…
A funny, scary, magical and thrilling modern fable, August Moon seamlessly stitches together ecological themes with beguiling myth to create a captivating tale of youthful empowerment and rebellious wonder. This is a fabulously enticing young reader’s epic every lover of comics and storytelling should take to their hearts.
© 2011 Diana Thung.