Good evening, dear readers. Come in, sit down, maybe take a calming tincture of laudinum and warm yourself by the fire as I tell you about a graphic novel that might just be perfect for your spooky season reading (as spoiler free as I can make it)
Hopeless maine is a graphic novel written and drawn by Tom & Nimue Brown that tells the tales and misfortunes of a girl called Salamandra and the other unfortunate inhabitants of the fog shrouded forsaken island of the title.
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but for Hopeless I’d say it is a really great example of the look and feel of the whole book. It’s spooky gothic style drawn with lots of little details and muted colours really show off its creators unique vision and hand drawn style that runs throughout.
The style continues throughout the 230 page A5 book that includes the first two books in one volume (Personal demons & Inheritance) and is something all its own. It makes me think of Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal but with more creeping dread. It has a feel of several things you’ve seen before but is very much its own vision.
So on to the story.
As I said above, it follows a girl called Salamandra who lives alone on an island just off the North East Coast of America in a nonspecific time but it’s a distinctly victorian and lightly steampunky world. Hopeless is an uneasy home to a dwindling population of people who seem unable to escape the once grand but now cursed island where the only new residents are survivors of shipwrecks or things born of the night.
Sal goes to stay in an orphanage and has to deal with literal family demons and, potentially even worse, the other kids while trying to fit in and find some way to escape the island, all while exploring her growing, if unpredictable, witchy powers.
Without giving the plot away it’s hard to describe. It’s a book that strolls along following it’s whimsy, turning this way and that. Events happen and bad guys are always around but Sal is going her own directions at her own pace, finding friends and foes. It reminds me of something like a gothic My Neighbour Totoro or some other Ghibli works. it has a story but it doesn’t slap you in the face about it and it doesn’t spell out every little thing, its more about the people and I really like that.
As much as I personally love it, I can’t say that Hopeless Maine is for everyone and I don’t think it was ever intended to be. It’s doing its own unique spooky thing telling a tale that’s sometimes melancholy, sometimes funny yet always full of heart.
But if my ramblings and the various art from the series (used with kind permission of @GothicalTomB) have tweaked your interest or you know a tweeny kid with some gothy pagan leanings, go check it out. I think it’s something special.
And now I intend to recline next to an old oil lamp and devour the next two volumes of Hopeless Maine (Victims & Sinners) before the creatures of Hopeless Maine devour me.
Special thanks to our resident Critical Brit @Steboost
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Until next time, stay safe out there, gang.
