The Flight collection of graphic novels

I've been pretty scatter-brained and busy lately, and when I feel this scattered, I find that I can't focus on writing or reading anything of any length. This is a good time for graphic novels! Reading them, obviously, not writing them. I gave up on writing comics back when I was a teen.

Flight is a serious of graphic anthologies that my husband likes to pick up, and that I sometimes read. They're edited by Kazu Kibuishi, creator of the on-line comic Copper. Chris is a big fan of aforementioned comic, and discovered in via the links section of another favorite comic, xkcd. At Comic Con, we met Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd, and Chris was complaining about Copper never updating, and Mr. Munroe said "That's because Kazu has been working on Flight, and he's standing at the booth right behind you." Chris then squeeled like a fan girl*, turned around, and bought Volume 1 of Flight, getting it signed by Kazu and the other creators who were in the booth at the time, a process that took probably about 10 minutes of the book getting passed from artist to artist. It was a big, crowded booth.

Anyway, rambling story of how we discovered Flight aside, it's a neat little series. Each sizable volume is packed with an assortment of stories by various authors and artists. Some you may have heard of, most you probably haven't. Each one seems to have a vague theme, but the stories still remain unique and different from each other. It's a something for everyone sort of anthology. There's action stories, funny stories, kids stories, romances, real life stories, fantasy, sci-fi, dreamscapes, talking animals, mythology, not to mention dozens of different art styles.

In each volume, you'll probably find a few stories that stand out as great in your mind, some that you don't really get the appeal of, and a bunch that are neither good nor bad. In my experience, even when I'm not into a story, I can really enjoy seeing how the artist interprets the story, and admire the different art and narrative styles on display.

Flight anthologies tend to run $25 in the US, a good price for such a sizable graphic novel. They can usually be found in the graphic novel department of your local bookstore, if you don't patronize comic book shops.

*This is a little something that I like to call revisionist history, and it will also let me know when Chris sees this blog post.