Collecting shortform comics stories together in one package provides an excellent means for self-published creators to showcase their storytelling abilities over multiple themes and approaches. In Lotus’ Dream artist Wilson So provides three briefer tales for our consideration. One was created for a competition on the idea of ‘Light and Darkness’ while the other two are described by the creator as “derived from over-the-top unrealistic gay fantasies during my high school time in Macau.”
‘The Brightest Grey’ uses that premise of centring on themes of light and darkness to give us an exploration of concepts of morality that rejects easy absolutes. A young woman finds herself in conversation with the darkest part of her soul as, for unrevealed reasons, she faces the ultimate judgement of her actions in life. It’s the strongest of the three offerings here with So dropping us into a story-in-progress and providing revelations to the greater picture as events move on. Deep contrasts of black and white feed into the tone of the story and the cartooning here is both stripped back and yet somehow layered too.
The last two comics ‘Gym’ and ‘A Date’ are more vignettes than stories – tales where we’re observers to almost interlude-style moments of romantic fantasising. ‘A Date’ is the more successful of the two, turning expectations on their head, with So using one jarring moment to visually suddenly pull us back from what we are witnessing and casting what we thought we knew in a new light.
Lotus’ Dream does have points where the reader is aware that the artist is learning their craft as they proceed but that is ultimately, of course, the entire point of collections like this which serve as worthy entry points into the work of creators we may be less aware of.
Wilson So (W/A) • Self-published, £8.00
Review by Andy Oliver
