Jules Valera’s A Very Fragile Release Coming Along as a Light Breath collects three A6 minicomics in a tactile vellum-banded compilation. The three titles – Jupiter & the Moon, Venus in Capricorn and Kingdom of Uranus – were created between 2019 and 2024, and are described as “comics about estranged astronomical bodies and the space between them.” The first obvious observation about these three publications is how much their physicality feeds into the reading experience; cosmic majesty ironically feeling all the more expansive for the confines of the format that contains it.
Abstract comics, of course, represent work that we don’t simply find our own meaning in… sometimes we actually project that meaning onto them. A Very Fragile Release Coming Along as a Light Breath fits into the graphic poetry strand of comics and yet that in itself, in isolation, seems too confining a term for what is happening here. This is symbolic sequential art that one suspects is also infused with autobio; comics that are somehow both abstruse and yet filled with the echoes of lived experiences that feel at least emotionally recognisable too.
Jupiter & the Moon (above) with its exploration of the distance between anthropomorphised planetary bodies, for example, feels like an extended visual metaphor for the distance in a very human relationship when parties become alienated from one another. Venus in Capricorn (below) can be interpreted as a short comic about being trapped by the pull of a toxic relationship while Kingdom of Uranus uses its astronomical subject to provide a comics essay to explore sexual identity as ultimately a liberating power.
It’s fascinating to look at the evolving style of Valera across the years in these comics. All three are playful with their employment of the language of comics – ignoring the constraints of perceived standards of the form with ever changing page structures and representational, geometric symbolism often supplanting traditional sequential layouts – but by the time we reach Kingdom of Uranus (below) there’s a confidence in abstraction that is peculiarly beautiful in delivery.
Here, in this final volume, Valera provides a constant dizzyingly diverse array of imagery that includes the conceptual, the experimental, the opaque, the minimalistic, the literal, the allegorical and the figurative. Stream-of-consciousness storytelling that is hypnotically immersive and some of the most compelling abstract comics I have seen in my time at Broken Frontier.
Jules Valera (W/A) • Self-published, £30.00
Review by Andy Oliver
