LDCOMICS ONLINE COMIC FAIR 2025! Have we already reached three weeks of our LDComics Fair coverage? Today’s first subject of coverage at Broken Frontier is Rayne Booth’s Falcão, a haunting piece of slice-of-life storytelling that has an introspective yet still visually eloquent quality.
Set in the countryside in Portugal Falcão is a study of the titular character, a hardy old man who has lived alone in his small, stone-constructed home for decades. Most of that time without even electricity. Falcão’s only company is the numerous cats that live around the cottage, his beloved hens, and the very occasional visitor. When a threat from the skies above disrupts that simple way of living Falcão is forced to take drastic action…
Booth’s story is quiet and pensive and yet its effect after reading is a lingering and strangely profound one. It’s an exploration of a life that obeys different rules to the rest of us; one of stark simplicity and unostentatious order. It may be easy for outsiders to judge Falcão’s existence but to some extent in doing so we risk straying into a place of ignorance. Themes of loneliness and solitude, and even a dose of existential cruelty, also seep into events as the story progresses.
Booth’s muted colours only add to the quiet intensity of Falcão. Nature and landscape become as much characters herein as our protagonist while sometimes skewed perspectives convey an ironic feeling of claustrophobia given the sweeping, open views of the countryside we are observing – perhaps echoing how Falcão perceives his confining world. A self-contained and thoughtful comics short, Falcão provides a welcome introduction into the work of an artist whose practice I had yet to discover. Further exploration beckons.
Rayne Booth (W/A) • LDComics Online Comic Fair, £5.00
Review by Andy Oliver
The LDComics Online Comics Fair runs across the month of July. Read all our coverage of the comics on offer here at BF.
