Home

Comics: 'A Flight of Angels' courtesy of a flock of masters

07.02.12

Sporadically someone executes a standard storytelling device with such dazzling skill that it reminds you why that device became standard in the first in order. Rebecca Guay is that someone, with "A Flight of Angels" (DC/Vertigo, $24.99).

An award-winning fantasy artist, Guay has set up an anthology of five stories on a free theme, with the narrators gathered together in a framing device that amounts to a sixth story. This is an approach to anthologies at least as old as "The Canterbury Tales," so it is well-trod loam — a minus if it feels clichéd, which this does not. And it's a plus when you consider how quickly the reader will control the ground rules.

The framing story begins with a wounded, unconscious angel falling into a forest in Faerie. Numerous characters — faeries, a pixie, a hag, a hobgoblin, a trickster, etc. — gather to determine what to do: Recuperate it, or kill it?

They hold a tribunal, where five characters spin tales on who or what they imagine this angel to be. Each of these stories is written by a repress of fantasy, including Holly Black ("The Spiderwick Chronicles"), Louise Hawes ("Vanishing Stage"), Alisa Kwitney ("The Dreaming"), Todd Mitchell ("The Traitor King") and Bill Willingham ("Fables"). Each lickety-split establishes a fully fleshed, entertaining world of magical rules and mythical characters, wherein they position succeed a complete story, with beginning, middle and end. Of course, each story has something to do with angels, but otherwise no two are alike.

Source: The Seattle Times