Thursday, August 01, 2013

Introducing Sparkplug Highlights!

Hey everyone! We're excited to announce a new feature here on our blog called "Sparkplug Highlights," in which we'll choose a book from our store a couple of times a week and share a little bit about why we think it's so great. After you've read the selection, we'd love to hear what you have to say about it! Feel free to let us know in the comments or on our Facebook or Twitter.

This week's choice is the recently-added Sky in Stereo, issues #1 and #2, by the talented Mardou. This comic is the coming-of-age story of Iris, a seventeen-year-old girl living in Manchester in 1993. Her crush on her coworker, fights with her parents, experimentation with drugs, and feelings of ennui are presented in a perfectly relatable way; Mardou uses Iris's pleasures and crises to exactly capture the feeling of being a teenage girl trying to learn how relationships work and figure out a place in the world. Mardou's black-and-white art is detailed and expressive, with some exquisite flashes of eye-popping intricacy -- a great example of this is when Iris is listening to David Bowie on acid. As Nick Jones of Existential Ennui says, "The beguiling artistry of Sky in Stereo lies in Mardou's captivating command of character and mood, of her detailing of the disappointments, minor triumphs and minutiae of everyday life in a humdrum northern town." Grab Sky in Stereo today and then tell us what you thought!



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