Air Vol. 1: Letters from Lost Countries

Blythe didn't pick the best job to go with her fear of heights. Why would someone become a flight attendant when they suffered from a sever fear of heights? But that is what Blythe does and after an unusual run in with a passenger, her life starts to spiral out of control. I loved this graphic novel. The story was was intriguing with fun twists. I liked how lighthearted some of it felt and how other parts were had the needed seriousness to them. Blythe is surrounded by a cast of fun characters that I have a feeling are only going to get better. I think part of why I liked this is that it wasn't as dark as I find a great many graphic novels to be. This just grabbed me right away you're not sure where the story is going but it seems like it is going somewhere good. This was a wonderful change from so many of the other graphic novels I've read. It was light and fun. I found it be excellent and would highly recommend it to someone who has never read a graphic novel before or to someone who doesn't want all the gore that can be found it so many.

G. Willow Wilson is flying through Air with the greatest of ease. Okay, sorry about the cheap pun, but it's true. Wilson, a gifted and intriguing young writer, is turning into a talent to watch when it comes to offbeat, magical realism comics for the next generation. That is to say, she does a bang-up job of combining Lost-style conspiracy theories with no shortage of cliffhangers (Amelia Earhart makes an appearance here, and she fits right in, delight that she is). Our guide to this otherworldly realm is Blythe, a flight attendant for a fictional airline. Blythe is deathly afraid of heights and falling, but don't worry, this is not some simple trope for a series about flying. The old joke goes that it's not falling that one should be afraid of; it's the sudden stop at the end. In Blythe's case, her fear is that she'll continue to fall, on an on, past the ground and deeper and deeper. She may have good reason for this fear. Absolutely nothing she knows or thinks she knows is exactly true in this book. Blythe first gets drawn into the madness of the strange world when she meets Zayn aboard a flight. She suspects him of being a terrorist, but he's not. He's quite a bit more. From there, Blythe is drawn into an ever-weirder plot involving hyperpraxis and the Etesian Front, the quest to change human travel lines forever, and the use of deadly force to prevent magical forces from changing the world forever. The title comes from a letter Blythe receives from Narimar, a country that doesn't exist. Yet if it doesn't exist, how is she receiving mail from there? As with their previous Vertigo book, Cairo, Wilson and the always dependable M.K. Perker have created a nice little pocket of eeriness and strange behaviour. How long they can keep the mystery fresh and entertaining is anybody's guess right now, but for the time being, Air is fresh and compelling, a genuine treat. -- John Hogan

I just finished reading the first trade paperback and it's great. I had no knowledge of this comic beforehand, I just read a preview a long time ago. The cover art alone made me want to check this one out. The art is great, the story is fast-paced, full of action and quite strange, which is something that I love in a comic. I hope this one gets a long run because it deserves it.

Ms. Wilson is clearly an erudite writer who draws not only on popular culture, but conspiracy theories, Sufi thought, current affairs, literature, and a broad expanse of history. This knowledge is not thrown about casually and aimlessly, but is woven together to give depth to what superficially appears to be an anti-terrorist thriller.

Wilson's AIR is a breath of fresh air [pardon the pun]: A wonderfully surreal and endlessly inventive examination on relationships, identity, memory, paranoia, and geography in an ever shrinking, globalized world where boundaries transform and reform effortlessly and fantastically - as if shaped in a madwoman's dream. Fortunately for us, that madwoman is the skilled Willow Wilson whose gifted pen brings the dream to fruition with the help of artist MK Perker.