Air: Letters from Lost Countries
Found a short review of a an ongoing comic book series called ‘Air‘ in my flatmate’s issue of Marie Claire – written by the same author as ‘Cairo’, a graphic novel I remember seeing in a store on Pitt Street (Sydney) last month. I’ve read some more reviews of the series online now and I’m looking forward to getting my mitts on at least the first issue. Comic books are something like sci-fi or fantasy novels for me – a category of reading material that I eventually expected to become more interested in.. only perhaps I haven’t had the right introduction to yet. For my next Sydney layover I’m going back to King’s Comics for Ender’s Game, and to maybe ask the guys who work there for a recommendation for a hardcover title to fondle over..
I’m drawn to Air. Firstly, the main character of Air is a flight attendant, based at Schipol, and I like finding references to flight attendants in everyday pop culture, where either someone is making a mockery of the job or over-glamorizing it; it’s normally one extreme interpretation or the other. And apparently this is the first ongoing Vertigo series with a female main character – Blythe. She’s not a brunette, but that’s ok.. in one issue Blythe visits a mythical country wedged between India and Pakistan, Narimar, that no longer exists on maps following the Partition of 1947. How awesome is that?! From the basics it only sounds better and better – the genre of the series is described as ‘magical realism’, a make-believe tree with roots in with real world, which appeals to me completely (I think I’d lose interest in any story that floated too far off the ground).
The concept behind “Air” came from Wilson’s own experiences after being grilled by a flight attendant in Amsterdam for the many visas in her passport. The airline staffer found it conspicuous that Wilson, an American, had traveled so much. “And by the fact that I was living in the Middle East,” Wilson told CBR News. “MK [Perker] claims that this was just an accident, and that the idea was clearly percolating in my mind beforehand, because ‘Air’ expands radically beyond simple airport hijinks. Who knows where stories come from, in the end? Living abroad (no matter where) will do one thing to you, guaranteed: destroy your ability to accept what you’re told without question.”
Indeed, “Air” pulls a lot of rugs out from under a lot of commonly accepted beliefs, “which was certainly my experience living in another culture,” Wilson remarked. “‘Air’ is political in a very different way than ‘Cairo’ was, and has a much broader focus. In ‘Air’ I’m pushing my own boundaries — I’m looking at the relationship between paganism and monotheism, which for a Muslim writer is just enough rope to hang oneself with; between politics, technology and symbolism, between maps and territory. But that’s awfully abstract. The meat and bones of ‘Air’ is a really fast-paced, surreal adventure with cliffhangers galore.” – G. Willow Wilson talks ‘Air’
Cover art of issues #1-13 here.
In the Air with Willow Wilson and M.K Parker : Vertigo Spotlight
