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Aaron Renier's SPIRAL-BOUND

By Leroy Douresseaux
February 6, 2006 - 12:34

Turnip, an elephant, Stucky Hound, a dog, Ana, a rabbit, and Emily, a bird, are a group of go-getting kids. Turnip wants to be an artist, spending most of his efforts on creating likeness of Viola, a girl (mouse) with whom he’s infatuated. His friend Stucky is determined to use his art class time creating an actual workable submersible vehicle.

The book’s central plot is a kind of juvenile detective story concerning a local legend about a mysterious and fearsome monster that lives in a pond on the edge of town. This mystery is seen through the eyes of two ambitious cub reporters, Ana and Emily. The work for the town’s underground newspaper “The Scoop,” and it is literally an underground press, existing secretly in the bowls of the city. The newspaper can get the dirt on everyone because they know all the secret passages and entrances that allow them access into public places (including businesses) and escape hatches in places like the city park from where they can escape back into their underground world.

The adults in the town place a lot of blame for the mystery of the monster on the art teacher, Ms. Skrimshaw, a whale who lives in a glass sphere moved around by a tractor, because she knew the mysterious players and circumstances involved in the monster’s murky past. When the creature suddenly strikes again for the first time in a while, Ms. Skrimshaw faces the brunt of the adults’ harsh anger. It’s up the children to solve this long-running mystery.

SPIRAL-BOUND is the first major work by cartoonist Aaron Renier. I’m willing to call his efforts a waste of time only because, in the narrow Direct Sales comic book market, this imaginative children’s adventure that also has such a robust pull on an adult’s mind is lost. If there are truly comic books that can crossover to the young audience reading Rowling, Pullman, or Snicket, this graphic novel (and it is a novel in terms of the substantive depth of its content) is it.

Renier has created a full-realized world – an open universe, with internal, dreamlike logic and a magically lush landscape of fantastic settings and engaging characters. The book’s front and back covers are designed to look like a child’s spiral-bound notebook, and the book itself contains a tale full of the kind of whimsy we might expect of youngster who doodles in his notebook. The narrative even starts off clunky and slow, like something created by a novice struggling to find his voice and a narrative rhythm, and when Renier hits his stride, he goes from rookie to accomplished vet in the span of 20 or so pages.

My only complaint is that this book deserves to be in color and to be hardcover book, and if I can help spread the word, Spiral-Bound will have so many future printings that it will be worth the effort and expense to make it so, where it will take a place with other modern, popular children’s books.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12