| Title | : | Celeste |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1906838763 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781906838768 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 192 |
| Publication | : | First published May 20, 2014 |
Celeste Reviews
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Snagged this at the library because the art is gorgeous, and while non-resolution, surreal tales appeal to me this feels unfortunately half-baked. No pun intended but Celeste does have the vibe of college-years stoner bro headtrip book. Like, this is the sort of book where its college and after the blunt rotation finished and everyone is half-melting into the futon or floor watching Koyaanisqatsi, the guy in a Dead Kennedys shirt who only drinks whiskey neat would carefully pass to you saying “check this fuckin’ shit, my dude” regardless of your gender then make the hand gestures around his head for “mind-blown” while also making that fizzly, explosion noise with his mouth. Which isn’t a criticism, I mean I was there and it was great. And I think I accidentally pocketed your lighter when we split my last Parliament, my bad. It’s a book you watch other people read and prompt discussion, half because you want someone to explain it to you and half because…well, what the hell was that all? Author/artist I.N.J. Culbard pretty solidly fulfills this genre of “what the hell?” with this graphic novel of three separate but vaguely thematically linked plot lines that refuse easy answers but explore ideas of isolation, self-doubt, and other “is this the meaning of life?”-type ideas. By the end as it sort of fades away leaving far more questions than answers—which, admittedly, is kind of awesome and captures the destabilizing effects of the book—it just feels like not enough and rather rushed while also feeling cumbersome for juggling too much and never quite doing one thing well enough.
Three tales, three lives, but not quite a holy trinity of success
This book has a lot of potential and I think there is certainly an audience for it. I probably would have thought this was great at one point, especially how disquieting it is as it forces you to confront some fairly uncomfortable things and leaves you without much closure that could serve as a blanket to comfort your mind. But it just falls short, particularly with the writing in general. The gist is that three people in different parts of the world, after having been “visited” by a purple petal blown on the wind, find themselves suddenly alone in a world where everyone has vanished. One is some sort of government agent, left alone as he receives a distressing call about his wife, another is a young woman on a subway being teased for her albinism, and the third is a punk, Asian man possibly in the process of hanging himself. Each story starts to spin in wild directions when they discover they aren’t fully alone: the maybe-FBI guy finds a kidnapped man in a car trunk who may have murdered his wife, the woman finds another woman and they confront their fears before tearing around town nude and drinking champagne, and the third…well he fights demons with a man that has a birds head (sorry but
Zoe Thorogood pulled this look off more successfully) and it just gets kind of stupid but cool and violent?
In a world where Seinfeld showed how seemingly effortlessly four plots could break away while still commingling on a weekly basis, these three launch beautifully and then stumble about. I wish it had just done one well instead of trying three middling stories. There’s some cool themes going on, such as how in a moment of isolation one must confront themselves in a deep manner and think about their actions, and the art is fantastic, but it just feels undercooked with the ingredients stubbornly refusing to blend. You know when someone is like oh the cookies are a bit gooey and you think, hell yea I love a good gooey cookie but then you bite it and taste raw egg and think oh no this is just nowhere near ready and kind of politely choke it down before discarding the rest? No, just me? Well it felt like that to me.
At this point I stopped saying “what the hell?” and just rolled with it.
But returning to my first, bad metaphor, it’s just very college bro kind of eye rolling. It reads like it really wants you to be impressed and talk about how it’s this amazing artistic expression that “nobody gets it and thats why they don’t like it” kind of thing. But like, I don’t know, I’m calling a bluff here. I bet it does have this cool, abstract meaning that the artist envisions and I believe there’s a lot behind it but it wasn’t expressed in a way that is worth more than some head nods and “mind-blown” reactions before moving on. None of the plot lines feel fully realized enough, even in the spirit of their surrealism, to really land and it doesn’t have enough to support it’s own weight. It aims for edgy and achieves that I guess, but not in a great way? The woman’s plotline feels a bit fetishized, the way you can see college stoner bro telling it like “yea, dude, the two hot chicks are alone on earth so they become lesbians and they just run around naked” which is great and all and I do love a queer storyline, but it feels less like repping the queer community and more like a fetishization of queer women for the male gaze (none of the men get naked…unless you count the lopsided old guy who bends over naked to show an eyeball grow out of his asshole…). This came out in 2014 and I had a moment today thinking about how, while the publishing industry still has a long way to go, queer representation has improved in a decade especially having queer voices telling their stories in a way that feels empowering instead of exploitive.
I will admit I loved the art. I loved the character designs, the colors are great and I really loved the long series of panels—and full page spreads—of space that set a fantastic tone of our almost undetectable tininess in the grand scheme of the cosmos. I.N.J. Culbard (who is
Ian Culbard as he sometimes publishes under) has done some cool stuff, adapting several classics like
H.G. Wells,
The King in Yellow and art for
The Picture of Dorian Gray: A Graphic Novel, all of which feel like influences or kindred spirits to this surrealistic nightmare tale. This just never quite came together and while I like books thats leave you to grapple with existential horrors and unresolved questions, I think I’d rather just move on glad I experienced it but without much interest in pursuing it any further. But maybe you will love this, and I’d love that for you, and I think it’s cool that somewhere out there DK shirt dude is drinking his whiskey neat, having his mind blown and can’t wait to show it to a friend. Good for him, share your love of books, my bookish friends!
2.5/5 -
This was a random grab at the library, and I didn't really know what to expect aside from what I gleaned from the cover and the brief blurb on the back. I wanted to like this book, but in the end it did not sit right for me. For one thing, the pacing is too hurried. We pass between the three story lines manically, without a chance to become immersed in any one of the settings. And the three stories are so wildly different in tone, style, and even genre, that the switching made me feel almost dizzy. And the plot just didn't make up for it; it was thin and didn't feel well-established.
The middle story about the woman named Lilly was, I admit, infuriating. Why does Aaron (a woman, for those who haven't read it) wear her pants so low that nearly 90% of her underwear is showing in every panel. Seriously, what is up with that? I find it hard to believe that any human being has ever dressed that way. It is just bizarre and distracting and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of pants, gravity, and/or the human body. And the scant female characters in this book are so ridiculously sexualized. It's as though the author was just biding his time for a few pages until he could get the ladies all nekkid and sexing each other. It felt gratuitous and unnecessary. I mean, for the record I'm a lady who like ladies, but it just felt like a male fantasy of two women getting it on, which maybe it is. But bleh, no thanks. -
Beautiful graphic novel. Greatly drawn, but unfortunately I did not like the writing. Exciting developments in the first half build up a great sense of expectation of something brilliant about to be revealed, but in conclusion nothing at all is explained or revealed. You need to make up your own mind as a reader, and the plot remains floating in this drunken, surreal state. Unfortunately, it's not better because of that. It might be a style that I don't like, but more than that, I think this type of story telling (or "non telling") hides a certain lack of imagination and originality.
I know some people don't mind this type of obscure story, and they often see artistic sophistication in it, but I'm sorry to say, I just see it for what it is: unimaginative writing.
In other words, it's much easier to write a story like this than having to come up with a satisfactory explanation for all the strange things that have been happening in the first part. A 14 years old kid could have written this story.
Being a great illustrator doesn't equate to being a great writer. They are two different jobs.
Sorry to sound harsh, but while I respect the author's optimism in creating this work, I also value my optimism and my money in buying this book, therefore I don't see why I should put my opinions down in milder tones.
Update:
Somewhere else on the web, Richard Bruton reviews this book and celebrates the absence of any explanation, saying "some will no doubt react strongly against a perceived absence of any real resolution. But for those of you who relish this sort of thing, for those of you who enjoy the challenge of leaving a work with more questions than answers, Celeste will enthral, fascinate and unsettle". The problem with this perspective (aside from the falsity in the word “perceived”), also shared by other reviewers here, is that "a story that leaves you with more questions than answers" is a very EASY story to write. I'm afraid that what many readers have abscribed to "profundity" is nothing more than a lack of substance.
On the other hand, here is a review that I fully agree with:
http://www.brokenfrontier.com/celeste... -
A man is stuck in Los Angeles traffic when he receives a call from the police about his wife; an albino woman sees a brunette on the London Underground; a Japanese cartoonist goes to the Aokigahara forest at the base of Mount Fuji to commit suicide.
Stop.
All of a sudden, everyone in the world disappears except for these people. But how and, more importantly, why?
INJ Culbard’s graphic novel Celeste is the first time he’s both drawn and written a book, and it’s a triumphant effort. Celeste mixes in multiple genres from magical realism to horror fantasy, crime thrillers and contemporary romance in a potent, compelling and mysterious story.
The book is a thrilling read on a purely surface level. Culbard switches perspective on the characters every couple pages to keep all three stories spinning simultaneously. Ray Bone’s story is perhaps the most exciting. After being called by the police, the call cuts off suddenly and he realises everyone in LA has gone. But he hears a thumping from a car boot and a man leaps out, tied, with blood all over his face. As the two try to figure out what happened, Ray discovers he has more of a connection to this strange man than he first thought when he discovers his home address in the man’s car - but who is he and could he be connected to the police phone call about his wife?
Lilly and Aaron’s story in London is a whimsical and sweet story of two lonely women finding one another and connecting. They enjoy their sudden isolation in one of the biggest cities in the world and treat themselves to a champagne breakfast before running through a deserted London.
The Japanese man’s story (he’s called Yoshi in the blurb but his name is never mentioned in the book) is darker at first but becomes eerie and fantastical as he goes from attempting to hang himself to struggling to survive in a haunted forest suddenly teeming with purple cats, lizard and bird-faced people, cyclopes, and giant red demons!
Visually and narratively all of their stories are stunning to read - but there’s more going on beneath the surface. Culbard initially frames the story with a terrific zoom in from beyond the cosmos, closing in panel by panel to Earth, as a small pink flake (like a blossom petal) reaches each one of our characters, while the moon itself hangs prominently in the background, watching events unfold.
Like a lot of great sci-fi stories, Celeste is an impressionistic tale that asks many questions of the reader without providing literal answers. Culbard is inviting readers to think about the meaning behind the characters’ stories and what they mean. What is the pink flake - is it a cosmic being, like god, and does its presence symbolise a higher power offering them a second chance? Is this a dream or is it really happening? In literature, the moon has many meanings but it’s often associated with change, either rebirth or death, which could mean many things for our characters. As they face the realities of their lives, stripped of all distraction, do they falter in the face of the hard decisions or will they be victorious?
Celeste is an outstanding story of people caught at a crucial crossroads in their lives and forced into confronting their fears, told in an enthralling yet thoughtful narrative with gorgeous artwork throughout. Culbard proves decisively that he’s an accomplished writer as well as an artist with this marvellous book. Definitely check out Celeste - don’t miss one of the most enchanting comics of the year! -
The premise of this book is really good and really gets you thinking even if the reason(s) why aren't actually explained at any point. Having said that though I do have a few rather big issues with this book. Firstly the lack of explanation as to why everyone disappeared is really irritating and leaves you feeling rather let down and flat, particularly given the frantic nature of the three stories that you've just followed and the questions each one raises for each of the characters and you as a reader. Secondly why does the only female led story include large quantities of nudity when neither of the two male led stories do? Women do read graphic novels too you know and a smidge of balance on this front wouldn't go amiss. Especially when there is no real obvious reason for it as part of Lily's story. Lastly, what is with the demons chasing Yoshi? So much of these stories are left unexplained you end up with a load of questions and no real answers. Such a shame as the ideas in here are so good and held such promise.
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I picked this up at random from the library because I was looking for a standalone graphic novel.
I liked the idea of the story but to be honest it was all a little confusing. The plot didn't really make much sense and the artwork, though colourful, just added to the confusion. There was very little dialogue making it difficult to follow the story a lot of the time. Also, the cover doesn't reflect what happens in the story.
Overall I don't have much to say about this graphic novel. The idea was good but the execution poor so I wouldn't recommend it at all. -
This book made no sense whatsoever. Art was nice but glad I just checked it out from the library and didn't buy it or I would have been mad at wasting the money.
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Beautifully illustrated but frantic and confusing.
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Als Kind habe ich einmal eine Story gelesen, die glaube ich "Der letzte Tag der Erde" oder so ähnlich hieß und vermutlich von Bradbury war. Ein in der Einsamkeit lebendes Ehepaar weiß, woher auch immer, dass der letzte Tag der Welt sich dem Ende neigt. Panik wäre sinnlos, also tut das Paar alles, was es sonst auch täte, und kurz vor dem Einschlafen fragt die Frau den Mann, ob er auch nicht vergessen habe, das Licht unten im Haus zu löschen. In gewisser Weise machte dieser Satz das Ende fassbarer als jedes Aufbegehren.
In "Celeste" finden sich drei Personen auf verschiedenen Kontinenten einer ähnlichen Situation ausgesetzt. Plötzlich scheinen sie die einzigen überlebenden Wesen auf der ansonsten intakten Erde, die für sie anders als für Bradburys Ehepaar zu ihrem persönlichen Limbus wird, wo sie sich ihren Dämonen und Ängsten stellen müssen.
Der Reiz der Story liegt darin, dass Culbard keine Erklärungen liefert. Indizien scheinen Zusammenhänge anzudeuten, doch das Geschehen bleibt vage wie eine gute Schwarzweiß-Folge der Twilight Zone.
Viele Panels sind rauschhaft surreal und wunderbar anzuschauen. Die Story entwickelt einen tollen Sog, der die Fantasie des Lesers anregt.
Das etwas platte Ende läßt vermuten, dass Culbard die Story zu einem rundum positiven Abschluss bringen wollte. Die "kosmischen" letzten Panel täuschen darüber nicht hinweg, dass das dreifache Happy End ein wenig kitschig ist. -
Some of the art was beautiful. Wish the story would’ve grabbed me more. Interesting concept.
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The line between heaven and hell is a thin one indeed.
Celeste explores certain popular tropes of fate or free will with some success.
The three narratives cohere into a final story that tries to provide a glimpse into... what?
Purgatory?
Heaven?
Hell?
Ones’ flawed desires?
Do these pink petals allow for self discovery? Are they a cosmic form of Ayahuasca ?
There is little closure in these stories.
It’s about as satisfying as the final episode of lost was...
The art is great and playful though as a previous reviewer pointed out, the pink undies constantly viable are indeed questionable and a little weird.
While there are worse things to read out there, I suggest you pick up anything by Warren Ellis, Neil Gaiman or joe hill and eat up that mythology instead -
The blurb asks the question, «In a world without consequences, what would you do?» The reply is apparently that women lose the clothes and have sex the first chance they get, Japanese people fight demons with samurai swords and white American men have egocentrical pissing contents with themselves in response to the emasculation of becoming a father (all while the mother is literally in labour).
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Pretty good art comic. The story is subtle and you have to kind of contemplate it afterwards to figure out what happened. If I had written this immediately after putting the book down I would have given it a worse review. I won't explain any of it as I think you should be just as lost as I was!
The art, as well, is nice and subtle. The inking is minimal and lets the colors do a lot of the work. A good amount of weird stuff in the book which I also enjoyed. I think comics should be full of crazy shit visually otherwise what's the point?
Most of the pages were splash pages with a lot of imagery but only a few images. Though it is a huge book, I finished it in a very short amount of time. I appreciate that format, but I feel like it should be reserved for super detailed and intricate art. I didn't find myself wanting to linger on those pages that much so it went quickly.
Overall it was a good book, though, and I do not regret picking it up at the library! -
What the hell was that?
That was just so incredibly random and weird. It was interesting and I definitely felt compelled to keep turning those pages but seriously, what the hell?
The premise is pure sci-fi, everyone on Earth disappears except for our main characters, an albino in London, a depressed punk in Japan, and a Cop in LA. The Japan sequences are especially freaky and strange but all of it is pretty trippy.
I get the concept and the message the author was conveying but it still felt like it might have been trying a little too hard to be deep and intellectual. The artwork was bright and colorful and overall the book is very beautifully crafted, I just wish the story had given me more plot and less psychedelic philosophy. -
Opening with a gorgeous, near-silent sequence which slowly zooms in from distant space to three petals settling with three inhabitants of Earth, Culbard's dreamlike tale then follows those three people as pretty much everyone else on the planet disappears. Perhaps inevitably, I enjoyed the London strand of this more than those in the US and Japan, though it is noticeable that it's only the female among the leads who was naked at the start of her day and who then proceeds to shed her clothes once more during it. There's no real attempt at an explanation, which is probably for the best (I generally remember mysterious moods much more powerfully than their resolutions), but nor does the sheer strangeness quite compel in the way it can from someone like Brendan McCarthy. A curio with glimmers of sheer wonder, if not a must-read.
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I have no idea what I just read... The pacing was so incredibly rushed and I just felt really confused. I'm not really sure what I was meant to get out of reading this graphic novel. No connection to the characters. The messages were way too subtle, forcing the reader to connect-the-dots out of near nothing. Still. 2 stars simply just for the beautiful art style.
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Sinceramente...
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Turns out it's not that easy to create a "mind-blowing" story...
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‘Celeste’ is a graphic novel by I.N.J. Culbard whose graphics I have enjoyed on the ‘Brass Sun: The Wheel Of Worlds’ mini-series. His art is equally good on ‘Celeste’ and he has more space here to indulge in slow-paced storytelling which he does to good effect.
There’s a very cinematic opening few pages in which the view pans from a distant shot of the Milky Way galaxy right up to our own lovely planet. Then it focuses on three objects that look like rose petals which drift down from the sky and land on three different people. These are an albino young lady in London just getting up for work, a man in the USA driving to work and a man in Japan about to hang himself. In the blink of an eye, it appears that all the people around them vanish and they are left alone. Then the albino girl finds another girl, the man in the US finds a fellow trapped in the boot of a car, hands bound, and the man in Japan finds odd looking shape-changers who attack him in various ways. There is some nudity and not very gory violence.
The storytelling was excellent throughout and it was perfectly simple to follow even though there were many pages with neither dialogue nor captions. It was easy to see what was going on. Making sense of it was a different matter, unfortunately. I very much enjoyed the developments in the first half which built up a great sense of expectation of something brilliant about to be revealed but the concluding part was, to me, disappointing. This sort of obscure story always passes my understanding, however, and people who like experimental fiction will probably enjoy the whole thing.
I’m glad that the medium of comics is being stretched in this way and used for something other than super-heroes, monsters and Science Fiction. This was a fantasy or maybe magic realism. I certainly appreciate the tremendous amount of work that I.N.J Culbard put into this project and I emphasise again that the graphics are lovely. However, the meaning of it all was lost on me. I have reviewed similar experimental works in this manner and among the creators, my name will surely be infamous as a blockhead best left reading simple super-hero adventures. Sorry.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at
https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/ -
Some thoughts: I enjoyed the art style and colours -> visual appearance was very nice and especially the first and last pages depicting the pink petals floating around are beautiful. The beginning of the story was interesting, as the 3 protagonists were introduced in the beginning of their day, then the story takes a weird turn when most people on Earth seem to suddenly disappear. The protagonists are left with just one other person (or creatures/demons in the case of the Japanese guy) and with them they try to understand what's going on.
When I picked this up at the library, I just checked the back cover to see the blurb: "What it does it mean to be alone?" is the question in the back cover. I'm not sure this story answered that very clearly (or, my viewpoint on the matter is a bit different...), it leaves a lot for interpretation. One of those vague stories that will leave you thinking "what was this really about" and in the end, the reader has to make up their own mind about it - no clear answers are given. -
What would you do if you suddenly found yourself all alone in the world? Where would you mind take you? Who would you imagine beside you?
Celeste is a trippy number that follows three individuals who find themselves exactly in that sort of a dream scenario” a woman with albinism in London, a cop in Los Angeles, and a suicidal comic artist in Japan’s Aokigahara Forest.
I’ve read the author’s Salamandre before and liked it. And I liked this one too, albeit it’s a completely different book.
What I enjoyed most here was the bizarre dreamlike narrative, the clever interplay of the three disparate plot strands, and the minimalism of the text. Culbard understands the graphic novel format perfectly, relying on the art as heavily as on the text, if not more so.
The result is rather striking, well drawn, and melancholy, and lyrical.
The only detractor is the ending, and even though, just slightly so. The inevitable danger of crafting a dreamlike story is to avoid that trite cliché of “and then they woke up”, and the author didn’t quite manage that.
But otherwise an entertaining quick read. -
Recently re-read this book after originally reading it around 15 years ago. I recalled little of what the story was about and now I know why.
There's something hypnotic about Culbard's project here. It's ambiguous with it messages but it's one of the few comics of this era that makes the reader think and interpret, rather than handing it to you on a plate. For me this story is about loss, anxiety, overcoming fears and obstacles.
The three intersecting stories are very different and it shows diversity of culture and how we deal with things.
The art is very good, and I wish it was longer in some ways but it stands alone as a unique story that is very text minimal and strange enough to certainly gain much criticism . But for me it works well, and the semantic messages are a reminder for the reader that maybe they can relate, and think about what's important for them.
A unique experience. -
I picked this book from my library’s “white elephant” shelf. Each book is wrapped and has a tag with a few descriptors. This one said “courage, demon haunted forest, three perspectives”. Of course, that’s intriguing. I figured by the size/shape it might be a graphic novel, which is fine (though I generally prefer graphic memoir to graphic fiction). But this book was super weird. Not exactly what I expected from the description, but a fun idea none the less. I think the demon forest is meant to be a reference to the suicide forest in Japan? In reading some other reviews, I have to agree that the storyline of the two women is overly sexualized and somewhat male gaze fantasy-esque. The whole plot was a little confusing but I got the gist of it. Make the most of your life, grab ahold of your desires, etc etc. I think I’ll have to pick another book from this table before the season ends!
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The concept, what would you do in a world with infinite freedom of choice is a fascinating one that post-apocalyptic thrillers have posited in a less direct form In years gone by. In this case three urban lives are thrown off kilter and as a result of a strange extra-terrestrial state of affairs they get to consider how well their lives are actually in concert with their dreams. Each gets to a point of resolution but this being a single volume, the answers given, while not pat are limited. This concept could run and run. A fascinating philosophical work that surely gets everyone thinking about this important issue: is this life that I am living the life I want to live?
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The art is very classic comic-book and there's a kind of cyclical structure to the entire story. Beyond that I'm not really sure what was going on (and one of the girl character's underwear more-than-peeking out of her cargo pants was so improbable so as to be distracting). The third story with non-English-speaking characters was interesting but I wasn't sure how the pieces fit together or whether it really got the attention the other two pieces commanded.
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Ambitious concept. I was three quarters of the way through the book before the sensual nudity of the lesbian relationship highlighted too much for me the way society commodifies the female body. Would the author be as confident in the sales of the book if they drew a male gay relationship in the nude?
Nice artwork, ambitious storyline.
Interestingly, I couldn't find information on the author in the book nor were there any page numbers. -
Beautiful illustration! The story gives me very little. Seems like it's trying to grasp something profound, but fails to give me the feeling that it is. Seems like it substitutes imaginativeness with the vague. The vague is built on unconvincing grounds, and as such tells me just about nothing.
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This graphic novel is a whoooole lot of nothing. Of the three stories only one was interesting to me and it was so flat and poorly explained that I couldn’t fine anything to enjoy. The cover doesn’t match the story AT ALL which is a shame as this one was a cover buy for me.
