In Alex Alice’s “The Castle in the Stars: The Space Race of 1869,” we are invited into a world where the vision of the cosmos in the nineteenth century is not fanciful, but rather a scientifically accurate hypothesis. The planets closer to the sun are indeed younger and could be teeming with prehistoric life, while the outer planets are older and could be home to advanced civilizations. Humankind stands at the brink of a new frontier that extends to the very stars themselves.
Written and by Alex Alice
Translated by Anne and Owen SmithIn search of the mysterious element known as aether, Claire Dulac flew her hot air balloon toward the edge of our stratosphere—and never returned. Her husband, genius engineer Archibald Dulac, is certain that she is forever lost. Her son, Seraphin, still holds out hope.
One year after her disappearance, Seraphin and his father are delivered a tantalizing clue: a letter from an unknown sender who claims to have Claire’s lost logbook. The letter summons them to a Bavarian castle, where an ambitious young king dreams of flying the skies in a ship powered by aether. But within the castle walls, danger lurks—there are those who would stop at nothing to conquer the stars.
In Castle in the Stars, this lavishly illustrated graphic novel, Alex Alice delivers a historical fantasy adventure set in a world where man journeyed into space in 1869, not 1969.
I confess I came to this series rather late. “The Castle in the Stars” only caught my attention when the third volume came out late last year. A quick glance at some preview pages made it immediately obvious this was a series I needed to pick up. It harkens back to the works of Jules Verne, especially Journey to the Center of the Earth, which also had explorers setting off in the footsteps of another explorer that had gone before them and had first person narration from its protagonist. (Alice does a wonderful job of capturing the energy of Verne’s wide-eyed explorers in the narration.) Plus, it’s full of wonderful machines! The Schwanstern is every bit as memorable as Captain Nemo’s Nautilus. There’s also a bit of Hayao Miyazaki and Hergé in the DNA of “The Castle in the Sky.” The series draws from so many influences that I love, it makes for a downright intoxicating mix. This is what the comics of my childhood felt like. While “The Castle in the Stars” is something new, full of all the excitement of discovery that something new brings, it also triggered my nostalgia something fierce. It’s perhaps a bit of an understatement to say “The Castle in the Stars” is my kind of comic.
This is a world that’s clearly lived in Alice’s head for some time. The research he’s put in is evident on the page—history, architecture, and mid-nineteenth century scientific theory—so the world feels full. For a story about exploration, this is perfect, because it gives the characters something to question and explore, even beyond the central conceit of proving the existence of aether. The lead, Seraphin, embodies this fierce curiosity. After a run-in with ruffians that spoke German, he immediately delves into writings on the state of Germany and the rise of Bismarck. Instead of being a blatant infodump, this section is used to explore Seraphin.
The three leads, Seraphin, Hans, and Sophie, fall into familiar archetypes. Seraphin’s the curious one, Hans is the ingenious one, and Sophie’s the tenacious one. Between the three of them, Alice keeps his story going where it needs to go economically simply by letting the appropriate character steer the narrative. Need to introduce a new story element? Seraphin. Need a device to overcome an obstacle? Hans. Need to pull story threads together and refocus them into action? Sophie. This results in pacing that feels natural and effortless.
But the star of the show is Alice’s art. This alone is reason to pick up the book. Page after page, it is breathtaking. But more than that, it’s rich with Alice’s storytelling prowess. He’s an artist that knows the power of an environment to tell a story, yet his page layouts are so panel dense, he has to be very specific in how he uses them. He often uses his layouts to tell us something about an environment, such as the arc-topped panels in the scene when Seraphin and company meet King Ludwig II—the panel background can be reduced to just a color, but the panel never lets the reader forget we’re in a room full of arches and pillars.
Continued belowHe also uses his backgrounds to add flavor to a scene, such as when Seraphin is being berated by his Latin teacher. The teacher is holding up a picture of the goddess Venus and in the next panel Seraphin’s classmates all have their heads tilted to the same angle as the picture, with various expressions of delight on their faces.
Not only does this add a little bit of humour to the scene, but it immediately sets Seraphin apart. Most importantly, design is motivated by character and story. The technical drawing of Jank’s Schwanstern tells us so much about who Jank is, especially the note “Engine room (to be determined)”.
Alice’s use of narrative captions demonstrates he knows their power. At times, the pages are dense with them, other times completely bereft. However, they’re never redundant. There’s an interplay between caption and panel, where each gives the reader a new piece of information and the juxtaposition creates a third in the reader’s mind. A simple panel with the narration “My first encounter with Hans’s father was not encouraging,” is paired with an image of a stern-looking man standing next to a closed door, watching Seraphin walking away, the boy’s buttocks emanating squiggles and stars of pain. An entire story told in a single panel an inch and a half tall.
“The Castle in the Stars” is about voyaging into the unknown, and it touches on some of the reasons why one would do such a thing. In the case of our leads, they’re motivated by scientific curiosity, but this is not the case for everyone. This is the 1860s, when empires were expanding, and with most of the globe already spoken for, this zest for imperialism is turned the stars. This aspect of the story is treated fairly lightly, with a clear “evil empire” as the bad guys, and as such there’s not much nuance in the way imperialism is portrayed, and no real critique of imperialism in general. This is probably the book’s weakest element, but then this is only the first in a series. At this point in the narrative, our three leads are young and impressionable, and all products of societies that do not question the morality of colonialism. As the characters venture into the stars, I hope this is an aspect of the series that will evolve, but for now the focus is on the romanticism of exploration.
First Second has done a marvelous job on “The Castle in the Stars” series, retaining not just the original book design of the French editions, but the size of the books too—they’re published in proper bande dessinée comic album size (A4, approximately 8.3 x 11.7 inches). Considering the density and detail of Alice’s pages, this really is the minimum size the art should be viewed at.
My only quibble is with the digital lettering of some of the sound effects. Alice’s art emphasizes its hand-drawn qualities, and the sound effects are no different. Since the book is translated from French to English, many of these sounds are identical and don’t need any translation at all, so they remain as they were in the original Rue de Sèvres album. However, some do require translation, and those sounds effects look strikingly different, often popping off the art in an unnatural way. I wish the translated effects had been rendered more faithfully. That said, the letterer (uncredited, presumably the translators) still wrings a lot of character out of these digital sound effects—the vibrant character of the sound effects still comes through.
I also appreciated what wasn’t translated. Seraphin’s textbooks remain in French, trusting the reader to understand what the words say in context, and retaining the essential European flavor of the comic.
If “The Castle in the Stars” series has escaped your notice, or perhaps you haven’t got around to it yet, take the time to check it out. It is an utterly rewarding read. The first three books are currently available in English now, and the fourth will come out this September.
Note: “The Castle in the Stars” series is told as a series of diptychs, so it’s best to read two books at a time. Book One (‘The Space Race of 1869’) doesn’t have an ending, rather it just stops because there’s no more pages left and Book Two (‘The Moon-King’) picks up right where it left off.