[Featured artwork by Alexander Utkin]
Welcome back to our Summer Comics Binge of Alexander Utkin’s Eisner-nominated series “Gamayun Tales,” where I’m reading through all five stories that make up the collection of modernized Russian folk tales so far.
“Gamayun Tales I” was initially released in individual hardback editions, with one story per book, before being collected in a paperback volume. “Gamayun Tales II” skipped this format and released its pair of stories in a single paperback edition. For these reviews I’m reading the collected editions.
Last week saw the beginning of our journey into Russian folk tales with ‘The King of Birds,’ which was everything I had expected it to be; it was fun, it was weird, and it looked fantastic. Let’s see what ‘The Water Spirit’ brings.
Written and Illustrated by Alexander UtkinCover by Alexander Utkin
Translated by Lada MorozovaIn this second instalment of Alexander Utkin’s stunning and lyrical Gamayun Tales series, we rejoin our friend the merchant on the long and treacherous journey home from his adventure with the King of Birds.
When curiosity gets the best of him and he opens his new mysterious golden chest, the merchant unwittingly condemns his newborn son to a life under the sea… but friends can be found in the most unlikely places, and with any luck the merchant’s son won’t have to face his future alone.
After the relatively light-hearted weirdness of ‘The King of Birds,’ Utkin delves into a much darker story with ‘The Water Spirit.’ The story starts by resuming the Merchant’s journey with his golden chest which he must not open before arriving home. Needless to say, the Merchant opens it before he arrives home and what follows is a tale of limited time, bargains, and ignorance. It delves into much darker territory, with the Merchant unknowingly trading his new-born son (whom he didn’t know he had) with the titular water spirit, Vodyanoy, and then later offering himself up instead, with the Merchant willing to sacrifice himself to protect his family. Of course, these story elements aren’t too heavy for a middle grade reader; many children’s films have high stakes, it is just the contrast with last week’s story, where the stakes seemed dramatically lower, that provides a shock factor. The burning of each of the realms in ‘The King of Birds’ was shocking, but it felt a little distanced and more like other fairy tales where they are dramatic, but not necessarily traumatic; this story feels a lot heavier.
Utkin’s artwork feels suitably heavier too. There’s far more shadowing in the art, with huge amounts of darkness occupying many pages, often suffocatingly so. When the Merchant is caught in the storm, the rain, snow, and hailstones really enclose the space around him, with Utkin’s thick and textured lines making the storm feel incredibly intense and claustrophobic. This is similarly repeated later on with the Merchant’s son, who is suddenly enveloped in darkness, with the only piercing yellow light coming from a floating skull, which is revealed to be the top of Vasilisa’s staff. In the scene when the Merchant and his wife travel to Vodyanoy’s lake to give up their son, Utkin chooses to place the pair against a solid gray background and the colors from the characters seem to be heavily muted by the contrast. This gray tone takes root throughout the scene too and drains it of its warmth to perfection. After seeing so many panels and pages in the book thus far vibrantly colored, this scene feels starkly different and aptly so for its content.
It isn’t just the color choices that bring the different feel to the story visually though, but the panel compositions and pacing. When the Merchant enters the palace-in-a-chest, there’s something haunting about its emptiness, with the smaller compact panels bringing a sense of tension due to the limited perspective. Likewise, the nine-panel grid depicting an apple sinking into the lake and disturbing one of Vodyanoy’s guards really slows the pace momentarily and is incredibly successful at generating a sense of curiosity and unease.
Utkin does a good job of pushing back against the tension of the story with the introduction of Fyodor the house spirit. Fyodor looks after the Merchant whilst he stays in the palace-in-a-chest, but isn’t shown initially because he is invisible to humans. In Fyodor’s revelatory flashback sequence, Utkin wants to literally zoom out and he shows the reader the events again, this time using taller panels to accommodate Fyodor’s tall frame as well as give a warmer feel to the events than we previously had experienced because there’s nothing hiding outside of the panels anymore. This effect is also aided by the fact that Fyodor looks incredibly harmless. On my second readthrough, while the story seemed a lot lighter than it had on the first, the scene that was the most changed was the Merchant’s first time in the palace-in-a-chest. Knowing about Fyodor made the palace seem much safer, with the Merchant speaking to the “invisible servants” actually a sign of his understanding rather than a signal of his naivety to the seemingly-sinister setting.
Despite its very different tone, ‘The Water Spirit’ is still very much a continuation of ‘The King of Birds,’ and Utkin does a great job of briefly recapping the previous story, a feature that would have been far more important when the tales were published individually. Personally, with the connections and tapestry that Utkin established last week, and that are continued here, reading the stories in isolation wouldn’t do them justice. ‘The Water Spirit’ answers the question of what was in the golden chest, something that if I would find dissatisfying if never addressed, and also sheds light on where the chests originated from. Again, like with ‘The King of Birds,’ Utkin does complete the main story of ‘The Water Spirit’ up to a point from which the reader can imagine a positive outcome beyond the pages, but its ending also sets up the next tale, ‘Tyna of the Lake.’ It just wouldn’t read as well on its own, but perhaps that’s because I’m not in the book’s target audience. There’s also an introduction to Vasilisa, with her backstory being glossed over as to save it for the next volume. For some people this clear intention of expansion may be frustrating, with readers wanting to read a story from beginning to end, but I’d have to highlight the grandeur of Utkin’s plans; he’s weaving all of these different characters and figures into a single, multi-faceted story and world, and presenting it in charming and colorful artwork, a combination that is incredibly enjoyable and addictive. Bring on ‘Tyna of the Lake!’
