Customer Reviews

Sky Doll, Vol. 1 (v. 1)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one of those hard to find Eurpoean comics that I have always wanted to check out, but was always to hard to come by. Especially a version which could be read in English. When I saw that this collection was available, it felt like the wait was finally over.

I am not disapointed with my purchase at all. Sky Doll as a piece of work is worth adding to your collection. This hardcover is really nicely presented. The artwork is reproduced beautifully, and the production values are high in this graphic novel.

For me, this book was worth the purchase just for the artwork alone. I would give it 5 stars if this was just an art review without hesitation. If you love sequential art, and the styles of Disney crossed with the detail of manga art then this is for you. The colour pallettes were also very inspiring.

I had fun with the story, but that wasn't the reason why I made my purchase, so I'll leave that aspect of this book at that.

As for the actual hard cover, I have a couple of very minor comments which I think would have made it even better. This is my wish list:

1 - I wish the artwork was presented in it's original size and format. I would much rather the larger size art on the dimensions of paper it was designed for... Does the English speaking audience really need everything in "comic book size" for it to sell? Having said that, it dosn't look bad the way it is presented. I just couldn't help being made aware of this because of the white spaces at the top and bottom of each page.

2 - I wish the sketchbook section at the back was bigger! You do get a couple of sketches with a very 'press release style' interview. I would have loved this section to be much chunkier.

I'm really glad I bought this despite the wish list, and it is really happy sitting nearby me on the shelf :)

I'm surprized no one has written on this yet. This is a great graphic novel. Artists Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa have created a comic book like no other.Former Disney artist from Italy, have taken their craft and made an adult verson of what a Disney cartoon would be like. Whats cool to me is the amount of emotion the characters exspress. The facal exspressions along with the animated gestures are very different from what you would get in a manga or comic. The colors are just beautiful. I can look at the art for hours. If you are into Disney animation and cartoons with feeling then by all means buy this book. It is for adults by the way for nudity.

This introduction certainly pulled me in. The "Sky Doll," Noa, starts life (if you can call it that) as a life-sized, robotic toy created for the most adult of entertainments. Although engineered for contentment with her lot, something in Noa becomes more than she was built to be. Despite built-in safeguards, her personality begins to emerge. So do the ambitions she wasn't supposed to have, and her first ambiton is to escape.

That launches her into a larger, more complex world than the locked rooms of the harem-for-hire. That world, or rather those worlds, turn out to be theocracies with simmering rivalries - after all, these two opposed sets of tenets can't both be right, can they? Soon, Noa finds herself immersed in the intrigue between them. She also find within herself much more than her design engineers cold ever have put in ...

Despite the adult undercurrent, this collection's skin display remains largely (but not wholly) restrained. Instead, its easter-egg coloring and slightly goofy style disarm the potentially disturbing back-story, and keep this a safe adventure. And, just once in a while, it offers a little more to think about. For example, just how human does a being have to be, to be human enough?

-- wiredweird

I bought this after reading the paperback version of the first three chapters. Someone said the text and pictures are too small but I don't feel that - maybe because me being an artist myself I'm used to working small and looking at small images and words.

I can't wait till Chapter Four comes out and is available in the US.

As graphic novels go, Sky doll is an interesting one. It offers up a very interesting idea that borrows concepts from Sci-fi such as Blade runner or Ghost in the shell, but does it in a much more whimsical nature. All the character's are very charismatic, even the unlikable ones, and the book is illustrated with beautiful stylized artwork that is filled with personality.
Unfortunately, where Sky doll falls short is it's writing. It's never exactly clear what the overall plot is building up to; and sadly, it never really feels like an explanation to the story is ever given. There are a lot of details that just never seem to follow though. It ends up leaving a story that seems like it's trying to be deep, but just ends up feeling odd and random.

This is also a mature book. Though it contains nudity and some sexual situations, it's all very soft core. It's as harmless as it is superfluous.

In the end, I can't really say that I'd recommend this book, unless you just want a mind trip with pretty pictures.

This tale of a female android -- sexy but utterly innocent, sweet and loving and searching for love and her place -- in a galaxy-spanning medium-future civilization under mildly corrupt theocratic rule reads like as pure a distillation of the essence of Heavy Metal as is possible. And so it only makes sense that it would be published over here by Marvel, which has been in the business of triple-distilling superhero comics, like some mad purveyor of punch-em-up Scotch, into ever more esoteric and self-involved forms.

There's not a single page in Sky Doll that's less than stunning, and not a single word or idea in it that any reader with the slightest knowledge of vaguely smutty commercial French comics (shall I just say "Heavy Metal" again?) will find the least bit surprising. In the alternate world that is France, this is Marvel Comics. And now it's so here as well.