Tillie Walden is quite the phenomena in the graphic novel field. Having created eight professionally published works, she’s won the Ignatz and Eisner awards multiple times, and snagged an LA Times Book Prize along the way. This line of achievements is all the more astounding considering that Walden was born in 1996 and created her first award-winning graphic novel at the age of 18.
I first heard about On a Sunbeam a few years ago, and it was one of the series that inspired in me a renewed interest in the webcomics medium. I found myself impressed by the sheer scale and ambition of the project, and how subtle and well executed it is.
Walden has confessed that she is not a science fiction fan, and hence her version of space travel is a radical departure. The spaceships in this saga resemble fishes; their interiors have a stylish, elaborate decor like a Mediterranean resort.
Only a skeleton crew of five young travelers is required to pilot the expedition ship where the story takes place. The leisurely, elliptical narrative follows them as they set out to restore old buildings which are apparently floating… somehow …in space. The focus is on the crew’s interpersonal dynamic, with three of them, Alma, Elliot and Charlotte having worked together a long time, and the newcomers Jules and Mia being treated as outsiders.
Walden’s art style is very loose and casual, but she has a knack for setting her realistic-seeming characters in three-dimensional space. It gives the story enormous scale that evokes a sense of wonder, sliding past any rational objections the reader might have. Her tranquil color scheme gradually shifts from a beige duotone to blue and then to a multicolored pallet, new colors being introduced when there is a new phenomena to be witnessed, such as moonlight reflected from nearby planets, or secret chambers in an abandoned church.
The overall effect of the series, both the writing and the art, is to project a sense of an alternate time and space that cannot be fully comprehended, and to populate it with characters whose behavior is familiar but also mysterious. Walden’s artistry is like a closure diagram, where the mind intuitively completes the picture in a way that’s more compelling and real than a straightforward presentation could ever be.
