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Written by mat
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Alexei Gural’s independently produced graphic novel, Rosewater, takes place on an Earth on the brink of apocalypse where angels live as human beings in quasi-human form. They look like humans, they live like humans, they die like humans, but they still have certain angelic powers depending on how much of their cherubic life they choose to hold onto. This appears to vary depending on how many human vices the angel partakes in during their time on Earth.
Jacqueline, a member of the world-famous band Rosewater, has very few of her divine powers left after partaking in copious drug use and a serious attempt at suicide.
Anna awakes in a desert with a head injury that has caused amnesia. Jacqueline discovers Anna in the desolation and takes her under wing into the lone house in the landscape. Jacqueline reveals that they are actually in Georgia and that the rest of the world has taken on the same sandy appearance in what is referred to as “The Disintegration.” Keep in mind Rosewater was written long before M. Night Shymalan cleverly named his pretentious movie The Happening. During The Disintegration, buildings, humans and other tangibles begin turning into sand.
The only beings seemingly strong enough to survive this disaster were angels. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that the band Rosewater was the cause of it all and the world’s only hope, or ultimate destruction, lies with the band’s elusive and unstable lead singer, Rose. Turns out Jacqueline just so happens to be a member of Rosewater, and she and Anna embark on a cross-country trip to get the band back together.
The unique thing about Rosewater is that Gural, a collage artist, used live models for each of the scenes and then added an illustrative tinge to all of the photographs in a Photoshop-like program. The models were mostly shot in one apartment and then added to the backgrounds after the fact, but this lends to the overall comic book feel of the altered photographs. This method is probably what allowed Gural to produce the prolific illustrations in the 317-page novel by himself without losing sanity.
Occasionally, some of the details in smaller panels are overwhelmed by black, as if Gural was trying to create too much mood, or obscure too many background details. Sometimes it leaves the reader squinting, trying to decipher the subtleties.
There are no dialogue bubbles and occasionally the uniform lettering looks amateurish and too computer-generated. The dialogue itself is often overburdened with exposition and melodrama.
Even with those faults, Rosewater will keep your attention through most of the 317-pages, and it is a quick read, but at times, it seems like self-indulgence dreamed up by a heroin-addicted musician. Yes, only music has the power to unleash destruction upon, or provide salvation to the world. Finally, someone reaffirms that the movie Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey was not just conjecture. Then again, a few of the models work nicely. Model/actor Rebecca Van Dam, posing as Anna, has the perfect mix of facial expressiveness for the two dimensional role of the innocent amnesiac waking to apocalypse.
I will say this in all honesty, while re-reading the graphic novel for this review, an eruption of blood gushed profusely from my nose ruining several pages of the graphic novel before I could stem it.
Rosewater might just be that awesome, the kind of awesome that makes you bleed. Then again maybe my home needs a humidifier. Either way, Gural’s future work is worth keeping an eye out for as he matures as a graphic novelist.
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