Owly - Just A Little Blue [2005] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Owly - Just A Little Blue [2005] 

This is the second volume of Andy Runton's series of books, five volumes of about 120 pages each were published in black and white digest format from 2004 to 2008 by Top Shelf. Runton later did two large format colour children's books with the character, and more recently the original books have been reprinted by Graphix, now in colour. More on that later...

As you might expect, the series is about a young owl, living a life of almost unbearable cuteness, along with his best friend Wormy (you can probably guess what animal he is...).  The stories are largely wordless, except for a few labels and sound effects, with everything having to be interpreted through the actions of the characters or some pictogram representations of their thoughts and words.

As I said, it's all very cute, maybe too cute for me in most circumstances, but when I'm in the right mood it can amuse me. I have the first two books in print, and all five of them in digital editions.

In this particular issue, the story is about Owly deciding to build a birdhouse for a family of bluebirds. Various complications ensue, teaching lessons of sacrifice, trust and heroism. It's fun to read, using different mental muscles from most other comics to interpret the actions, making for a lot more involving read than you might expect.

As I mentioned, new editions of the series began recently, four of them published since 2000, the last due out next year. The most noticeable change is that the stories are in colour now, and that looks really nice. 

The other major change I'm less sure about. 

They add a fair number of descriptive captions and dialogue to the images, which pretty much just replicate what I was already doing on my own. I really don't know. Maybe those really help people less familiar with comic book storytelling? I never recall hearing about anyone having a problem understanding the series, and in fact the challenge of figuring it out for yourself seemed to be part of the charm, but then most of what I heard about it came from people steeped in comics vocabulary from a young age.