Liz Valasco's The Adventures Of Moon Pie

Sweetness and existential despair mark Liz Valasco's continuing stories of her character Moon Pie. Her most recent mini, The Adventures Of Moon Pie, see this character with a moon-shaped head wander about a forest with his little robot companion that he built. Valasco blends a fine line, dense cross-hatching, and cartoony character design to create a lived-in world inhabited by these two odd creatures. Moon Pie, as the introduction explains, is an alien sent from space to complete a quest of some kind, but it's taking a long time. Like many vast undertakings, there's a lot of boring downtime, and this comic is an example of what he does on his downtime.

The first page sets up the itinerant character of Moon Pie, as the six panel grid winds up forming a single, beautiful image. Moon Pie's robot is clever and relentlessly curious, and they make a funny duo as they navigate the landscape, looking for mushrooms. Moon Pie finds a "friend" (a skeleton at the bottom of a well) and doesn't understand that it's dead and unresponsive, so desperate is he to find any kind of connections with other. There's also a profound sense of understanding his extremely long life span and wishing it was over until his philosophical robot reminds him of his responsibilities.  Everything from the lettering to the cross-hatching to the actual dialogue is strikingly thoughtful, as Valasco aims to create not so much a story as convey a mood. This is ultimately a story about loneliness, to be sure, but it's also a story about duty and understanding one's place in the world. There's a dull ache one feels when reading it; it's a mixture of melancholy and deep understanding.