Don’t be fooled by the small size of this book or by the fact that there aren’t a lot of words. The author, Drew Weing, really gets what graphic novels are about in the way he uses his pictures and words to complement each other and tell a wonderful story about an unnamed hero, a big lug of a guy, who has dreams of being a poet. Those dreams may be dashed when he’s shanghaied onto a boat and sent out to sea. This is one where you’ll want to carefully study each of the spreads to really get the full effect of what’s happening. The story told here is pretty simple, and at first I was not a fan of the almost Popeye-like method of sketching, but the more I turned the pages the more it grew on me. Text is sparse, but the images presented manage to tell a story more thoroughly than most people can with words. It also resonated with me because it's about a poet who is shanghaied into a ship's crew and made to work manual labor, though for the character in the book it seems to work out better, despite a few traumas.
What do You think about Set To Sea (2010)?
Jack London meets Popeye? The drawing style was fun, light, and engaging.
—Lavol