It’s been much too long since I’ve read a graphic novel quite like this.
To break down that statement, it occurred to me that the bulk of my graphic novel library is composed of serialized works, made by teams of writers and artists on strict deadlines. And there’s nothing wrong with that, per se. But Chronicles of Yria, of which Myre is volume 1, is a different beast altogether: years of devotion and effort in the making, today we’re talking about a true labour of love of art and creation. That’s not to say that serialized works cannot be that; but Myre is on a whole other plateau entirely. So let’s take this journey together.
Chronicles Of Yria, volume 1: Myre (henceforth just Myre for our purposes) struck me right away for a couple of reasons, and if you’ll lend me a couple minutes of your time, I’ll tell you why Yria, with art and co-authorship by Claudya Schmidt AKA AlectorFencer, and dialogue and co-authorship by Matt Davis, is absolutely a series to put on your radar going forward.
The first thing I need to draw your attention to is the artwork: there are no corners cut, no detail left vague. This is, as I’ve shamelessly expressed to the artist numerous times, some of the most gorgeous artwork I’ve seen in the graphic novel medium.
You know how in a lot of graphic novels, you’ll have some absolutely stunning cover art, and then you open it up and the artwork inside, while certainly good and functional, will be a bit less detailed, a bit less stunning? It makes sense, especially in those serialized issues I talked about, where the staff are on a hell of a deadline each month.
But scroll back up and take a good, long look at that cover art. I promise you that every page of Myre is just as great. Just as immaculately detailed, just as lush and vibrant.
If you haven’t guessed, my favourite styles of graphic novel art are those that skew towards lush detail. Two of my favourite graphic-novel artists, both of whom seem to work primarily in the realms of Marvel and DC, are Lee Bermejo (Joker, Batman: Noel, Batman: Damned) and Clayton Crain (Carnage: Family Feud, Carnage: USA…so basically he does symbiotes). Super-detailed artists who infuse their work with loads of depth and intricacy, the kinds of creators whose visual work has a truly immersive quality to it.
I’m happy to put Claudya Schmidt in that special tier of artist who has both the skill and willingness to make every panel on every page pop in its detail, like you’re watching still frames captured from another realm just barely out of reach.
So naturally, when I was batting around ideas for a theme to ‘anchor’ this review around, I knew early on that I’d spend a great deal of time discussing Yria’s masterful use of visual storytelling.
When I say ‘visual storytelling’, I’m referring to something very specific. Usually when I say that, it means I’m talking about the ways in which a creator can tailor environments, or characters’ outfits, or other visual details within a narrative to reveal things about those places or those characters, but what Schmidt does with Myre is on another level entirely (in addition to all of the above).
As you dive into Myre, you’ll find multiple pages at a time that have no dialogue to move the story along. Instead, a number of sections are driven entirely by the artwork, allowing Myre herself (just assume I’m talking about the eponymous lead character when I say ‘she’ instead of ‘it’) to guide the reader and the story by her actions, gestures and movements.
To give you a small-scale idea of what I mean, there’s an early scene where our leading traveler attempts to light a match, so that she might enjoy a hand-rolled smoke. First it fails, then it fails multiple times. Then it fails many times, to the point where her draconian mount and companion glances back at her to see what’s up. Then it lights – and sends up sparks that go off in her face. Mildly humiliated, she soldiers on. So much character is conveyed without an inch of dialogue.
Sequences of combat, or of coming upon massive fantastical vistas, can go multiple pages without an inch of dialogue, because frankly, they don’t need it. Myre (the book, not the character – but, okay, also the character) speaks when it needs to. To say that she begins the journey as somewhat socially maladjusted would not be undeserved (and, okay, her people-skills still have a lot of room to grow by the time we leave off), but at the same time, those panels dealing with her gradual journey from step to step, help the reader orient to her. It really wouldn’t have the same impact if the story simply dropped us in from dialogue-filled scene to dialogue-filled scene. Myre gives us a chance to breathe.
Worldbuilding is also handled heavily via stark visuals that ‘fill in the gaps’ and lend colour and life to this vivid world: in addition to the more general landscapes, like arid ranges whose ridges clash like blades, towns built into dryland crags and precarious swamps whose every corner gleams with shadows and danger, you have delightful single-scene effect-details like glow-bugs that act as tavern lights, a merchant’s shop set along the broadside of an elephantine beast-of-burden, and a four-armed reptilian pianist (finally, someone who can keep up with Jordan Rudess!…sorry, metal joke). And with these little details, it’s a bit similar to how films can convey these things through their visuals without drawing attention away from the story at hand.
That brings me to the story’s unique dynamic between storytelling and dialogue: as I mentioned, while the artwork and co-authorship of the story are done by the Berlin-based Schmidt, co-authoring and dialogue are credited to Matt Davis, a native English speaker.
Full disclosure, in my correspondences with Claudya Schmidt, she has displayed a strong grasp on the English language (as do most Germans I’ve spoken with, inside and outside Germany, to be perfectly honest – and those who know my music tastes know my love for Tobias Sammet’s music, and that man can chew his way through many an English lyric with words I didn’t even know!). But this is a smart tactic on Schmidt’s part: in addition to being a native English speaker, Davis has been working with the art of wordplay for a very long time. If you recall the ancient times before ‘salty ranting guy’ became a whole YouTube subgenre, he made his name way back in the day as 2, The Ranting Gryphon, and I’m told he hasn’t stopped creating in various mediums since.
(Hey, popping in from 2022 to make a clarification here. Stuff has happened in the time since this book came out involving 2. Please don’t let it put you off of Claudya’s work; she has nothing to do with ANY far-right politics whatsoever. Back to the review as written in 2020.)
So letting an English-language wordweaver handle the minutae of the dialogue, in a story which is told primarily in English (though there are in fact translated German versions available from a distributor linked on her website), feels like a very smart move to me. As for the dialogue in particular, a lot of it has Davis’s distinctive witticism, woven expertly between more serious or somber moments. The creative synthesis that Schmidt and Davis have going on behind the scenes is clearly working. Outside of the dialogue, I have no way of knowing which particular ideas and concepts were Schmidt and which were Davis, so I’ll split the difference and say they both did a stellar job.
So, this is a graphic novel. Which is probably an odd thing to reiterate at this point, but this is the rare graphic novel that well and truly takes advantage of its medium. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Myre could not have been told as a text-only novel, at least not to the same effect.
And the thing is, you can’t say that about all graphic novels: if you’ve read the Death Note manga, you know that it’s so immensely dialogue-heavy, and moreover dialogue-centric, that I reckon you could convert the story into a text novel and not really lose too much. And that’s just one example, though I’ve seen plenty of graphic novels that have pages so heavily loaded with dialogue-bubbles that the actual art can get a bit lost. Not the case here.
But at the same time, a part of me suspects it would take a really, really freaking good writer to do with words what Schmidt does with visuals. Take the whammy of a two-page spread that ends this volume (and if it doesn’t get you hyped for volume 2, I’d caution you to check for a pulse): the medium of graphic art conveys the simultaneous feeling of “Oh wow” and “Oh shit” in such an amazing way, and – again with the visual storytelling – completely wordless. I’m not posting it here, because 1: I’m only posting images that are already available on the Yria website for ethics reasons, and 2: it’s a spoiler. I do love that spread, incidentally: in terms of the impact it has, I might compare it to something out of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, or possibly the game Shadow Of The Colossus – film and games being two other mediums where the visuals can really have room to effectively breathe, under the curation of the right creator. In fact, in the bonus content section, Claudya discusses how the art of cinema was an inspiration on her style, which absolutely makes sense to me.
Speaking of storytelling, what we’ve got here, as mentioned, is but Part One of the over-arcing story. And when that’s the case, I become hesitant to prejudge various character arcs, because I’d prefer to give the authors in question space to play these things out in their time. But what I can tell you is that it’s working – ‘it’ being that ephemeral connection between reader and book, because I like all these characters, I’m invested in Myre’s journey, I enjoy spending reading-time in the world she inhabits, and so all of those elements are a success so far.
Much of the storytelling here, naturally, is visual. Some foundational aspects of the world and lore are handed to us through dialogue, such as the pre-history narration that opens the story, but a lot of the foundational details of the state of Yria are given to us visually: the beggars in the streets, the refugees of the desolation left in the wake of terrible beasts, the ancient temples of a long-forgotten time. We travel with Myre from the badlands, to settlements both rough and ornate, to the deep places of the world where one’s body might never be recovered.
And in some ways, it can be said that that journey itself is the best part of Yria’s narrative so far as seen in Myre, for this is merely the beginning of the journey, and many answers to the questions raised throughout the story are not ours to have yet, only to anticipate.
One last note about the physical presentation of Myre: I have the Remastered edition, because – well, okay, because I didn’t discover Schmidt’s work until that edition was already out. But this is an absolutely beautiful tome, a huge hardback with a built-in fabric bookmark, and a section at the back discussing concept art and designs.
This edition’s quality matches or surpasses most of what I’ve seen from the big-name graphic novel publishers, Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, IDW etc, and from what I understand, Schmidt is shipping these out of her house! It’s put together with so much genuine care and love. And in an age when so many people are taking all their entertainment completely digitally, the physical presentation really, really matters, I find. In fact, I believe Myre is only available in physical form, save for the pages that Alector has opted to post online for promotional purposes. Trust me as someone who has this book: even if you normally take your books and graphic novels digitally, this is well worth making space in your place.
Schmidt/Alector has gained a firm supporter in me. I’m excited to dig deeper into the lush world of Yria, and I can hardly wait for volume 2 and beyond. In the meantime, this won’t be the last ride I take through Myre, not by a long shot.
All the images in this review are of course by Claudya Schmidt/AlectorFencer and were grabbed from the official Chronicles Of Yria website. If what I’ve been talking about sounds good to you, you definitely should grab your very own copy at that link.
A very sincere thank-you to Claudya Schmidt for being so accommodating and understanding with me when crazy circumstances arose in transit that necessitated a replacement copy to be sent out. Thank you so much for the second copy! Finally being able to read it as it was meant to be read was a wonderful experience, and even after almost two months in the waiting, I have only this to say: worth the wait!