Beach Safari - Softcover

Comics newcomer Mawil addresses the topics of shipwreck, survival and summertime love with the narrative efficiency of a fable. There's not much to this work in terms of plot, which starts when a rabbit washes up onto a sandy shore. Disoriented and smaller than most of the island's other creatures (including seagulls), he struggles with hunger and desperation until he stumbles upon the beach chair of a girl who is vacationing with friends. She and her beautiful, free-spirited pals take the rabbit under their wing as a kind of mascot and plaything. Small and awkward, though gifted with speech, he eventually forges a friendship with one of the girls that intensifies and peaks before faltering by the end of the summer. Despite the slightness of the story, it astutely lays out companionship's complex, double-sided nature. That it does so with a minimum of dialogue is a testament to the effectiveness of its graphic style: the expressions of terror on the rabbit's face as he confronts one obstacle or another are both funny and familiar, making it easy to understand what's at stake. The author's pacing is also impressive: even after the rabbit meets with the girls, silent episodes and landscape shots where the rabbit is on his own intercut the more raucous scenes of togetherness. The book's combination of cartoony exaggeration with graphic sophistication evokes the thrill of summertime crushes while alluding to the probability of abandonment.
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