Review: The Sound of the World By Heart
I love the city I grew up in, New York City, where you can meet a new person every day of the year and will never meet everybody. Incidentally, the same goes for restaurants back home, you can go to a new restaurant every day of the year, and still have not been to every restaurant. The city has an interesting hodgepodge of cultures, as there is nothing like it. In fact, the borough, I grew up in, Queens, was recently revealed by an ethnographer, to have the most number of languages spoken than any other part of the country.
At the same token, as much as I love the city I grew up in, I don’t know if I could ever live there again. This is due to the city not being the same as it changed so much, that it different than the city I grew up in. This is what I believe is what makes the city so beautiful, as lonely as it can be, it can also be inspiring. In The Sound Of The World By Heart, Giacomo Bevilacqua, explores this great metropolis through social experiment, and not expecting to find what he does.
In the opening pages, our protagonist, Sam, begins his day, paying his landlord, and grabbing a cup of coffee, but he accomplishes these tasks without saying to a word to anybody, an experiment him and his editor, hatch up as part of an article. The reader gets a history of the character while feeling connected to the pain he feels when he fell out of love and learns how he copes without saying a word, by counting numbers all day long. During this sojourn of 60 days, with no physical communication, he unexpectedly sees the same woman everywhere, understanding then, that city needs something form him. By the end of the book, you realize as does Sam, that really what he did not realize what the city required of him, was for him to find himself and to find love.
Overall, a brilliant book, that is not only an ode to New York City but also a fable of getting out of one’s own way. The story by Bevilacqua is quaint, pertinent, comical, and lovable. The art by Bevilacqua is simply elegant, where his style is somewhere between realistic and rotoscope, which provides glowing panels. Altogether, this book is a love story to New York and to, love.
Story: Giacomo Bevilacqua Art: Giacomo Bevilacqua
Story: 10 Art: 10 Overall: 10 Recommendation: Buy NOW!!!
Just like the Bobby Caldwell song, “Do for Love,” people do the dumbest things when they are in love. Love is what my grandmother used to call having “stupid eyes”, which is a concept I did not get until I was older. When I first fell in love, and then when that same girl broke my heart, I finally knew what she was talking about. As you never really see the person’s flaws until you no longer have feelings.
As the world heads into 2017, and in a time of uncertainty, Lion Forge’s newly acquired boutique imprint Magnetic Collection announces two gorgeous works of graphic fiction told from two wholly unique perspectives.
Another original graphic novel by Panda Likes creator Giacomo Bevilacqua, titled The Sound of the World By Heart, is a touching, vividly illustrated journey of the heart through modern New York City.
Award-winning Magnetic Press becomes the Magnetic Collection at Lion Forge Comics. The deal went down officially September 30th. Mike Kennedy, Publisher and President of Magnetic Press, has joined Lion Forge Comics as Creative Director of the Magnetic Collection. In that role, he will curate a branded collection of premiere books across all imprints at Lion Forge, including new acquisitions as well as the award-winning and critically-acclaimed, creator-centric Magnetic catalog of titles.