Today, we look at the newly released Dark Horse deluxe edition Grafity’s Wall by Ram V, Anand Radhakrishnan, Aditya Bidikar, and Jason Wordie, with Irma Knivila, Girish Malap and Lizzie Kaye (Editor).

The fact that there is such a poetic and thoughtful throughline to this book is just icing on the cake " if the worst thing I can say about Grafity's Wall is you'll be disappointed that it ended, it stands in great company.I wish more comics made me feel this way, which feels deeply selfish to say on some level, but is certainly true. In this parched place, you learn to make do with what you have before the thirst becomes all-consuming.

This is life as experienced, not explained or defined, far too much to be fully captured and held in a comic, so all you get are those moments. And he doesn’t draw pretty, he doesn’t draw “realistic,” — he draws operatic, he draws evocative and he wants you to feel something, even if you don’t necessarily like what it is you’re feeling, even if what you see isn’t pretty or terribly “real”.

Slice of life, but interjected with insights into why people make art, how they try and connect with one another, it's a special book. There are all these little things, tiny details that feel absolutely normal to the locale, that will seem bizarrely alien and outlandishly new to some.

And it is such a treat, with everything from pop-art moments to psychedelic title cards (like above) to all kinds of others. It’s using the natural “rhythm” of the comics form, as each panel is a single “beat” and what you’re getting, in the end, is a rap scene, with the music converted to/for the page. A arte também é incrível, uma complexidade econômica, bagunçada, que se expressa melhor nos próprios grafites do protagonista.His work leaps to match RK’s loose work consistently, providing a vision of Mumbai that feels just right for the book. It’s certainly the work with the broadest appeal, set in a sort of distant historical setting that feels far away for many to start, wherein you’re just transported and you experience something. It’s every wall, it’s every empty thing, every wreckage, every broken thing, every blank space that just needs the right spark of Promethean fire.