Review: Little Bird by Poelgeest & Bertram

With the same limitless scope as Star Wars, and the social-political explorations of A Handmaid's Tale, LITTLE BIRD tells the story of a young resistance fighter battling against an oppressive American Empire while searching for her own identity in a world on fire. A gorgeously illustrated epic where one girl risks everything to save her people, their land, and the freedom they so desperately deserve.

I think one of the strengths of fiction is in that it can use symbolism to makes its point to a great effect. The medium does not have to entrap itself with the rigidity of reality in terms of rules, language, and cliches. Because of that, fiction is able to make good points about the real world that non-fiction finds very hard to make.

For example, Goerge Orwell's Animal Farm taught a good lesson about the politics of that time without pretzelling itself with terminologies that would give too much away about what it was talking about. In short, you could enjoy the tale without any political commentary.

Unfortunately, Little Bird fails this test. The point the graphic novel was trying to make - the evils of blind nationalism, power, and religion, falls flat in the sense that there is no cloaking of words, no fallback on symbols, no employment of what makes fiction great. The venom of the writers towards what they consider vices and injustices are made too plain on the page. This error makes enjoying Little Bird quite hard for people they might be trying to reach

The art is lovely. Spectacular in many parts. But the story lacks the maturity the art deserves.