ADVANCED REVIEW: A Stray Dog Takes an Incredible Journey Home in LOVE: THE MASTIFF

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Love: the Mastiff

Written by Frederic Brremaud
Illustrated by Federico Bertolucci
Publisher: Magnetic press

The Australian outback is not a place for a leisurely stroll. Oh sure, here you will find sand goannas, koalas and kangaroos. And the cute quokka. But there aren’t many people around, it’s hot, dry, and dusty in most places, and even where it’s cool and shady, you can encounter all kinds of creeping death. In the outback, they sort their death adders into two different categories: the common and the desert. Then there is the inland taipan, reputedly the deadliest snake in the world. They say the poison can kill 100 people, and if there’s something deadly calling the outback home, when you go there keep your eyes open and your head on a spin.

It’s not just the wildlife. Rough places are elementary places. Threatening exposure and dehydration. Experts say you can survive without water for about 3 days, maybe 3 weeks without food. If you avoid the vipers and taipans you will find things to eat. If you’re fast enough, you may be able to eat a death adder. Not recommended. In 2015 a camel hunter spent six wretched days lost in the outback. Incredibly, he not only lived without water all the time, but also ate ants. I’ve never eaten an ant, but I understand they are sour.

That is disappointing. I always thought ants were more of a savory dish.

As a rule, it is best not to get lost in the outback. In Love: The Mastiff, the title character of this beautiful yet thrilling graphic novel of pure animal adventure has no choice. When a venomous snake kills its master on a hunting trip, the mastiff must find its own way home. Along the way, he encounters a full collection of Australian animals, and you will experience every bit of his exhausting ordeal. There is no dialogue in this story. There are not even sound effects. Only the dog walks with determination on this survival journey through an untamed land.

Love: the Mastiff

But even as a survival story, it’s not just the story of a lost dog. For this fifth entry in their award-winning wordless nature series, writer Frederic Brremaud and artist Federico Bertolucci fill out the Australian wilderness using discernible and narrative skills worthy of Marty Stouffer or the filmographers who shot Sir David AttenboroughBBC’s 1979 nature documentary series Life on EarthIn addition to the central story, this book is teeming with predators and prey. A koala fends off a wedge-tailed eagle. Snakes slip around, at the expense of small rodents. Kangaroos bound by the brush. A wombat and his joey race the dingoes to safety. Things live or die according to the dictates of each encounter. My favorite is the platypus, an important secondary character. The platypus doesn’t know or care what we think of it because it’s just doing its regular platypus messages.

Brrenaud and Bertolucci weave these stories around and through an environment that is particularly harsh on the helpless or the weak. But they do so steadfastly and largely without imposing value judgments. Even the dingo pack that acts as the mastiff’s recurring antagonists are just dingos. Other animals feast on each other, or try. This is just the way things are in the outback, and, expanding further outward, the natural world as a whole.

The complete lack of text in Love: the Mastiff allows Bertolucci to further demonstrate different levels of artistic virtuosity. As illustrations, his panels are breathtaking. From the first view of a panoramic valley baking under a hazy, halo sun to the softly glowing lights of a house on the edge of a forest, these images are as sharply focused as any award-winning photograph of the true outback. Bertolucci’s vision of the outback has a heightened realism of brilliant blues, blazing reds and the inviting coolness of leafy shadows and running water. It gives an almost tangible sense of being present, a specificity of time and place. With a naturalist’s attention to species-specific anatomy and body language, Bertolucci communicates directly with the reader the drama inherent in the story’s many confrontations. If you’ve ever wanted to see an enraged koala in battle mode, this is your chance. Our platypus friend has an almost animated waddle. What really impresses, however, is the way Bertolucci conveys all this excitement without humanizing the animals in the least.

Love: the Mastiff is an action packed journey that might remind you of those old Disney nature movies where the predators never seem to catch a break (or a wombat) and the narrator with a folk voice assures everyone it’s all part of the cycle of life or the wonder of creation or something equally healthy and bloodless. Except this story comes from a grimmer place, a universe that’s not necessarily of ‘chaos and murder’ as director and narrator Werner Herzog would have it in his 2005 classic documentary Grizzly Man, but somewhere where you might not find comforting aphorisms or necessarily a happy ending meant to soothe our feelings as we sit on the family couch in front of a television tuned to Animal Planet. If there is kindness in this interior, it comes from a more primitive, unformed place. This is a dog Naked prey, a Put away on four legs or Man in the wilderness with a fine, hairy boy in the lead instead of Richard HarrisStunning, powerful and exciting.


Published by Magnetic Press, Love: the Mastiff goes on sale on June 15, 2021

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Marques
Marques
I am the main reporter of Gaming Ideology. I love to play 2D Games like CupHead. I am working as a reporter for five years now and loves to provide gaming news to others.

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