Stand Still Stay Silent vol. I by Minna Sundberg

I received Stand Still Stay Silent vol. I as a present from my boyfriend last month, and started reading it on New Years Day exactly. I had never heard of the comic before, although as a language enthusiast with language-enthusiast friends I had naturally seen this page before.

I loved the comic. It strikes a perfect balance between cute and scary - not something I ever thought I would say before! The story in the first volume shows the first outbreaks of the mysterious 'rash illness' and it's spread across the world. The particulars are kept quiet, and we are thrown 90 years into  future where much of the world is either uninhabited/uninhabitable or purposely forgotten (often both). The first volume charts the set up and a few of the adventures of a group of explorers on a mission to learn more about the 'silent world'.

So, a good story line and absolutely gorgeous art. Each page is truly breathtaking, with a lovely attention to detail and fabulous colour work. Each chapter contains information pages, such as the one linked above, which give the world more colour and more depth. They're all really thoughtfully done and make lovely additions to the story. The characters are all rather over the top. My favourite is the extremely withdrawn Finn, Lalli. His backstory and arc looks very promising, too. Although the characters often seem like caricatures of themselves, I felt it really fit in with the story and the artwork, if that's even possible.

The print copy is a Lovely Thing in and of itself. It's a solid hardback in a large format, although smaller than A4. The paper is high quality as is the print itself - bright, crisp and clear. It also comes with an extra short story and insight into Sundberg's page creation process. I could continue reading online, but a good part of me wants to hold off and treat myself to the second book instead.

Minna Sundberg is Finno-svensk (and there was more Finnish in this book than any of the other Nordic languages) so I will be counting this as Finland for the European reading challenge. This book also counts for the Mount TBR challenge.