Korgi: Sprouting Wings by Cristian Slade

by Chriss Cornish published: February 26, 2010 No Comments

This Book Is About

KORGI is a woodland fairytale about a young mollie named Ivy, her korgi cub Sprout, and their amazing adventures in Korgi Hollow. In the first volume of this all-ages graphic novel series, Ivy and Sprout discover some interesting things about themselves as they stray from their village and face danger for the first time.

My Thoughts On This Book

The description of this book doesn’t do it justice. There’s a sweetness and a strength to the characters in Korgi and Christian Slade manages to develop a sinister long-term storyline in a graphic novel series that doesn’t have any words.

I discovered Korgi not in a store but on my desk one morning. I hadn’t bought it; it was just left for me like a present from the comics fairy. Who, in this case, turned out to be my roommate of the time who saw the books at the comic shop next to his work during his dinner break and got them for me thinking I’d like them. And boy-howdy do I!

Korgi is a little cross-genre, it’s a fantasy story with a little science fiction in the mix. Book 1 has two flying saucers (one in the background sky and one crashed in the landscape). Book 2′s plot has an alien in it. The sci-fi element really helps spice up the fantasy elements and helps keep the series fresh and provides the reader with little surprises.

The basic plot of Korgi is a girl-and-her-dog story. Ivy and her korgi companion, Sprout, are both youngsters who get into a perilous adventure when Sprout goes off chasing butterflies. They discover a ruined spacecraft, find ancient pictoglyphs showing korgis and spider monsters, and are almost made into soup.

In the end, their adventure draws the attention of a creepy monster living in the rubble of an old castle, setting up a long range plotline for the series. Which is really impressive when you consider Korgi is told solely through pictures.

Talk about a book breaking the language barrier.

That’s what I really love about Korgi, that it’s told with nothing but images. There is no dialogue or narration. The only words in the whole story appear on one single introduction page where the frog chronicler of Korgi Hollow sets the stage, so to speak.

Before I read Korgi I’d never seen a comic told without any words before. Oh, I’d ‘read’ old kids’ picture books like that, but never any adult or all-age fiction. There’s something wonderful and fresh about a comic/graphic novel that uses only images to tell a story. The only other place I’ve seen it since is in the Flight comic anthologies, especially Flight 5.

What Are Mollies and Korgis?

Mollies are a small woodland people who look like humans and live in tree trunk villages alongside their korgi friends and partners.

Korgis are based on the Welsh Pembroke Corgi dog, only the full grown korgis are giant next to their mollie friends, who ride them like horses and use them to pull carts and carry harvest baskets.

Oh, and they breath fire. Yep. Fire breathing corgis. That’ll get the cattle moving, eh?

Basically, Korgi plays with the folktale origin of the corgi dog which says they were the draft animals and steeds of the fairies. The old Welsh legend says that the white markings on the corgi dog where left by the fairy harnesses.

Shadetastic or Blank-city: How Well Was This Black&White Comic Colored

Oh, and they breath fire. Yep. Fire breathing corgis. That’ll get the cattle moving, eh?
Korgi is a black and white graphic novel, though I’d say it’s more grayscale. The illustrations are well shaded and have an old print engraving look to them.