Review: Empty Quarter: The Heredity of the Sands by Baltasar

Attempting to achieve something profound through a graphic novel is a major challenge for many artists and writers, namely because so much has to be expressed in such a short and condensed amount of space. In Empty Quarter: The Heredity of the Sand, a new graphic short by Baltasar, there are plenty of ideas on display, but the book struggles at times to keep the flow of meaning clear.

Based on the Empty Quarter area of the Arabic Peninsula, this is a simply illustrated book, primarily visualized with stock-posed characters over photographic backgrounds and speech bubbles. The premise is of a young man who goes on a mystical journey on a magic bicycle over land and sea, through jungles and deserts to uncover great truths about serenity, the unwillingness of humanity to change, and the physical construction of a bicycle, among many other tangential points.

The focal traveler meets many people along the way, none of whom are explained or given much backstory. In fact, most of them appear to be the same character in different clothes, which may be a symptom of lazy illustration, rather than a lack of character development.

There are some interesting questions posed within the unclearly ordered thought bubbles, but the writing often interrupts itself with seemingly unrelated points and notes, as well as jokes that land poorly – or not at all. There is an unusually large amount of references to drinking beer or getting drunk, which don’t appear to have much bearing on the story, and many of the jokes surrounding these moments make for the weakest scenes. The early introspective scene about the structure and function of bicycles is interesting, and the flow of this story could be improved with more quirky philosophy and heady analysis. There is a silliness to the book that is appealing, but it needs to be executed in a much more effective way.

A great deal of this confusion can be chalked up to the obvious language barrier between the writer and English, as many of the sentences almost make sense, but seem to miss the mark of common speech. In a graphic novel where art and words are equally balanced, having both sides of the equation struggle makes it difficult to enjoy the book as a whole. A comprehensive edit, or possibly an entire rewrite, could help this idea go from nearly illegible to intriguing.

The whimsical nature of the writing does come through, but in its present form, it is close to unreadable. Some improvements to the background art, including not repeating images so often, and more variation in the character depictions, would also add some flair and style to this book. A great deal of work is required to bring this book up to a publishing standard, but the passion for this story is clearly there, and some of the scenes already summon interesting questions and draw out the occasional chuckle. There is potential among the problems, and perhaps even profundity, but sizable improvements and changes must be made for the book to be ready for readers.