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A review by jessrock
ELEMENTS: Fire A Comic Anthology by Creators of Color! by Taneka Stotts
4.0
Elements: Fire is the second comic anthology from Beyond Press. I backed both this book and the first, [b:Beyond|20625032|Beyond the Queer Sci-Fi & Fantasy Comic Anthology|Sfé R. Monster|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1441720978s/20625032.jpg|39910718], on Kickstarter, and while I enjoyed both I do think Elements: Fire is quite a bit stronger than its predecessor. Beyond is a collection of queer sci-fi and fantasy stories, putting its focus on telling diverse stories; Elements: Fire is a collection of comics by creators of color who were asked to write speculative fiction themed around fire, with a primary focus on diverse creators. The looser theme for Elements: Fire means the stories in this collection felt like they covered a wider range of topics than the stories in Beyond did, and I think that worked to its advantage. One of my main complaints about Beyond is that many of the stories felt like they were given enough pages to tell quite a bit of story, but not enough pages to tell the whole story, so that the worlds I was dropped into didn't always entirely make sense to me. I had that same issue with a few stories in Elements: Fire, but not nearly so often, and I think that's at least partially because the looser focus on "speculative fiction" rather than science fiction meant the worlds we encounter in Elements: Fire are often worlds that feel more familiar so that the stories don't need to spend as much time on world-building.
I really like the decision in Elements: Fire to print the pages in black, white, and red. Some of the stories were saturated in red; others incorporated just the tiniest hints of spot color in otherwise black and white comics. Even though the creators approached their use of red in many different ways, the three-color printing helps unify all the different stories and art styles and is a pretty clever way to make an anthology feel like a unified whole.
I think the biggest standout in this collection for me was "Metta Helmet," a dialogue-free story about a woman who takes daily trips into a dystopian city, with a central theme that is written on the wall of a building toward the end of the story: "Kindness is a weapon, use it fiercely." I also really liked "Firelily," about a teenage girl who's trying so hard to make friends that she almost overlooks a classmate who cares about her deeply; and "A Burner of Sins," about a woman whose job is to free people from their guilt as long as they regret what they did, but after encountering a former classmate who is trans, comes to the realization that sometimes people want peace from guilt over things they can't and shouldn't regret. One of the most intriguing stories for me was "Thrustfall," about a boy with a jetpack taking his Flying 101 exam; it felt like a single scene from a much longer story that I'd very much like to read.
Most of this collection felt like it was written for teens or adults, but there were also a couple of stories that felt more like children's or all-ages comics that also stood out for me: "Too Hot to Be Cool," about friendship and the challenges of meeting people when you're the daughter of a witch; and "Home Is Where the Hearth Is," about choosing your own family when your birth family doesn't give you the love and compassion you need.
I really like the decision in Elements: Fire to print the pages in black, white, and red. Some of the stories were saturated in red; others incorporated just the tiniest hints of spot color in otherwise black and white comics. Even though the creators approached their use of red in many different ways, the three-color printing helps unify all the different stories and art styles and is a pretty clever way to make an anthology feel like a unified whole.
I think the biggest standout in this collection for me was "Metta Helmet," a dialogue-free story about a woman who takes daily trips into a dystopian city, with a central theme that is written on the wall of a building toward the end of the story: "Kindness is a weapon, use it fiercely." I also really liked "Firelily," about a teenage girl who's trying so hard to make friends that she almost overlooks a classmate who cares about her deeply; and "A Burner of Sins," about a woman whose job is to free people from their guilt as long as they regret what they did, but after encountering a former classmate who is trans, comes to the realization that sometimes people want peace from guilt over things they can't and shouldn't regret. One of the most intriguing stories for me was "Thrustfall," about a boy with a jetpack taking his Flying 101 exam; it felt like a single scene from a much longer story that I'd very much like to read.
Most of this collection felt like it was written for teens or adults, but there were also a couple of stories that felt more like children's or all-ages comics that also stood out for me: "Too Hot to Be Cool," about friendship and the challenges of meeting people when you're the daughter of a witch; and "Home Is Where the Hearth Is," about choosing your own family when your birth family doesn't give you the love and compassion you need.