Kingdom

by Jon McNaught

Overview

Kingdom forges a story in the parts of a vacation we like to forget—the arguments, the poor weather, the moments of quiet solitude. This detailed graphic novel follows a family on their vacation to a small campground, where teenager Andrew explores the dunes in relative solitude, and Suzie navigates childhood in the wake of her older brother.

Fond memories and old habits compete with modern distractions in this contemplative and atmospheric new work from Jon McNaught, with a meditative art style that makes the ordinary, extraordinary. A family sets off for a long weekend at a campground next to the ocean. We follow them through the familiar landscapes of a summer break: gas stations, windswept cliffs, dilapidated museums, and tourist giftshops. Richly illustrated and sparsely worded, Kingdom explores the rhythms of nature, the passing of time, and the beauty and boredom of a summer holiday. A great new story for fans of Richard McGuire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781910620243
Publisher:	Nobrow Ltd.
Publication date:	07/09/2019
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 10.60(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jon McNaught graduated from the University of the West of England in 2007 with a degree in illustration. He now lives in Bristol where he works as a printmaker and freelance illustrator. He has contributed editorial illustration work to The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, among others.

Editorial Reviews

06/03/2019

McNaught’s visual poem captures both the boredom and enchantment of family vacations. Teenage Andrew and his little sister, Suzie, are towed by their mother to Kingdom Fields Holiday Park, where she alludes to her own childhood memories by observing, “I guess this is... it.” McNaught is not much interested in dialogue or plot, though there is no shortage of text, from retail signage to the “plip plip” of water dripping in a seaside cave. He invests instead in mood, and sometimes sections a page with as many as 34 panels, each focusing on a detail—rain falling outside a store window display, flies alighting on the corpse of a sheep—in a palette of pinks and blues. Andrew and Suzie absorb it all placidly, as if everything bears roughly the same emotional weight. Things happen—the kids have a somewhat awkward visit with their grandmother, poke around some beach ruins, and Andrew makes a friend. But, while this graphic novel is stylishly rendered, readers looking to hook on to a story-centered narrative may struggle. While McNaught’s collage slow-pan has its joys, it’s like the comics equivalent of arthouse cinema and will mostly appeal to particular readers eager to put in the work of appreciating it. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"An atmospheric and beautifully executed slice of family vacation life."
—Booklist

". . . this is a beautiful rumination on the cross-section between tradition and moving on, about the escapable forces that peck away at the bubbles we build around ourselves, and about the hidden parts of the world that make it so rich."
—Comics Beat

"There's a filmic quality to McNaught's shots, a pacing and spacing reminiscent of Terrence Malick's films . . . We can recognize in the narrative the non-narrative of our own lives, the little scraps and sequences and moods and motifs that we convert into experience, into memory, into our own sense of self. This strange recognition has a subtle but affecting power. It makes revisiting McNaught's work such a pleasure—-and it makes me anticipate future volumes from the artist. Highly recommended."
—The Comics Journal

"You can pretty much feel yourself at the shore, and then when it ends you kinda come back out. It’s almost like you go into a hypnotic trance and are there viscerally, and then you’re back out […] It’s the kind of unique book that Nobrow’s bringing to the table that you just don’t find anywhere else these days."
—Jason Wood, 11 O'Clock Comics podcast

From the Publisher

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