Rain.

Yet another ground breaking and entertaining graphic novel by living legend Bryan Talbot, another superb piece that would grace any bookshelf it sits upon. This one written by his wife Mary. The second time the couple have cooperated on a comic book work, the other being the highly regarded and rather special  The Dotter of Her Father's Eyes. Bryan Talbot is something of a national treasure (a notion that would probably make an artist of his stature and regard  cringe but I speak on an emotional level. He just is.)
          Take the opening pages of Rain as an example of that;you flip open the book to see a two page spread, a view of a distant moorland, a beautifully understated piece of art where one can almost feel the wild wind come off the page accompanied by the pitter patter of heavy raindrops on scattered moorland boulders. three pages later we are dislocated, for narrative reasons, through time and space to a valley in southern america , only to move past those pages two centuries later to be confronted with an enviromental disaster that were the 2015 floods in northern England. it is ambitious but handled delicately with Mary Talbot's scripting. what a bittersweet thing it is then to watch the love blossom between the two women as nature itself buckles and twists in artificially induced spasms. go look up some of the photographs of destruction caused by the flooding, the sight of small towns and villages, rural homes, engulfed in flood water. they are just heart breaking.
            Rain centres on one relatively, in the world wide scheme of natural mismanagement, example of moorland ownership by an "elite" , for want of a more user friendly and simple euphemism, group that impacts catastrophically on those people living under the surrounding hills. the whole ecosystem of the surrounding landscape thrown a googlie by clay shooters greedily hellbent on riddling the wildlife with undiscriminating abandon. its class based and idiot driven, the last vestiges of a cultural tradition as crustily bourgeoisie as it is unpleasant.
             It is a non linear tale but never over complicated, nor is it preachy. it gently unfolds and we learn as we go along the simple fact that while things are rarely simply they are neither too complex to fix or understand. There a nice group of friends at the heart of this tale, a little kooky, but then lovers often are.
             The sea, sun and sky that surround us are all that we have.
             We need to learn to love them a bit more.
             Even though they will never truly love us back.
             Appreciation and coexistence is enough for now and always.