Black Is the Color by Julia Gfrörer

I often find I'm thinking about or focused on the wrong things in the books I'm reading - that I need to specifically tell myself to ignore something so I can move on.

For example in Julia Gfrörer's short, dark, creepy 2013 graphic novel Black Is the Color, the story opens on a wooden ship, far out in the ocean, several hundred years ago. One of the leaders - not the captain, maybe the first mate or owner - tells two sailors that they are, unfortunately, running lower on provisions than expected. So he's going to kick the two of them off the ship, into a small open boat, to die in the middle of the sea.

And my first thought was: was that a thing? I've heard of crews going on half-rations, or even less - stretching their food farther and farther. And I know that a merchant ship, which this one appears to be, had a small, tight crew to begin with - especially compared to a warship, which would be swarming with gunhands and marines and others. So it didn't quite make sense that they could or would just kill two of a very limited crew at the first sign of trouble.

But that's how Gfrörer gets to the story she wants to tell: this is about two men, in that open boat, and what happens to them. So the setup almost doesn't matter: it's plausible, it's quick, it gets them out there, under a baking sun, with no food or water.

And then the mermaids come out to investigate.

Black is the story of one of those two men: Warren. He lasts longer. He's...befriended? made a pet? visited? by a mermaid, Eulalia. We see him alone in the boat, slowly dying. We see him with her, being comforted or having sex or being a new object of interest. We see her down in the depths, among her people, callous and self-centered and flighty. We see that she and all her people view humans as amusing distractions, as entertainment - interesting in the moment, maybe, but nothing more important or significant than that.

Gfrörer's art is detailed and organic, her lines dark black and usually thin, her borders in this six-panel grid just slightly irregular, her people with sharp defined faces, her seas a mass of lines rippling and undulating, endlessly. This is a book that's black in multiple ways: story, theme, characters, often visually. Black is the color here.