Another aspect I noticed about the art was the meticulous attention for detail, for every time I revisited the book it offered something new, something that made me smile. There were subtle artistic throwbacks as well towards some of the world’s most famous pictures, like the panel of newsboy announcing Titanic catastrophe. In the artist after note Shaun directs to various immigrant anecdotes as his thematic inspiration. Other similar inspirational throwbacks are there in the book, undecipherable for me though. Titanic reference, in one panel somewhere after the first arrival. This belongs to the flashback back story of one of the character our hero meets, who was the sole survivor of an old war. Four pages that capture ‘time’ through simple sequences. And everybody speaks distinctly different languages, but it is barely a barrier for the ‘melting pot’ they live in, like how the absence of wordings in the book isn’t a barrier for readers in following the story. Worlds illustrated in this graphic novel are strange and steampunk-y, with monsters and pokemon like creatures. Migration and multiculturalism are recurring themes in this book, with every character being like the protagonist sometime in their life, an immigrant looking for a new home, with his/her whole life and dreams in a suitcase.

New beginnings can be scary as well as exciting the gorgeous art effortlessly conveys conversations, passing of time, flash backs and emotions through our man and people whom he encounters. It is the story of a man immigrating from his strange world to another in search of job and livelihood, leaving his family behind. The graphic novel opens and closes with detailed portraits of people from all over the world, celebrating the diversity and harmony of magical world of immigrants in story. There is literally nothing to read in the graphic novel, no written words, no colours, no page numbers but each panel speaks a lot more than what a conventional paragraph would do. ‘Beautiful’ would be an overused adjective for this magical visual narrative.

The arrival illustrated novel