The Weaver Festival Phenomenon (2018) pg.15

Adapted from a Banana Yoshimoto short story ‘Moonlight Shadow,’ that you can find in the back of most copies of "Kitchen," The Weaver Festival Phenomenon maybe Ron Regé, Jr.'s most straightforward book but also his most lyrical and beautiful.

Ron told me that he actually had the idea to have Satsuki running on the bridge, with a, for lack of a better term, fisheye camera effect joining all the bottom row of panels first, while for the middle panels he only drew in the figures but after he drew the bottom realized he could do a similar but slightly different effect for the middle row by using different locations but using tangent lines to not mirror the camera effect but also use the same lines to depict speed. When it all comes together on the page what you get is not only visually interesting but conveys fast running in the middle panels and a slowing down to a stop at the bottom. So many extremely smart decisions!

This page has so many Regé staples the aforementioned tangent lines, the multiplying of body parts to show movement within the panel, drawn out action, written out text explaining the action that is being done and maybe most noticeably a scene in which a character wakes up. The act of waking up is very important in all of Ron's work from Skibber Bee-Bye all the way to his most recent Halcyon, but it's always deployed different ways and the repetition and variations of how they are used across his body of work is fascinating.

Truly singular cartoonist who has really created his own visual cartooning language which in such a reference heavy art form is no small feat.


Pencil and ink on bristol board.

14" x 17"