With a prevailing aura of mystery, and unanswered questions about the details of the Great Invasion, the story is rich, satisfying, and complex. The book features striking, haunting visuals ... The art shows a practiced breadth of skill that encompasses tender emotions and dynamic action scenes. Celestia is a thoughtful, beautiful graphic novel.
Just like everyone else in cli-fi's intended audience, I am acutely aware of the problem of climate change. But that means that I'm also terrified down to my core ... One of the many delights of Celestiais that Fior knows how I feel—because he feels exactly the same way ... Fior even seems to have planned both books' artistic schemas to go easy on stressed-out sensibilities. Celestia—translated into English by Jamie Richards—is remarkably beautiful considering its post-apocalyptic setting ... Fior embraces and balances all sorts of oppositions in this book ... All this thematizing bogs down the narrative, unfortunately—or maybe it would be more accurate to say it fogs it. Pierrot and Dora often seem to be traveling through the hazy realms of dream rather than the real world, an effect that's heightened by Dora's psychic visions and Pierrot's penchant for speaking in rhyme. As a result, even their life-and-death scrapes lack urgency. The other characters, meanwhile, are all the kind of representative 'types' that generally figure in quest stories, and they often speak in riddles, too. It's hard to care about any of them. But maybe Fior means for his reader to feel this unwilling, perplexing emotional detachment.
Ambitiously realized by Manuele Fior and eloquently translated by Jamie Richards, Celestia—Venice’s oneiric double—is a visual poem and modernist dance in graphic novel form, encompassing diaphanous terrains and gothic undertow, exuberantly tumescent with allusions to literature, art, and architecture ... Richards’ expressive portrayal of Pierrot complements Fior’s suggestive approach. Their linguistic collaboration resembles a graceful pas-de-deux between layers of idea and perception. Fior’s painterly panels, like his organic narrative, often do not follow the sequential action-to-action layout of traditional comics, but employ disorienting shifts in perspective, scene, and mood—bringing to mind Brodsky’s metaphor of Venice as a trammeling labyrinth.
... a book that is uninterested in telling you anything about itself, preferring instead to sink you into atmosphere and context clues ... with no hand-holding, the world seems more honest and true to itself ... What sings in Celestia is Manuele Fior’s incredible artwork, which feels as if it was cobbled together from Impressionist canvases ... This feeling of reading something steeped in art history and aesthetics further blends a sense of a fully realized world with a sense of weighty importance, as if the story has been loaned a museum-quiet gravity ... That there are full-page spreads that feel as if they would look at home on canvas, hanging in a wing of some European art museum means that this book feels more visually striking than its peers in graphic novel sections of bookstores. There isn’t anything that feels this way, that exudes this sort of confidence ... Furthermore, because there is a sense of timelessness to the book, we take the narrative as being told to us by someone of authority, of historic import. We believe in the narrative as something powerful, the characters as beloved. Though the book doesn’t spoon-feed the reader anything — indeed, it avoids answering any resolute question — we understand the world and its relationships as concretely considered and understandable. It’s a feat of aesthetic that makes the book stay with the reader long after it’s over, trying to work out connective tissues between its fantastic, quiet, and modern concepts ... The result is not only a truly unique dystopian world, but a truly unique and sophisticated comics experience.
... immerses readers in a vast and ethereal dreamscape of the future, where complex interpersonal dynamics are one of many aspects to simultaneously entice and evade comprehension; yet, in a realm where telepaths can enter dreams and memories can be read aloud like poetry, these mere glimpses and hints of deeper narratives simply reinforce its mysticality ... These glimpses are offered up to us through Celestia’s unique and delicate artwork. By often only allowing us to see glimpses of the action, profiles or silhouettes of faces, or selective portions of the scenery not covered in inky shadow, Fior is forcing us to lean in closer to decipher the world of Celestia. However, this is made even harder by the restrictive angles and constant perspective shifts which disorientate and delineate the narrative flow; panel borders slice through the action making us always feel as if something is just out of sight. This contributes to the general foreboding that is itself reminisce of the omnipresent threat experienced in nightmares ... Most scenes have two distinct tones, dividing episodes and setting a clear mood, whilst also showing the shifts in pace and transitions of time. These are very much needed given the disjointed narrative style, allowing us to grasp onto some linear progression as we delve deeper into Fior’s fantasy ... Being necessarily ungraspable, we are always aware of Celestia as a work of art, as a creation of Fior’s imagination, and this allows for a greater appreciation of the tactile skills involved, and for each panel to be seen in their own right – as individual works of art.
... a fully-painted graphic novel that for the first time feels more like an iteration, rather than a new development ... It's long and beautiful, and its very existence is a huge accomplishment, though reading the thing left me mostly unimpressed ... Painted comics work best when great restraint is shown, and even then, it is a far greater challenge than limiting yourself to lines and flat fills, which makes the beginning of Celestia all the more remarkable—it's breezy and effortless in its flow, while every panel can be taken out and studied as an illustration. At first, there seems to be no sacrifice in the process—the book works as a book, and as a collection of sometimes unbearably beautiful images, some of them displaying great skill, others not afraid to show naivety. That latter quality is what makes Fior stand out among so many skilled and often samey BD/fumetti artists—he knows when to stop and let the reader see his brush in action, instead of wrapping up each line and polishing each corner ... Unfortunately, the beginning of the book is its best part. The art feels vibrant and loose, with dry brush acting as pencil hatching, and shadows taking unexpected colors depending on the mood. The story is yet undefined, allowing the world to be broader and denser than it appears, and the city of Celestia feels strange and familiar at once. Then the book's protagonists, Dora and Pierrot, take their leave, and both the story and the art take a dip (or a bit earlier, around page 42)—the drawings get too polished and enclosed, and sometimes weirdly realistic (especially when children are involved), and the character arc starts following some pretty tired tropes to the letter. You'd come across fantastic compositions and subdued body language in one panel, then something over-acted and almost Disney-ish in the next. All of the paintings are executed masterfully, there's no question there, but the style stops growing, and all the gorgeous vistas begin to feel like too much candy ... The ending is particularly irritating, but I won't spoil it. Let's just say, another trope comes in, quite loudly.
Fior...eschews exposition in favor of narrative momentum and an incisive focus on his characters' emotional development, resulting in an at-times bewildering, but uncommonly moving, glimpse of the future ... An imaginative and skillfully told story about characters and a world reeling from trauma but poised for a new beginning. Fior's talent for conveying emotion evokes both heartache and awe.
... a visually stunning if underdeveloped postapocalyptic adventure ... Fior’s artistry is as impeccable as ever ... Less successfully, the script leans heavily on tropes of the gruff, suffering male protagonist and the tender female deuteragonist who loves him despite his abusive behavior. Artistically forward-thinking, the themes turn backward in execution. Despite the unoriginal character study, Fior proves he remains one of the finest painters in comics.
