Writer / Penciller: Patrick Wray / Avery Hill Publishing
30th September 2020 (Released 12th August 2020)
The Pitch: In the year 2036 the whole of Kingsby county has been flooded after several weeks of torrential rain. Only a few villages have escaped the flood. One of these is the village of Pennyworth, where Tom and Jenny live. When the inhabitants of nearby Brook Falls arrive and attempt to lay claim to Pennyworth, a struggle ensues that places the residents of each village against each other in a battle of wills that threatens to change all their lives forever.
The Flood That Did Come is a deceptive book. Although it doesn't speak a liars language, it flirts with the soft-pedaling back talk that we've come to know and hate in British Politics over the last few years. It's style is one of minimal colours, negative space and rubber-stamped minimalism that at first makes you think of child-like games and activities but before long makes you realise that these are the colours of official documents. Blue for 'Approved', Red for 'Denied'. The same kind of stamps the use of could decide a person’s fate. The text, too, has a simplistic, factual tone reminding one of BBC world service announcements, only made by children. From the mouths of babes though, because these announcements are heralding an end to life as some know it. The sweeping wind of change that blows towards us and that we may be powerless to stop.
The story is one that's been covered by column inches and news reports (and even other graphic novels): sudden, intense flooding in parts of rural England that threatens lives and livelihoods. Wray, in his debut comics work, gives this a science-fiction bent. We're in the year 2036, a future that will be sadly a depressingly real for us in our lifetimes. Wray's book recalls the middle-England sci-fi of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The polite bureaucracy masks a selfishness and viciousness. There's a seething fear and anger underneath the courteous natures of children, largely writ upon them by the adults in their lives. The children of the story are antiquated in their own way – enjoying the unending rain and desiring simply to keep calm and carry on. Whereas today's children seem wracked with neuroses and self doubt, Tom and Jane seem possessed of a resolve to simply survive, a resolve borne out of their fortunate position to live on higher ground than a neighbouring town that has been consumed by the rising flood waters. They become a metaphor for the attitudes of England as we bring one misfortune after another on ourselves – Uncaring governments, Brexit and it's nasty inherent racial overtones, climate change and of course, the omnipresent threat of COVID.
THE BOOK BECOMES A METAPHOR FOR THE ATTITUDES OF ENGLAND
Eventually, the children give in to destructive impulses from a need to protect what has become their little island. To say that this book is pertinent and current is an understatement. The simplicity of it is it's way of lodging in your mind, making you wonder about the actions you might take or indeed may have taking in times of disaster. The world is slowly inching towards a pattern of disasters that we in the west seem to think we're immune from. Wray's book underlines that we are not or at least that immunity from the moral consequences of our actions may come at too high a cost for future generations to bear. There are revolutionary ideas ahead of us to embrace and reading The Floods..., I'm reminded me of warnings from other art in my lifetime. The Manic Street Preachers' If you tolerate this then your children will be next plays through your head as I read this, like a stark warning from the past. It's just one of the things that this book made me think of. And when it comes time to change the patterns of destruction we've brought on our planet, ourselves and our neighbours, it's worth remembering that before any changes in society take place, first you must be made to think. This book does that and for this alone, it's one you should think about owning.
The Flood That Did Come is available from your local comic store or from Avery Hill now.