Red Colored Elegy #[nn]

Seiichi Hayashi's Red Colored Elegy, published by Drawn & Quarterly in 2008, arrives in this beautifully designed volume that feels as much like an art object as a comic. The cover sets an immediately lyrical tone — a barefoot young woman in a red striped top and skirt floats suspended above a soft, impressionistic field of grass and flowers, a large empty speech bubble drifting beside her against a pale blue sky. It's a quietly arresting image that captures something dreamlike and melancholy, perfectly suited to Hayashi's reputation for poetic, emotionally intimate work.