I See A Knight by Xulia Vicente Review

Art: 2/2

World-Building: 2/2

Fun: 2/2

Plot: 2/2

Relevance: 1.7/2

Overall: 9.7/10

I See a Knight is Spanish Illustrator and Comics Artists Xulia Vicente’s latest work for Shortbox and it is truly a masterpiece. I was first enticed into reading I See a Knight by its gorgeous cover. Once I had picked up the comic and turned to read the first page, I could not stop and read the entire comic over again immediately after.

At its core, I See A Knight is a coming of age story which follows the relationship between the main character Olivia, and a knight named Sierra. In less than 40 pages, Xulia Vicente completely immerses the reader in an intensely deep and emotional, yet heart-wrenching relationship between the two main characters. As Olivia ages, Vicente mixes the magical and mystical elements of the story with many aspects of Olivia's life such as playing around as a young child to moving off to college (which I will be doing next year) that make the story flow naturally.

Xulia Vicente’s art is beautiful and the bold orange theme mixed with dashes of deep blue is utterly stunning, especially with her slightly cartoonish and playful style. This, along with how the panels are arranged and organized only fuels the plot, letting you fill in the areas when you can and leaving you wondering about what you should be. Also, Vicente's illustrations serve to bolster her eloquent writing, with the emotion in some panels feeling truly palpable. Through her illustrations, Vicente is able to set an innocent and fun mood that is underscored by an ever-present foreboding feeling as Sierra's origin and motives remain a mystery.

Spoilers beyond this point!

Beyond just a simple coming-of-age story, Vicente conveys many important messages about the human condition through her powerful storytelling. Vicente creates a personification of fate through the character of Sierra the knight as fate grows old with us, bears witness to all of our ups and downs, and eventually kills us. The idea of the personification of fate is explored all throughout I See A Knight. At the beginning of the comic, Olivia is a joyful, curious, and innocent young girl playing with Sierra and asking her about the world. However, as Olivia grows older, this wholesome curiosity slowly fades, and eventually so does her happiness after fate, or Sierra, tells Olivia that her love interest is already seeing someone. After this point, Olivia asks Sierra to take her on a ride and to have fun again like they used to, thus implying that Olivia is choosing to embrace her own life and retake her own happiness.