This may be interesting to some people, but it was too over my head. Art is unique but I don't see it appealing to the masses well.

I like Europe Comics, the books they publish always have good story lines and nicely drawn and illuminating illustrations.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

My review is that I didn’t get. I felt a bit thick reading this. It felt like it was referencing things that I didn’t know about. The art is eerie and the colour palette gives a sense of strangeness. From my understanding, one of the themes explored is loneliness and strangeness of the modern world.

Some of the images lingered with me after I put it down. This book is a surreal and often abstract travelogue that baffled me. The lettering frustrated me and I can’t say I enjoyed reading it. I’d say it verges on pretentiousness but I’m not sure that is true.

Not sure who would enjoy this. If I have any Polish readers can you please let me know how it reads in its native language.

I thank this book for the fact that I can read a review of it written in the original creators' language of Polish, which I really don't know very well at all, yet still recognise the Polish for "pretentious". For that is what it is. Dziękuję.

Beneficio

By: Michael Kalicki (story), Gawron (Illustrator)

4.0 / 5.0

    I feel like a lot of this novel went over my head while I was reading it. I didn’t get out of it as much as I did in a normal novel. I think I am missing some lore and background information in order to fully understand this novel. This novel seems to be difficult to get in America, so maybe that is why I didn’t get much out of it. I feel like I am missing some culture aspect to it. 

    The art style of this novel was very unique. I loved how it kept to the same color pallet as the cover of the novel. It was a little difficult to read the font that was chosen at times. The images weren’t clear at some points too. I would really need to look at the cell in order to figure out what it was depicting.

    The form of the novel was different from any other graphic novel I have read. There weren’t as many words and no speech bubbles. This made it a little more difficult to figure out what was happening. The novel was something I would expect in an art useful gift shop. It is a fusion of higher thinking art and writing.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Beneficio-Krzysztof-Gawronkiewicz-Michal-Kalicki

This review will appear on my blog on June 4th, 2020.

This was not for me. I had no idea what the story was about. The blurb says ...'poetic work seeks evasive answers to the questions we have all asked ourselves about the mysteries of modern life.'

The story seems to focus on a young girl who is on a journey, and that's about all I can gather from this book. The art work is mostly in two dull colours. This was disappointing for me.

Copy provided by Europe Comics in exchage for an unbiased review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is seemly a book about a woman who got high, so high that she doesn’t even remember who she is. (at least that’s what I got lol)
But then you realize that it's more of a surreal take about the world. The art follows the text, in the sense of being kind of abstract, which I very much liked.
I wish the book's message was clearer. Maybe it was to someone else, but it certainly wasn't to me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Europe Comics for the free e-copy for review.

I did not enjoy _Beneficio_ mainly because I was unable to figure out exactly what was going on. The
NetGalley description states that the "work seeks evasive answers to the questions we have all asked ourselves about the mysteries of modern life", but I didn't get that impression at all. Yes, the protagonist poses a few questions, but she doesn't propose any sure answers.

I think it's supposed to be a story about a young woman's journey through depression to self-understanding, but the young woman seems to spend the entirety of the narrative in a drug-induced fugue state before seeming to disappear and possibly die. Or maybe she just thought herself into enlightenment? By way of a flawed understanding of Carlos Castaneda and his journeys with peyote? Which the author misspells as "dopophora" williamsii instead of lophophora. Very hard to understand what's going on.

I think the artwork is meant to tell a parallel tale, but the simple line drawings are so crude, and the muted palette is so blandly monochromatic, that I often had no idea what I was supposed to be seeing. Taken together, the whole graphic novel seemed itself to be a bad trip. Maybe that's the point of it.

_Beneficio_ wasn't for me at all, and I really don't know to what target audience I'd recommend it.

Thank you to Europe Comics and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

I'm not really sure how to process "Beneficio". Part poetry, part philosophical thought, part ghost story, the short comic by Michal Kalicki defies boundaries. In essence, Kalicki asks a very simple question. Who or what profits and what is the cost in modern day society? Using the lens of a young adult female, Kalicki then questions everything from the hollowness of existing on social media platforms to war time Warsaw. In vivid and gorgeous drawings, Gawron brings Kalicki's ponderings to life. I enjoyed the amount of creativity in this book, the way it unhinges itself from any form or narrative. It is a very freeing read.

this was an amazing look at an existential crisis told through beautiful and mundane imagery that conjures in us a feeling of isolation. This philosophical mystery leaves us uneasy and satisfied with a twist we never knew was coming. The twist was that we were looking for something the whole time that wasn't there, adding our own experiences to a seemingly anonymous world with ourselves at the center. A wonderful experience to be held and read, with line-work that conjures our favorite childhood illustrations and impressionistic painters, brush strokes as fluid and moving as our own thoughts and energies.. Absolutely amazing, im so happy there are comics out there pushing the medium to one of philosophical thought and poetic prose that blends seamlessly with is own visual narrative in a succinct limited palette. a beautiful work of art

I almost understood nothing until the very end. This one wasn't a pleasant read unfortunately as I didn't like the art either.

Thanks to NetGalley and Europe Comics for this ARC.

Thank you to the publisher for giving me a free copy of this comic.

I enjoyed the comic to an extend. i'd like to point out the first thing that I noticed when reading this. The text. Its in a very annoying font where you have to quess what word is written sometimes. Not my favourite thing in the world let's just say.

The story itself was fine. It wasn't extraordinary but also not bad as well. I just thought that throughout the story it got rather dull. So there isn't much to say on that part.

I think the art is very cool and I like how it mostly uses on colour only. It gives the whole comic a mysterious vibe somehow, a feeling of wanting to know more. I think it's a fun touch.