As the Crow Flies

by Melanie Gillman

[nannah]

There’s something about traditionally drawn graphic novels that hit differently. It feels more intimate, although maybe it has something to do with the simple fact that there are so few of them out there. In any case, As the Crow Flies is a lovely webcomic-turned graphic novel about a black sapphic girl who goes to an all-girl (and, incidentally, all-white) Christian backpacking camp.

Content warnings:
- racism
- transphobia (it’s implied the camp counselor is a TERF)

Representation:
- the main character, Charlie, is mixed race (black) and sapphic
- another main character, Sydney, is a trans girl
- a secondary character is half Diné (/Navajo)

There’s something very, very beautiful about the way the friendships are depicted here, and the way the story unfolds. While the plot on the surface is what has to do with the basic summary on the back cover, it’s also all very much a story about the self and nature--and the self in nature. As the backpacking camp/trip has to do with performing a ritual that involves the same thing, this makes sense.

The art also lends itself very well here: those full-page colored pencil drawings of mountains are gorgeous. The landscape art is definitely my favorite part of the graphic novel. Everything is drawn nicely, in fact, though I wish certain expressions had more nuance to them, because sometimes I felt swung between emotional extremes. I know the author is capable of it, especially looking at the last page. The character’s faces there are absolutely stunning.

However, the author is white, and she’s writing a black main character in a story with a large focus on race. People of color have differing opinions on this, but the most common opinion is that it’s okay for white people to write characters of color as long as they don’t center the story around race. I feel like perhaps the author should have stayed in her lane and written the story about Sydney, the trans teen, as the author is non binary and the story also focuses a lot about transphobia as well--their choice is odd taking this into account.