Cryptic tale of a stranger in town

Dreamtime
By Henrik Rehr
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/henrikrehr/

Henrik Rehr grew up in Hans Christian Andersen’s hometown of Odense, Denmark. When he moved to Copenhagen in 1989, he took over the middle-class mime comic strip, Ferd’nand which he then did until 2006 (he used to sign it Rehr.Mik). Rehr’s prolific body of work and his seemingly inexhaustible range of styles are worth looking at, online first and then investing in hard copies of those that take your fancy.
Rehr founded the studio De Bla Bil (the Blue Car) and worked on the children’s adventure series, Julius and Drømmen om langskibene (The Dream of the Long Ships). His folktale series, Kvik Leif was also very well received.
He wrote two critically acclaimed books, Tuesday and Tribeca Sunset, both about the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy in New York where Rehr lives with his wife and two sons. Unlike so many other novels written about the terror attack, Rehr’s story is from the ‘inside’: his flat was 200 metres away from the collapsing twin towers. His wife went to work, his older son to school and Rehr had to stay put with his asthmatic toddler while the dust began to crawl into their lungs. The story traces the family, effectively homeless after, trying to put their lives back together. The books are poignant and arguably some of the best work created at that time.
Available online, for free, Dreamtime is a medieval style comic-noir whose protagonist is introduced as he stumbles through a forest, lost except for the ghosts of some regret he seems to carry with him. In a typical Middle Age tale inspired sub-plot, he is saved by a mysterious gypsy with the ability to calm wild animals and is led to a village by a raven. Here he is given work, a name (he can’t or won’t remember his name from his ‘previous life’) and is slowly absorbed into the village and the family and their histories and regrets. Following the formulaic story arc of the stranger who comes to town and shakes up the chug-a-lug existence of an old community, the 14-odd chapters build up tempo slowly but surely and have adequate sub-plots and character-development to keep it all very interesting.
The art is all black and white but in high contrast creating very dramatic imagery that lacks very delicate subtleties, especially in the many close-ups but the overall effect is one of high drama and of a time well past.