Review by Ian Keogh

Totem opens with illustrations of a naked woman’s corpse as found at an archaeological site, then flashes back to Carmen’s memories of her former lover Yukio. Once their relationship has been established there are further flashbacks to Carmen’s youth when her grandmother communed with ghosts and she and her friends saw strange flying balls of light.

Laura Pérez brings continually impressive fine art skills to Totem, supplying panels as individual illustrations and prioritising that over continuity, which can take large leaps. Eye-catching full pages are prominent, both in shades of grey indicating the distant past or colour for the more recent past. The immaculate precision of the backgrounds and scenery (when included) at first hints at staging, but turns out to be nothing more than individual style, and Totem is a beautiful looking graphic novel. The mood, however is all in the construction as people are universally impassive whatever their circumstances. That expressions concede so little is a storytelling weakness when Totem can progress for pages at a time without words.

When there is dialogue it’s distant and sometimes awkward, which may be a translation glitch, but it’s so frequent that perhaps it’s the intention. Interpretation on the reader’s part is a continual experience, with some explanations later forthcoming, and other behaviour elusive, especially at the end.

Death is a continual theme, with a side dish of loss. Carmen learns as a child that she’s inherited her grandmother’s talent when a friend dies, and as she grows older her life is presented as a procession of ghosts, some literal, others in terms of their lack of involvement. The lack of emotional investment makes for an atmospheric, but extremely distanced experience where art and story work at cross-purposes, with Totem never delivering on the promise of such artistic skill.