Review by Karl Verhoven
Ash is a trans guy who arrives to work in a South London noodle shop underneath the railway arches, and Bone Broth is the story of how he begins as a nervous newbie and gradually integrates with the other staff.
As the cover tells you, Bone Broth is Alex Taylor’s first graphic novel, and he’s followed the maxim given to new writers that they should write about what they know. Thirty densely crafted pages introduce the cast amid what’s almost a primer in how to run a noodle shop, and they provide a notable contrast. We learn how everything about the noodle shop is set up for maximum efficiency and fast service, while Taylor’s creative methods ensure the opposite. The pages are filled with so much detail that it’s difficult to work out where the focus should be unless there’s a large illustration, and Taylor always takes the long route around any subject. The sample page exemplifies this by being devoted to something completely unnecessary for the bigger picture or in establishing the cast. Every creator has to follow their own instincts, but unless utterly charmed by the art, Taylor’s methods are going to shed readers rapidly because it’s well beyond halfway before the main plot kicks in.
An additional possibility for confusion is Taylor using colour to separate different time periods. Anyone not catching on that scenes in red are flashbacks to the past is going to be very confused.
It’s frustrating, because there’s obvious talent and Taylor has a broader worldview than many bring to comics, incorporating his versions of paintings along the way. A strong aspect is naturalistic dialogue with the occasional amusing observations such as “Each of these boxes is like a little porky coffin – filled with ghosts that will warm the bellies of the living”, referring to the bones used for the all-important noodle shop broth.
So much of Bone Broth is about everyday bonding, but it eventually becomes a peculiar form of ghost story, which is nicely unpredictable. However, it takes too long to reach that point as Taylor can’t hone in on what’s necessary to convey his ideas compactly.
