I just finished reading Colonia: Islands and Anomalies, which collects the first several issues of the Colonia comic book by Jeff Nicholson. I wanted to read this title because of all the positive things other comics bloggers were saying about it, but getting a copy of Colonia turned out to be harder than I expected. After several trips to local comic shops turned up nothing, I wound up placing a special order for the book.

The cover of Colonia shows a humanoid creature with a fish for head, hands and feet. Curiosity about this strange creature first attracted me to the book, which places a fantasy-adventure story in what appears to be a colonial time period. Although I found the story slow to get started, all of the characters grew on me, especially Lucy, the talking duck. Nicholson's enthusiasm for colonial history also really shows in the material and makes it fun to read.

Since I am not a parent, I rarely think about how kids would view something I'm reading. But after reading Colonia I found myself wanting to put the book in a kid's hands. It reminded me of classic adventure titles I read when I was young, like Treasure Island and Swiss Family Robinson. Colonia, though, is both easier to read and more contemporary in spirit; for instance, there are women pirates captaining the ship, and the author gently debunks some of the nationalist legends found in the history of "discovery."

The book also makes Nicholson's creative process transparent in a way that is quite cool. At the end of the book, Nicholson reviews some of the titles he used as source material for his drawings and his story. He includes some essays where he describes finding inspiration in wandering around an old period boat and in picking up outdated but still-useful reference books in used book stores. His lack of pretension about creating comic books added to my experience of Colonia.