Frank Santoro is an artist with a vision that can run counter to what some people expect in their comics. Casual, and more refined, readers alike tend to want their comics ink-rendered, bold, and grounded in a certain manner. Santoro’s work is often pencilled and it is experimental and has an ethereal quality. But a reader only needs to take a careful read to see that Santoro’s work has its own unique substance. In “Pompeii,” his most recent graphic novel, published by PictureBox, Santoro maintains the spontaneity of sketchbook drawings in a well orchestrated narrative. This is a story about learning how to see the world as it really is and perhaps gaining solace from how it may have been.
