The Shepherd: Apokatastasis by Andrea Molinari, Roberto Molinari, & Ryan Showers

Note: Ebook provided by the author for my honest review.

To start, this graphic novel is emotional, yet full of action. It’s also one that will make you think. In the introduction by the author, Dr. Andrea Molinari, he tells the reader how this book started as a dream he had and later became shaped into this graphic novel by him, his son, and the artist Ryan Showers. It was really interesting to read this story of a father and son’s relationship knowing that the author worked on this graphic novel with his own son.

Even though it isn’t a spoiler (as it’s part of the summary for the book) that the main character’s son dies in the beginning from a drug overdose, it’s carried out so well that it’s such a deeply emotional part of the book (and I don’t have any personal experiences that are close to this at all). The father’s emotional turmoil shows so strongly, and it’s easy for the reader to sympathize with him. As the story carries on, there are many different emotions besides sadness, but they’re depicted just as deeply to affect the reader.

The artwork style is dark, which carries the weight of emotional baggage that is dragged through this novel. I read this on my laptop, since it was an ebook, and I can only imagine how gorgeous the artwork is on a physical printed page. The colors chosen reflect the sadness and grief in the beginning, and later reflect the anger and hostility through the father’s quest for vengeance.

This story brings up questions about life and death, morality, and forgiveness, and the afterword written by Dr. Molinari is very interesting as well. He is a theologian, like the main character, so his discussion on the background of aspects of this book are insightful and also make me miss a class I took in college (it was The Bible as Literature, and there were so many interesting discussions in that course). These themes are definitely ones that induce a need for further reading, because there’s so much that can be learned.

I really enjoyed this graphic novel. It took me longer to finish only because I read it on my computer (which made the print smaller, therefore making me take breaks to rest my bad eyes), but it is definitely a quick read if you don’t have that problem. You can order the book from Amazon here (either for Kindle or a physical copy).

Rating: ★★★★☆

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