I must admit I was rather taken in by the concept behind the epic fantasy comic By Moon Alone. The comic starts out with your classical epic fantasy where two children (Lune, the Moon Child, and Sola, the Sun Child) are facing down your typical forces of darkness (you know the type – big, demonic-looking, and clearly overcompensating for something). It would not be until ten pages into the comic that the first major twist occurred; the fantasy epic? It is the script of a story being read by Melanie, a paraplegic girl in the real world, and written by her only friend Daniel.

On the surface, this would make for an interesting story in and of itself. While the lack of back story for Lune and Sola is a bit confusing (especially once we’re introduced to even more heroes in the fantasy world who seem to be working to protect the Sun Child from some dark force working to gain the one weapon that can harm Sola), their story still drew me in. I’m more ambivalent about our young storytellers. Melanie’s moods are mercurial and apt to flip quickly and frequently, while Daniel is your typical milquetoast without much of a spine and more patience than any child his age should possess. Of more interest to me is Melanie’s love/hate relationship with Daniel’s story.

Naturally, there’s more to this. A brief glimpse of a shadowy figure lurking in the trees freaks out Daniel and suggested to me that perhaps this “imaginary world” Daniel is writing is more “real” than the world in which Daniel and Melanie live. And this presents an interesting dichotomy; for if Melanie is the Sun Child, she bears little resemblance to her counterpart in Sola. Daniel is perhaps closer to his potential counterpart in that when Melanie is being threatened by her Nana (I’m unsure as to her relation to Melanie; it may be grandparent or grand aunt, given her age) he hides and cowers behind the sofa, much like Lune hiding when Sola was facing down one of their foes.

If we assume the “real world” is in fact imaginary, then aspects of Melanie and Daniel’s world can take on added meaning. Melanie’s handicap may be a manifestation of Sola’s own fears and doubts which were glimpsed earlier. Her Nana becomes both warden to keep her imprisoned in her fears and an obstacle to be overcome when she finds herself. And Melanie, banished to an attic she cannot escape without help, slowly pieces together the pages of her life, her hatred and loathing of the story becoming instead self-loathing, and her constant attempts to force Daniel to destroy the story reflecting her own fears of having failed at some point.

While the first two chapters examined the fantasy epic near the story’s climax, I suspect the third chapter has taken the time-honored path of returning to the start of the storyline. This may help fill in more of the story behind Sola and Lune, and the foes they face. What will be interesting is to see if we’re given glimpses into the past of Melanie and Daniel as well; a bonus comic suggests they met at a convenience store but the growth of their friendship and the collaboration between Daniel and Melanie has only been mentioned. Even if my suspicions on the levels of reality for By Moon Alone are correct, the story would work better if we had a better understanding on what drives the friendship between these two, and on the story they are telling.