‘Centralia’ with story and art by Miel Vandepitte is a graphic novel about a really strange town and its really strange inhabitants.

It is said there is treasure in the town of Centralia. There is also almost certain death between the ground so hot that people melt, the snipers with bazookas on stilts and the mutated residents of the once mighty town. Still, that won’t stop an unusual group made up of a treasure hunter, a reporter and a mute sniper.

This is a strange story in every aspect. Parts of it work better than others. The real reason to read this is the fantastic art. It has a grotesqueness about it, and intricate line work.

Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me early access!

While this has some stunning visuals, the story just didn't feel cohesive or engaging enough to really pull me in long term. A quick read but not something I will be going back to.

Centralia was creative and visually entertaining. I was drawn to the use of words and pictures to draft another universe.

Centralia, Pennsylvania is a real place, with real underground coal vein fires that have rendered it uninhabitable. It makes for a fascinating starting point from which to spin a fantastical, if slightly scattershot, adventure. Even when the tale goes a bit off the rails, the energy, humor, and creativity behind the project keep the story entertaining and propulsive. The artwork is in an older comics style, but detailed, expressive, and easy to follow, even when the scenes become increasingly more hectic and surreal. Good, ripping, fun.

A graphic novel with a rather weird storyline, based on the real town of Centralia, in the US. There are mutants living there, and supposedly gold somewhere in the middle of town. A group of people sets out to retrieve the gold. The artwork was great, but the representation of mutants as the bad guys is a common and unfortunate trope in speculative fiction, with real-world consequences.

Thank you to Diamond Book Distributors and to Netgalley for the ARC.

This was kind of a cool set up but I didn't enjoy the characters. The world was interesting and the mission kept me going. Overall i didn't like the characters.

Big thank you to NetGalley and Diamond Book Distributors, Living the Line for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for reviews.

This was an intriguing fantasy graphic novel in which a group of people set off in a over-heating, dying planet in search of treasure. Wacky people on giant metal heat proof stilts are chasing them, as well as another group of people added to the mix. This was an interesting take on a dystopian story, but I wasn't sure how I felt about it. It felt like a fever dream sometimes, whereas other times I found myself lost in it. I also felt lost as to what was happening a few times. I like the premise of this story, especially with the global warming issues we face today. I feel the writing was a little lacking however.. I really loved the art style though! It really was a beautiful book.

In this post-apocalyptic tale, a gang of intrepid travelers set out to find the hidden gold treasure at the center of the deserted town. The narrative is poorly organized. It appears as though we are beginning to read it in the midst. Character introductions are not done correctly. I didn't get the artist's wit or black humor. I believe the art style is inappropriate for the topic being delivered. The illustrations are incredibly cartoonish despite the artist's talent. In conclusion, I'm not fond of this graphic novel at all.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Diamond Book Distributors, Living the Line for providing an ARC of the book for the reviewers.

I was lost in this book, not as in so engrossed that I lost myself...more like, I have no idea what or why or even how things happened. I'll say the good things first. 1. the art is interesting, unique, and expressive. 2. The message seems to be environmental in nature, which is nice. 3. There was a lot of creative passion in this project, and I felt it in every panel. There are no shortcuts here.

Here's the bad: I was LOST. completely and utterly. The story drops you en media res and although I often love that... here it left me disoriented. I kept having this feeling of trying to catch up, and never fully succeeding and although sometimes I marveled at interesting creative choices, I was still asking 'why' and 'how' and UHGH? more than I was following the plot. I wanted this to be more successful than it was, but I'm still intrigued by the effort and the vision if not by the execution.

Centralia takes the reader on a journey through a familiarly unfamiliar world named Centralia which is now a wasteland ravaged by apocalypse and full of flesh-eating birds, mutant monsters, and maybe a little bit of gold.

The art is hard to not comment on. It shows so much of the story with sweeping visuals of cities and wastelands as the characters move around. There's so much detail packed into each page that it's sometimes hard to wrap your head around it. Vandepitte's style reminds me of the comic artists Dan Piraro and cartoonist Wayne Honath, who both work on the popular "Bizarro" comic in newspapers in America.

Centralia, unfortunately, falls flat in every other category. The plot is focused on a rag-tag group going into a ravaged and unsafe city to find gold and someone still alive to interview, in the case of the journalist. The character's personalities just didn't shine to me, they felt flat and didn't necessarily make me want to root for them. The plot, as well, felt a little flimsy and reminded me of the general style of Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá's Umbrella Academy - a lot of visuals with little substance. I love a good visual for a comic or graphic novel, but I want to have purpose to them instead of just cool concepts. I found the end a little rushed and didn't enjoy the mutants or the fact a lot of their design seemed to be focused on genitalia and organs.

Overall Centralia wasn't the comic for me. I think fans exist out there for this piece, especially readers who enjoy art that pushes the realms of possibility and concepts that are steeped in sci-fi.

Thank you to NetGalley and Diamond Book Distributors for providing me with a copy for an honest review.

Bonkers fantasy graphic novel, where a disparate group of people are trying to enter a poisoned, over-heating city in search of either some gold treasure or some journalistic insight into the place. Weird people on mahoosive heat-proof stilts are against them, and there's a third bunch of characters to throw into the mix – and they get thrown in whenever it's convenient in this sloppy book, that revels in great design and fine craft in the visuals, but is too nutzoid and fever dream-like to really be to my taste.

Not a fan. Thought it was going to be different from hearing what it was about and I really just couldn't get into the art style as well.

Centralia by Miel Vandepitte is a graphic novel inspired by/loosely based on the abandoned mining town Centralia in Pennsylvania. And I have some mixed feelings about it.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this one. First of all, I really liked the art of the places and surroundings, but I just didn’t really like the way people were drawn (that’s really just my personal taste though). The story itself felt somewhat like a fever dream, and while I was really intrigued at the beginning, towards the end things felt a little too convenient and happened too fast.

If a graphic novel full of strange, mutated people and animals with an air of an old western comic sounds at all interesting to you, I’d recommend picking up Centralia.

I really enjoyed this. It is an adventure story involving war, climate change, hidden treasure and a weird evolving species. A group of adventurers set out to look for treasure in the abandoned town of Centralia. The earth there is so hot that it melts anyone unfortunate enough to walk on it. The town also has pockets of poisonous fumes and scavenging dangerous birds, but that is not all the town has as the adventurers discover. They find themselves battling old enemies, making new friends and finding a way to save their own home town from devastation.

The artwork was imaginative and really conveyed the confused topsy turvey nature of Centralia with all its hidden dangers and peculiar residents. The story is intriguing and held my attention to the very end. I wasn’t aware that there is actually an abandoned town in the US called Centralia. According to Wicki it’s population has declined from 1,000 in 1980 to 5 residents in 2020, because a coal mine fire has been burning beneath the borough since 1962.

I don’t know if the true story inspired the author but this is an enjoyable story with heroes, bad guys and a courageous heroine who wants to know the truth about Centralia and makes a major discovery.

Anyway it is a good graphic novel to get caught up in and I enjoyed reading it.

Copy provided by Diamond Books via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

This graphic novel is an excellent example of how to fictionalize a town. Centralia is one of the most well-known abandoned ghost towns, with numerous urban legends surrounding it. It also gained popularity as the inspiration for the setting of the Silent Hill movie adaptation. In this book, the author reimagined the town in such a wonderful way. If Silent Hill turned this abandoned mining town into a gateway to hell, Vandepitte filled his version of this town with amazing sci-fi elements. He made this small town appear larger than it is, and he went far beyond the conspiracy theories and urban legends that surround it. He created something that (I assume) almost no one has imagined yet.

The book is also incredible for reasons other than its concept. Since Page 1, I've been in love with the art, and this is exactly the type of art I want to hang on my wall. The majority of the frames are lovely, and the pages are full of interesting little details. This artwork is also accompanied by an intriguing story. I like how strange it is, and even though the characters aren't particularly deep or well-developed, I was fascinated by their journey. My curiosity about what they would discover inside Centralia compelled me to flip through the pages so quickly. I believe I became engrossed in the story because of the artwork. It perfectly complements the plot and the world that the book wishes to explore.

After finishing the book, I couldn't figure out why so many people gave it low ratings and negative reviews. Perhaps the book simply fell into the wrong hands. This creator made an outstanding debut, and he deserves to be recognized for it. I will definitely look into his future works, and I am confident that he will not disappoint.

Thank you to NetGalley, Diamond Book Distributors, and Living the Line for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Well, I’ve been to Centralia, Pennsylvania and experienced the heat coming from the underground coal mine fire. I thought this would be a nonfiction graphic novel about that town where people had to move away as the town had become unlivable. Boy was I wrong! This is way-out-there zany sci-fi graphic novel with human treasure hunters encountering crazy alien life forms. I have no idea who might enjoy this, but I certainly didn’t.

What an interesting take on the story of Centralia, PA the modern ghost town that also inspired Silent Hill. There are some truly stunning full page art spreads and some interesting characters to be found in this title. Though we get a really narrow glimpse into what seems to be a post apocalyptic universe, there's a lot of interesting world building happening in under 150 pages. That said, there was definitely *more* that I wanted to know, to discover, to better understand. I feel like this story might have been better told across two volumes to further flesh out this truly interesting narrative

I tried but I couldn't get into the book. I didn't like the art and I never understood why the bad guys have penis-noses

Brilliantly done! Vandepitte tells a thrilling, surreal, and often unsettling story that escalates as fast as heat rises. The art style is beautiful and eerie, complimenting this fantastical story perfectly. I simply had to read it all in one go - it was just that good!