Tsunami (2025)
Tsunami (2025) by Ned Wenlock. A 278 page graphic novel for readers 15+.
“Why don’t I just try and shake off the humour, turn everything off.” - Ned Wenlock
Show, Don’t Tell.
I think we’ve all heard that old adage repeated in English class since the dawn of the creative writing assignment (blame Anton Chekhov). It was a simple thing when I was taught it, “don’t say the character is smart, show them doing smart things” “don’t say the monster is scary, describe what makes it scary”. It was just a reminder that the reader is supposed to be experiencing things, not being fed information.
But what if you never tell the reader a thing?
I mentioned I was reading this back in my Simon Sort of Says review, and coming from that book was some whiplash. Simon was an emotionally intelligent kid, who’d been to therapy, and you had a seat right there in his brain. Tsunami leaves you a fly on the wall instead.
Not a thought bubble in sight for 278 pages as you’re left to wonder what’s going on beneath the surface.
The Story: There are a lot of quintessential coming-of-age story beats you’d recognize in Tsunami: the bully, the new girl, a troubled home life. But don’t let that deter you, Tsunami shines in what it does with these elements.
Peter is 12-years-old and in the closing days of elementary school, he’s awkward and lonely, quiet and thoughtful. An easy kid to ignore at home and school. The only person who pays him any attention to him is his bully Gus, a violent kid a head taller than Peter who regularly beats him up and who’s idea of a joke is to threaten to drown Peter or push him under a truck.
At the start of the book Peter tries to (for what doesn’t feel like the first time) get his teacher to intervene; he's publicly told it can wait until after class, then later privately told that bringing bullying up in class will just annoy his bullies and that he should stop. The same teacher later catches Peter window shopping at a sports store and asks if he’s looking at the knives, Peter says he was looking at a fishing rod and the matter is quietly dropped.
She’s a pretty awful teacher.
This might all have come to nothing; they’re headed to high school in a few months, they probably won't be in the same class, Peter might have grown a few inches over summer, Gus might get bored or realize that most girls don’t want to date violent bullies who joke about killing animals… But life (and the plot) isn’t always so kind and fate drives them together.
Peter catches Gus stealing from a local store, and Charlie moves to town.
As if the threat of being handed over to the cops by his favorite victim wasn’t enough of a reason for Gus to hate Peter, he is instantly smitten by Charlie and watches as she makes fast friends with Peter. It turns out they are the only two kids in class who can’t swim and spend the day talking in the bleachers when the class goes on a field trip to the local pool.
A crisis has become inevitable.
The Plot: Tsunami is masterfully written, suspense in broad daylight, red flags waving everywhere. You turn each page watching Peter’s plight be ignored by those around him, as despite that he makes a new friend who thinks him being weird is cool and calls him a badass. He figures out Gus has been lying about all the dangerous stuff he did and calls him out on it.
Except the bully doesn’t back down, things do get worse. And Charlie doesn’t seem to mind Gus so much after all, maybe they’re even becoming friends.
I get why the book is called Tsunami, the quiet tension before a sudden violent rush. But while reading I had a different bit of watery danger in mind: Drowning. Peter is a kid doing everything “right”, he’s himself, he’s honest, he stands up to his bully, he goes to adults for help, and it never gets better. Peter is a kid quietly slipping beneath the waves and we’re the only one who’s noticed. (metaphor bonus points because he canonically can’t swim.)
If I had to nitpick… I didn’t like the resolution on Charlie’s character. It conflicted with earlier dialog without explanation and didn’t seem to connect to her character in the rest of the story. I felt like she wasn’t needed for Peter’s story anymore, so she wasn’t needed for the book anymore.
The Art: I loved the art in this book, a simple style polished to perfection; these little thumb people just oozed expression and emotion off the page. It’s snappy where it needs to be snappy, still where it needs to be still, and most of all Ned Wenlock trusts the art to do its job. There are multiple extended scenes with little or no dialog, and I wouldn’t change a single one.
The Ambiguity: I would literally be ruining the fun of the book if I went too deep into this, but let’s talk about two examples. The cover of this book is a boy running, the rear of the book recontextualizes this: He’s a boy being chased. Simple, beautiful. (And easy to find images of in the promotional material.)
And then there’s this page, not even 30 pages into the story. A character we just met and whose thoughts we never see. Do you believe him when he said he was at the hunting goods store to buy a fishing rod?
Bonus Points and Final Thoughts: It was nice meeting you Ned, thanks for signing my book. Everybody should read it. Twice!
