This 177-page, black-and-white comic book should garner its author, illustrator and editor a lot of credit.   

The Thai Cartoon Institute's Soodjai Promkerd found the original drawings by Kunakorn Worawantanachai inadequate, but the story he submitted with them was too good to go unpublished. She handed the storyboard to professional cartoonist Ruengsak Duangpala.

In his debut as a writer, Kunakorn expresses a subtle message of self-realisation, love and peace with straightforward simplicity, with humour and thoughtfulness - a good recipe for success.

Many of the frames are extraordinary, poignantly addressing fundamental and funny truths about our everyday relationships at school, at work and at home.

The highly capable Ruengsak delivers with a seamless integration of narration, dialogue and illustrations.

He's designed a new style of faux-naif characters. They resemble Japan's Doraemon while borrowing many Disney-like features, such as the exaggerated mouths and eyebrows.

The tale progresses coherently and with a cinematic quality. While it's heavily dependent on dialogue, many frames go without, even full-page spreads. The words are set in an eye-catching variety of typefaces, sometimes with random typographical symbols.

The narrator meets himself as a child and as a mirror image in short, film-like episodes that make up a larger story. He views with humour his own reactions to the demands heaped on him as a youngster, a physician, a husband, a father and ultimately as a son.

Despite his irritation, as the story unfolds, he tempers his feelings.

As a child, the narrator took great joy in reading comics during class, and looking back he reflects fondly: "I think life is like a comic strip. There are many hilarious things happening all the time and we all anticipate the next page. The only difference is that, in life, we can't take a peek at the last frame."      

As a young doctor, he's put off by his never-ending queue of patients and the insistent pharmaceutical salesmen. The solution he devises, revealed only at the end, is unique.

"For working people, the happiest moment of the day is surely after work," he muses. The illustration shows the young doctor behind him heading for the hospital's dormitory area.

At home he is annoyed by his wife's complaints about him leaving newspapers and clothes scattered about. His son asks for help with his homework. His mother reminds him of the upcoming lunar religious festival.

"Look, Mum, nobody worships the moon these days. I am not going," he says, then turns to his son. "Now, son, make me proud: Who is Neil Armstrong?"

As the television reports more violence in the Middle East, the fuming dad raises his voice to answer his own question: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind!"

In an inspiring leap for the narrator, he searches for a picture of "a perfect dad" for his son's class project and comes across a photo of his wife when she was young.

Ultimately, he takes his mother and son to a Chinese temple, the scenes effectively illustrated in pale tints.

The doctor sees himself as a little boy coming to the temple with great joy. Not hearing what his mum is saying in the present, he remembers what she so often said in the past.

He realises how much he has changed -

but not his mother, and not the beautiful full moon. 

The happy ending is magnified by another bulletin on the television news. "President George Bush has decided to withdraw troops from the Middle East. Many analysts see it as the end of a small war, but an important gesture to bring peace back to the world."