Graphic Novel Challenge Blog

Graphic Novels: Reviews & Challenge Wrap Up (Literary Feline)

2008-12-30T16:38:00.000-08:00

The Graphic Novels Challenge required that I read at least six graphic novels this year, and I had agreed to read eight. I managed to read one book for this challenge earlier in the year. My husband had slipped a copy of Criminal Volume 1: Coward onto my TBR pile a while ago, sure I would like it. He was right. And it was a great way to start off the challenge: a crime fiction graphic novel about a thief, caught in a tight spot.

Next up was Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, both books 1 and 2. Persepolis has gotten quite a bit of attention in recent years, and a movie was even made based on the books. In many ways, Persepolis is Marjane's coming of age story, of her finding her footing at a tumultuous time in her country as she grew from child to womanhood in Iran during the Islamic and Cultural Revolutions. And yet this book is so much more than that. The novel touches on the toll war takes on ordinary people; oppression, specifically that of women; and about the difficulties of being an immigrant, including the loneliness and hardships of starting over. It is also a story of endurance and strength, of hope and dedication.

What stood out for me most in the novel was how Marjane's parents stood up for her and supported her choices, even when they knew she was going to make mistakes. Their love for their daughter came through in the pages, as did her love for them in how she portrayed them.

This is a story that could have been told with just words, but it would have been a much longer book. The author's choice to tell her story through words and art is very effective. It is the combination of words and pictures that draw the reader in. The black and white artwork is bold and stark, fitting for the story told. The characters are well developed, their individual stories and feelings coming to life on the pages. I was moved to tears and laughter as I read the two volumes of Persepolis. This is one I cannot recommend enough.

* * *

I followed that up with Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel, an autobiographical graphic novel. Fun Home is another book that is much more than what it appears to be on the surface. The book tells the story of Alison and her father, of their relationship before and after his death. She never quite felt like she understood him when she was growing up and it was only after she came to understand and accept that she was a lesbian that she learned her father had long hidden his own homosexuality, hiding it behind a wife and three children. Alison's story is tragic on many levels, but there is also humor and clearly love for her family etched in just about every frame. It was only after her father's death that she was really able to know the man. The reasons surrounding his death raised their own questions and doubt in her. While her mother chose to stay with her husband all those years, it was quite clear that she too had suffered, and her pain and resentment emanated off the pages.

An aspect that stood out for me throughout the novel was the juxtaposition of Alison and her father. How similar and yet different they were. Alison could not help but compare herself to her father, looking for commonalities and perhaps answers about her own identity. This was brought out in both words and through the artwork in a very natural way.

Alison Bechdel's artwork was very telling. She captured the emotions of those in her book. Much like I found with Persepolis, the author's story could very well have been told solely in words, but it has a much more powerful and meaningful effect told in graphic novel format.

One facet of the book that will attract book lovers is Alison and her father's love of reading. At one point in the book, while describing her parents, the author writes, "I employ these allusions to James and Fitzgerald not only as descriptive devices, but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms." [pg 67] True to her word, Alison Bechdel's entire book is full of literary references and comparisons. One of my favorite quotes from the book is "I didn't understand why we couldn't just read the books without forcing contorted interpretations on them." [pg 200] I am sure many of us can relate to that sentiment.

Both Fun Home and Persepolis deal with heavy topics. In both cases, the authors open themselves up to the readers, sharing their painful stories. These are books well worth taking the time to read, even by those who shy away from reading graphic novels.

* * *

I did make one substitution for the Graphic Novels Challenge. Instead of reading Aleksandar Zograf's Regards From Serbia, which I still plan to read at some time in the future, I picked up the copy of Dave Sim's Judenhass, which my husband sneaked in between the graphic novels I had yet to read.

Judenhass is a different kind of graphic novel. It is more message than story. I am really not sure what to say about this one. It is powerful and moving, and it made me feel angry and ashamed for the world's part and lack of action during one of history's most terrible moments, that being the Shoah, or Holocaust. Judenhass is Dave Sim's remembrance not only to the horrors of the time, but the prejudices and ill will that lead up to it. The author writes that given the views and prejudices about Jews for so many years, centuries even, the Shoah, was, in fact, "inevitable." The images throughout book are haunting; the quotes from respected as well as those not so respected historical figures, including political leaders, authors, and other well known people say it all.

In the Acknowledgments and Bibliography section, Dave Sim writes:

Unfortunately in this age of diminishing attention spans it seems to me that there is also a need for distillations of the facts that allow even the slowest reader and the most reluctant teacher to comprehend and convey some measure of the enormity of the Shoah and the profound level of enimity against Jews which made it possible. I hope that JUDENHASS--with roughly a 25-minute reading span--will serve that purpose.

It most certainly does.

* * *

I followed the serious reading material up with something lighter. Andi Watson's Slow News Day was the perfect segue. A wannabe TV sitcom writer takes a job as an intern for a small town newspaper in England. The newspaper is struggling and advertising is slowly edging out the actual news stories to try and keep the paper afloat. Katherine Washington is hoping her experience at the paper will provide insight for a project she is working on. She is teamed up with the Wheatstone Mercury's sole newspaper reporter, Owen, who takes his job very seriously. It is no surprise that he resents the young woman's encroachment on his turf, especially someone who is not as dedicated to the job and the outcome as he is. Both comic and touching, Andi Watson's novel is delightful and entertaining.

* * *

Next up was Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home by Joss Whedon and Georges Jeanty. This particular graphic novel picks up where the television series left off. Where once she was the only vampire slayer on earth, she is now one of many, and she has taken it upon herself to help train and organize those like her to fight demons and vampires. In this novel, Buffy and friends are threatened by an old enemy and an army that want Buffy dead. With Joss Whedon at the helm, it was no surprise that the witticisms and humor from the TV show came out in the graphic novel as well. Light, action packed and fun, it was good to visit with Buffy, Willow and Xander again, if only for a short while. Even in the comic world, Willow is the witch no one should dare mess with.

I finished off the graphic novel challenge with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Volume One by Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill, Ben Dimagmaliw and Bill Oakley. Set just before the turn of the 20th century, six extraordinary literary figures are united to fight against an evil that threatens to level England. I had seen the movie version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen years ago and was curious what the graphic novels might be like. This first installment proved to be a rollicking adventure. Mina Murray of Dracula fame held her own amongst the men she fought along side: Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Hawley Griffin and Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen were filled with colorful artwork and stories that were impossible to put down. They were a cap to an enjoyable graphic novel adventure.

* * *

The Graphic Novels Challenge gave me the opportunity to finally read those graphic novels I had been meaning to get to for some time. I wish I was better equipped to discuss the artwork of these novels in a way that they deserve. While words and art both tell the story in these books, the artwork itself is what most stands out and makes these stories what they are. The images on the pages say so much more than words could ever say. I admire the artists and their ability to tell a story through art so effectively.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
by Marjane Satrapi (translated by Mattias Ripa & Blake Ferris)
Pantheon, 2003
Nonfiction (Graphic Novel); 153 pgs

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
by Marjane Satrapi
Pantheon, 2004
Nonfiction (Graphic Novel); 187 pgs

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
by Alison Bechdel
Mariner Books, 2007
Nonfiction (Graphic Novel); 232 pgs

Judenhass
by Dave Sim
Aardvark-Vanaheim, 2008
Nonfiction (Graphic Novel);
Slow News Day
by Andi Watson
SLG Publishing, 2002
Fiction (Graphic Novel); 160 pgs

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home
by Joss Whedon and Georges Jeanty
Dark Horse Books, 2007
Fantasy (Graphic Novel); 136 pgs

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Volume One
by Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill, Ben Dimagmaliw, and Bill Oakley
America's Best Comics, 2000
Fantasy (Graphic Novel); 192 pgs

Sky Doll - Reviewed by Chainletters

2008-12-01T13:40:00.000-08:00

Sky Doll by Barbera Canepa and Alessandro Barbucci.
Original review here.

Sky Doll is the flagship in Marvel’s new line of comics imported from Soliel, a premier European publisher.

Noa is a life-like android, known casually as a “Sky Doll.” With no rights or freedoms, Sky Dolls serve the needs of the state - no matter how lascivious or depraved. Knowing nothing but a life of such service, most dolls comply. But not Noa; she dreams of more. And the arrival of two missionaries, Roy and Jahu, proves to be her ticket out.

Hoping to escape her slavery, Noa stows away on their ship. But these agents of Lodovica, the Holy Mother, are not all they appear to be, and Noa is taken across the stars, an unwitting participant in a war between religions.

Sky Doll is a masterpiece. Beautifully detailed artwork and fantastic coloring are perfectly partnered with a thrilling plot line and a truly immersive world. Each chapter reveals something new about the characters and how their hidden pasts all weave together. Ending with a real promising hook (and stunning state-side sales), Sky Doll promises that its eventual continuation is well worth the wait.

Please note that both the artwork and material of Sky Doll is for mature readers only.

To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novelby Siena Cherson Siegel and Mark Siegel

2008-11-29T20:28:00.000-08:00

Published in 2006.
64 pages (according to amazon.com, as the pages aren't numbered).
Robert F. Sibert Honor Book in 2007.

To Dance, a children's graphic novel recommended to me by my goodreads friend george, is a delightful look at the life of an aspiring ballerina.

Cross-posted from my book blog.

Janes in Loveby Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg

2008-11-29T18:10:00.000-08:00

Published in 2008.
176 pages (according to amazon.com, as the pages are not numbered).

From the back cover: The coolest clique of misfits plays cupid and becomes entangled in affairs of the heart. People Loving Art In Neighborhoods (P.L.A.I.N.) goes global once the art gang applies for a grant from the National Foundation for the Arts. And the Janes will discover that in art and in love, general rules don't often apply.

What I thought: I loved The Plain Janes, and I loved this sequel. Maybe it's just my inner teenage-girl - but I truly hope for more episodes in this Minx graphic novel series.

Cross-posted from my book blog.

Gloom Cookie v2 - Serena Valentino

2008-10-28T14:38:00.000-07:00

The follow up to the first collection sees a new illustrator, John Gebbs. Overall his illustrations were not quite up to Ted's (volume 1) apart from the first chapter which was stunning with a beautiful boarder around each page. The whole gang are back and some more of the plot is revealed. More of Damian and Lex's past is shared, we learn more about Sebastian and Chrys including the monster and Vermilion is back with more terrible gothic poetry.

I liked that we learn more of Isabella and her reasons for being the way she is. You come to pity her up to a point and understand why she treats Lex as she does. It is also now out of her control, the curse being so old. Vermilion has also decided that Lex is his true love, but he has other problems with rival Lord Delchi in town who is dating Lex and Chrys' friend Lyndi.

My favourite gothic soap opera. I look forward to getting some more free time so I can have my next fix. Another stunning collection.

Gloom Cookie v1 - Serena Valentino

2008-10-28T14:37:00.000-07:00

The first Gloom Cookie collection by Serena Valentino (Nightmares and Fairy Tales) is illustrated by the wonderful Ted Naifeh (Kin with Holly Black). It introduces a whole cast of gothic and fantastical characters. You have Lex (a petite and pretty goth) who is in love with Max (a tall cyber goth type). He does not love her sadly, but the evil Isabella who doesn't even notice him. Isabella has a history with Damion who in turn has a thing for Lex. Then there are Lex's friends Sebastian and Chrys who make a lovely couple. Things are not all they seem here either. Sebastian sees monsters everywhere and Chrys, well you will have to read the collection to know more about her.

There are also some great secondary characters like Vermilion who writes terrible gothic poetry and Sebastian's monster. The story of Lex and Damian starts to be explained and we delve into Isabella's past as well as Sebastian's parentage. I loved all the Vampire the Masquerade references, Valentino really knows her goth culture!

The stories blend elements of fairy tale, fantasy and gothic culture in a spell binding mix. Ted was just the right person to illustrate this collection as the artwork is stunning. It is just the right blend of hunour and seriousness, poking fun at itself and the goth culture it portrays in a loveing and endeering way. I look forward to more in this series.

Mail Order Bride, by Mark Kalesniko

2008-10-23T11:28:00.001-07:00

Mail Order Bride, by Mark Kalesniko
Copyright 2003
Fantagraphics Books
Graphic Novel
261 pages
Author's Website
Challenges: Dewey's Graphic Novel Challenge

What led you to pick up this book? I love me a graphic novel and all. I picked this one up for a graduate class originally (back in 2006 or so), and I ended up not taking the class. However, I guest lectured in the same professor's undergrad version of the course, and he invited me to take part in a conference call with Kalesniko. It was great fun, and I really enjoyed chatting with the author.

Summarize the plot but don't give away the ending. From the publisher: Monty Wheeler, a pathetic, emasculated, 39-year-old virgin struggling with his own societal demons, expects Kyung Seo (his Korean mail order bride) to fulfill his female Asian fantasy stereotype: domestic, obedient, hardworking and loyal. But Kyung, tall and accent-less, is much more human than Monty is ready to accept. Kyung soon finds, in addition to predictable dissatisfaction with her husband's inane expectations, outspoken inspiration in Eve Wong, a western-born Asian woman. Could Eve be Kyung's ticket to rebellious self-fulfillment, or do her actions not always ring true? Through explorations of art, passion, identity and rebellion, the reader must ponder strength and cowardice while Kyung herself fights a potent war between independence and safety.

What did you like most about the book? This is one of those cases where I really liked everything about the book. The illustrations are stunning, the story is both provocative and quite funny, and it made me think! What more could a girl ask for?

What did you think of the characters? I found Monty exceedingly annoying. I wanted to shake him (and the majority of his friends) and tell them to snap out of their stereotypical assumptions. If you've read American Born Chinese, by Gene Yang, this book has much the same type of message. It confronts ethnic stereotypes in a very clever way.

Share a favorite scene from the book: Near the end of the book there's a big showdown between Monty and Kyung wherein they basically both come to realize that their assumptions about each other are not as black and white as they originally assumed. They realize they're both at fault for the disintegration of their relationship. It's a very powerful scene--both in image and written text.

Recommended for those who like graphic novels and a good story in general. If this were made into a written novel, I think it would be just as powerful and entertaining a story.

In general, I'd call the writing, illustrations, and story beautiful! And a really quick read. I polished it off in an hour or two.

Note: This is my fourth graphic novel for the challenge.

Bookworms Carnival: Graphic Novels Theme

2008-10-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to let you all know that the next Bookworms Carnival theme is graphic novels. I hope some of you will submit some of the great reviews you've been writing. I'm the host this time.

Edition 17 hosted by: Dewey
Deadline for submission: November 14, 2008
Theme: graphic novels
To submit a post, email: dewpie at gmail dot com (with GN Carnival as the subject heading, please)

Three Shadows

2008-09-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

by Cyril Pedrosa
Translated from the French by Edward Gauvin
First Second, soft cover, 269 p.

Back then, life was simple and sweet. The taste of cherries, the cool shade, the fresh smell of the river… That was how we lived, in a vale among the hills – sheltered from storms, ignorant of the world, as though on an island, peaceful and untroubled.
And then…
Then everything changed.

This was a moving story of the love of two parents for their child and how they cope with the uncertainty of his future. As it says on the back flap, “Three Shadows was born out of the agony of watching his close friends’ child die very young”, and as such it felt very real and emotional. He’s also taken a dark story about death and turned it into something almost beautiful.
I didn’t always love the artwork but it was always interesting, and Pedrosa did a great job of telling the story through brush strokes instead of words in many places. The author has a background in animation and you can really feel the movement of many of the scenes from his unique style.

(click to enlarge)

You can see the first 11 pages here, and another excerpt, showing the arrival of the shadows, here.
Interview with the author.
More info at Amazon.com.

*Originally posted at In Spring it is the Dawn

The Wizard's Tale

2008-09-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

This young adult graphic novel was nominated for the Eisner Award for Graphic Album in 1998. It tells of a wizard who is descended from a long line of evil wizards except he's quite bad at being evil. He reluctantly has to set off on a quest for a magical book otherwise he'll get kicked out of his castle by other evil wizards. There is a quest, there is romance, there is a squire who wants to be king, and a talking toad. It is a very short and quick read, and while it is a young adult, I think many younger readers would like it. It's an unconventional sort of fairy tale with touches of humor throughout.

The Plain Janesby Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg

2008-09-12T08:50:00.000-07:00

Published in 2007.
176 pages (according to amazon.com, as the pages are not numbered).

I first heard about the young adult graphic novel The Plain Janes from Dewey, who reviewed it and then sent a copy to me and my daughters. (Thanks again, Dewey!) Sugar Plum (age 12) read the book the same day it arrived, immediately emailed the author because she liked it so much, and claimed our copy as her own. Last month I happened upon the book in Sugar Plum's bedroom and decided it was time for me to read it. I started it late one Friday before bed and finished it the next morning. Like Sugar Plum, I fell in love with the book!

The Plain Janes - from DC Comics' imprint Minx - is a story about art, fear, belonging, being yourself, and making a difference. I think those are topics to which each of us, regardless of age, can relate. The Plain Janes is Castellucci's first graphic novel, but a sequel Janes in Love is due out soon.

I'm new to the world of graphic novels - but I've so enjoyed the ones I've read so far (two volumes of Fashion Kitty, American Born Chinese, and this one). I'm also going to check out some of Castellucci's novels.

Cross-posted from my book blog.

Y the Last Man v1: Unmanned - Brian K Vaughan

2008-09-12T01:40:00.000-07:00

Yorick (his father was a drama teacher) is feeling left behind since his friends all went off travelling. His girlfriend Beth is no exception and is off exploring Australia. For company he has a helped money he is supposed to be training he names Ampersand. As he proposes to his girlfriend over a long distance phone call something terrible happens. A mysterious plague sweeps the world killing everything male. Yorick and Ampersand are now the last males of their species.

They set out to try and find out what makes them different to all the other males who have been left for dead. The world is in choas wondering how life will continue without male sperm donors. A group of women nicknamed Amazons are destroying sperm banks and monuments to malesas they believe it is divine justice for all the rapings, seriel killers and abusers. The Amazons burn off one of their breasts when they join up and are particularly violent to the other women.

Yorick is looking for his sister Hero as well as a scientist who may be able to clone him and tell him why him and Ampersand survived. Coming to his aid is the mysterious secret agent called 355 who is part of the Cupler Ring. Alongside that is the wish of some women for him to propogate the species in the usual fashion when all he wants to do is find a way to get to Australia and find Beth.

An adult set of comics published by Vertigo (the home of Fables and The Sandman among many others), this was a fantastic beginning to the series. Apocolyptic but set oin a world not very far away from our own, it looks at the realities of a world of women only (besides Yorick and Ampersand of course). The choices the women make along the way were dealt with very well (eg a former top model becomming a garbage truck driver and rgretting her boob job) and it seemed very realistic. Highly recommended, expecially to those who enjoy darker graphic novels that make you think like Fables and The Sandman.

Maus I & II

2008-09-06T22:25:00.000-07:00

by Art Spiegelman
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Special Letters Award, 1992
Pantheon, softcover box set, 280 p.

Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his father’s terrifying story, and History itself.
Moving back and forth from Poland to Rego Park, New York, Maus tells two powerful stories: The first is Spiegelman’s father’s account of how he and his wife survived Hitler’s Europe, a harrowing tale filled with countless brushes with death, improbably escapes, and the terror of confinement and betrayal. The second is the author’s tortured relationship with his aging father as they try to lead a normal life of minor arguments and passing visits against a backdrop of history too large to pacify. At all levels, this is the ultimate survivor’s tale – and that, too, of the chidren who somehow survive even the survivors.

There have been several wonderful reviews of this lately that I'm not sure I have anything new to add. But what an incredible way to tell a story about the Holocaust! Art Spiegelman’s drawings are powerful and really make the words and the horror of what his father and all the other Jews experienced all the more vivid. Much has been said about his use of animals to depict different groups (the Jews as mice, the Nazis as cats, the Americans as dogs, etc.) and I think this works really effectively to make it not just the story of Vladek and Anya Spiegelman but all Jews and everyone who was affected by what happened.

One of my favourite parts of the story though was how Art related the process of getting the story from his father alongside the story itself. It was this look at their relationship that made it extremely personal, and touching.
Partly because of the visual style, and also Vladek’s resourcefulness, especially after he found himself in Auschwitz, I also couldn’t help but think of the film, Life is Beautiful, while I was reading this. Such a beautiful, moving film!
Thanks to the nudge from a couple of challenges, I'm so glad to have finally read this!
My Rating: 4.5/5

(image found here)

*originally posted at In Spring it is the Dawn

Nightmares and Fairy Tales v3: 1140 Rue Royale - Serena Valentino

2008-09-04T13:54:00.001-07:00

The third in the series by Serena Valentino. It is set out in a slighlty different format to the first two. This collection follows one storyline throughout with doll Annabelle very much in the background (she appears to those who have read the first two and recognise her). Rebecca and her aging aunt Victoria move into a house reputed to be hauntet in New Orleans.

Former owner Delphine Lalaurie was found to have killed her slaves in the house after torturing them and suffering them. One woman was chained to the stove and at least two men were operated on alive and well in horrendous ways. In the house Rebecca is beset by the spirits of the dead who are able to possess her in order to get their revenge. The story also links back to one from the first collection about a group of nuns in New Orleans who sacrifice Dominique's illegitimate son to amonster locked away in the attic.

A terrifying and gothic tale that Valentino begins saying "there is a truth embedded within the layers of fiction that fill this volume" and it is "inspired by historical events". How people can treat each other like this is disgraceful. However, it is beautifully drawn and a gripping tale that really leaves an impression on the reader. This is a great series and highly recommended.

Emily the Strange: Lost, Dark and Bored v1 - Rob Reger

2008-08-31T17:42:00.000-07:00

A series of three comics about Emily the Strange and her many black cats. It is filled with lots of short tales filled with her usual attitude centering around being lost, in the dark and bored essentially! There are "interviews" with The Damned, Elvira Mistress of the Dark and Marilyn Manson. There are some fun fake advert pages too. Silly fun if you are in need of cheering up, or should that be glooming down.

The Complete Maus - Art Spiegelman

2008-08-18T03:23:00.000-07:00

Art Spiegelman tells his fathers story as a Jew in Poland during the Second World War in comic book format. The Jews are drawn as mice, the Germans as cats, the American's as dogs and the Polish as pigs. This is a truely harrowing story with lots of cross roads and choices made along the way with Spiegelman showing what happened to the familes who chose the alternative along the way.

His mother and father against all the odds managed to survive the war as well as being POWs in Auschwitz seeing many of their friends and family die in the camps and by Germans along the way. They are dehumanised, starved, beaten and betrayed along the way. Sadly his mother later killed herself in 1968 after suffering for depression for many years (since before the war) and writing this brings on a bout of depression also for the author who includes sections from his life whilst writing this comic.

Art and his father have a very strained relationship and he is often conflicted with how to write about him. He wants to remain true to their relationship whilst not living up the to the Jewish sterotypes. This is shown very well in the panels below.

His father is also racist and anti-communist which Art struggles with after knowing what he lived through at Hitler's persecution. He can't understand how someone who has been on the recieving end of such abuse and violence can perpetuate the same against another. The main thing is though that he cannot image the horrors his mother and father lived through. It is one thing to have them described, but it can never be the same.

Defintely a tale that sticks in the readers mind. Very personal and filled with tragedy and sadness, it is difficult to remember at times that this is a story of courage and survival. That anyone Jewish in Poland and Germany managed to survivie the war is a miracle and I hope one that is never forgotten. This is essential reading.

This is an extra I read for this challenge.

Fables v4 : March of the Wooden Soldiers - Bill WIllingham

2008-08-18T01:27:00.000-07:00

Continuing straight after volume three, Storybook Love, the prologue opens with Boy Blue's story. So far he hasn't been in the series much, merely working for the Major and Snow White. Here we learn about the Fables last stand in their homelands against the Adversary and how the final survirors escaped. Turns out however, that the Fables are not safe from the Adversary in the mundane world. Despite living secretly in New York for centuries, agents from the Adversary finally appear asking them to surrender.

Meanwhile Red Riding Hood manages to escape from the Adversary for the second time and actually crosses over to the mundane world. It has been many years since anyone last crossed over and Bigby Wolf is naturally suspicious. She wants to join their community and learn about their new lives, but Bibgy and some other Fables are determined to find out if she is a spy first.

Other plot twists include Snow still being pregnant and beginning to come to terms with her real feelings, Prince Charming begins his campaign to become the new Major, Pinnochio discovers his father Gepetto may still be alive after all this time working as a slave for the Adversary and Rose Red and some of the Fables from the farm visit for the showdown with the enemy soldiers. There are some casulties like in any war, but there are also some great new additions to the ever expanding cast.

A great addition to the series, this won an Eisner Award for Best Serialized Story (Legends in Exile and Homelands also did). The artwork is up to the standards of the previous in the series and I really enjoyed how the story was advanced. I can't wait to read the next volume, The Mean Seasons.

Maus I & II

2008-08-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

By Kim L
Maus I & II by Art Spiegelman
Rating: 5/5

Also posted at Bold. Blue. Adventure.
Also posted at In Their Shoes

How does a writer describe horrors that are undescribable? Write a fresh story about a period of history that's been so dissected and analyzed it seems every story that can be told has already been told? And most of all, how to write about the Holocaust without being completely overwhelmed by the telling?

Art Spiegelman chose to write his story in a comic book format. It is unlike any other comics I've read before. The illustrations are all in black and white. Different nationalities are different kinds of animals. The Jews are mice, the Poles, pigs and the Germans, cats. Spiegelman never goes into detail as to why he chose to use animals to represent the characters, but it works visually by letting the reader know immediately what nationality particular character is. On a deeper level, there animals can be taken metaphorically; the Jews have to play a cat and mouse game to survive, or mice are seen as vermin, much as the Jews were.

That Vladek managed to survive the Holocaust at all is nothing short of miraculous. His story is full of brushes with death, incredible luck, and a sixth sense for danger that keeps him alive. While in Auschwitz, he finds ways to be resourceful. When needed, he tutors a guard in English, passes himself off as a tinsmith and then as a shoe mender. He finds a way to pass messages to his wife and keep her close by.

Vladek survives, but along the way he is forced to watch nearly all the members of his family die. Each day, he might talk to someone who the next day will be dead of a guard's bullet, or gassed in the chambers, hanged, or simply disappeared. Finding enough food to live to survive the next day is the only thing on anyone's mind.

(You can click on the image to the left to see an example of one of the pages.)

This book is not just about Vladek's Holocaust experience. Framed around it is the story of how Art set out to record and process his father's story. He finds his father at best difficult and at worst downright impossible to be around. His father's overwhelming stinginess is embarrassing (They sneak into a hotel to play bingo for free because it costs $.25 a card to play at the bingo hall; Art cringes in shame when his father tries to seal up a box of cereal and return it to the grocery store, to name a few examples).

There is a particular scene in Maus II where Spiegelman tries to explain to the reader what it is like to write about the Holocaust, what it cost him to write his father's story.

Vladek started working as a tinman in Auschwitz in the spring of 1944... I started working on this page at the very end of February 1987. In May 1987 Francoise and I are expecting a baby... Between May 16, 1944 and May 24, 1944 over 100,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed in Auschwitz. In September 1986, after 8 years of work, the first part of Maus was published. It was a critical and commercial success. At least fifteen foreign editions are coming out. I've gotten four serious offers to turn my book into a T.V. special or movie. (I don't wanna.) In May 1968 my mother killed herself. (She left no note.) Lately I've been feeling depressed.

Spiegelman always presents the story in an honest manner, never covering up his conflicts with his father, or his father's volatile relationship with his second wife, but this particular passage struck me as particularly honest. His disjointed thoughts, flitting from his own personal life to the cold facts of the Holocaust and back again, could have easily come across as a distraction to the main story, but Spiegelman incorporates them in such a way that they only enhance the story by showing the reader what it means to be the child of a Holocaust survivor.

Since I've just been talking about this author's honesty, I'll be honest with you, the reader. I avoid most Holocaust novels because they just make me so damned depressed. The organized, methodical way that the Nazis invented new ways to torture fellow human beings, how many people bought into the lie that some people are superior to others... it just sickens me to read about it. So even if you are like me and would rather read the entire dictionary than another Holocaust book, let me tell you why this one is worth your time.

The first thing it's got going for it is that it's a quick read. You could breeze through both books in a couple of hours. Secondly, although it describes the familiar horrors of the overcrowded cattle cars, the shower stalls, the death chambers, this retelling brings something new to the table because the format is so different than anything else you've read on the Holocaust.

Fables 3 and 4 by Bill Willingham

2008-08-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

Storybook Love, the third book in the Fables series, begins with an American folktale, “Bag O’ Bones”. Jack (the same Jack of beanstalk and giant slaying fame) goes to the American south to join the Civil War. When crossing a swamp, he comes across a man who just may be the devil, and wins a magic bag from him in a poker game. Then he finds out just what happens when death itself is imprisoned in such a bag.

The following story, “A Sharp Operation”, is about the fate of a man who finds out about the inhabitants of Fabletown and jumps to the obvious conclusion: they’re vampires. He’s seen the movies. He’s read Anne Rice. He knows.

With “Storybook Love”, the main plotline, so to speak, begins. Some of the issues left unresolved at the end of Animal Farm are finally dealt with, and things between Snow White and Bigby Wolf take a very interesting turn.

Finally, “Barleycorn Brides” is about how the Lilliputians dealt with a very serious problem: the fact that only men had escaped from the Homelands.

The artwork in this book is absolutely gorgeous. But then, with Linda Medley (of Castle Waiting fame), Bryan Talbot and Mark Buckingham among the artists, that’s hardly surprising. I enjoyed these stories a lot. "Storybook Love" was probably the most satisfying. It’s better developed, and I liked how it dealt with themes like love, trust, vulnerability and obsession. But I also loved the first and the last stories, especially because they’re stories in which the series’ fairy and folk tale feel is particularly strong.

On to the fourth volume, March of the Wooden Soldiers. This one starts with a heartbreaking tale told by Boy Blue. He was one of the very last Fables to escape from the Adversary and leave the Homelands, and he tells the story of those who bravely stayed behind and fought so that one last vessel could make it to our world. He also tells the story of his doomed love affair with Red Riding Hood.

Boy Blue’s escape was over a century ago, and that was the last time anyone made it out of the Homelands. Until now, that is. Because Red Riding Hood arrives to Fabletown, and tells everyone that she was enslaved by the Adversary for all this time. Bigby Wolf is immediately suspicious. Can she be trusted? How did she escape? Meanwhile, Jack claims to have seen new and hostile fables in the city. Something big is definitely about to happen. Something that cannot possibly be good.

March of the Wooden Soldiers is quite a bit darker than the other books in the series. There’s a lot of plot development in this one. It seems that the big questions – Who is the Adversary? What is he or she after? Are the fables safe in our world? – are now one step closer to being answered. Of course, at the end of the book we still don’t really know much for sure. I can’t wait to see how everything will turn out at the end of the series.

I just love Fables. I love the writing, the intelligent storytelling, the beautiful artwork, the characters and the setting. And of course, the concept itself. It’s so much fun to find characters from my favourite fairy tales in this story. I really like the fact that Bill Willingham’s concept of a fable is so wide. The characters he uses come not only from traditional fairy tales, but from folklore, legends, myths (Pelinor! Britomart!) and such classics as Pinocchio, Gulliver’s Travels and The Wizard of Oz.

So yeah, two more great books in a great series.

(Originally posted here.)

99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style

2008-08-02T23:44:00.000-07:00

by Matt Madden

Graphic Novel, 2005
Chamberlain Bros. (Penguin USA), pb, 203 p.

Matt Madden’s Exercises in Style is a series of engrossing one-page comics that tell the same story in a variety of ways. Inspired by Raymond Queneau’s 1947 work of the same title, a mainstay of creative writing courses, Madden’s project demonstrates the expansive range of possibilities available to all storytellers.

This was a really fun look at storytelling. Starting with this as the template, he came up with so many creative variations of the same story. Sure I didn’t love all of them and some of them were a bit silly but I think that’s the point. It certainly showed that there are numerous perspectives and ways to approach a seemingly simple story. I haven't read Queneau's book that this was inspired by, although I've heard of it, and I am curious how he could write one story 99 different ways since in some ways I think drawing multiple versions would be easier than writing them. Regardless, just like the book itself proclaims on the cover, I think this would be quite inspirational to those who write or work on film or any other kind of storytelling.

From L-R: Horizontal, Manga, Cento (David Mazzucchelli, Ben Katchor, Chester Brown, Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Daniel Clowes, Art Spiegelman, Julie Doucet, Gary Panter)
Click on photos to enlarge.
*Illustrations © Matt Madden
Interview with Matt Madden in The Comics Journal

Originally posted at In Spring it is the Dawn

Promethea review by Athena

2008-07-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

This review covers the whole series from books 1-5. I quite enjoyed this graphic novel series by Alan Moore, J. H. Williams III, et al. There are style and art changes throughout the series. The story has themes of folklore, mythology, spirituality, magic, and most of all, imagination. It is very epistemological and a bit psychedelic (in the good way). Sometimes, a lot of the concepts went over my head, and it really is a series that requires reread to appreciate all the messages and the beauty. There were many times I did not know where to look as so many things were on the page. It is meticulous and beautifully done. By Book 5, the series gets incredibly meta; it is very cool. I can not really summarise all the ideas of the series, but it is fascinating. I would love to own it and reread it when inspiration strikes. I've grown to really love and appreciate Moore's work, and this may seem like a shift from The Watchmen and V for Vendetta, but at the same time, it is not. He is still spiritually and emotionally evocative in his works. I would highly recommend it to be people who are open to fantasy, epistemology, philosophy, and visual storytelling.

Crossposted from aquatique.net.

Fables 3: Storybook Love - Bill Willingham

2008-07-25T01:10:00.000-07:00

This third graphic novel in the series collects comics 11-18 and the focus is love between the fables. The First story "Bag O' Bones" follows Jack as he wins a magic bag from the Devil playing poker and being a better cheat than he was! The bag never fills and Jack knows the magic words to trap things inside it. He traps Death one day when trying to save a fair lady, but he has to release him when nothing is able to die. "A Sharp Operation" covers 2 comics where a mundy journalist tracks the fables believing them to be vampires threatening to expose them. They use Briar Rose's finger pricking trick to teach him a lesson, but they have problems trying to wake her up again. Prince Charming is a cad and loves the thrill of the chase. He no longer loves Briar (his second ex-wife) and so a stand in prince needs to be found to give her loves kiss.

"Storybook Love" is a 4 part tale. Bluebeard and Goldilocks plan on killing the still recovering Snow White and Bibgy Wolf. They use magic to fuddle their minds and send them away together where Goldilocks can kill them without any of the other fables guessing it was her. Prince Charming (Snow White is his first ex-wife) is more than he seems and steps in to fight Bluebeard to the death and the tale ends up with a big surprise for Snow. "Barleycorn Bride" is the final comic and tells how the Lillipututian men got brides like Thumbalina when none of their women folk crossed over into Fabletown with them.

This was a great collection of stories. I am realy becomming fond of some of the characters and caught up in their storylines. The art was great as usual and there were some great references to fairy tales lurking in the background. Bring on the next in the series...

Coward by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

2008-07-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

But the way I see it . . . If you aren’t scared, in our line of work, then you just aren’t thinking. And I won’t work with people who don’t use their brains before their bullets . . .

Criminal Vol. 1: Coward by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
Icon, 2007
Crime Fiction (Graphic Novel) ; 128 pgs

My husband recommended that I try the Criminal series, sure I would like it. He's usually always right when it comes to what I will like and not like and this time was no different.

Leo is good at what he does. He is a criminal who believes in following the rules. He has his own code which has kept him out of jail and alive all of his life. His father had gotten caught after breaking one of his own rules, and Leo did not want to follow his father's fate.

One of his rules is not to trust dirty cops, and so when Seymour and a fellow officer, Jeff, interrupt his evening of picking pockets and ask him for a favor, he turns them down. Jeff claims he has inside information on a diamond transport, evidence for a case that will soon be coming to trial. Leo is still not interested. Seymour, however, knows which buttons to push, calling on one of Leo’s friends to play the sympathy card. Against his better judgment, Leo finally relents. He should have gone with his instincts. Nothing is quite what it seems, and the heist goes terribly wrong. Leo finds himself on the run and wondering how to set things right.

Leo is one of those characters I like instantly. He is intelligent and thinks before he acts. He is careful and detailed. He also has a good heart. He has been a loner most of his life with the exception of caring for his father's friend, Ivan. Ivan is a bit of comic relief in the story. He has a way with women, and, despite the fact that he suffers from Alzheimer's, some of his actions had me chuckling in spite of myself.

Sean Phillips art work is an integral part of the story. It sets the mood and gives life to Ed Brubaker's words. It is impossible to think of one without the other. The story is both compelling and suspenseful. Coward takes the reader into the seedy underbelly of the city and is full of complex characters that I look forward to learning more about in later issues.

Rating: (Very Good)

Originally published at Musings of a Bookish Kitty

The Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman

2008-07-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

In The Complete Maus, Art Spiegelman tells not just his mother's and father's story but the story of all Jews in World War II Poland. The Complete Maus is the story of the Holocaust.

In a break-through way, he tells this story in the form of a graphic novel. I was amazed not just with how approachable this made the horrible story of the Holocaust, but also with how appropriate it was. The story of the Holocaust is not an easy story to tell. By telling his father's story from the perspective of a son watching his father and via a graphic medium, Spiegelman captured the effects of the events on his father. As a reader, I could see the aftermath of the story because Spiegelman had captured the emotions in the illustrations. The Complete Maus is an essential story in the body of work about the Holocaust and rightly deserves the special Pulitzer Prize awarded it in 1992. It is a book anyone, even those who don't consider themselves readers, can approach to learn about the Holocaust.

Maus I: My Father Bleeds History

In Maus I, Spiegelman approaches his father Vladek to learn the story of how he met his mother Anja and how they survived in Poland in the early years of the World War II. Interspersed through Vladek's story is the modern-day struggles Vladek faces with his second wife, Mala. At first, I was frustrated by the presence of people not associated with the historic story. Why not tell the entire story from the perspective of the past? However, I realized that seeing Vladek's reactions to modern events helped me to see how his past is still his present: he cannot forget the war. Despite the fact that he wants to set the past behind him, he is still untrusting of people and frugal. He is still suffering, still "bleeding" history.

What struck me most about the Jews in Poland in 1938-1944, particularly Vladek and Anja, was that the only reason they survived thus far was because they were lying, stealing, and cheating, besides the fact that they still had some money to pay people for help. Vladek put himself and his wife before everything: that was the way to survive. It was shocking to realize how little mercy others had for them. While some were willing to risk their lives to help the Jews, it was shocking how little chance the Jews had to live. The Nazis, in general, showed no mercy.

Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began

Maus II continues the story of Vladek and his wife, now sent to Auschwitz, and it continued the story of Spiegelman as he faces his father's life story, now in the wake of his father's death. Spiegelman (the graphic novel author) feels guilty not just because his father survived Auschwitz but because others want to exploit it, because he never suffered as his father has, and because he will never really understand what suffering is. It is emotional, with that introduction, to read the story of Vladek and Anja's 10 months in Auschwitz, again trying to find an advantage so that they can survive, despite the odds.

The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale

What stood out to me in these two volumes of history is that the graphic novel format is a griping way to tell a story. It showed me, again, that this is medium that needs to be embraced.

Spiegelman does not want his graphic novel turned in to a movie. I would agree: a movie of this story would be too harsh and too insensitive. A wordy memoir also would be too "heavy": I love to read, but I couldn't read a memoir like this because it would be too much, too depressing, and too detailed. But a graphic novel medium is perfect. In Maus, we learn about the Holocaust but we also learn about the effect of the Holocaust on subsequent generations. And it is very readable: for the legions of people in the world that don't "like" to read, this is something that they could easily approach, painful as the story may be. That said, I was greatly disturbed the story (as should be expected) and I wouldn't recommend this for children.

The Holocaust happened: the world needs to know story. Maus is an excellent approach to it.

I read Maus I and Maus II at the same time, in one volume called The Complete Maus. They were originally published in 1986 and 1991. I cannot comprehend separating these two stories; they seemed to be one. Did you read these at different times? How did that affect your reading of the story? Did you feel something was missing after the first one?

Originally posted on Rebecca Reads.

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi

2008-07-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

While I loved reading Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood, I was not as impressed with Marjane Satrapi's continued memoir, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. Part of the problem was that while I liked the young girl striving to find herself, I no longer liked the angst-ridden teenager narrating the story of her foolish mistakes.

Persepolis 2 seemed to have two parts: one part of Marji living by herself in Austria, skipping classes, doing drugs, and otherwise feeling sorry for herself, and one part Marji returning to Iran and coming to terms with the challenging political situation and social repression that women face in that country. I liked the second part of Persepolis 2 much more than the first because it educated me on the environment women had to live in even in the late 1980s in Iran. While I certainly appreciated the story of her return to Iran and I was somewhat interested in her view of the challenges to a 20-year-old woman educated in the West suddenly thrust back in to a repressive environment, I honestly didn't like her as a person. I was disappointed because I did like the young girl in Persepolis 1 who thought she was a prophet and longed to find her place with God and in her world. I realize every young teenager makes mistakes and I'm not criticizing that; I'm just sorry I bothered to read about it.

Persepolis 2, as a graphic novel, was intriguing, much like Persepolis 1 was. However, since I would never pick up a memoir of a teenager randomly wandering around Austria, I would never have picked up this book had it not been a graphic novel. When I say I didn't like it, I say I didn't like the story (i.e., her life), not that I didn't like the way it was presented.

Ultimately, Persepolis 2 was not my type of memoir. It may be for you.

Did anyone else feel like Persepolis 2 wasn't as strong as the first one? Or am I being unfair?

Originally posted on Rebecca Reads.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

2008-07-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

I joined the challenge a few months ago and I've already read a few things, the three my library had. Now that I can post on this blog, I'll post them here. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'm new to the medium of graphic novels.

Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis:The Story of a Childhood was a delightful but heartbreaking memoir of a girl coming of age during the Iranian revolution and war, 1979-1983. Marji is just 10 when the Shah is overthrown and Iran is transformed into an Islamic state. Marji suddenly must wear a veil and hide her sneakers, which are too “Western.”

While there is nothing humorous about war, torture, and murder, Marji’s memoir of her experiences during this time is full of subtle humor. I loved the stories in which Marji and her family found humor despite their surroundings. (I don’t want to spoil it for you, so you’ll have to read it yourself.)

In Persepolis, Marji had to come to terms with who she was, and she had to reconcile herself with God. It was a beautiful story of growth, even in the midst of horrific war.

By reading Persepolis, I’ve joined the world of graphic novels readers (although I really dislike that term; read this post to find out why). I was amazed at how natural it felt to read in this format. I wasn’t sure if it would be quicker or slower than reading a non-graphic novel, but it was an interesting blend. The book itself was quite short, so I found it was very quick. Besides, as the cliché says “A picture is worth a thousand words,” and sometimes I found the pictures did shorten it wonderfully: they told us what we needed to know without having to explain it in many words.

For example, when her father explained that her grandfather was the son of the overturned emperor, the next box is thus (page 22):

The cursive writing and squiggly lines so perfectly capture the day dream. Explaining the same thing in words would have detracted from the strength of the day dream.

I guess my question for myself should be: would I have read Marji’s memoir if it wasn’t in the form of a graphic novel? Probably not. While I am very interested in history and international politics, Iran isn’t on the top of my nonfiction interest list these days. But I’ve very glad I did read it; it was an intriguing look into a life completely foreign to my own.

I am excited about the prospect of graphic books. Reading this was a different experience--just like listening an audiobook is a different experience. But it is still reading! I believe now that you can't say it's not reading until you give it a try.

I look forward to reading Marji's continuing story in Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return.

Originally posted on Rebecca Reads.

Perfect Example by John Porcellino

2008-07-08T11:28:00.000-07:00

Perfect Example is a coming-of-age story, a sort of memoir told in comics, or perhaps an autobiographical graphic novel. It depicts Porcellino's summer after high school graduation. It was especially poignant for me, because I grew up in the same time and place as Porcellino -- not the exact suburb, but very nearby. The places the characters visit, the music they listen to, the types of houses they live in, even the basic attitudes of the teens and parents, all of these were very familiar to me.

The summer after high school is often a time of trying to figure out one's place in the world. Porcellino portrays his adolescent-on-the-brink-of-adulthood self trying to find a balance between getting to know himself as an individual and finding a way to feel less isolated. This book also manages perfectly capture avoidance as a way of dealing with the realization that you've attained a major milestone in life without a clue about what comes next for you. Sometimes the teenage John seems to be working hard at staying a kid, doing kid things with his friends, and other times, confronted by those same friends with the need to make decisions about college and adulthood, he sinks into depression. The words, "I don't know" appear over and over throughout the story, and John is often completely paralyzed with indecision, even about small things such as whether or not it's ok to try to hold the hand of a girl he likes.

You can see an example of Porcellino's simple line drawings below.

The Absolute Sandman Volume 1

2008-07-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

Author: Neil Gaiman
Reason for Reading: Graphic Novels Challenge
Rating: 5/5

Also posted at Bold. Blue. Adventure.

Despite it's sizable size and weight, I'm going to count this as one book for the Graphic Novel challenge, otherwise I would be done already with the challenge, and I'm certainly not ready for that. The Absolute Sandman collects issues 1-20 of the Sandman comics into a hefty collector's edition. Thank you to the Washington County Library for carrying this one, because it also carries a hefty price tag that I personally could never afford.

Anyhow. The story opens as a group of occultists try to capture Death. Instead, they find that they have captured Dream. Unable to find a use for him and unwilling to let him go, they leave him in a prison, his guards forbidden to sleep.

Nearly 70 years pass, and the absence of Dream is being felt around the world as people fall into a mysterious sleep from which they can't wake up. Dream is one of the immortal Endless, who do not age and outlive even the gods. So he bides his time and eventually his bonds weaken. He steals out through the dreams of a guard who falls asleep. Revenge is immediate on his mind, but after condemning his captor to eternal nightmares where each waking is a new nightmare, there are important tasks to carry out. Finding his tools, which have been scattered and lost, restoring order to the inhabitants of his kingdom, and locating the ones who have strayed.

In his quest to restore his kingdom, Dream journeys across earth, and into Hell. He finds help and hindrance from an array of characters both mythological and contemporary. The Fates. The Justice League. Lucifer.

Like all the Neil Gaiman I've read so far, I loved this book. The intensity of action starts to peter off towards the end, and short, stand-alone stories emerge. I liked both, even though the action is more page-turning. A story that reveals what cats really dream about was especially amusing. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that some of the stories contain especially disturbing gory scenes. I haven't read enough comic books to compare it to any others, but there were a few parts that I kind of had to get through quickly because I'm not one who likes gore.

Even so, I rate this book very highly. Like I mentioned the other day, my brother came and read this in one night, I finished it, and then my husband read it. So for a library book, this one was put to good use. This particular collection has all of the enhancements and extras a collector's edition should have, and if you already like Sandman, it might be a great way to collect the comics.

Other reviews:

Andi of Tripping Towards Lucidity (Preludes and Nocturnes)
Chain Letters (Doll's House)
Dewey (Preludes and Nocturnes)
Debi (Preludes and Nocturnes)

If you've reviewed any of the first 4 graphic novels in the Sandman series, please let me know and I'll link you here.

Pyongyang review by Athena

2008-07-07T06:16:00.000-07:00

Pyongyang: A journey in North Korea is Guy Delisle (a Quebecois, now living in France) graphuc memoir of two months spent working in the North Korean capital for a French animation company outsourcing work to the North Koreans. It is a fascinating look at North Korea and its regime. While he is not in NK for very long, Delisle observes the expat community of NK, and the dictatorial regime's forceful propaganda machine. All foreigners seem to be kept in a very closed bubble constantly watched by their assigned guides. The author takes a copy of Orwell's 1984 and observes the parallel. It is apt because the regime seems to permeate in all aspects. It is the most closed country in the world, and it is rather frightening the extent in which the whole population seems to live in a bubble themselves. Without any outside media and severe limited ability to travel and educate themselves, many seem to genuinely believe the personal cult and god-like presence of the Kims even if one of them is dead. The cult of personality is rather creepy. Though there is little choice, but to pretend to believe because the dictatorship has some of the worse human rights violations globally. A lot of what the memoir describes is not creepy. Nothing can last forever, and the NK regime certainly won't. It will be interesting when that happens since the country is in a time warp. It's like how people go to Cuba and say it looks the 1950s, but North Korea and its population seem to be still in the 50s since they are limited in communications, food security, electricity, industrialisation and manufacturing. Since the culture is protected is by the government, art is monitored. This is especially significant in that all its neighbours are accelerating at a very fast rate in the globalisation. Having read on North Korea a bit from my studies, I would recommend further reading of the subject if you are intrigued after this short, but interesting read.

The Complete Persepolis review by Athena

2008-06-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

The two volume omnibus edition of Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoirs and Bildungsroman of growing up in and away from Iran. I actually did not know about the French edition until too late. As is the case sometimes, I regret not having found the original French version to read especially since I perpetually need to brush up my linguistic abilities. I did see the movie in French. Overall, I found this read immensely enjoyable and wonderful. I love it as much as I love The Complete Maus by Art Spielgman, another identity searching and family history memoirs of conflict. Persepolis was moving, tragic, beautifully drawn, funny, painful, and honest. It is beautiful memoirs of childhood and finding one's own identity with change and upheaval. I liked all the characters; I could feel for them. I liked young Marji's spirituality, faith, and religion, and while it was difficult to watch her go through her teen years, I could relate to her in a way I have not for a character in a long time. While I did not live through the political and violent times of war and revolutionnary torn Iran, we have similar family dynamics and other things such as the scene with Marji as waitress that hit home.

The film is wonderfully done as well, and while it is a condensed version, it still has the same simple yet affective black and white imagery. It has a couple of things the graphic novel does not, and it is nicely voice acted all around. It is harder to find a more truer to the novel adaptation than with Strapi as the co-writer and co-director of the film. Both are recommended.

Abridged from aquatique.net

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 by David Petersen

2008-06-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

This comic book series, of which Fall 1152 is the first collected volume, is about a society of sentient mice living in a medieval-like era. This is a world full of dangers, and vulnerable creatures such as mice must constantly remain alert. In this first volume, we are introduced to Liem, Kenzie and Saxon, three members of the Mouse Guard. The Mouse Guard is responsible for the peace and safety of the kingdom, and, as it turns out, this role is now more important than ever. When investigating the disappearance of a grain merchant, the three nice discover signs of the existence of a traitor, and end up uncovering a conspiracy that could lead to civil war. Along the way, the three mice discover the truth behind a legend, and find help in unexpected places.

The story told in this collection is brief, but full of adventure and suspense all the same. It’s a fine introduction to a very well-developed, rich and complex world. I liked how, at the beginning of each chapter, a little bit of mouse literature or lore was quoted. I also liked that a lot of background stories were hinted at, adding to the depth of the world David Petersen created. Plus, there was a section at the end called “Maps, Guides and Assorted Extras” full of details that helped me understand the kind of society these characters live in.

The story told in Mouse Guard is a good one, but what really conquered me was the art. It’s absolutely stunning, and it resembles nothing I’ve seen before. It made me want to dive into this world and lose myself in it. Actually, I shouldn’t be separating the storytelling and the art, because they are completely entangled. There are several long sequences of panels without a single word, and they tell the story gracefully and effectively. Comics work, after all, very differently from illustrated novels.

Don’t be fooled by the cuteness of the members of the Mouse Guard. Cute they may be, but they are fierce warriors all the same. And the general tone of the story is ominous and dark. The world these characters inhabit is harsh and unfriendly. The Mouse Guard has not only to defend their fellow mice from natural predators, but also to deal with the more unsettling danger of conspiracies and betrayal.

As often happen with the first volume of a series, Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 feels very much like an introduction. There are things that hint at the unique personalities of each character, but there’s much room left for further character and plot development. I anxiously await the release of Mouse Guard: Winter 1152.

More of David Petersen’s gorgeous artwork can be seen at the official Mouse Guard website.

(Originally posted here)

Adventures of Spirou and Fantasio----The Robot Blueprints and other Stories by André Franquin

2008-06-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

Title: Adventures of Spirou and Fantasio----The Robot Blueprints and other Stories
Author: André Franquin
ISBN: 9788128614804
Publisher: Euro Books 2007
Pages: 67/Graphic Novel

Spirou and Fantasio is a Franco-Belgian comic strip whih was first written in 1938. The series has many common elements with humorous adventure comics like Tintin and Asterix. It is one of the most popular classic Belgian comic strips and, unlike Tintin, new Spirou books continue to be published to this day. Spirou and Fantasio are the series' main characters, two adventurous journalists who run into fantastic adventures, aided by Spirou's pet squirrel, Spip.

I had read a lot of Spirou books and forgotten all about those, as I did not own any. I picked this book last Sunday when I bought 4 other books. Looking at these graphic novels made me nostalgic and I had to buy it. I will pass it on to my nephew as I did with my Tintin and Astrix books.

This book contains four stories: The Robot Blueprints, Spirou in the Ring, Spirou goes Riding and Spirou with the Pygmies.

The Robot Blueprints is the usual kind of story where certain bad elemments want to lay their hands on a bluepring of a Robot. It has been made by a mad scientist to help the mankind but those bad elements have other plans. Spirou, along wioth his friend, Fantasio foils their plan. Frankly it had nothing much new in this. However, the visual was good. The chase, the hiding, the beating, everything.

In Spirou in the Ring, Spirou is challenged by a well known boxer to fight with him. The other boxer is a bully and over-confident of his winning. Spirou takes the help of his friend Fantasio and starts practising for the Big fight which is the talk of the town. Meanwhile, Bert tries to stop him on his tracks. However, despite heating, Spirou wins and also wins over Bert.

Spirou goes Riding is funny where our dear friend goes riding on a eccentric horse. Read it and find out how! I adored this story! And fell in love with the horse!

And finally Spirou and the Pygmies has him and Fantasio visit a place called Rangapanga in Africa. There are two tribes, Browns and Backs there who are eternal enemies. A chance discovery leads to the fact that the blaks ar infact browns. The age old war is resolved! This story starts with a Leopard following Spirou!

All the four adventures are well depicted. One is pulled into the stories and comes to love the characters. I am definitely going for more Spirou books!

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

2008-06-18T03:37:00.001-07:00

Marjane spent her growing up years in Iran, the daughter of wealthy-ish middle class parents. Her formative years were during the Iranian Revolution, in which her immediate and extended family took an active part. Politically, it was a time of great unrest and uncertainty and, if her book is any indication, she spent much of her time mulling over the things she sees and hears as an only child.

She's an interesting character - at times naive and idealistic, and, as she grows older, very aware of the horrible circumstances that surround her and she almost seems to revel in the horror. She is close to her family but becomes increasingly fed up with how restrictive her society becomes after Iran becomes an Islamic Republic. Oh, and of course, there's the Iran Iraq war - this woman lived through a very unstable time.

I think the main reason that I liked to read her story is because it is so very different from my own story. I had no sense of politics until late high school, at least - perhaps mostly because of the country I live in and partly because my parents didn't seem to actively engage with me in discussions about it, as Marjane's parents did. I can't say that this book changed my life, or that I even got a sense of an overarching theme of "war is bad" or "my childhood stunk." She is not a character that I felt pity for, even as horrible things are happening to her - partly because I didn't get the feeling that she was pitying herself.

The graphic novel format really worked for me - I'm not sure her story would've been quite as interesting without her creative drawings. I think also, it might've been much more "graphic" to have had to read about all the violence instead of just seeing her take on it, which nearly always gave you the sense and idea of the violence without being overly bloody or intense.

As an introduction to modern Iranian history for teens (and grownups) , I think it's fantastic - it puts a face on the masses and she does include background for the events that she experiences or hears about. I think every story we read that makes a group of people seem more familiar and their views more understandable is a story worth telling.

Kristy's Great Idea

2008-06-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

Martin, Ann. 2006. The Babysitter's Club. Graphics by Raina Telgemeier.

The Babysitters Club. I admit it. I read them as a child. I can't say I read all 131 books and 12 Super Specials, but I read more than a few. I believe I grew out of them by the early to mid-thirties. (Not my age. The number in the series.) The first book in the series, Kristy's Great Idea, was published in August of 1986. When I discovered the series, the first three or four were already published. I believe I bought them all at the same time. (I think. It's been a while. But I do remember that I had to wait after that for each new release.) Why the emphasis on how old it is? Because it says something both about the book and about me.

The graphic novel--for me--just didn't do this book justice. I'm biased. I'm not really "into" graphic novels. I'm not. I've read most of the Babymouse and I love them. I do. But that is really the exception. The others? I look at the covers. I might open one now and then. But overall, I'm just not that interested. Why did I pick this one up? The Young Adult Reading challenge (host Shady Glade) has a requirement of a graphic novel. And I wanted to reread Kristy's Great Idea for the Heart of A Child challenge. (And the actual novel-novel was checked out.)

For those who haven't read any of the novels and have no idea what's going on (if you're patient enough to get this far), The Babysitters Club is started by Kristy. It is her "great idea." She teams up with some of her closest friends, Claudia and Mary Anne, and invites a new girl into the club as well, Stacey. The Club is to help parents find a babysitter in one quick and easy call. One call, 4 sitters at their disposal. The series alternates narrators between each member of the club. (And more than four do eventually join.)

I haven't read the book in at least fifteen years. But a lot has changed in fifteen years. The book has no computers, no internet, no email, no cell phones. And things like nail polish and make-up are "forbidden" to girls their age (seventh grade, I believe) and having a phone in one's bedroom (or one's own phone line in general) is a complete novelty. Claudia's extra-extra cool because she does. But the references to Rainbow Brite and G.I. Joe date the novel further. (While you could argue that G.I. Joe is relatively timeless, they're certainly not the HUGE thing they were in 1986. I remember watching the end credits to the cartoon show every week day. I was always early for the next show. Now I can't quite remember what that show was.)

I don't know if the lack of technology would bother modern readers or not. But not having it certainly makes starting the club more work for the kids. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It gets them thinking; it gets them into being creative.

There is more than just babysitting involved as well. The big "issues" of the book being Kristy dealing with her parent's divorce and her mother's dating again and Stacey's issues with coming clean about her diabetes to her friends. (Claudia's issues are with her parents not wanting her to wear make-up. Mary Anne's issues are with her father's strictness in general.)

I was surprised by how much I remembered. The small things. The little details. The snippets of dialogue. Each character's pet peeves. The mundaneness of siblings' names even. This is neither a good or bad thing. Just something to think about. I wonder how much essentially useless knowledge is stored in my brain???

Romeo & Juliet

2008-06-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

Manga Shakespeare: Romeo & Juliet. Originally published in UK. Illustrated by Sonia Leong.

I'll be honest with you from the start, I have zero experience with Manga. The drawing factor for me wasn't the Manga--it was the Shakespeare. I like anything (and everything) that makes Shakespeare accessible for readers. That essentially translates into me liking Manga Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet. I'm not sure how typical or untypical Manga Shakespeare compares to other Manga out there--as far as text or graphics or design goes. So I'm just gonna leave it for others to decide.

Open up Manga Shakespeare and what do you find? "Present day Tokyo. Two teenagers, Romeo and Juliet, fall in love. But their rival Yakuza families are at war." That makes it appear--at first glance--like they've changed Shakespeare, doesn't it? That the text is going to be really off base. But while the illustrations follow that story, the text is about as true to the bard as you can get. It does take some getting used to (for me and maybe only me) to realize that the text and the illustrations aren't really in sync with one another. The graphics show people emailing and texting and using cell phones and what not, but the text is true to the original. (That doesn't mean it's line for line, word for word, unabridged and unadapted, but it's close enough that dare I say it--you could probably maybe get away with reading this instead. As long as you don't give yourself away by saying it's set in Tokyo and that it was Romeo's lack of signal on his cell phone that led to the tragic deaths of two young lovers. (His cell phone was "no signal" and he missed the message that Juliet was faking her death.)

At first, I thought that I would have a hard time following the story. It's not that I'm UNfamiliar with the original. I've read it at least three times. It's just that with graphic novels, I don't always recognize who everyone is supposed to be. Small details--color and length of hair, shapes of eyes, small fashion details that distinguish characters from one another--can be hard to pick up if you're graphically challenged. Call me a newbie. But surprisingly enough, I soon had it down. Part of me wishes that it had all been in color. But I don't know the rules of Manga--if it's mainly black and white or if it's mainly color, or if just depends. That's why I'm not going to try to sound like I know what I'm talking about here.

The only other slight issue I had with the book is the fact that for a few pages, the characters shrunk. I don't know if that's the best description. I think the best word would be everyone and everything became squatty. They became instead of tall and lean and normal, they became short and fat and stocky and odd. I don't know if this is typical or not. It could be. But it was just weird for me.

I did think the format worked well. It definitely made Shakespeare more reader-friendly. The good stuff was kept sacred, and you'll probably recognize most of the quotes. That is if you're familiar with the play or with the movies that stayed true to the play or if you've watched Shakespeare in Love repeatedly. (Not that I'm judging!)

You can read more about the series here.

JULIET

Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

ROMEO

It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

JULIET

Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I:
It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua:
Therefore stay yet; thou need'st not to be gone.

ROMEO

Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
I have more care to stay than will to go:
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.
How is't, my soul? let's talk; it is not day.

JULIET

It is, it is: hie hence, be gone, away!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division;
This doth not so, for she divideth us:
Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes,
O, now I would they had changed voices too!
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt's-up to the day,
O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.

ROMEO

More light and light; more dark and dark our woes!

Now on to the story itself. Call me contrary, but Romeo & Juliet just doesn't do it for me. I don't see Romeo & Juliet as this marvelously romantic couple. I think Romeo is as silly as silly can be. I can't judge Juliet's heart as easily. But Romeo? How can I trust a guy who can be head-over-heels madly, deeply, truly in love with a girl one minute, to the point of depression and distraction and good old-fashioned moodiness, and then at the drop of a hat, in just one glance fall madly, truly, deeply, head-over-heels in love with another girl having completely forgotten his former love and heart's desire. Romantic? I think not. Add in the fact that these young lovers--at least Juliet is, I'm not sure of Romeo's exact age--are way too young to even think about making life-time commitments. (She's either 13 or 14.) The fact that this was considered marriageable is a bit stomach-turning to me. When you think about it, their bodies, their minds, their souls are just beginning to develop. They're still growing and changing. True love? Probably not.... Textbook case of stupidity of both teens and adults? Definitely! It's hard to find a character that isn't stupid in Romeo & Juliet. The parents of each child? Stupid! The friends of both families with their I-must-fight-for-the-fun-of-it attitude? Stupid! The fact that people were being killed just for the thrill of it? for the sake of some stupid family feud? Beyond stupid.

So the text is beautiful. I won't deny that. But the motivation that leads to this tragedy is just plain old-fashioned stupidity only romanticized and idolized to last forever and ever and ever.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Midsummer Night's Dream

2008-06-16T10:44:00.002-07:00

Manga Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream. Illustrated by Kate Brown. 2008.

Last Wednesday, I reviewed Manga Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. I liked it. I did. As much as I ever could like Romeo & Juliet anyway. This week, I'm happy to be reviewing Manga Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. This has always been more of a favorite of mine. Not my absolute favorite Shakespeare mind you, but near the top at least where comedies are concerned. There is a certain playfulness, a whimsical flavor that is light and fun and more joyous. Love isn't deadly in A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's playful, fun, silly, fickle, whimsical. It's the anti-Romeo-and-Juliet play.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is the story of multiple lovers, multiple couples. There isn't one main story--there are many teeny-tiny stories that are all woven together into a delightful mix. There is Oberon and Titania, Theseus and Hippolyta, Hermia and Lysander, and Helena and Demetrius. And then there is the playful mixing of Lysander and Helena and Titania and Nick Bottom (the Ass of a man). There is much angst in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Much. Angst. You've got father-daughter conflict. You've got thwarted, forbidden love. You've got unrequited love. You've got secrets. You've got betrayals. You've got angry little spats. And at the heart of the whole mess is Puck. Puck is such a wonderful and delightful little fairy-type character. He is a prankster. Someone who takes enjoyment out of playing and interfering with mortals.

In Romeo-and-Juliet, love is taken too seriously. Here, one might argue that love isn't taken seriously enough. You've got these two men, Lysander and Demetrius, making all sorts of foolish speeches...but the reader is in on the inside joke this time around. The reader knows that all this talk of love is just foolish magic-talk. The reader knows that such talk isn't to be taken at face-value. Each of our characters is flawed. There isn't one among them that doesn't have something that keeps them just short of perfection.

Helena, lovable though she may be, is a bit too clingy, a bit too desperate, a bit too go-getter. As a modern reader, you want to tell her to show some pride, hold on to some dignity, to not be so obviously lovesick. And, Demetrius, well, he seems a bit too full of himself. Although the text doesn't necessarily come right out and say it, he comes across to this reader as thinking he's God's gift to women. In other words, he needs a comeuppance, to be put into his place. The work of Puck on Demetrius can only be a good thing that we hope can last. Oberon, same thing, he's arrogant; he's proud; he's got this whole domination thing going on...but I can't really dislike the guy because he has a heart when it comes to Helena. He sees the poor girl in need and sets out to help her. It's not his fault Puck helps a little too much.

The language, the style. It's Shakespeare. It's beautiful. It's memorable. It just works. Again, there is nice adaptation in this Manga edition.

The artwork. I love the colored illustrations of the beginning. But there were certain sequences that just didn't work for me with this one. I liked certain pages, certain spreads. But I can't really say that the ENTIRE book was utterly fantastic or anything. But look at this color spread? Isn't it wonderful?

***
TITANIA

My Oberon! what visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamour'd of an ass.

***
THESEUS

I pray you all, stand up.
I know you two are rival enemies:
How comes this gentle concord in the world,
That hatred is so far from jealousy,
To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?

LYSANDER

My lord, I shall reply amazedly,
Half sleep, half waking: but as yet, I swear,
I cannot truly say how I came here;
But, as I think,--for truly would I speak,
And now do I bethink me, so it is,--
I came with Hermia hither: our intent
Was to be gone from Athens, where we might,
Without the peril of the Athenian law.

EGEUS

Enough, enough, my lord; you have enough:
I beg the law, the law, upon his head.
They would have stolen away; they would, Demetrius,
Thereby to have defeated you and me,
You of your wife and me of my consent,
Of my consent that she should be your wife.

DEMETRIUS

My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth,
Of this their purpose hither to this wood;
And I in fury hither follow'd them,
Fair Helena in fancy following me.
But, my good lord, I wot not by what power,--
But by some power it is,--my love to Hermia,
Melted as the snow, seems to me now
As the remembrance of an idle gaud
Which in my childhood I did dote upon;
And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,
The object and the pleasure of mine eye,
Is only Helena. To her, my lord,
Was I betroth'd ere I saw Hermia:
But, like in sickness, did I loathe this food;
But, as in health, come to my natural taste,
Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,
And will for evermore be true to it.

THESEUS

Fair lovers, you are fortunately met:
Of this discourse we more will hear anon.
Egeus, I will overbear your will;
For in the temple by and by with us
These couples shall eternally be knit:
And, for the morning now is something worn,
Our purposed hunting shall be set aside.
Away with us to Athens; three and three,
We'll hold a feast in great solemnity.
Come, Hippolyta.

***
THESEUS
[Reads] 'The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung
By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.'
We'll none of that: that have I told my love,
In glory of my kinsman Hercules.

Reads

'The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.'
That is an old device; and it was play'd
When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.

Reads

'The thrice three Muses mourning for the death
Of Learning, late deceased in beggary.'
That is some satire, keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.

Reads

'A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.'
Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!
That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow.
How shall we find the concord of this discord?

PHILOSTRATE
A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,
Which is as brief as I have known a play;
But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,
Which makes it tedious; for in all the play
There is not one word apt, one player fitted:
And tragical, my noble lord, it is;
For Pyramus therein doth kill himself.
Which, when I saw rehearsed, I must confess,
Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears
The passion of loud laughter never shed.
***
THESEUS
No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no
excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all
dead, there needs none to be blamed.
***
PUCK

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Hamlet

2008-06-16T10:44:00.001-07:00

Manga Shakespeare: Hamlet. Illustrated by Emma Vieceli.

"The year is 2107 Global climate change has devastated the Earth. This is now a cyberworld in constant dread of war. Prince Hamlet of Denmark has come home to face an uncertain future."

The above gives you a clue about the illustrations that follow in Manga Shakespeare's take on Hamlet. (I suppose. I have a hard time deciphering just what it's supposed to mean. What is a cyberworld?) As in previous titles, however, the text remains true to the spirit and times of Shakespeare. Hamlet, unlike Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, is not a love story. Rather, it's quite the opposite. It's the story of hate, of revenge, of anger, of bitterness. A young man, Hamlet, returns home to find his father dead--murdered--and his mother married to his uncle, his father's murderer. He's angry and rightly so. The ghost of Hamlet's father inspiring him to take vengeance, Hamlet sets in motion a violent and disturbing plot. I don't suppose Hamlet meant to litter the stage with dead bodies. I believe he only intended to take the life of his uncle, his stepfather, Claudius. But things don't always go according to plan. And Hamlet is indeed a tragedy. Do two wrongs make a right? Well, no, they don't. The death of all these characters--Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Laertes, Hamlet, Ophelia--can never make the death of the king, Hamlet's father, okay. All those deaths don't make reparation. No matter how many dead bodies pile up...

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Walking Distance

2008-06-16T10:42:00.001-07:00

Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone: Walking Distance. Adapted by Mark Kneece. Illustrated by Dove McHargue

Coming in October 2008, a graphic novel series inspired by classic Twilight Zone episodes. Up first? Walking Distance and The After Hours. I'll review each separately.

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead--your next stop, the Twilight Zone.

Walking Distance is the story of a world-weary man, Martin Sloan, who stumbles into his hometown, Homewood, and meets his young and carefree self. Emboldened by the idea of saving himself from a life of drudgery, Martin tries to pass along some words of wisdom to his eleven-year-old self. What would you say to a younger you? If you could go back in time and *warn* yourself about the future? Would you listen to yourself? Walking Distance is an interesting premise. Martin learns, as we all must, that you can't change the past. You can't cling to the past. There's no use wondering about the what-ifs...I like the fact that it is his father who is sharing his words of wisdom with his all-grown-up son, "When you go back--look ahead. You've got to be strong that way. Life only looks complicated. It takes strength to keep it simple. Don't long for the past."

One of the reasons I like this story is that it illustrates a longing, a wishing we have to connect. Maybe we wish we could have a conversation with a parent, with a child, or even with ourselves--younger or older. When Martin *accidentally* goes back in time, he sees his hometown exactly as it was. He sees his friends, his neighbors, his parents, and, of course, himself. And on some level, I think this idea appeals to us. Especially tied in with this is the theme of loss. The past is lost to him, of course, except in his mind. But also the loss of his family. (I'm not sure if the text mentioned his mother, but I think they mentioned that his father had died. Martin is given the opportunity of perhaps *listening* to his father's words of wisdom for the first time.)

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

The After Hours

2008-06-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone: The After Hours. Adapted by Mark Kneece. Illustrated by Rebekah Isaacs.

I hope I'm not the only one excited about this new series of graphic novels inspired by classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. The first two books in the series are being released in October 2008. More will follow! (I'll post about that at the end!)

The After Hours is a classic for a reason. It's about a "customer" at a department store that has quite a unique experience. I remember watching this episode as a kid. I remember being freaked out by it. But my love of Twilight Zone was always there--freaked out or not.

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead--your next stop, the Twilight Zone.

Marsha White entered the department store in search of a gold thimble to buy her mother. But not all is at appears. First, she's taken by special elevator up to the eighteenth floor. Here she sees an entire floor of a department store empty but for one store clerk, a woman, and one gold thimble. Making her purchase, too hastily perhaps, she returns to the main floor of the store where she discovers a flaw in the thimble. But her complaints are met strangely. The men in charge seem emphatic that there is no eighteenth floor. Also they don't carry gold thimbles either. After a slight accident, a trip or fall perhaps, Marsha wakes up in one of the offices later that night. Her adventures in the store after hours...well...I won't spoil all here.

I definitely enjoyed this one, and would definitely recommend it!

Here is what I was able to learn from my googling:

Fall 2008
"Walking Distance"
"The After Hours"

Winter 2009
"The Monsters are Due on Maple Street"
"The Odyssey of Flight 33"

Spring 2009
"Deaths-head Revisited"
"The Midnight Sun"

Fall 2009
"The Big Tall Wish"
"Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?"

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Owly: The Way Home & The Bittersweet Summer by Andy Runton

2008-06-15T12:26:00.000-07:00

Owly. I have yet to meet a more lovable, empathetic, warm-and-fuzzy graphic novel character. His mild adventures take him around his forest home as he makes new animal friends and helps them along the way. The theme of friendship is so cleverly played out as Owly interacts with Worm and the Hummingbirds, without ever getting sappy or slow. The wordless format is perfect for older children who might be struggling with text - and yet, for myself, I liked how it made me imagine my own text in my head. It would be fun to hear an early reader "read" this book aloud. Owly is a great introduction to graphic novels or a fabulous addition to any collection.

The Sandman: The Doll's House - Reviewed by Chainletters

2008-06-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

The Sandman Vol. 2: The Doll's House by Neil Gaiman.
Original Review here.

In Preludes and Nocturnes we met Morpheus - The Sandman, Lord of Nightmares, also known as Dream of the Eternals. Still cleaning up the mess left by his absence, Dream begins to track 4 dreams who used the opportunity to escape the Dreamworld. The key to finding these rogue nightmares lies with the newly awakened Dream Vortex, which has taken form in the shape of Rose, a young woman searching for her long missing brother. But Dream isn’t the only one taking advantage of the Vortex. Desire, a younger member of the Eternals, wants to play games with Morpheus's heart.

As Dream follows his escaped minions, Rose continues to search for her brother, and the two journeys are linked. From the mind of a small boy, to the 1st annual serial killers convention, The Sandman goes about reclaiming what’s his. But as the book comes to closer to its conclusion, so does the confrontation between Dream and the entity which threatens his realm.

With The Doll’s House, Gaiman continues to build a fantastic vision of our world. My favorite chapter, with its dark wit, was Part 5: The Collectors, which showcases the maniacs’ convention. Using each chapter’s individual story, Gaiman builds an overarching plot that reveals a little bit more of how The Eternals interact with humanity and, with his final twist, how humanity can effect The Eternals. With the beginnings of Dream’s evolution, Gaiman offers a glimpse into how The Sandman will proceed.

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

2008-06-09T07:51:00.000-07:00

American Born Chinese was the 2007 Printz Award winner. It was also a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award. I'm thrilled that a graphic novel was recognized by the people behind these prestigious awards. Readers of all sorts are really beginning to see the literary value of stories told with both words and pictures.

This book addresses a variety of important themes, but I think the most important is that of identity: how we let others influence how we see ourselves; the sides of ourselves we may be unaware of; how often we base our own identities on what we aren't rather than what we are; how damaging our treatment of people based on ignorant perceptions can be to their identities; how inner strength and authenticity can be achieved, and so on. I think I could read this book every day for the next month and keep finding more ideas about identity within it. It's a very skillfully layered book.

It begins with three separate stories which are told in alternating chapters, though these stories eventually converge, and the connection between them is revealed.

The first story is a traditional folk tale of a monkey king. He attends a party with other gods, but is turned away because he's a monkey and wears no shoes. The image below features the monkey king working on attaining the four major disciplines of invulnerability.

A second story is about Jin Wang, a Chinese-American boy who is navigating between the predominantly-white world of his school and the world of his parents, who live a more traditionally Chinese lifestyle at home. The image below demonstrates the ways in which even well-meaning people who attempt to be accepting of diversity can hurt individuals with carelessness or ignorance.

In the bottom right hand corner, you see one of Jin's classmates, a Japanese-American girl the bullies in the class call "chink," which is a demeaning term for a Chinese person, not a Japanese person. The ignorance of some of Jin's classmates is so deep that they can't even get their racial slurs right. If you're a woman like me, you may have been called names usually reserved for women. That's pretty horrible, but imagine if the people degrading you with words paid so little notice to who you really are that they didn't even use ugly words reserved for females, but instead called you names commonly used to insult men. With the former names, as awful as they are, you at least know that you're not alone, that other women are called these names. With the latter, your femaleness is completely dismissed. Imagine how much damage something like that, happening day after day to a child, could do. How would that affect your sense of who you are?

The third story features Chin-Kee, a horrifyingly stereotypical Chinese boy who visits his white American cousin, embarrassing that cousin with his stereotyped behavior: eating "clispy flied cat noodles" in the cafeteria, knowing the answers to all questions in class, etc. This story evokes a TV sitcom, with a laugh track running at the bottom of many frames. Just like in real sitcoms, he laugh track is often there when nothing even remotely funny has happened, which is one reason I refuse, under any circumstances, to watch any TV show with a laugh track. Below, you see Chin-Kee and his cousin, Danny, or as Chin-Kee says, Da-Nee.

This is the sort of book that would appeal to teens struggling with their own identities, but if I gave this book to my own teen, I'd probably discuss it with him afterwards. Sometimes kids are so surrounded by stereotypes that they don't recognize when they're used as satire.

And, of course, this book would also appeal to a wide variety of adults. I adored it, myself. Nymeth thought highly of it, as did Alison.

Thanks to Alison for this link to an essay by Yang about how he came to write this book.

Asterix in Spain (gautami)

2008-06-07T04:45:00.000-07:00

Title: Asterix in Spain
Author: Goscinny and Uderzo
ISBN: 0340183268
Publisher: Hodder Dargaud/1971
Pages: 48
Genre: Comic books/Graphic Novels

This is another re-read after 20 years! I am now going through my collection of Asterix, randomly.

Romans capture Pepe, the son of the Hispania chief. He is quite a handful. While taking to hide him someplace, they lose him and he is found by Asterix and Obelix. They take him to their village where Pepe is to live with Obelix as his sacred guest. Now Pepe is a holy terror and Obelix can't stand him. However, he has to look after the boy. Meanwhile, there is a fight with the fishmonger, Unhygienix because of Pepe.

Aserix has a brainwave and sends Pepe to the bard, Cacofonix's place. Pepe abnd the bard hit it off and Cacofonix sings for him all night. The Gauls can't take it any more and decide to deliver the boy to his father. Asterix and Obelix venture out in Unhygienix's boat. As usual they meet the Pirate's ship and rob them of all the food. Obelix, that is!

On their way, they meet caravans, all going to the druids' procession. One of the Romans sees Pepe and want him back. To cut a long story short, Pepe is delivered to his father after much trouble. And our heroes return to Gaulish Village for more merry making, fights and squables.

The books are worth reading, re-reading because of the pun, wit and great graphics. I am on a binge!

Wanted review by Athena

2008-06-06T06:46:00.000-07:00

This is the most violent graphic novel I have read yet and probably one of the most violent books I have read in a long time. I am curious about the upcoming movie adaptation, so I decided to read the graphic novel I never heard of. It was not worth it. It was violent, dark, depressing, and dystopic. Funnily enough, I do not think it was intended as nihilistic as other modern graphic novels tend to be, but that message is not clear. I think Millar intended it to be a hero's journey for villains, and it has been described as "The Watchmen for villains." I do not know if we are suppose to feel for the amoral protagonist Wesley. I considered him too immoral to actually care about. It was just too dark for me. I would not recommend this graphic novel.

Having said that, I am looking forward to the movie (it's a good movie year I think). It is going to be a lot different from the movie in terms of plot. I will probably like the movie a lot more than the books. Fox in the comic books is modelled after Halle Berry (due to Fox's similarity to Catwoman), but I'm glad it's not Halle Berry. Similarly, Wesley was modelled after rapper Eminem. It was a bit creepy reading the comics with him as Wesley. According to this behind the scenes featurette, the first 40 pages of the book are copied fairly accurately into the movie. The movie is going to be violent and R-rated. I am not into violent movies per se, but I am into humor/mindless action flicks once in awhile. I won't mind the violence in the movie as much as the comics which always tend to be more violent than the movies. Actually, If they kept the plot of the comics as it is, I highly doubt anyone would want to see the film. This comics plot really does not have a wide appeal. So, this is one of those rare cases where I will probably like the film more the original and want them to change as much as they can from it.

Re-Gifters (reviewed by Laura)

2008-06-05T14:21:00.000-07:00

Re-gifters by Mike Carey, Sonny Liew, and Marc Hempel (Minx, 2007)

re-gift –verb
1. to give an unwanted gift to someone else; to give as a gift something one previously received as a gift; also written regift

Dik Seong Jen (Dixie) has a spiky exterior–her spikiness is a defense mechanism guarding against her powerful emotions–as she puts it, “I don’t show it, but deep down I’m really a passionate person”.

For many years, she has loved hapkido because she is proud of her Korean heritage and because she needs the physical outlet for what she cannot express in words. More recently, she has discovered that she loves (or at least has a huge crush on) Adam Heller. This crush is so powerful that it’s throwing off her ki (”the universal energy that some call spirit”), and, subsequently, her ability to fight her best in hapkido. She has been ending up swept off her feet (in more ways than one) in sparring sessions with Adam.

Paralleling Dixie and Adam’s storyline is Dixie’s run-ins with Dillinger and his crew. Dillinger’s spiky exterior as the tough Hispanic kid is countered by his actions–he defends Dixie against his gang who have derided her heritage by telling her to “walk on the Korean side of the street” and he helps her practice for the hapkido tournament. Most importantly (at least for the sake of the book’s title), he plays a role in the re-gifting–the Hwarang warrior figure really makes its way around to sundry recipients throughout the book. By doing so, Dillinger helps Dixie to reboot her Korean American pride in who she is and to re-discover her ki.

Dixie’s crush on Adam causes her to misplace her passion for a time and to muddle her decision-making so that she stands in danger of losing her spot in the National Tournament and in danger of losing control. She also risks losing everything else she holds dear–her ki, her self-respect, her best friend, her pride in her heritage, and her family’s trust.

In the end, Dixie sees clearly what she has to do, “No confusion. No hormones. No need to think twice.” The story really moves–the illustrators’ masterful use of line makes the hapkido sequences look real and the apt character facial expressions and body positions say a lot without the text having to say anything. When the character’s are speaking, their voices are consistent with their personalities and depictions. Re-gifters is a fun story that speaks to family and cultural expectations, unrequited love, friendship, perseverance, and competition all wrapped up in a complete package to give to the graphic novel fans out there as well as to those who like sports and/or multicultural stories. Re-gifters is not likely to be re-gifted, although it is likely to be loaned out its fair share.

Visit Cynthia Leitich Smith’s site for more children’s and young adult books starring Korean Americans or my WorldCat.org list for Korean American Juvenile Fiction (includes works by authors Linda Sue Park, An Na, Marie G. Lee, and more). I recently reviewed Kimchi & Calamari by Rose Kent about a Korean boy adopted into a family with Italian ancestry. For more on the Minx graphic novel line, visit DC Comics site and view its Minx information or peruse the Comics Worth Reading site and read reviews of all the Minx 2007 graphic novels.

Cross-posted on my blog ((actually awhile ago, but I'm just getting around to posting here too).

Mouse Guard Fall 1152 by David Petersen (reviewed by Laura)

2008-06-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

“The mice struggle to live safely and prosper among all of the world’s harsh conditions and predators. Thus the Mouse Guard was formed.”

When you’re little, the world can be a dangerous place. Fortunately for mice, who happen to be quite little indeed, they have the Mouse Guard on their side. The Mouse Guard are the “escorts, pathfinders, weather watchers, scouts and body guards for the mice who live among the territories”. In other words, The Mouse Guard keeps mice travelers through the territories as safe as possible and investigates when said mice go missing.

So it is that three of the best of the Mouse Guard–Lieam, Kenzie, and Saxon–are sent out to discover the fate of peasant mouse that went missing while delivering goods among the territories. What they find (in addition to a hungry snake) is treachery from within mousekind.

As more of the plot against the Mouse Guard unfolds they discover that it is a mouse claiming to be of Black Axe renown that seeks to overthrow Lockhaven (the Mouse Guard’s home) and the Mouse Guard itself. Mouse Guard Fall 1152 follows these three mice as they investigate the treachery and fight to eradicate its source, so that they can once again focus on external threats to their species from “all the creatures that eats us” [mice, that is].

At book’s end, Petersen has included maps, guides, and assorted extras in which the mouse territories mentioned in the Mouse Guard’s adventures are more fully developed. Petersen’s text and pictures are replete with details that enhance the story. For instance, in describing Barkstone he proclaims it to be the “destination for the best in glass, furniture, and other goods” while Lockhaven is the Home of the Mouse Guard. He couples these proclamations with intricate drawings that reflect each locale’s uniqueness.

Each chapter begins with some exposition, but the captions on the panels themselves are relatively sparse making it an attractive choice for reluctant readers. Peterson employs diverse panel arrangements, color, line, and perspective to create the illusion of action and to drive the story forward.

Readers who enjoy Mouse Guard Fall 1152 will look forward to Mouse Guard Winter 1152 coming out in its collected edition in Winter 2008. In the meantime, other books to suggest to those who enjoyed talking mice historical fantasy adventure aspect include: Kate Dicamillo’s The Tale of Despereaux, Robert C. O’Brien’s Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Brian Jacques’ Redwall series, Robin Jarvis’ Deptford Mice series. More mice fantasy adventure can be found in Michael Hoeye’s Time Stops for No Mouse and The Sands of Time, Avi’s Poppy stories, and Geronimo Stilton’s Geronimo Stilton series. Other books with less daring do but with talking mice that I can’t seem to stop myself from mentioning because they’re so much fun include: Beverly Cleary’s Ralph Mouse chapter books and Jennifer Holm’s BabyMouse graphic novels.

As for readers who don’t necessarily require mice, but nonetheless like the adventure and the anthropomorphic animal aspects, there’s no shortage of these kind of books. Just to name a few, you might try Erin Hunter’s Warriors series (cats), Kenneth Oppel’s Silverwing (bats), Kathryn Lasky’s Guardians of Ga’Hoole series (owls), or Richard Adam’s Watership Down (rabbits).

Mouse Guard Fall 1152 is a story replete with intrigue, adventure, survival, and courageous mice. Mice should be able to rest easier knowing that the Mouse Guard is on duty, and fans should rest easy knowing another volume is on its way.

Another interesting book review pertaining to rodentia is in the Times, Amanda Craig’s Varmints and Vermin in Children’s Fiction where she discusses Tumtum and Nutmeg by Emily Bearn and Nick Price and Barnaby Grimes: Return of the Emerald Skull by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell.

Cross-posted on my blog (actually awhile ago, but I'm just getting around to posting here too).

We Are On Our Own by Miriam Katin

2008-06-05T06:10:00.000-07:00

This is an amazing book. I suggest you all run straight out to your library or bookstore now and pick it up. Seriously.

We Are On Our Own is a memoir in the form of a graphic novel, a genre I've seen called graphic memoirs, visual autobiographies, and even autobifictionalography, among others.

It's a very dark, serious book about Katin's childhood as a Jew in Hungary during World War II. Her father was off fighting, and she was at home with her mother. When her mother received papers telling her to put all her belongings in storage and report for deportation (or hopefully "only" deportation), her apparently wealthy mother obtains fake papers and takes Katin off to make a living sewing in a small village. They live on the run, in hiding, for a while, and when the war is over wait to find out whether Katin's father is still alive.

The story is told from the point of view of Katin, who seems about four or five years old at the time in which the book is set, which provides the sort of details not usually found in stories of the Holocaust. There were so many horrors, I think, that people who were adults at the time generally don't remember some of the smaller tragedies, or at least don't think to tell them. But since Katin was a child, she remembers things like the loss of her dog. The first indication we have that Katin is living during war time, and maybe her first memory of the war, is when her mother is forced to turn in Katin's dog to the Nazi's.

In addition, since this is Katin's story and Katin was with her mother, we see the war from a woman's perspective. This is not something that is available that often, women's war stories. All the more reason this book is an absolute treasure.

In the cover image above, you can get a sense of Katin's drawing style. The color in the flags is a rare addition; inside, most of the drawings are dark pencil sketches, with beautiful impressionist-like color sketches saved for scenes of pre-war and post-war times.

The Fixer: A Story From Sarajevo reviewed by Corinne

2008-06-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

I guess when you read the subtitle "A Story From Sarajevo" you should know that this not a pretty story. It's the story of Neven, whom the author meets in Sarajevo. Neven is a man who is willing to sell his war stories to the press and get them the "inside" story - he's a crass, chain smoking veteran of an incredibly complicated war. The way the story is told, I never completely believed anything Neven said - which probably exactly the point. Journalists are constantly having to decide whether what they are being told is true or not. It was challenging, though, that we kept switching time periods, my brain couldn't keep the action straight very well.

It's a gruesome work of art - an illustrated history of a bloody conflict that is full of unfamiliar names and organizations. While the graphics were often a bit too...graphic for me, I appreciated the point of view - following the story as it's told to the journalist, walking in the shoes of the people he meets in a city that has been torn apart by hatred and violence. It definitely makes for a more hands-on modern historical experience - sort of like the scenes in a movie that are so horrible you can't look away.

One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry

2008-06-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

I really loved One Hundred Demons. It's a very unique book, and I'm not quite sure how to go about describing it, except with words like awesome or delightful. It's not quite a graphic novel, though the stories are interwoven. Barry calls herself a cartoonist, though to me, cartoons are animated and comics are on paper. She calls this book "autobifictionalography" because parts of it are true and parts are made up. I think that like many storytellers, she embellishes where it's necessary to make the story more fun. The book is full of pop-culture references from the time she was growing up (she was born in 1956), quite a few of which I caught. If you were born in the fifties, you'll probably catch even more, maybe all of them.

The book started out as a painting exercise. She read about a monk who painted a hundred demons on a handscroll in 16th century Japan and decided to try the project herself. The book itself doesn't focus on all one hundred demons, though there are probably at least a hundred painted around the borders. Instead, Barry chose a handful of demons, many of which may be familiar to you, and wrote stories about them. Below is the beginning of one story, featuring one of my own personal demons, dogs, with whom I have a love-hate-allergic-fear relationship.

Other demons/stories I identified with were "Girlness" and "My Worst Boyfriend" and "The Election" and "Common Scents."

The image above looks a bit washed out on my monitor, and maybe yours, so here's another one where you can see the intense color she uses, a feature which really made the book for me. I would have loved it just for Barry's humor (especially as a highlight for actually serious topics) and self-deprecation and story-telling skills, but the lush gorgeousness of the art was icing on the cake.

Barry has many other books, and as soon as I finish writing this, I'm going to add them all to my wishlist.

The Clarence Principle - Reviewed by Chainletters

2008-06-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

The Clarence Principle by Fehed Said.
Original review here.

Clarence, left behind by Elissa, decides that before he can catch up there is something he must do. He commits suicide.

Clarence wakes in a bathtub. As he gets up pondering the fate of suicides, he finds a message scrawled on the bathroom mirror, “Find me”. Thus begins Clarence’s surreal adventure through the underworld. Clarence passes through the door and encounters the Toll Booth Man. But the Toll Booth Man informs Clarence that he shouldn’t be there, and threatens him with the knowledge that the dead can die again. Clarence, knowing that he must find whomever left him the message, clobbers the Toll Booth Man and runs.

Further down the path he finds a man hanging from a moon. The Man on the Moon has been trying to kill himself again for nearly 250 years, but has been - as of yet - unsuccesful. Because while the dead can die, they don’t know how. Clarence makes a deal with the Man on the Moon; if Clarence can find a way for him to die, the Man will tell him the way out of this land.

Clarence meets a series of unfortunate characters and trials on his quest to find a way to kill the dead. Clarence makes a dear sacrafice, but once he has what could be the answer, the Man on the Moon directs him further down the path. There he meets Blossom and participates in a strange play. Soon enough it becomes obvious to the inhabitants of this world that something has gone wrong. Clarence has begun to tip the fate of those around him, and Death herself must step in to help Clarence find the proper path and who has been leaving him messages.

The Clarence Principle is a strange book covering a dark topic. Yet every encounter along Clarence’s journey proves to be deeply invested with meaning. By the end of the novel the truth of Clarence’s fate and the decisions he make are all too human. Said has developed a truly touching story of discovery and loss. Some of the concepts and feelings conveyed here are quite complex and took a second reading to truly grasp. While The Clarence Principle doesn’t really make an effort to stand out, the amount of time and care put into its creation is abundantly clear.

Superman: Red Son - Reviewed by Chainletters

2008-06-03T13:06:00.000-07:00

Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar.
Original Review here.

This novel takes place in the realm of “what ifs.” What if Superman’s ship had landed 12 hours later? Well, then the All American boy we know and love would become something else. Something raised on a commune in the Ukraine and clad in Communist Red.

As the cold war rages, the Soviets leak news of a new superpower to bring an absolute end to the arms race. That superpower is Superman, and his astonishing abilities leave Americans grovelling in their lead-lined basements. Only Lex Luthor, the genius of Star Labs and husband to star-reporter Louis Lane, is unworried by the threat of Superman. Instead, Luthor finds himself excited by the challenge Superman poses, and begins his scheme to take down the Son of Communism.

In Moscow, Superman finds himself the adopted son of Stalin and a man of the people, spending his time between various disasters and dancing with Wonder Woman. And while Superman does not wish to be involved politically, Stalin’s sudden death throes the USSR into chaos. Something Luthor is more than willing to take advantage of with the unveiling of his Superman-clone. Finding himself in a pinch, Superman takes over the party reins and Stalin’s place as The Man of Iron. And this is how the world begins to change. But a few twists and turns remain, and by the end, you will see Superman in a whole new light.

Millar’s vision of Red Superman offers a cunning parallel to the classic Man of Steel. With appearances by other DC heroes, Red Son offers a compelling alternative that gazes deeply into the motivations of each character. Even with the sides flipped, each character remains essentially the same at the core, providing the reader with an amazing story of love, conflict, and error that is all too human. The art, stark and dark, is reminiscent of a few Batman novels, and provides an interesting mirror of the emotions playing through each scene.

Re-Gifters reviewed by Corinne

2008-06-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

Original review found here

This graphic novel was a quick read. Jen is Korean-American living in South Central L.A. There's two basic story lines - Jen is preparing to be in a national martial arts competition and Jen is in love with a popular boy at school. The story lines are intertwined because said boy is also in the competition and Jen has a seriously hard time finding her "ki" (universal energy, or spirit) because of her infatuation with him.

I didn't like the art as much in this one as I have in other graphic novels - it felt a bit sloppy and slapdash, or maybe it's just not my style. I liked how the idea of re-gifting played into the plot (I won't spoil it) and I did like learning about Korean culture. The ending felt like your typical romantic comedy tie-up-with-a-bow, but it was satisfying none the less. Although it wasn't one of the best I've read, I didn't feel like it was a waste of time either.

I Killed Adolph Hitler by Jason

2008-06-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

Jason's comic Low Moon is currently running in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. If you click the link, you can read the strips that have been published there so far.

I bought I Killed Adolph Hitler for my husband for his birthday, after reading a review of it. He loves graphic novels, and Jason's author description was surreal in a way I thought my husband would apprecite: "Jason was born in Norway in 1965. Suddenly he spoke to a cat. Winter filled the room. They could see the ocean." But what actually happened is that my husband read that and called Jason a wanker. Still, he loved the book, and I enjoyed it, too.

The main character in this graphic novel is a hit man. The back of the book says that in the society in which this story is set, murder-for-hire is legal, but when reading the book myself, I didn't get the sense that it was either legal or illegal. That might just be something I missed, but it doesn't matter either way. The main character is a hit man, and is approached by a scientist who has invented a time machine. The scientist wants him to travel back in time and kill Hitler. Unfortunately, the time machine will only work once every fifty years, so the hit man has to get it right on the first try. Of course, he doesn't. He messes up, which leads to some playful experimentation with the idea of time travel. And that playfulness was what I liked best about this book.

I also like Jason's use of color. He's known for his minimalist drawings, which I enjoy. But what drew my eye most was his heavy use of blues and greens with muted greys and browns, which make his rarer red tones really pop out. I also love the way his characters are different animals, and I spent some time trying to figure out if different animals represent different types of people, as they do in Spiegelman's Maus. But although most of the main characters have dog-like qualities, other animals (birds, bunnies, and my favorite, a cat with a hipster beard reading a paper in the hit man's waiting room) seem random. I admire that; I feel it sends a message that people just look different, and maybe we shouldn't make such a big deal about what their appearances say about them.

Cross-posted in my blog.

The Sandman: Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman

2008-05-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

“If this is your first encounter with the world of the Sandman, it is worth bearing in mind that the Endless are not gods, for when people cease to believe in gods, they cease to exist. But as long as there are people to live and dream and destroy, to desire, to despair, to delight or go mad, to live lives and affect each other, then the Endless will be there, performing their functions. They do not care a jot whether or not you believe in them.”

From the Introduction

Endless Nights is a collection of seven stories, each about one of the Endless, and each illustrated by a different artist: Glenn Fabry, Milo Manara, Miguelanxo Padro, Frank Quitely, P. Craig Russell, Bill Sienkiewicz and Barron Storey. Of the seven stories, only two – Delirium’s and Destruction’s – are set after the events at the end of the Sandman series. But the references to what happened are subtle enough to make the stories spoiler-free for anyone new to the Sandman. And I actually think that this book would be a very good introduction to the series – better than the first volume, Preludes and Nocturnes.
I kind of knew from the start that I would find this book perfect. How could I not? My favourite author, what is probably my favourite of the things he’s created, and wonderful artwork. And yet I avoided it for five years, the reason being that it was comforting to know that there were Sandman stories out there that I hadn’t yet read. That there were some corners of that universe left for me to explore. That it wasn’t over yet. And you know what’s funny? Now that I’ve read the book, I still haven’t lost that feeling. I still don’t feel that it’s over. I think of the world of the Sandman and I get the same old feeling of elation and longing. It feels like those stories exist, and it doesn’t matter if they ever get written or not. I guess that’s what happens with the best of fictional worlds. They gain a life of their own. They become a part of our own personal mythologies.

I think my favourite stories are Dream’s, Death’s and Desire’s, but there wasn’t a single one that I didn’t like. In Dream’s story, “The Heart of a Star”, Lord Morpheus first learns that love and vulnerability cannot be disentangled. “The Heart of a Star” sheds light on the enmity between Dream and Desire, and it also gives us a glimpse of Delight. This story also has my absolute favourite artwork in the book. Miguelanxo Prado did a splendid job, creating soft-coloured and dreamlike imagines that suit the story perfectly.

In “Death in Venice”, we are told of an island whose inhabitants sought to deter the course of time – and thus to stop Death. Desire’s story, “What I’ve Tasted of Desire”, is about the life of a woman whose desire “burned like a forest fire”. “Fifteen Portraits of Despair” is gut-wrenching, especially the fourth portrait, which involves terrible things happening to cats. I read it at my own peril, really. I had been warned back in 2003, when Neil said,

“If it's any consolation (and I'm sure it won't be), the story of the cats is one of those things that really happened; I ran into in a local newspaper, and I couldn't get it out of my head, so I wrote it as fiction, to see if that made it any better, and it didn't really."

I think knowing that it really happened only makes it worse (but then again, I think I'd have known it has happened in reality even if he hadn't said it. I have heard of similar things happening to dogs). This is a story that will haunt me for a very, very long time, and part of me really wants to erase it from my mind. But I don’t regret having read it, because terrible though it is, it’s a very powerful story that conveys despair perfectly. And what would fifteen portraits of Despair be, if not gut-wrenching?

I could go on and on about the other stories on Endless Nights, but I think I’ll stop now. I’ll just add that this book perfectly illustrates the reasons why I love The Sandman so much. These stories are intelligent, powerful, and relevant. It’s what Neil said in the introduction – they are stories about people who dream and desire and destroy and despair and all the rest. They are stories about what it means to be human.

Nightmares and Fairy Tales: Beautiful Beasts - Serena Valentino

2008-05-21T02:55:00.000-07:00

Ragdoll Annabelle is back for another installment of stories tinged with horror and fairy tale elements in the second graphic novel in the series. She is still with Gwen who seems to be the first girl to actually be able to hear her and they spend their nights telling each other stories about her previous female owners. The first is about the first owner Annabelle can remember from the modern world. Paige is a lovely 1920's flapper who keeps seeing a strange man named August. She gets frustrated when other people don't seem to be able to see him and it turns out he is a ghost. They find a way to be together that is perhaps not the most desirable. The second story is a reworking Little Red Riding Hood with Luna trying to stop her father from killing wolves. Her mother sends her to live with her grandmother after a wolf kills her father and she befriends one of the local young men on the way. A mixture of fairy tale and werewolf mythology. The third tale concerns Gwen herself as she makes a new friend at school. She isn't quite what she seems and it takes the fairies help to save Gwen from being trapped forever in a mirror in a haunted house.

Next is a different take on Beauty and the Beast. Belle is in love with Rose, but her father finds out and bannishes Rose chaining his daughter Belle in a room alone. One day he travels from home and meets the Beast, offering Belle's life instead of his own. She goes to live with the Beast and finds much more than she bargained for. The final tale is in two parts about Catherine. She is a nurse to a particularly delusional and poisonous woman Vivianne who is convinced Catherine is having an affair with her husband. She passes on this view to their daughter after her death and Catherine is haunted by the ghost of Vivanne after she does end up marrying her widowed husband. She is taken to the brink of insanity and left alone in an assylum stuck with her visions and nightmares.

Beautifully drawn again, I preferred this one over the first installment. I think the tales were a little bit better crafted and I enjoyed the subjects and personalities more. I look forward to reading more in the series and learning about where Annabelle came from and seeing what else happens to the lovely little Gwen.

Jimmy Corrigan review by Athena

2008-05-19T19:53:00.001-07:00

This is the story of a lonely, awkward man who meets his father for the first time over Thanksgiving weekend. There are also a series of flashbacks to the childhood of Jimmy's grandfather who also had an alienated relationship with his father. While the artwork and the symbolism is well crafted, I am unsure if I actually like this work. I appreciate it, and the last panels of the ending were hopeful, but for much of the novel, I did not feel invested in Jimmy or the story. I can understand why this is such an acclaimed and influential work. It's a sad story that is told well through the well crafted imagery.

The Best American Comics 2006 review by Athena

2008-05-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

Edited by Harvey Pekar, this first edition of The Best American Comics anthology showcases the variety of comics and visual storytelling available today. Many of the stories are very political which is understandable since comics has history of being subversive. Even more off the comics featured are based on autobiographical experiences or nonfictional accounts which seems to me the biggest movement in comics and graphic novels these days. The end of the book includes notes about the contributors and on the pieces in the book by the authors themselves. There are quite a few that did not stand out for me as it often happens in some anthologies, but many were well done, a couple extremely so, and one made me laugh out loud. Pekar wanted it to feature the best of the 2004-2005 time frame and allow old and new readers like to appreciate comics. I don't think this would necessarily be the best introduction to the graphic storytelling medium, but it really does showcase the diversity of styles in the medium. It is short, and I would recommend reading the introductions after the comics themselves.

Nightmares and Fairy Tales: Once Upon a Time... - Serena Valentino

2008-04-26T12:50:00.001-07:00

A collection of six dark comics telling the stories of life seen through the eyes of Annabell, a little rag doll as she changes owners. After witnessing the gruesome demise and violence surrounding her owners, Annabell believes herself to be cursed. Later owners begin to be able to hear her warnings and she discovers she may be able to help the innocent after all.

The first two tales are about Morgan who is dating Dominique who claimes to be a vampire. She stays with a friend when things start to get creepy, but wakes up to find him dead next to her along with his housemate. She is taken to a mental institution when it turns out Dominique is dead and branded insane, all because she refused Dominique's gift of immortality. The third tale shows Dominique in a nunnery giving birth. Her son is taken to his adoptive parents, but has possibly been sacrificed to monsters in the attic. It shows Dominiques origins and the truth behind her earlier claimes. Annabelle then meets Snow in the fourth tale with a look at Snow White before helping Gwen in the fifth tale. Gwen is moving to a new house with her parents that seems haunted. There are monsters in her closet and her neighbour gives her Annabell to protect her. The real monsters aren't in her closet however, and Annabell is able to protect her from her parents until her neighbour rescues her. It seems Gwen is the first to hear Annabelle. The final tale looks at Annabelle's role in Cinderella's life.

This was a beautiful collection. The tales were quite short and simple, but chilling and stuck in the mind afterwards. The illustrations by FSc are beautiful and it is worth reading for those alone. It leans more towards horror than fairy tale and is possibly more suited to female readers as it is always woman who seem to own Annabelle.

The Case of Madeleine Smith by Rick Geary

2008-04-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

True crimes goes graphic with cartoonist Rick Geary’s illustration of the scandalous case of Madeleine Smith, a genteel lady in Victorian Scotland who was accused of killing her lover by poison.

The novel opens on March 23, 1857 when Emile L’Angelier, a young clerk, is experiencing another attack of the illness that has been plaguing him in the last few weeks. By the time a physician shows up, Emile is dead. A post-mortem is conducted and his organs are found to show signs of arsenic poisoning. After finding some disconcerting love letters and a journal the prosecutor issues a warrant for the arrest of Madeleine Smith.

The second part of the novel details the romance between the two. How they met and how they carried on a secret love affair, as Madeleine’s parents didn’t approve of their relationship. But, Madeleine is also being courted by a man her parents do approve of, and severs her relationship with Emile.

Desperate, Emile threatens to send their correspondence to her father and Madeleine has to find a way to put an end to their relationship for good. The rest of the story unfolds with accounts of the trial and what became of Madeleine. It is no wonder this story was the scandal of its day.

I found this to be a captivating story told with a voice that captures the period detail and with beautiful black ink drawings. So did she do it or not? Well, I guess you’ll have to read the book and you be the judge.

Cross-posted at Bookgirl's Nightstand

The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch - Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean

2008-04-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

This is another alternative I am adding to my challenge list as it was really good and I wanted to share it!

The tale follows a grown man as he looks back and remembers his childhood and various family members who are no longer alive. He remembers his grandfather who sold his grocery business and opening an amusement arcade in the town. It has a mermaid (a lady in a costume and wig who sings on a rock), a ghost train, hall of mirrors and a Punch and Judy show. Sadly no one comes to it as it is not on the main pier and even when it is raining the people stay away so sadly it has to close.

It looks at the story of Punch and Judy as well as a couple of characters no longer in the show like Punch's girlfriend. I had forgotten how grim the tale is. Punch starts by throwing the baby out of the window and then beating Judt to death when she shouts at him. He then beats the polieman to death who tries to arrest him, a physician, a crocodile, a hangman (he tricks him into the hangmans noose in his place) and finally the devil himself. At the end Punch is happy as everyone is now free to do what they want with the devil having been killed. The adult narrating the story remembers how he was frigtened of the tale as a child and it is easy to see why.

It is also a look at the innocence and naivety of childhood. There is a secret past concerning his grandfather that he never picked up on as a child as well as an unexplained tale about his uncle. There are various references throughout the story saying that he now thinks differently. It did enjoy this graphic novel with the range of different illustrations by Dave McKean. A dark trip back down memory lane.

Castle Waiting by Linda Medley

2008-03-28T15:44:00.000-07:00

Castle Waiting starts as a retelling of “Sleeping Beauty”, but, unlike the best known versions of the fairy tale, it doesn’t end with the prince and the princess happily going off together. Instead, that is when it truly begins. What happens to the castle that was isolated for a hundred years? What happens to the people who slept alongside the princess?

Let us fast forward. The princess's three ladies-in-waiting are the only original inhabitants of the castle left. The castle has become a safe haven, a refuge for those who seek it. It is a place where misfits can find acceptance, a place women can flee to to escape abusive husbands, a place where single mothers can find companionship and happiness. Its inhabitants now include a stork-headed castle steward named Rackman, the mysterious sister Peace, a horse-headed knight, and demons, brownies, goblins, and ghosts, among others.

Jain, a pregnant lady with a mysterious past, makes for the castle to seek peace and refuge. Slowly, she begins to get to know the castle and its inhabitants, who tell her their stories, as well as the stories that someone in their stories told them, creating a final effect where layers and layers of enthralling tales rest over one another. Sister Peace, a character I initially regarded with suspicion (I think her pet demon is to blame for that), ends up becoming central to the story, and reveals herself to be wise and remarkable in many ways. She tells a fascinating story involving a circus, a lion tamer, lots of puppies, a mill, and an order of bearded nuns.

Linda Medley has created a story full of humour and warmth, peopled with characters you truly care about – peculiar and intriguing, yes, but accepting and wise and kind. Plus, Castle Waiting will delight fairy tale lovers with references to "Puss in Boots" and "Rumplestinskin" and other legends and myths that help create a truly magical atmosphere.

Linda Medley’s art is as good as her storytelling – subtle and incredibly expressive, full of little details like glances and raised eyebrows and trolls hiding under bridges that help pull you into the story and simply do not let go.

Castle Waiting is a charming fairy tale about friendship, genuineness, justice, acceptance, and learning to be happy in whatever way you choose to be. I anxiously await the publication of the second collected volume later this year.

You can take a look at the first issue of Castle Waiting here – but do keep in mind that the art looks even better on paper.

Blankets review by Athena

2008-03-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

Blankets is a graphic novel of first love, growing up, faith and the loss of it. It is nearly 600 pages of black and white graphic storytelling. The style is fairly realistic and very wonderfully drawn at times. Craig Thompson is definitely creative and a talented artist. Something about the simplicity of the drawings were evocative. The graphic novel medium is very well suited to autobiographies and memoirs such as this. It is especially apt when telling of experiences of childhood and other first or crucial memories since they are usually are so vivid and intense. Another example of where childhood inspired stories go well is American Born Chinese.

In an interview, Thompson on the success of the graphic novel: "Probably the things that I was reacting against in the comics medium. I was reacting against all of the over-the-top, explosive action genre—I guess alternative comics have been doing that, for a while. But I also didn’t want to do anything cynical and nihilistic, which is the standard for a lot of alternative comics." I am going to agree about the cynicism that is found in alternative comics. I think it is also the post modernism and existentialism that runs through a lot of art in general these days. Blankets has a bit of that, but I would say it is less nihilistic than David Boring. The ending is open ended and pensive due to its biographical nature, but an excellent graphic novel overall.

Cross posted from Aquatique.

Asterix and the Great Crossing (gautami)

2008-03-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

Title: Asterix and the Great Crossing
Author: Goscinny and Uderzo
ISBN: 0340247142
Publisher: Knight books/1979
Pages: 48
Genre: Graphic Novel

I have been an Asterix fan since very long, I think, from my school days. I have read most of the series although I do not recall much of it. Those were known as comic books and now are renamed as graphic novels.I picked this out randomly from my collection.

As usual this starts in the tiny village of the Gauls. Hygienix, the fish monger is selling bad fishes. Vitalstatistix, the chief of the tribe protests. Then there is a free for all fight. The druid needs fresh fish. So Asterix and his friend, Obelix volunteer to go and then they get lost in the sea. They meet pirates who offer them food.

Their boat is destroyed and with the help of a branch they land up in a village which consists of another tribe, maybe Iberians or Cretans. The people are so taken in by the two that the chief offers his daughter for marriage with Obelix. Therefore, they run away in the dead of night in a leaky Boat! Again they are caught by people who they think, are Romans. Just before they are to be sacrificed, one of the slaves is a Gaul and tells thm about the plan. So they run away, again in boat and are welcomed by their village, minus the fish! Back to their old ways of eating, fighting and merry-making until the next encounter with Romans!

Reading Asterix series is a pleasure. There is satire, wit and humour. The visuals are all very good and the characters are so lovable. Asterix, Obelix and their dog, Dogmatix are inseparable. Not to be missed at any cost. Not only this but any of the series!

Fables: Wolves (vol. 8)

2008-03-26T06:49:00.000-07:00

There's nothing quite like knocking off a whole book in an evening when still recovering from a reading slump. I just can't deal with big novels exclusively right now, so finishing up (my) available Fables graphic novels has been just the ticket. I still have a B&N gift card burning a hole in my pocket, so I suspect I might have to order Sons of Empire (vol. 9) before the day is up.

In Wolves, Mowgli of Jungle Book fame goes looking for the exiled Bigby Wolf. Upon finding him, Bigby must complete a covert mission for the Fabletown higher-ups before returning to his beloved Snow White and their cubs.

This is a long-awaited issue, as those who are currently into the series up to the Storybook Love volume will already know. I'll be cryptic and closed-mouthed, but this volume certainly lived up to expectations with lots of "ooh ahh" moments and just the right amount of mush.

I've already wooed over this series this week, so I'll save you from my usual gushing, but I really do recommend any and all comics fans, fairy tale fans, or adventurous readers unused to either genre to give this series a go. It's so very smart and funny and clever and wondermous.

Ok, so I gushed a little. It really couldn't be helped.

Black Orchid - Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean

2008-03-24T10:45:00.000-07:00

I decided to add this to my list of extra graphic novels read for this challenge as it was so good and I wanted to share it here!

Black Orchid is a plant woman created by Doctor Phil Sylvian who fights crime in Gotham City. On the night she is killed one of the other plant women Sylvian is growing reaches maturity and wakes up not understanding who she is and what she is. She has the tangled memories of Susan Linden who Phil grew up with and was in love with. It is her DNA and RNA that makes up the plant women, but as she is no longer around Black Orchid is still no closer to knowing about herself and her origins.

As more and more people she is close to are killed, she goes on a journey which takes her to Arkham Asylum and Louisiana meeting comic book heros and villians in her quest. All the time is is running from Susan's ex-husband who has just been released from jail who is trying to kill her for Susan leaving him, as well as Lex Luthor who wants to own her and dissect her.

It is beautifully drawn and is possibly the best looking comic book I have ever read. This series of three comics dispels the comic book sterotypes and turns superhero battles upside down. It is so much more than others in it's genre, much more than a superhero comic and is more about a voyage of self discovery. Highly recommended to all comic, superhero and fantasy fans.

Fables, vol. 7 - Arabian Nights (and Days)

2008-03-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

I just finished the seventh volume of Bill Willingham's Fables series, Arabian Nights (and Days). For the uninitiated, the Fables series chronicles the plight of a group of fairy tale, fable, folklore, and nursery rhyme characters from many a varied cultural tradition (although the European tales take center stage). In this installment several Arabian characters--Sinbad, first and foremost--visit the Fabletown complex in New York City to discuss an alliance against the Adversary that's slowly taking over Fable homelands. Alliance building is a tricky business, and as the blurb on the back cover asserts, the Arabian Fables are concealing Weapons of Magical Destruction!

As silly as it might sound in blurb form, this series is one of my favorites for several reasons, two of which are:

-Its ability to wonderfully and cleverly reimagine classic folk and fairy tale characters in extremely unique ways. Willingham pays homage to classic tales from the Grimms, Charles Perrault, et al, and simultaneously reinvents them for a contemporary audience. For more on this, read my Master's thesis, "More Than 'Interesting Dead Things': The Reanimation of the Oral Tradition Through Narrative Subversion and Visual Narrative Performance." It's all about this concurrent truth to tradition and reinvention.

-The whole series is a witty and biting critique of current race relations and political endeavors. Willingham makes reference to Jewish diaspora, contemporary race relations in America, and now, obviously, America's relationship with middle eastern nations and weapons of mass destruction.

It's just all so extremely well done--veiled inside a web of intertextuality and fun. Breathtaking. Just freakin' awesome.

If you haven't yet started reading the Fables series...get on it. You're missing out otherwise.

The Sandman v2: The Doll's House - Neil Gaiman

2008-03-20T08:55:00.001-07:00

Collecting comics 9-16 in The Sandman series. Dream continues to look for what is missing from his realm after recovering his artifacts in the first collection. This time what is missing is four of the major arcana. Brute and Glob he searches for first and finds hiding in the mind and dreams of a child. They have captured a ghost who they have set up as "The Sandman", a superhero who keeps the abused and mistreated child company along with his pregnant wife. The Corinthian is a nightmare with teeth for eyes who is found at a "Cereal" convention. He has inspired many serial killers throughout the world and is there as a guest of honour before Dream captures him. The fourth is Fiddlers Green who is a place and not a person in the land of Dream. He is trying out life in the human world, taking on human form for a time.

Desire of the Endless has a hand in things, trying to manipulate Dream using human girl Rose Walker to further his/her/it's own ends with the help of Despair. Rose has no idea what she and her family are caught up in as the truth is slowly revealed tying in nicely with the first collection. She is a vortex in the dream world and is somehow pulling the major arcana towards her helping Dream and his raven sidekick Matthew track them down by following her.

Gripping and deeply disturbing, it introduces some more of Dreams family and explains more of their role in our realm. They are not supposed to manipulate humans, it is the other way around but some seem to forget this. It will be itneresting to see what Dream does now that his realm seems to finally be in order.

Fashion Kitty versus the Fashion Queenby Charise Mericle Harper

2008-03-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

Published in 2007. 96 pages.

Back in October, my daughter and I read Fashion Kitty for our mother-daughter book club. It was my first experience with graphic novels, and I found Fashion Kitty to be a delightful character and the novel to contain a number of meaningful messages that I hoped would continue in the sequel.

This second in what I hope will be a long-lived series did not disappoint me. Bullying and consequences. Individuality and family. The color pink and correct spelling. All this and more in the adventures of Fashion Kitty!

Cross-posted from my book blog.

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

2008-03-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

How do I even begin to write about this book? I’ve been putting this post off because I really don’t know how to put my experience with Maus into words. It is, quite simply, one of the most powerful books I have ever read. But postponing this post won’t make writing it any easier, so here it goes.

The events retold in Maus take place in Poland between the mid-30’s and 1945. They also take place in New York in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Maus is three things: the story of Art Spiegalman’s father’s, Vladek Spiegelman, survival; the story of a strenuous father and son relationship; and the story of the process of writing a comic book about the Holocaust.

The one thing everyone probably knows about Maus is that the Jews are portrayed as mice, the Nazis as cats, the Polish as pigs, the Americans as dogs, and so on. What you hear less often, though, is that, instead of turning the characters into caricatures, this portrayal increases their humanity, and thus the book’s poignancy. What shines through, past these animal faces, is the fact that people are the same – what we have in common is much greater than our differences, and there are both cruel and sympathetic people in every nationality, every ethnicity, every religion.

As I said before, Maus is as much about the Holocaust as it is about the enduring marks it left on the survivors and their families and about the process of trying to make sense of something this enormous through art. We are shown an adult Art Spiegelman asking his father to tell him the whole story – and this Vladek does. He tells him the story of the War and the pre- and post-War years, from meeting his future wife in the 1930s in Poland, to the increasing discrimination against Jewish people that first took their numerous family to a ghetto and later took the few surviving members to Auschwitz, from where only Vladek and his wife Anja escaped at the end of the war, seeking shelter in Sweden before moving to America.

Maus felt more personal than all the other holocaust stories I have encountered before, and I think the reason was the fact that the format of a father telling this story to a son allowed some complex and conflicting emotions to be expressed. What makes Maus so powerful is how raw, honest and human it is. It goes beyond a story in which the inhuman cruelties that Jewish people had to suffer are described (not that stories that “merely” describe those aren’t very much necessary). It shows what it is to have survived the unimaginable, and also what it is to have something that happened before you were born, something you are not sure you truly understand, be so acutely present in your life.

Art’s relationship with his father is, like I said, strenuous at best. The truth is that the present day Vladek is not a very likeable character. He is mean and demanding to those who surround him, he is obsessed with not spending a single unnecessary scent, and, most shocking of all, he is a racist. When his daughter-in-law asks him how he can be a racist after his whole life was shattered by anti-Semitism, he answers that you cannot even begin to compare a black man and a Jew.

All the questions that the reader struggles with throughout this book are the same questions Art Spiegelman is trying to find answers for. He realises that in many ways his father resembles the stereotype of the “miser old Jew”, and having to portray him as such worries him.

Many of these are, of course, unanswerable questions. To which extent did the overwhelming experience of the Holocaust turn his father into who he is today? What can be traced back to it, and what can’t? What can you expect from someone who went through something as overwhelming as that? What can you demand? And how much can you forgive and tolerate? How do you even begin to make sense of something like this?

Then there is the question of trying to portray this experience in the form of a comic book, and all the doubts, struggles and hesitations Art Spiegelman has to overcome. He considers giving up many times – fortunately for us, he didn’t, and he couldn’t have used a better approach to tell this story.

Art Spiegalman was born in Sweden after the War, and another question he has to struggle with is the extent to which he can understand the Holocaust even though he didn’t experience it himself. And yet its presence in his life is undeniable. His parents are haunted by the memories of those who didn’t survive, especially of their first-born son, Richeu. Richeu was poisoned by his aunt Tosha, who also poisoned herself, her daughter and another child at her guard when she was told that they were all going to be sent to Auschwitz, and there was nowhere else to hide. In 1968, his mother Anja commits suicide and doesn’t leave a note. Was it the experience of the death camps that caused it? Was it her lost son Richeu, her lost family? Was it Vladek? Was it something else? In an attempt to make sense of this, Art Spiegelman draws the mini-comic “Prisoner on Planet Hell”, which is reproduced in its integrity on Maus.

Another question raised in the book is if those who managed to survive, like his father, are to be admired, and if so, whether this means that not having survived is condemnable. And accepting that neither is the case is also accepting that something like the Holocaust is too horrible to have any sort of inner logic. There is no pattern that can be discerned. There is only utter senselessness and random death.

I know that this post is already very long, but I cannot finish without saying that Maus couldn’t be what it is if it wasn’t a comic. The art is an integral part of its power, of its poignancy. There’s the image that I posted above, of Vladek and Art in a classic storytelling pose, resembling a father and a young child, Vladek telling the story while his son takes notes. Then there are important details like the fact that when Vladek tries to pretend that he is not a Jew in Poland, he is shown wearing a pig mask:

And finally there is my favourite image:

This version of it that I found online is slightly different from the one in the book: there Vladek and Anja are shown from behind, walking aimlessly in the night towards the crossroad/swastika, and somehow they look even more vulnerable, even more forlorn, even more lost.

I urge you all to read Maus, even if – especially if – you are not a big fan of comics. I can’t think of a better book to demonstrate their power.

(Originally posted here)

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea - J's Review

2008-03-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, by Guy Delisle is a graphic novel that tells the story of the author's trip to the capital of North Korea in 2001. Delisle is a French cartoonist, and was in Pyonyang working with Korean cartoonists at the time.

Delisle does a wonderful job of capturing the bizarreness of life in a totalitarian country, one that lives almost outside of the world, shut off from the west, and especially its sworn enemy, the United States. He describes a bleak, strangled society where the people live in such poverty that up to 1/3 of the population receive food from foreign aid, the average person works 6 days a week, and on the 7th 'volunteers' to do labor for the betterment of society, such tasks as picking up garbage, painting bridges, watering vast lawns with buckets of water. This is a society best described as cult-like, where the very calendar begins at the time of the glorious leader's (Kim Il Sun, Kim Jong Il's father) conception. (Wiki says the calendar starts with his birth, not conception. Not sure which is correct.)

Delisle's time away from work was spent being chaperoned around the city, as foreigners are not allowed to be in public without translators and guides who ensure they see only what they are meant to see, hear only what they are meant to hear. There is one radio station, no internet, no TV. Voices over loudspeakers blast out propaganda to encourage workers in their daily toil, everyone is required to wear pins of the glorious leader or his son, and small infractions can cause a person to 'disappear '.

I found this book to be very interesting as a glimpse into such a repressed and strange country, but there wasn't much of a story there, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I did Persepolis, which had a much more narrative quality to it. If you're interested in getting a peek into a mysterious country that very few foreigners see, I would recommend this book as an easy primer.

American Born Chinese - J's Review

2008-03-12T10:40:00.001-07:00

Though I finished my Graphic Novels Reading Challenge, I've been sucked in enough by the genre that I decided I would try a few more. From other reviews I've read on the Challenge's blog, I decided to try American Born Chinese. It is a tale of learning to accept oneself, ignoring the disparaging attitudes of those around us. Although American Born Chinese deals with the slings and arrows of racism, I would argue that the themes of acceptance and self-awareness translate well to all of us, and that anyone who has ever felt self-hatred in the face of society and its harsh criticisms can find something to identify with in this story.

The book is told in three tales. First, the ancient story of The Monkey King, who bears a strong resemblance to my personal favorite monkey, Mojo Jojo (minus the huge brain, of course). The monkey king works very hard to gain all of the attributes necessary to become a god, and attend the parties of the other gods. But he is turned away and humiliated, because underneath it all, he is fundamentally a monkey.

The second story is that of Jin Wang, an American Born Chinese boy growing up in the suburbs, attempting to distance himself from his Asian roots. He falls in love with a white girl, and wishes to be part of the popular Caucasian clique in school.

The third story is about Danny and his cousin Chin-Kee. Danny is blonde haired, blue eyed, and for some unknown reason has a Chinese cousin who comes to visit him once a year, humiliating him and making his life miserable by his hyper-stereotypical behavior, until Danny has to change schools, over and over again.

The three stories come together in an unsuspected way, and the lessons learned are lessons that are pretty much universal to the human condition.

One! Hundred! Demons! - Lynda Barry

2008-03-08T15:49:00.000-08:00

Isn’t it great when a book not only entertains you but sparks your interest enough that you seek out more information on the subject? One book that really challenged me to try something new was One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry.

This was my first read for the Graphic Novels challenge and it’s turned out to be one of my favorite books this year already. The book, which she describes as a work of “autofictionalography”, focuses on family life viewed from a young girl’s perspective. Barry was prompted to start the book after she read about an exercise where you draw the demons that haunt you. Using single word notecards, chinese calligraphy brushes and ink she draws out stories on dancing, music, resilience, and other subjects.

Whether the stories are real or not they are haunting. She recreates the world of a childhood filled with hurts, loneliness, and examines her dysfunctional family. Her drawings may be simple yet are able to convey so many emotions that whether or not your own experience is similar to the author’s you can’t help but feel connected. One of the vignettes that moved me the most was the one titled, “Dancing”. After a snide remark about her dancing style she stops dancing, an activity she loved. It’s just a pointed reminder of the consequences words can have.

This was a visually exciting book which could be easily read in one sitting but why rush. You want to drink in the words and then let your eyes wander over all the colorful lines, squiggles, faces, etc. There is just so much to see that you’ll have to come back to it over and over. I know I will have to add this book to my personal library.

Cross-posted at Bookgirl's Nightstand

Victorian Murders

2008-02-29T02:30:00.000-08:00

Rick Geary created a series of books in which he explores murders and crimes that took place during the last half of the 19th century. Two of those books are The Borden Tragedy, which is a look at the famous Lizzie Borden case, and The Case Of Madeleine Smith, about a woman in Scotland who may or may not have poisoned her lover in 1857. Both books are rich in detail, and Geary provides a bibliography for those who want to learn more about these cases. The Borden book stands out because of its marvelously meticulous detailing of the layout of the Borden house where Lizzie's father and stepmother were murdered in the summer of 1892. Others in this series include The Murder Of Abraham Lincoln and The Beast Of Chicago, which is about the serial killer who terrorized Chicago during the World's Fair in 1893. Dark but entertaining reading.

Persepolis - Satrapi

2008-02-25T04:42:00.001-08:00

I really enjoyed this one. I was a bit hesitant because of the black and white drawings, but in the end that was the best way to tell this story of a young girl during the Islamic Revolution in 1979. It was a good story, I think it showed the confusion of the times, the pride, the relief, trying to understand what is going on. Marjane is an intelligent, stubborn, courageous girl learning about the past and trying to figure out a future. I loved her questioning, and laughed at her wanting a Michael Jackson button, and felt for her at the end when she’s being sent to Austria. I’m glad I read this one.

I'm so glad I joined this challenge, I read some great stuff, and it's opened up a whole new world for me, I'll be reading graphic novels long after the challenge is over.

The Sandman v1: Preludes & Nocturnes - Neil Gaiman

2008-02-22T11:37:00.000-08:00

A collection of the first eight comics in the series; Sleep of the Just, Imperfect Hosts, Dream a Little Dream of Me, A Hope in Hell, Passengers, 24 Hours, Sounds and Fury and The Sound of Her Wings. It begins with Morpheus the Lord of Dreams and King of Stories being trapped by a group of humans trying to capture Death. In the human world people start to suffer from a sleeping sickness while he is away only waking briefly throughout his capture which lasts a human lifetime. He is finally able to free himself and has to track down his sacred objects which contain parts of himself to regain his power. These are a pouch of sand held by a human, a mask an unknown demon has and a ruby last seen in the possession of one of the Justice League.

Along the way he meets a range of comic book heros and villians including John Constantine, John Dee, Doctor Crane (The Scarecrow), Scott Free, Cain and Abel from The Bible and the Morning Star Lucifer among others. He also spends a chapter meeting up with his sister, a perky goth girl who just happens to be Death. I enjyoed the mythological references and how Morpheus gains his freedom from Hell. Lucifer has his army arrayed and tells Morpheus he has no power in Hell. The response is "What power would Hell have is those imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?", very powerful stuff.

A good introduction to the series. Lots of horror in 24 Hours and you can really start to hear Gaiman's unique voice coming through in The Sound of Her Wings. I loved the artwork, some of the attention to detail is amazing. I am looking forward to reading the second collection in the series.

Beowulf - J's Review

2008-02-12T16:12:00.000-08:00

I intended to read a different version of this graphic novel, but neither my local comic book store nor my local library had it in stock, so I went along with what they had, paying careful attention to NOT get the version based on the recent film, but instead, this version based on the historic novel.

If you somehow escaped High School English without reading Beowulf, I'll get you up to speed. Beowulf is the longest surviving Anglo-Saxon poem in existence, and what a poem it is. It tells of events, both real and imagined, dated to the time of Scandinavian King Hygelac, around 450 - 600 AD. The poem itself is about 1000 years old, and current theories believe that the most recent of the ancient scribes was Christian, and probably added the more Christian aspects of the tale, such as Grendel being from the line of Cain. Beowulf has been an incredibly influential tale throughout the years, most notably influencing the 'middle earth' of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Beowulf is the story of a brave warrior, Beowulf, who is called upon to fight a monster, which has been terrorizing a small kingdom and relegating its inhabitants to a life of fear. He conquers the monster, Grendel, with his bare hands, proving his strength and cunning. He then goes on to vanquish Grendel's mother, who bears no resemblance at all to Angelina Jolie, other than her oddly large breasts and small waist (hey, this is still a genre born from comic books). Beowulf's adventures continue from there, ending with him becoming a warrior king in his own right, and eventually, his passing.

I can't say I loved this book. It was pretty much a straightforward telling of a classic tale, and I think it did a fine job at it, but thus far, I have found the more contemporary graphic novels to be much more compelling. I'll recommend it, but not with an imperative to get out and buy it now, but more of a, yeah, if you're in the mood, go for it.

V for Vendetta review by Athena

2008-02-11T07:11:00.000-08:00

Before reading this graphic novel, I had read Alan Moore's other acclaimed work Watchmen. I enjoyed it, but I'm inclined to think right now V for Vendetta has some even better writing. Moore is a brilliant author who imbues poetic prose and engrossing narrative in graphic works. His characters are fascinating if not compelling. When I was reading this, I was afraid the darkness of dystopia would bring my mood down, but there were a couple of wonderful moments of beauty in this. Moore and co-author David Lodge weave a novel about society, politics, integrity, love, revenge, anarchy, fascism, security, and freedom. V is an intriguing character; a mad genius whose actions I do not necessarily condone, but whose arc makes this novel: "It's everything, Evey. The perfect entrance, the grand illusion. It's everything." While the novel has extremities, there is a moral grey side to it. The work does probe at the human capacity for indifference and to be controlled. A great graphic novel.

I watched the film adaptation more than a year ago. I liked it, and I understand that while Moore does not, Lodge does. I consider them different entities as a result of the changes. While they are not completely divergent, they are notable changes to the ending and fates of characters. The graphic novel is understandably more involved and includes more characters and stories. I highly recommend reading the book, and then watching the movie.

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

2008-02-08T17:16:00.000-08:00

Published in 2006. 233 pages.
2007 Printz Award Winner.

With its themes of race, identity, and self-acceptance, this graphic novel (only the second I've ever read) was a great follow-up read to the novel Nothing but the Truth (and a Few White Lies). Three separate stories that come together in the end, this is a quick read. I started it on Tuesday while sitting in the high school parking lot waiting for my daughter and finished it last night while eating an egg roll and a fortune cookie. The more I think about the book, the more I like it. Author Gene Luen Yang's discussion of the origins of the book (here) brought me nearly to tears. I think this is a book that everyone ought to read!

Cross-posted from my book blog.

Ex Machina:First Hundred Days (5)

2008-02-07T15:43:00.000-08:00

This graphic novel by Brian Vaughan was interesting but lacking. The character can “talk” to all kinds of machines telling them what to do, a talent he gets after being involved in a mysterious accident, he becomes a superhero, The Great Machine, he’s not loved by everyone though, some, police especially consider him a nuisance. He gives up life as a superhero to go into politics, he thinks he can really help people this way, he becomes mayor of New York. He tries hard not to use his powers even though some odd murders and a controversial art exhibit is taking up his time. This was definitely a beginning story, how he gets his powers and what he did and what he became, but it seemed a bit simple and I’m not sure where it will go. It was interesting enough to try the next one at some point but I’m not running to look for it, I’ll stick with Promethea and Sandman.

Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes - Gaiman (4)

2008-02-05T14:05:00.000-08:00

I’ve heard lots about Neil Gaiman, but have just never tried reading him before and I’ve been missing out! I’m not quite as in love with this as I was with Promethea, but I did enjoy this enough and have the next 2 volumes requested at the library.

What to say? Morpheus is the main character, but he’s been held prisoner for almost a century, and now that he is free he must find his power tools, so most of this volume is his attempt at successfully retrieving the sand, the mask and the ruby. Meanwhile, when he was prisoner some people fell asleep never to wake up. Once he was free things started going back to normal, almost. Then the creepy guy, Dr. Destiny, who had the ruby is using it’s power to keep people awake and things all over the world get really weird, people can’t sleep and all their dreams and nightmares are coming true. Morpheus and Dr. D battle, and then what is Morpheus to do with his life? He got some advice from his sister, Death, and some of the demons from Hell are not happy with him. Now I must continue to find out what happens to Morpheus next, I liked him and the idea of the dream world and it’s power over reality.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns review by Athena

2008-02-04T06:21:00.000-08:00

My regard for comics is positive for the most part, but I would not venture to say I am an avid fan. Part of is the lack of continuity, and the revisionist and changing nature of characters and stories. I do like a lot of superhero characters and am familiar with most major comic book heroes due to my exposure of the 1990s cartoons. Case in point, I loved Batman: The Animated Series when it first came out in 1992 (ended 1995), and it has remained my favourite version of the Dark Knight. Few animated shows have been that well done or engaging. Kevin Conroy's Batman will always be my personal Batman. The writing on the show was stellar; it is the reason that I find Batman the most fascinating of superhero characters. He is definitely my favourite from the DC JL gang. The animated series was inspired by the Tim Burton movies which was inspired by this Batman serial written by Frank Miller in 1986.

One of the reasons Batman is fascinating and unique (at least in the DC universe) is his darkness, his humanity, and his lack of superhero powers. He's a very flawed man with a lot of personal demons. This serial was influential in marking that return to the noir Batman. It's very well written and illustrated. The plot was fine, but I do not recommend it to people who do not know the character. I did not agree with all of Miller's takes to the Batverse, but I liked that he created a female Robin. There is some commentary within the panels about the media, public security, civil liberties, obsessions, vengenace, and the grey area of vigilantism. It's non-canon and there is a sequel, but I do not think I'll read it. Most of it is that I am too attached to the Batman I know from TAS, and I can't warm to Miller's Dark Knight. Maybe I just don't like Batman when he is old because I was not able to watch Batman Beyond either. (cross posted from aquatique.net)

Jimmy Corrigan, or, The Smartest Boy on Earth - J's review

2008-01-31T06:46:00.000-08:00

My latest graphic novel was Jimmy Corrigan, or, The Smartest Boy on Earth, by Chris Ware. Initially I wasn't sure if I was going to like this book, because the illustrations are quite busy, the writing tiny and sometimes hard to read, and it looked like it might be more kid oriented than the other books I had read thus far. Boy, was I wrong. I mean, the pages ARE quite busy (see above), and the writing was sometimes difficult to read (especially when italicized), but the story itself was sad and amazing. Jimmy Corrigan is approaching middle age, and has never met his father. His life is dominated by his mother, and he both needs her and wishes she would leave him the hell alone. And the rest of the time, he is alone. He lusts in a schoolboy way over a waitress in a local coffee shop, but is too shy to talk to her. He doesn't even notice the woman who worked on the other side of his cubicle wall for 6 months. He is the epitome of emotional isolation.

The book tells the story of his meeting with his father, which is mostly a dud. His dad is a bombastic blow hard, who tells inappropriate stories and gets excessively angry with a waitress who messes up his order...and Jimmy is passive enough to go fix the order with the waitress, but then ends up paying for the fixed burger, when it was the waitresses fault to begin with. The story weaves between the past, the distant past (the tragic story of Jimmy's grandfather's youth with an abusive father), and fantasies of being a superhero, a robot, anything.

Jimmy's coping mechanisms are heart-breaking, but his grandpa's story was the one that made me cringe inside. There's a scene where he goes to an immigrant friend's house with a group of kids, to make figurines out of clay or something, and the grandpa (also named Jimmy) waits and waits for the friend's father to irrationally lose his temper, to curse and yell and explode in his anger. When that doesn't happen, when the man shows actual warmth toward the kids, and praises Jimmy's horse figurine, Jimmy attaches himself to the man, and starts to fantasize about staying there forever. Of course, his father comes and drags him home, with him crying the whole time. Ugh.

Not an easy read on the eyes or the heart, but a touching and brilliant peek into the inner workings of an emotionally stunted character. Highly recommended, again. I might have to give a few more graphic novels a shot, I'm thinking.

The Tale of One Bad Rat - J's Review

2008-01-29T06:20:00.000-08:00

The Tale of One Bad Rat, by Bryan Talbot, is a pretty amazing accomplishment. Mr. Talbot started out with the goal of writing a graphic novel that took place, at least partially, in the Lake District of England, home of Beatrix Potter and the characters of her children's books. From that beginning, he took the image of a young homeless girl being harassed by a bearded 'Jesus Freak', (his words) in the Tube, and constructed a tale around her. For the girl to be homeless, Mr. Talbot decides that she needs a reason to have left home. So his character is the victim of sexual abuse by her father, and neglect and uncaring by her mother. Left to many authors, this story might have been heavy handed, but Mr. Talbot clearly put a lot of time and work into researching the mental effects of incest upon children, and he brings his young protagonist on a touching journey from the streets of London to the English Countryside, where she seeks solace in the familiar surroundings of her favorite childhood books, those of Beatrix Potter.

Helen Potter, the young heroine of the story, suffered incest at the hands of her father, but like many victims, she blames herself. She feels herself to be 'one bad rat', someone deserving of her father's abuse and her mother's disdain.

The first part of the book tells of Helen's experiences in London, both good and bad. The book opens with Helen in the Tube, fantasizing about killing herself. We also meet her only friend, a little rat named 'Ratface'. Ratface is with her throughout the book, sometimes in reality, sometimes in her imagination, but he is her constant companion, and her conversations with him provide a peek into her inner dialog. She is befriended by some thieves, who rescue her from the creepy clutches of a man on the street (who they then rob). She stays in an abandoned house with the thieves for a month or so, but things there go wrong, and she moves on, deciding to find her way out into the country, to the home of Beatrix Potter.

The story of her abuse is seen in flashbacks, which aren't gruesome, but are guaranteed to make your heart ache for Helen. When she finally arrives in the Lake District, she is taken in by some friendly innkeepers, and through their acceptance and the peace of the area, she is able to finally understand that she did nothing to deserve the treatment she received, and she is able to confront her father. The freedom she feels after confronting him is a beautiful thing, and she is finally able to move on in her life.

I really loved this book...I checked it out from the library, and I may decide that I need to own a copy. The author took such a difficult, heartbreaking subject, and with his beautiful drawings and sensitive touch, made it a story of redemption and the power of believing in ones self. Highly recommended.

Persepolis - J's review

2008-01-28T06:39:00.000-08:00

Persepolis is a story told in two graphic novels, The Story of a Childhood, and The Story of a Return. It is also the name of an award winning animated film based on these graphic novels. The stories are the autobiography of Marjane Satrapi, a woman born in Iran in 1969, and they follow her through his overthrow, and give voice to the crushed hopes of the Iranian populace when things go from bad to worse under the fundamentalist rule of the Ayatollah.

Marji's family is very progressive and open minded, and they encourage her to be a free thinker, to read and understand the events going on around her. They participate in demonstrations against the Shah, and then in demonstrations against the Ayatollah, wanting desperately to bring Persia back to the cultural haven it once was. Watching the news today, of course, you wouldn't know that modern Iran was once a bastion for intellectuals and free thinkers, for artists and authors and architects. We only see little snippets of life in Iran, and that is of the extreme fundamentalist regime currently in power. The impression is that all of the free-thinkers left Iran during the revolution, to escape the Ayatollah and his rigid and intolerant policies. Reading books like Persepolis, or Reading Lolita in Tehran, one sees the cultural underground that is still very much alive and well in Iran.

But I digress. Back to Persepolis. The first book tells the story of her childhood in Tehran, of the oppression felt by the Iranians under their government, of the relatives and friends who suffered torture and death for their beliefs. If you don't know much of the history of Tehran, it is a fairly simple account of events, yet it packs an emotional punch. At the end of the story, Marji's parents decide to send her to Austria, where she will not be punished for her outspoken ways, where her spirit will not be suppressed by the crushing regulations imposed on citizens, most extremely upon women and girls. The last page of the novel is heartbreaking, Marji at the airport, watching in horror as her parents leave, her mother in her father's arms, because she has fainted in grief and fear for her daughter.

The second novel tells of her time in Austria, as well as her return to Tehran. There, she feels like an outsider, like an immigrant who will never fit in. She finds a group of anarchists to hang out with, maintains her ability to get in trouble, and never stops missing her family and her homeland. After a few months living on the streets, she returns home to Iran, where the crushing oppression of the regime, and her inability to cope with it, send her into a depression. Eventually she overcomes her depression, goes back to school, finds love, and finally, herself. The final page of the novel mirrors the first, with her again leaving her family behind, this time as an adult, leaving for Paris, where she hopes to write and draw for a living.

The stories are so well told, I was engrossed from the first page. Marji is the kind of kid we would all want, though she doesn't recognize that in herself. Her parents see a curious mind, a keen sense of humor, and an indefatigable spirit. She sees a slacker who spends weeks at a time stoned and checked out of society. Even if they had known of her drug use in Austria, however, I suspect that they would have not thought her any less the perfect child...they would see this as a mistake, and mistakes are how we learn. And learn she does, painful lesson by painful lesson.

It's hard not to like a kid who remembers how to defend herself. Though her parents sent her to live with a friend, that friend promptly left her off at a Catholic school, to be taught by nuns. When left behind at school during the holidays, when all of her schoolmates are free to go home to their families, and she is left behind with the nuns. She comes down to the TV room with a pot of pasta to eat (she was too hungry for one serving, so brought more so she could enjoy it while watching TV), and is reprimanded by one of the Sisters for her gluttony. The nun says, "It's true what they say about Iranians, they have no education." Marji, her blood boiling, retorts, "It's true what they say about you, too. You were all prostitutes before becoming nuns!" Go, Marji.

I really liked these novels. Give them a try, or, perhaps the movie, which looks to be fairly similar, though the white subtitles on a white background make me wish I spoke French.

Promethea - Alan Moore (3)

2008-01-27T08:37:00.000-08:00

I can say I absolutely loved Promethea by Alan Moore. Promethea is a cool heroine. She’s also of the imagination so she can’t be killed! (at least that’s the scuttlebutt so far) Promethea was originally from 411 A.D Egypt, her father a Hermetic Scholar who is killed by Christians, she escapes and is taken by the gods into the Immateria. Over the years, different women with enough imagination and enthusiasm for her have written about her in newspaper comics or pulp novels, and bring her forth from the Immateria, and the two merge to create superheroine. It’s happening again in 1999 with a college student Sophie who was writing a paper on Promethea. Again there are evil forces after her to kill her, because those with power in the physical world, and little imagination fear that Promethea will destroy the world and their power. But ideas and imagination are not easy to kill. But Sophie is new to this and has much to learn about the Immateria and her history (her different incarnations) and she has to learn it and stay alive. I am absolutely in love with Promethea.

Pyongyang: A Journey In North Korea - Guy Delisle

2008-01-26T04:07:00.000-08:00

Guy Delisle, the author of this brilliant graphic novel, describes the capital city of North Korea as "A phantom city in a hermit country." He spent two months there on a work visa supervising the editing of a children's cartoon, and also made sketches of things in Pyongyang that he found hilarious, depressing or just plain jaw-droppingly bizarre.

If you really enjoy graphic novels, this one is not to be missed. My whole review is over at Naked Without Books!

I Killed Adolf Hitler, by J

2008-01-23T04:16:00.000-08:00

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*click picture to enlarge
I Killed Adolf Hitler, by Jason, is my first book for the Graphic Novels Challenge (links to my list on my blog). I've never tried graphic novels before, and haven't been a huge fan of comic books since my days of Betty and Veronica, with the exception of the Buffy, Season 8 comics, which is more about needing more Buffy, less about the genre. So here I find myself treading into a new medium, where an entire book can be read during lunch, and more is said in pictures than in words. The example I chose for a graphic, I suppose, isn't a good one to show this, since most of the frames contain words, but there are pages in the book that don't contain any. Pages where the deadpan expressions of the characters say more than pages of words could say.

In I Killed Adolf Hitler we find a world where hiring someone to kill your neighbor because they play their music too loud is perfectly legal. Where there doesn't seem to be much joy. The protagonist is sent back in time by a scientist to, you guessed it, kill Adolf Hitler before he comes to power, thus preventing the rise of World War II, and making the world a better place. He goes back, shoots Adolf, but then things go awry. I won't ruin it for you by telling you more, but I'll tease you by saying that there's a kinda sweet little love story in there about the protagonist and his girlfriend, and what they find out about themselves and each other in the process of trying to correct history.

J's Challenge

2008-01-22T11:00:00.000-08:00

My blog is Thinking About..., and I go by 'J'. I'm here to confess that I've never read a graphic novel, and haven't had much interest in them. But there's a film out right now, Persepolis, which the review in our newspaper said is so much like the graphic novel, you get pretty much the same experience by reading the book that you do watching the film. That kind of intruigued, me, and then I saw this challenge on Dewey's blog, so I decided to give it a shot. I'll try to see what this genre is about, and if I can get into it, and I'll read 6 graphic novels in 2008. Here are my choices, not particularly in any order:

I Killed Adolf Hitler, by Jason
A contract killer goes back in time to kill Hitler...and fails spectacularly. Recommended by Dewey herself.

Jimmy Corrigan: Or, the Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware
Ware's book is a semi-autobiographical account of his first contact with the father who abandoned his family. I get the feeling it didn't go very well.

Beowulf, by Gareth Hinds
I read Beowulf in High School, and talk about your epic tales! This is not like the recent movie version, I hope, but I'll let you know after I finish.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, by Marjane Satrapi
This is the story that sucked me into this challenge, so you know I'm looking forward to reading this one. :)

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return, by Marjane Satrapi
This is the continuation of Persepolis. The two stories together are about a young Iranian girl, whose family decides to stay in Iran after the revolution, but as she is not the kind of quiet, unassuming girl that can assimilate easily into society under the new regime, they decide to send her away to Europe for her own safety. The Story of a Return, I can only assume, is about her experiences when she is grown, and returns to Iran.

The Tale of One Bad Rat, by Bryan Talbot
This one is another that I found on Dewey's site, and it looks really interesting. It's the story of a girl, Helen, who is a runaway, and I think the victim of sexual abuse. The drawings are in the tradition of Beatrix Potter, and the character is named Helen Potter. I don't want to read more about it until I actually read it, so you'll have to wait and see what I have to say.

DMZ: On the Ground - Brian Wood(2)

2008-01-21T17:48:00.000-08:00

DMZ, formally known as Manhattan, is the setting for this graphic novel about an American civil war, between the United States of America (barely holding on to the eastern part of the country) and the Free States of America (who control most of the country). Matty Roth, an aspiring photojournalist is stranded in this DMZ with only partial knowledge of what's really been going on. The news in the USA is that the DMZ is full of insurgents but he's been learning that many civilians have been abandoned here and are surviving by whatever means necessary. He's learning how to survive here, who to trust, and what are the "real stories". He continues to report for Liberty News, the "official news" of the United States of America, but as time goes on he realizes that what is going on is different from what had been reported.

The story is continued in DMZ: Body of a Journalist and DMZ: Public Works, of which I read all three because the story was engrossing and deals with issues taken from today's news stories. The second focuses on how far the military and the powers that be would go to create a situation for military invasion. Matty learns that all is not as it seems and trying to do the right thing sometimes leads to following a different path and that truth is more important than family. The third volume deals with reconstruction firms, private security forces, terrorist cells and who can you believe?

I was pulled into the story and had to read all three volumes, the graphics were colorful, and depicted a war torn New York that was quite depressing to see. The characters were varied and interesting and I'm very curious as to how the story is going to end.

A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography Of Emma Goldman - Sharon Rudahl

2008-01-19T23:27:00.000-08:00

Emma Goldman (1869-1940) lived a long life, and every bit of it was dramatic stuff. She immigrated to America from Lithuania when she was a teenager. While still in the old country, she had read What Is To Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky, a novel about an affluent husband and wife who decide to sacrifice everything and dedicate themselves entirely to the revolution. This novel remained an inspiration to her for the rest of her life.

Shortly after her arrival in America, the Haymarket Riot attracted Goldman to anarchism, and she never looked back. A gifted public speaker who first gave speeches in Yiddish and German, then English, (after perfecting her language skills during a stint in prison), Emma Goldman was still traveling the country and speaking out against government corruption and war and for birth control in the final year of her life.

Since Goldman was possessed of a seemingly boundless energy and never shied from controversy, even though jail and death threats were common, this superwoman seems like an excellent choice for a graphic biography. Author Sharon Rudahl did both the text and the art. The art is terrific, but there's so much to explain since Goldman's life was all about history in the making that the text is a little overwhelming. Rudahl has a neat way of capsulizing history at times -- in one panel, she has newly elected President Theodore Roosevelt holding a copy Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and saying "Let's hurry up with those reforms, boys! I don't want to find a finger in my meat!"

At other times, it seems clear that even Rudahl is overwhelmed with too much text, because she has speech bubbles and commentary going all the way around the panel. This was confusing. I would keep reading, then shortly, in a lower panel, would read something that seemed out of context, but familiar, belonging to the above panel. This repeatedly broke my reading concentration, but I can't really fault Rudahl -- Emma Goldman was continually fascinating and it would be wrenching to have to make editorial decisions about the narrative.

Emma Goldman was married briefly, but she didn't care for the institution and was a proponent of "Free Love" all her life. A Dangerous Woman features three or four panels in which a naked Goldman is holding her lover at the time in a sexual embrace, so this is not a graphic biography for young readers.

In spite of the text-graphics balance problems, A Dangerous Woman is a well-done study of an immensely interesting American anarchist and radical.

The Jew of New York, by Ben Katchor

2008-01-18T07:59:00.000-08:00

A review in two parts....

Tuesday I left my copy of Great Expectations in my office, and I had absolutely no intention of going to work on Wednesday when a) I didn't have to b) it's a 40-minute drive there and back and gas prices are stupidly high. So, I just had to make arrangements for a short, temporary book to read in the between time.

I picked up Ben Katchor's much-praised graphic novel, The Jew of New York, which I chose for this challenge after hearing about it in a multi-ethnic literature survey course I guest-lectured in a year or two ago. It's a short book, only 94 pages, and given my usual speed at reading graphic novels, I expected to finish it over the course of Wednesday afternoon and evening.

Not so much.

This graphic novel drags like no other I've ever read. Seriously, I'm amazed at how much I dislike it. Especially since Katchor, a cartoonist for the New York Times, The New Yorker, Metropolis Magazine, etc. is highly praised in every comics forum I've ever run across. The Comics Journal, various reputable 'zines, my grad school professor who works in Jewish lit and multi-ethnic studies ALL praise him like he's the high priest of innovative comics. He's a talented guy...apparently.

I am, in fact, woman enough to admit that maybe...likely...I just don't get it. Stacked on top of that, is my admission that I generally don't really care for absurdist literary works, and Katchor's work is highly absurd. Some of the characters include a disgraced kosher slaughterer, an importer of religious articles, a man with plans to carbonate Lake Erie, and an anonymous man in a rubber suit. At first glance, this sounds like something I would enjoy. I enjoy weird characters, but not when they just wander around, wear bed sheets, sleep on lawns and skin beavers (hmmm, maybe I should spend more time examining the sexual implications).

The Jew of New York is essentially a series of character sketches, disjointed threads, that supposedly all come together in the end. How do I know? I consulted Google. I was so thrown by how much I dislike this book and don't get its "greatness" that I went a'Googling for nuggets to keep me going.

Until further notice, I'm going to assume that this book will come together in some thoughtful, meaningful, genius way that makes me admire it. But for now, I'm just sort of dazed.

Stay tuned...

Addendum:

I finished it. I sort of get what Katchor was going for. It's all very weird and ironic and tongue-in-cheek, and it was just painful to read. Additionally, I didn't find it a terribly well constructed example of graphic narrative. The text practically overtakes the images, the images generally don't help propel the narrative, and it was tiresome and frustrating for those very reasons.

Rating: 4/10 - Ugg.

Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

2008-01-10T15:47:00.000-08:00

A graphic novel that serves as the autobiography of author Marjane Saptrapi. I read the complete edition which contains "The story of a childhood" and "The story of a return". Marjane Satrapi was born in 1969 in Iran during the Shah's reign. During her lifetime she has witnessed first hand the takeovwe by the Revolution, the war between Iran and Iraq and the compulsary wearing of the veil by all woman in Iran. Her parents were very liberal and she grew up with an immense curiosity and drive to speak her mind which often got her into trouble in such a strict society. At the age of 14 her parents send her alone to Austria where she goes to school but doesn't fit in. She associates with punks and nihilists where she experiments with drugs and has her first relationship which sadly doesn't end well. After spending some time living on the streets and nearly dying she decides to return home, but starts to suffer from depression when she is back. In Iran she feels like a Westener and in the Western world she feels like an Iranian so struggles to find her place.

This was an excellent novel beautifully illustrated and told with warmth and humour despite the often tragic subjects. I am not really one for politics and don't know more than the basics, but this has given me a thorough grounding in Iranian culture and the wars going on in and near by Iran. The Western view of Iran is of oppression, particularly of woman, and it was lovely to see that behind closed doors there are parties, make-up, relationships (both straight and gay) and everything pretty much the same as over here. The only difference is if caught the penalty can range from interrogation to whipping to death.

If you don't read graphic novels, I urge you not to be put off reading this as you will miss a great story and a great piece work of politics too.

The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones - Alan Moore (writer) and Ian Gibson (artist)

2008-01-07T01:50:00.000-08:00

This isn't one of my official picks for this challenge, but as I read it and it is a graphic novel I thought I would cross post my review of it here if that's ok.

Halo Jones is an ordinary girl living in The Hoop. The Hoop is where the poor are put so that anyone with money doesn't have to look at them. It is no solution to poverty and unemployment, it is just a place to be. Nothing is really known of Halo's parents and it is assumed she was born on The Hoop and that they died when she was very young. She lives in the house of Brinna (considered to be a wealthy woman), Ludy a musician, Rodice another girl similar to her and Toby an animatronic dog who belongs to Brinna. Halo has always dreamt of leaving The Hoop and when Ludy becomes one of the Drummers and Brinna is murdered she siezes her chance to board a space ship as a hostess and travel to other planets.

She has became something of a legend in the future. She was supposed to be a war criminal who aided in the slaughter of millions and that she met many of the famous people of her time. The reality is somewhat different, she was more in the wrong place at the wrong time (or the right place depending on your viewpoint). Her real story sees her losing many of her friends and fighting in a strange war at super slow speed due to a different gravity on the planet Moab.

I really enjoyed this graphic novel. The heroine Halo was most interesting as she was so ordinary. She "could have been anyone" (her most famous quote). It had many elements of more male based comics like spaceships, guns, war etc, but she was strong in her own right and didn't succumb to many of the female stereotypes like taking her clothes off and fainting a lot which was something Moore and Gibson felt important. The ending saw some earlier storylines tied up nicely and there may even someday be a fourth book (this collection is made up of the three books previsuly published) to continue her story which I would definitely read. I also liked that dolphins ended up taking over the earth, being more intelligent and sensitive, very Douglas Adams.

A Contract with God by Will Eisner

2008-01-05T16:12:00.000-08:00

“A Contract with God” is a collection of four short stories, all set in tenement at 55 Dropsie Avenue, The Bronx, New York, somewhere in the 1930's. According to Will Eisner, the stories are semi-autobiographical - they were based on his memories of growing up in New York city at around that time, among other immigrants, many of which of Jewish origins. The stories are based both on his experiences and on those of the people who surrounded him. In the preface to this edition, he says, Call me, if you will, a graphic witness reporting on life, death, heartbreak, and the never-ending struggle to prevail...or at least to survive.

These themes are indeed present in all four stories. In the first one, which gives the novel its title, a man, heartbroken over the death of his 16-year-old daughter, feels betrayed by his God. He believes that he had a contract with God, and that God did not honour the terms of the contract. Therefore, he decides that he is going to break the contract as well, and cheats his way into a rich and luxurious life. Things take a turn, however, when the man decides to make a new contract with God.

"Cookalein" is about a summer at a Jewish country getaway, where some of the tenement's inhabitants spend their holidays. It is a story about social ambition, love, passion, and betrayal. Like in the other stories in this collection, there is quite a bit of irony in the way things turn out.

"The Street Singer" is about a poor street singer just misses his chance of becoming successful… or does he? The singer will never know, nor will the reader. A perfect illustration of life’s much too common “what ifs”.

Finally, "The super" is about – you guessed it - a super who suffers the consequences of his just for young girls.

Like I said, I really liked the way all these stories perfectly illustrated how ironic life can sometimes be. The stories are full of disappointment and heartbreak, but also of hope and joy – they tell us how harsh defeat can be, but they also celebrate life’s little triumphs.

It was only some four years or so ago that I began to read comics and graphic novels more or less regularly. And because I am so used to reading text only books, I really have to push myself to give the artwork the attention it deserves. It goes without saying that, unlike in an illustrated novel, in a graphic novel the art is not just a companion to the text. It’s a fundamental storytelling tool that says as much – and often much more – as the words. All this to say that I am in awe of Will Eisner’s art. His drawings often say much more than words ever could. He is especially masterful when it comes to the character’s expressions – they can be powerful and subtle, intriguing and deeply emotional. Whenever I read one of Will Eisner’s comics, I always make sure that I go slowly enough to truly take in everything that is on the page, and read the bits of the story that are not written down.

David Boring review by Athena

2008-01-04T09:10:00.000-08:00

A graphic novel about the eponymous character looking for love at what might be the end of the world. My first exposure to Daniel Clowes's work, and even though I may not love this graphic novel, it was definitely interesting and I look forward to reading Ghost World (I liked the movie). DB is modern, has subtle characterizations, but the minute details and the style of the illustrations really draws you in. It's alienation and the search for love in the 21st century with a large dose of black humor involved. Having read Shortcomings the day before, the two have very similar styles in plot, characters, and storytelling. Adrian Tomine and I suspect other young graphic novelists are influenced by Clowe's modern stylings and characterizations. I did not really feel too much for the characters, but I did find David intriguing. Maybe it was his constant searchings for love, his father, and the end of the story. The graphic novel is a bit meta which I tend to like. Crossposted from aquatique.net

Emo Boy - Steve Emond (1)

2008-01-03T16:10:00.000-08:00

The word "emo" has been associated with being emotional, sensitive, introverted, depressed, angsty or suicidal.

And Emo Boy is extremely emo. Typical emo boy going through several high school experiences - being picked on because he doesn’t fit in, the big dance, is he gay or not, not being athletic, etc. His “power” is exploding emo (no other way to explain it)

Basically, it wasn’t very interesting, there were some great poems and thoughts about being emo, being self-absorbed, being a geek, not fitting in, not “getting it”. Typical teenager behavior and perhaps other emo kids enjoy it, but it was more than enough emo for me. I'm not big on the whole emo thing, so perhaps for others it won't be too much.

American Born Chinese review by Athena

2008-01-02T19:07:00.000-08:00

American Born Chinese has three separate stories that connects at the end. All the stories have a strong message of self-acceptance. It also deals with racism, friendship, and growing up. The stories are well told; my favourite of the stories is the one on the Monkey King from the famous Chinese legends. Like the author Gene Luen Yang, I also grew up with these tales. The author has a very whimsical and funny take in his art and panels. The illustrations are on the lighter side, but still poignant. The dialogue understated but to the point. This is a graphic novel which both adults and young adults can read and appreciate. Crossposted from my aquatique.net

Laika by Nick Abadzis

2008-01-02T14:27:00.000-08:00

Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We did not larn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog.
Oleg Georgivitch Gazenko, 1998

As the title indicates, this graphic novel is a fictionalized retelling of the story of Laika, the soviet dog that, in 1957, became the first living creature to be launched into orbit. She was never brought back. Although at the time the official story was that she survived for 4 days in orbit, and then was mercifully euthanized, the truth of the matter was that Laika died a mere 5 hours after the launch, due to stress and the overheating of the cabin she was in.

Sputnik II, the vessel Laika was launched in, was built in only a month. The goal was for it to be ready for launch in time for the celebration of 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Soviet Space Program was supposed to symbolize the triumph and superiority of socialism. Although this story portrays the political environment of the time in detail, its focus is, above all, the emotions of those who were, in one way or another, touched by the little dog Laika.

I have mixed feelings about the sacrifice of animals in the name of science. While on an emotional level it can horrify me, intellectually I do know that certain things would be impossible to discover otherwise, and that medicine and biology wouldn't be as advanced as they are today if it weren't for it. What is so tragic about Laika's story, though, is that she wasn't sacrificed in the name of science. Nothing much was learned from Sputnik II. She was sacrificed in the name of a political game of chess. It was the desire to make a political statement that rushed the launch of Sputnik II, and made Laika’s safe return be disregarded.

Nick Abadzis explores the futility of her death brilliantly in this story. We follow Laika - or Kudryavka, as she was initially named - from the day she is born into a family that is too poor to keep her. She is given away to a careless boy who ends up throwing her into a river. She survives, and wanders the streets of Moskow until she is picked up by an animal shelter. There she is selected for training, and ends up being chosen as the occupant of Sputnik II due to her resilience and docile temperament.

I suppose that an easy way to tell this story would have been to anthropomorphise Laika. However, this was not the path that Nick Abadzis chose to follow. While Laika is undoubtedly at the very centre of the story, the human characters are just as important, and their emotions are what carries the story along and gives it the depth and resonance it has. The fact that Laika remains “only” a dog increases her fragility, and therefore the strength of the characters’ (and the reader’s) reaction to her fate.

As for the human characters, there is Liliana, the little girl at whose house she is born, and who never forgets her even after she is forced to give her away. There is Yelena Dubrovsky, the caretaker of the dogs on the Space Program, and the person who feels closest to Laika, and is arguably the most affected by her death. There is Oleg Gazenko, the main scientist behind the program, whose scientific neutrality slowly shatters, and there is Korolev, the ambitious Chief Designer of Sputnik II.

The way these characters’ emotions and motivations are portrayed is subtle and complex, and the final result is exquisite – a story that is very poignant without ever becoming overly sentimental. A touching account of the way certain choices take a greater toll on us than we could foresee. Highly recommended. (Originally posted here.)

Shortcomings review by Athena

2008-01-01T17:17:00.000-08:00

By Adrian Tomine (2007). A short graphic novella about Ben Tanaka, a cynical antihero Japanese-American. He is not very likable and has quite a few issues which leads to a deteriorating relationship with his long term girlfriend Miko. The novella looks at racial issues, stereotypes, and the breakdown of a relationship. It also touches on the issue of sexual identity, conformity, and fear of change. While Ben is often hypocritical, Miko is not free of hypocrisy or shortcomings either. While their relationship breaks down, they seem to be more sides of the same coin. A realistic portrayal of an ending relationship where both people are not necessarily in the right. The illustration is all in black and white, but poignant in its simplicity. Coupled with good dialogue, the experience is more akin to watching a movie rather than reading a book. A short but reflective graphic novel that is realistic in its portrayal of relationship breakdown. From a longer review over at my blog.

Graphic Novels Challenge

2007-12-08T09:54:00.000-08:00

To participate in the Graphic Novels Challenge, simply choose at least 6 graphic novels to read from January 2008 to December 2008.

You may overlap with other challenges. You may also change your list of titles at any point if something comes up that you want to switch around.

Here is a list of award-winning graphic novels. Of course, you may also choose graphic novels that have not won awards.

Thanks to Athena, here is another list of graphic novels.

Here is the graphic novels category in my blog, so that you can see what I've recently read that might sound interesting to you. Some of the books in that category have been called "graphic memoirs" or "graphic short stories" and yes, these also count towards the challenge. If you would like to read a comics series, that counts, too. Each collection counts as one book.

If you would like to be able to post your reviews of your challenge books in this blog, just take the following steps:

1. Leave your email address in the comments, in this format: dewpie at gmail dot com. You will be invited to be a member of this blog. If you want your email deleted from the comments even though it's in that spam-avoiding format, just let us know; either Athena or Dewey will delete it.

2. When you post, make the title of your posts the name of the book and your name. Example: "Fun Home review by Dewey."

3. Give the post labels: your name, the name of the book, the name of the author and whatever else you think is suitable.

4. Please link to your blog in your post. I know that a lot of people who post in shared challenge blogs are shy about doing this because they feel like they're being link whores or something, but for me at least, if I really enjoy your review or writing style, I want an easy way to get to your regular blog.

5. If you'd like, you could post your list of challenge picks here. Just label the post with your name.