I’ve finally started my oversized collectors set of Sin City books (I have BOTH sets – and yes, I dust them often!). They were gifts, but I did put them on my Amazon wish lists fully intending to read them right away.

So right off the bat, I read The Hard Goodbye and I swear I want to mount and frame about 50 of the pages as straight-up art. It’s stark black and white, but it manages this amazing and moving backdrop to a story that would have been simply too much if it had been bathed in color.

Marv’s found solace in Goldie’s arms for a night – he’s a guy that doesn’t find this kind of comfort at all. By the time morning rolls around, she’s dead and the police are on their way up the stairs. What follows is Marv’s need to find out who had to do this to Goldie no matter the cost and an underbelly of unimaginable horrors. Luckily, Marv is just the man to set such things right. 2 years ago

Kuper’s adaptation of Kafka’s work manages to humanize Gregor’s dehumanization and while simplifying the text, enhances the story in the stark black and white drawings reminiscent of wodcuttings free to occasionally break the bounds of their square boundaries. While Gregor’s plight can ultimately be viewed as depressing and nearly pointless, Kuper manages to focus on the deadpan humor throughout the story. While this ultimately doesn’t change the fate of any of the characters, it does seem to make for an easier read and pondering of the story of the entire Samsa family. 2 years ago

Another series I’ve found myself sucked into!

Strangers in Paradise is part Thelma and Louise, part soap opera, part gangster film and all heart. It follows best friends Katchoo and Francine through the series of events set in motion when Katchoo is arrested attempting to extract a little revenge on behalf of Francine. All of this is mere window dressing for the push and pull of friendship, the complications of love that cannot be returned and the heavy weight that secrets kept too long have on all of those we claim close. While some of the twists and turns can rival most soap operas for dramatic reveals, these are easily forgiven in favor of the reality of the utter ease with which Moore is able to capture that attempt to connect and put complete trust in another human being. Then again, perhaps Moore understood all too well that if you’re going to follow the ups and downs of the human heart, you need a storyline to match. 3 years ago

This is an adaptation of the novel – only not like the whole Comic Classics where it’s just a, “let’s distill this, throw in some random illustrations and hope the main story is there.”

It’s a trick of metafiction (look, you blend the Tower of Babel and Don Quixote in with a healthy dose of pulp fiction and come up with a less academic word) with all of the advantages of being able to see the trick from new angles. Of course, rather than show you exactly how its done, these new angles expand the depths the illusion can take.

The story features a Daniel Quinn who has been largely living as his alter-ego, fiction novelist William Wilson. When a wrong phone number seeking Paul Auster seeks a detective by that name, he adopts this new persona and the adventure that follows. One of a father and son, the seeking of the voice of god, a loveless marriage, the foundation of a new Tower of Babel and the eventual meeting of the real Paul Auster. I promise Don Quixote effortlessly fits into this whole mix. 3 years ago

The next-to-the-last page is the illustration for the 101 Book Cover – it’s a young Will Eisner. I Swear!

Will Eisner’s Contract with God was arguably the beginning of the graphic novel as an American Art form. No longer confining comics to daily serials starring super heroes or those on other lofty quests, Eisner’s stories concentrated on the day-to-day lives of those living in a tenement on Droopsie Avenue in the Bronx. What may at first appear to be simple stories soon become the things that will bind the tenement dwellers together in the one thing that is always in plentiful supply on Droopsie…the long suffering days interspersed with the few fleeting moments of triumph.

These stories will be repeated until the end of time in different skins and will be lauded as new and groundbreaking. But the truth is that it all starts here…and, yes, your grandparents and great-grandparents absolutely understood what it was like to have life randomly kick them when they were down for no good reason. And then they found ways to tell life that they were going to sometimes find victory on their own terms. Crazy, but true. Luckily, Eisner got it down for the permanent record. 3 years ago

In this thin and sparsely drawn black and white graphic, it can be easy to question at first how so much praise as been heaped on what appears to simply be a nostalgic peek at traveling baseball teams of the 20s. With each frame, it simply becomes so much more. Religious philosophy, race relations, family, the love of baseball, politics and even the perils of bad marketing ideas are all covered with the deceptive ease of caching a pop-up fly. And with the same speed of the catch, the topic moves on – the only topic Sturm clearly ruminates on at length is the love of baseball. After all, none of these things would be worth enduring (the least of which are the long hours on the road) if those players didn’t love playing the game during the summer of the Golem despite their hardships. Of course, how the Golem impacts even this is part of the story… 3 years ago

Daniel Clowes has a talent for zeroing in on those who are fighting against the notion that anyone but they has ever struggled with fitting into their own skin. Ghost World follows this struggle through Enid and Becky as they take the only path permissible – forming a tight bubble where one can pretend that they and everyone in it is absolutely, the only people that get anything about the world. The problem with angst-ridden teen bubbles is that reality has this pesky way of poking at the bubble, what with things coming to the surface like discovering things you actually do care about and finding things you might actually want to try.

If you don’t remember trying on different personas or if you no longer acknowledge your angst-ridden teen days, Ghost World can appear to follow two rather cruel and aimless girls. I did prefer the work of Clowes’s s_David Boring_ not only because you get a longer story arc, but because it’s clear that Clowes does not spend his time with the deliberately cruel. Instead, he spends time with those that become cruel in their misguided attempts to protect themselves from the cruelties of others. 3 years ago

This goal stays – I’ve modified my reading goals on LibraryThing for 2010 and am switching over to more open 75 book challenges instead of category reads. I have a dedicated one to graphic novels.

This one stays. I may add some others. 3 years ago

At first glance, Rick Geary’s volume on Jack the Ripper may seem sparse and nearly clinical. It is not padded with endless theories on the identity of Jack the Ripper, reasons for the targeting of the particular women or endless gossip about the lives of those investigating the murders. Comparing this against Alan Moore’s 575-page epic, From Hell, one might well ask, “what’s the point of a simple 62-page graphic on Jack?”

The point is that Rick Geary has presented us Jack the Ripper in the purest form possible – straight from the journals of an unknown British gentleman that lived in London during the murders. These were copious journals (the real ones are 24 volumes) from someone that clearly had access to insider information and a desire to play a bit of armchair detective. So this is Jack the Ripper in his heydey, before the conspiracies, before the movies, before the endless tell-alls and long before the massive rumors.

In this, you get a lot of fact, many fantastic maps and a lot of surprising commentary. Popular conspiracy theories today are readily dismissed by our journalist back then (An equally sinister theory concerns the…Free-Masons…but what motive the organisation could have in these cases is difficult to discern). The journalist actually backs no official theory on Jack’s identity, but there are several long-forgotten suspects that briefly appear in Geary’s volume.

This is worth the read simply to see the story from the perspective of someone as they were watching it unfold. 3 years ago

To appreciate the need to tell yet another Jack the Ripper story, it may be best to flip to the back of From Hell and read Alan Moore’s second appendix first. In it, he details an interesting history of how the legends of Jack the Ripper and the “true tales” have evolved since the murders were committed. He aptly describes it at one point as a “game of Bohemian Whispers” which gives him several advantages in the telling of his story. First, he can’t be blamed if he gets facts wrong, secondly, his version is not necessarily any more right or wrong than anyone else’s if one takes this position – something bolstered very much by the first appendix where Moore lays out that which is drawn from fact, that which was made up for narrative sake and that which was drawn from historical context.

That being said, this is an incredibly compelling version of events. In an environment where the police procedural has more than embedded itself into the pop-culture cannon, there is one truth to getting away with murder – prostitutes are disposable. And this is what makes Jack the Ripper such a compelling tale; Mary Kelly has managed to spawn her own set of legends in addition to being the alleged fifth victim. Each of the other victims is named and remembered. While many killers have garnered similar attention, finding victims that have achieved this type of canonization is a rare thing – finding this amongst the poor and supposedly disposable in our society is a rarity.

So when Moore finds a fantastic tale of Freemason conspiracy, a royal love affair and four women who chose to bribe the wrong man for ten pounds leading directly to the creation of Jack the Ripper, it suddenly makes sense. Even the fourth dimension bends a bit for our killer, bleeding through from the future to show that his actions will become part of the London psyche. Before one thinks that Moore is trying to present all of this as fact, there are good portions of the story devoted to those that were taken in by the hysteria of the day. Panels of random strangers writing letters to newspapers posing as Jack the Ripper are shown, police are shown dismissing key pieces of evidence, different investigators are brought in for political reasons – it’s all there to demonstrate the basic human need to muck up an already limited ability to discover evidence after the fact. (For those that must really know blow-by-blow, the first appendix details where each story element, character and even some bits of dialogue were either found or when they were invented for each page.)

Cambell’s drawings deserve a lot of credit. The black and white varies in style throughout – from a scratched-ink-style to a softened-smudged style that resembles charcoal drawings. For even the most gruesome scenes, one is thankful to only have the black and white drawing – color would simply have been too much for the violence his drawing clearly conveys. 3 years ago

From the mid-80s, this cross-section of Robert Crumb’s work is as representational as it gets. If collecting both Weirdo issues and collaborations with Charles Bukowski and Harvey Pekar weren’t enough, this also includes a biography of obscure blues artist Charley Patton and a collection of random bits of personal drawings. There are only so many Crumb-drawn birth announcements for good friends that the world has seen.

Weirdo includes Mode O’Day’s run which rivals American Psycho in its ability to slice through the ridiculousness of the 1980s ability to turn anything with depth into a shallow piece of fashionable trendiness. It’s more satisfying to know that Crumb did this during while Ellis had already lived the decade and was comfortably listening to grunge when he wrote his observations. Point: Crumb.

Even more satisfying is the ability to see the many versions of Crumb’s illustration. While it all has that distinctive “Crumb Look” to it, the variations in line and shading are amazing. When illustrating the Patton story, the lines take on a solid, nearly wood-cut feel in some places – it’s as if Crumb wishes to carve out Patton’s place in music history even though it has largely been forgotten. The Weirdo issues feature a bit of a “quickie” look to them with few solid areas that look as if they were slapped together in a few hours until you carefully look at the drawings and you realize that the drawing probably took even longer than hard, careful lines would have taken.

The stories are cut from whatever was interesting to Robert at the time. Mode O’Day is the definite highlight. Bukowski will fall flat if you’re unfamiliar with his work. Jesus People USA is a self-indulgent piece in an otherwise great collection. 3 years ago

The praise that has been heaped on Craig Thompson’s Blankets is well-deserved. At nearly 600-pages, it may seem that this will be a never-ending and self-indulgent tale, but it reads as if it were a fraction of those pages – and you are left wishing for more.

A memoir of that beautiful and brutal time when you’re on the verge of growing up, Blankets follows two of Thompson’s most important blanket relationships; the one he shared with his youngest brother and the one made for him by his first foray into love. In between this, there are crisis of faith, family and friendship. There are commentaries on the nature of cruelty in the world – the cruelty inflicted by strangers, by peers, by those that should be kind, by friends and by family. There’s the realization that the simple lessons of youth are no match for complex questions which most people are ill-equipped to answer.

But, mostly, it’s the lesson of the end of first love. And this is where Blankets is absolutely beautiful. Thompson manages to capture the nearly perfect arc of the teen relationship without trying to paint either himself or Reina with some false wisdom or insight to improve past versions of themselves. This is the true emotional impact of this story. 3 years ago

What does a superhero who is human, aging and without real super powers do when time is catching up with him? In this volume, we meet an older Batman who has been out of the limelight for ten years while Gotham has been overrun by the Mutant Gang. A brief turn out of retirement is possible, but not sustainable.

In this volume, Miller manages to weave familiar foes and friends together in a volume that deals with the end of the run for our hero. Age, of course, is the least of our hero’s issues. Our hero is a vigilante in the age of media, so while his battles are very real, the talking heads endlessly debate the merits of the legality of his actions. While our hero has chosen a path against the grain, another hero has chosen the path of assimilation and cooperation with civic leaders and this story is played out between the two of them. Miller even has room for gender politics.

Most impressive is the inking and coloring for Miller’s already expressive drawings. I found myself going over some panels multiple times just to admire the work. 4 years ago

Tucked in the back of Ultimate Spider-Man is an excerpt from the original comics. Our timeless tale of Peter Parker is in the background at school while the following exchange takes place:

Say gang, we need one more guy for the dance! How about Peter Parker over there?

Are you kiddin’? That bookworm wouldn’t know a Cha-Cha from a Waltz!

Peter Parker? He’s Midtown High’s only professional wallflower!

Do I even need to tell you that the kids are dressed in ties, skirts, sweaters and sports coats? Must I mention the girls accessories include clutch bags and pearls?

Not that these really matter much to Spidey’s story, but if you’re just deciding to get into the written version today after seeing the movies, how are you not supposed to roll your eyes and wait for the next CGI fest to come out instead?

This is why Ultimates exists. It’s a reboot for a classic tale. In Brian Michael Bendis’s hands, our Peter Parker meets plenty of the old-school characters in high school instead of in his city days. Technology makes more of an appearance in the stories – even Peter’s job at the Daily Bugle is secured as a web developer instead of just as a photographer. Even better, Peter’s inability to tell the Cha-Cha from the Waltz are forever forgotten in our reboot.

Mark Bagley and Art Thibert’s drawings do present well-defined, detailed characters. Unfortunately, some facial closeups – particularly those involving female charcters – take on a bit of the wide-eyed manga-feel that can feel too trendy at times. At the same time, the drawing techniques used for the Osborn Lab explosion news transmission, Peter’s initial pass out and fights with Electro more than make up for the manga trendiness.

If you’re expecting a faithful frame-for-frame retelling of the original, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re prepared for a story that respects the story of Spider-Man while bringing him up-to-date without tying him down to 40+ years of baggage, this is well-worth a looksee. 4 years ago

The first in Osamu Tezuka’s epic eight-volume manga series.

First things first, this is not a historic reproduction done in comic form. If one is looking for a serious study of Buddhism, this is probably not the place to start. That being said, if one wants to complain about the lack of on-point theological exactness in a manga depiction of the Buddha’s life, one should get familiar with the terms “broad strokes” and “chill.”

Ostensibly, this is the first the story of Shiddhartha, the Gautama Buddha. Seeing as how he’s not even born until page 250/400 and probably appears on about 5 pages worth of those 400, we don’t get a huge introduction outside of knowing that Shiddhartha is destined for great things.

Volume one concentrates mostly on the story of Chapra and Tatta – a slave and pariah. Chapra desperately wants to break free of his slave caste and Tatta is able to possess animals. They live outside of Kapilavastu, which today is considered a Holy site for Buddhists (its exact location is under some dispute).

While the Buddha does not figure prominently into the first book, certain truths are skillfully woven throughout this volume. If nothing, this is a searing indictment on the evils of the caste system put in pace thousands of years ago. Even more brilliantly done is the enduring theme that all life is sacred no matter how insignificant it may seem as it is part of a larger design.

Tezuka’s drawings run the gambit. There’s definitely the “traditional” manga feel in the black and white drawings. At the same time, the artistry in some of the epic panels is undeniable; the locust scenes are well-worth a pause. 4 years ago

The origins of Colleen Doran’s epic graphic novel first began when she was twelve. When we’re twelve, that voice telling us that we shouldn’t mix in governmental kidnapping plots with alien heritages and psychically linked siblings, political dealings of other worlds, Arthurian legend, a touch of an after school special and a slight dash of a Melrose Place designer-sabotage B-plot together to make an epic fantasy story. No, when we get older, that voice tells us such a mixture will just go really wrong really fast.

Thank goodness Colleen plowed onward without that voice. As muddled as all of that sounds, A Distant Earth manages to take all of these various plots and weave them into Liana and Jason’s story. The Gathering really offers a background into their story, beginning with breaking Liana out of a mental hospital where she’s been held captive most of her life. As Jason and Liana believe they’re escaping the worst of things, they discover that their problems are just beginning when it’s revealed that they’re half alien and key to ending a political struggle in which they’ll quickly become pawns.

I do want to find out what happens – of course, the library has volumes 1 & 3, but not 2 & 4…I’ve asked them to fix that. 4 years ago

Why I Hate Saturn feels like that witty banter you wished you had with that good, smart friend that you secretly know is smarter than you but doesn’t really ever hold it over your head. Anne Merkel is a columnist with deadlines she may or may not meet for Daddy-O magazine, which passes judgment on all things. She’s got a book deal, is as neurotic as it’s cool to be and has great taste in scotch.

When her sister arrives in town, her world is turned upside down. Not that she doesn’t try to avoid the whole thing. Anne’s sister, Laura is everything she’s not – a neat freak, confident, caring about the earth, a vegetarian and she claims to be the Queen of the Leather Astro-Girls of Saturn.

In reality, this is Kyle Baker’s story of how we cannot remain unchanged by those around us – no matter how hard we try. It’s also a story about knowing we’ll find out who we are in the company of other and not in the solitary confines of our own haphazardly-built walls. The good news is that these lessons don’t go one way…and they don’t lose their sense of humor. 4 years ago

Meh.

I know, I know, it’s on the list. If you look through my completed goals, you’ll see I’ve been to Japan. I do like Japan. I like Japanese food. I like Japanese cinema. I really enjoyed Akira. I played FFXI for a few years.

That being said, I’m not such a big fan of the manga in general or the anime it produces. I know, for some it’s like being a big fan of all things Italian and saying you hate pasta. But I swear that there’s much to Japanese culture that does not involve Manga and/or anime. And perhaps this is what annoys me about it – it’s a portion of the culture, yes, but it’s not the whole thing. It would be like assuming all American culture was country music and everything associated with it.

I suppose I don’t like these stories for a few reasons.

First, there’s the sense that there will never be an end to the story. I realize this makes no sense since I’ve enjoyed superhero works, but those are actually the comics I’ve stuck with the least – for the same reason. At some point, I want a story to have an obvious arc to it. At least with the DC/Marvel superheroes, you’ll end up with definite arcs. In my experience, the manga tends to meander and may or may not have a vague quest/love-interest/goal to get that may or may not be central to the story. This annoys me.

Secondly, the drawing grates on my nerves. The wide-eyed, small-nosed girls with exaggerated hair and bodies that would make Barbie cry…yeah, I think it’s a guy thing. Specifically a guy deep in the throws of puberty thing. I know, I know, there are plenty of female manga fans out there that are fine with the drawings. More power to you! And, hey, when I volunteer with the kids I’m one of the first to play Barbies – so call me a hypocrite. At the same time – I’m not identifying with anyone in these stories ever. It’s not the same as Harajuku girls by a long shot – I’ve been there and while the costumes are bright and colorful, their faces still look real.

Lastly, too much mythology. I think this is the same reason I’ll never be a huge fantasy reader. It’s probably also the reason I didn’t watch Lost. Heroes was lucky to get me. There’s only so much mythology I’m willing to memorize. I’m always amazed with the few fantasy novels that I do read to find the guides listing all of these details I’m willing to read past. To those willing to find the details – kudos! To the writers willing to keep the details in the broad strokes so I can enjoy the books – sweet! To the books where I end up having to know the mythology…I’m tired.

Yeah, you really wanted an entire thing on why I don’t like manga, didn’t you? Well, I figured it was only fair, since I didn’t really like this one way or the other.

It’s a cute premise – boy calls the wrong number and gets a Goddess Help line. Goddess shows up to grant his one wish. Instead of wishing for money, power, or even a new car, he wishes that the Goddess has to be by his side forever. So she is and he’s immediately kicked out of his all-male dormitory. I won’t get into the ridiculousness of the wish, as it’s sort of implied that he wants her as a love interest, but the book keeps them from even so much as mentioning a kiss for 7 chapters; even then, it’s nothing but a kiss on the cheek for a boy suffering from a terrible cold.

Outside of this, the Goddess, Belldandy, goes everywhere with Keiichi Morisato. The stories follow Keiichi first trying to procure them lodging, and then they shift to stories of Belldandy doing good deeds for Keiichi’s friends and family. Keiichi mostly eats, tries to keep Belldandy from telling everyone she’s a goddess and later tries to make moves on her.

I’d try to make this sound more exciting, but I’m not really the intended audience.

But I tried! 4 years ago

Kurt Busiek takes a more grown-up approach to the superhero while still maintaining the child-like awe that drew most of us into the Supermans, Spidermans and Batmans of old. The advantage? We end up with heroes that are real and without the crutches of virginal innocence that even they no longer believe or a cloud of unbearable pathos that says, “this is why I wear black latex.”

We get real superheroes in real costumes with real feelings. Some are heroes for valiant reasons, some are heroes because they don’t know what else to do, some want to do it for the fame and fortune and others have yet to reveal their real reasons. In each of the books, we’re introduced to different heroes that inhabit Astro City either through themselves or through those that have observed them. While the stories start with Samaritan, it’s clear that while we’ll see him again, he’s not going to be our main character throughout as Astro City has a good many stories to share.

The drawings of Brent Anderson (and Alex Ross’s covers) are fantastic and lush with color. The level of detail in everything – from the backgrounds, to the costumes, to the anatomy really shows throughout the book and adds fantastic layers to the vignettes.

I’m also not ashamed to admit that I’ve reserved the next few volumes at my library. I want to meet a few more heroes. 4 years ago

Palomar is a small town of a few hundred people somewhere in Central America. Our story is a sprawling tale, starting with one midwife, Chelo, destined to have no children of her own and surrounding those she’s helped bring into the world, those she’s protected, those she’s befriended and known. Like all stories, there are those bits to satiate you at the beginning, a bit of background on this that or the other and some nips of whatnot, but then there’s the thing that really gets everything rolling. In Palomar, that thing is Luba. Luba’s arrival is the beginning of everything – it sparks our boys into manhood, girls pay attention to their new powers of womanhood, Chelo has competition as a banadora, the sheriff pushes his corrupt nature too far, there is death, betrayal and murder…and this is all within the first 50 pages of the 500 that will cover 20 years in the life of Palomar.

Palomar is a sprawling soap opera disguised as the great novel. Within every dramatic twist, new romance or damaged relationship, there’s true humanity. These are not story lines that converge just to get one character from point A to point B back to point A in dramatic fashion. These are characters that go down paths that they cannot return from unchanged. 4 years ago

In an era where our Marvel Superheroes are increasingly high-gloss or known largely through film, revisiting Essentials becomes more important than ever. Sure, there’s the jolt of getting used to things that are going to now be viewed as sexist (yes, Sue Storm is the Invisible Girl, you’ll find out that one of her hobbies is actually “cosmetics”) and plot lines will revolve around fighting communists and winning the Cold War.

But that’s okay. This is how the Fantastic Four started. Sue’s powers are limited to invisibility and cunning. Johnny is sixteen years old. Marvel is only in partial crossover mode, so meeting the Hulk or Spider-Man is a treat instead of a well-orchestrated multi-trade paperback plan.

Volume 1 collects issues 1-20, along with an annual and a bonus Spider-Man crossover story. Within these pages, you’ll meet a variable who’s-who of villainy – Dr. Doom, Puppet-Master, Namor the Sub-Mariner and Molecule Man to name just a few.

The edition could have been improved had the original covers been presented in color. 4 years ago

Watching the evolution of Optic Nerve in this slim volume is well-worth the price of admission. With 32 Stories, one can add Tomine to the ever-growing list of the slice-of-life graphic artists able to successfully capture the everyday on paper. The skill for these artists in this is knowing which portions of the mundane are worth capturing, which things are worth confessing and which dreams are worth documenting.

Not all of the 32 stories are instant classics, but there are far more hits than misses. Tomine is at his strongest when drawing either himself or Amy, but has surprising shows with Happy Anniversary, and in the final story, Grind, where a girl tries to find someone that will accept her nighttime-teeth grinding habit. Watching his stories mature through the issues is a treat. 4 years ago

This is David B’s open and raw account of his family’s life as they search for a cure for his brother’s severe epilepsy. David B leaves in all up for examination – his family’s ancestry, the various cures the family seeks out, obsessions each family member develops, the frustrations all of them have and the toll that all of this takes on everyone.

There are times where David B’s level of disclosure can seem uncomfortable. Worse yet, much of the alternative medication in our pill-driven society can seem downright cruel until you realize nearly every pharmacological treatment for his brother ends up in complete failure. Then it becomes a story about a family willing to take any weapon up against a cruel tormentor, no matter how slim the chances of success. Even so, he presents this story honestly, showing the toll that a fight with no real end will take on all participants involved.

As an illustrator, David B’s work is reminiscent of intricate wood-cuttings where one can get lost in the details for hours. The depictions of the seizures and the onset of depression are an accomplishment unto themselves, and well worth a look through the book. Each of the backgrounds contains characters and spirit guides that serve he and his siblings well in their active fantasy life.

Highly recommended. 4 years ago

Len Wein’s Swamp Thing offers two versions of the story – the first in this volume is the story of Alex Olsen, turned into Swamp Thing through the jealously of another who coveted his wife. It was a sweet few pages where a true love is saved, but not reunited and a trinket lost forever but unable to be cried over. Len Wein didn’t want to continue it – he felt that he and Berni Wrightson done a perfect story and didn’t want to continue it further. They were being noble!

And so the story of Alec Holland and his transformation into Swamp Thing was born. After all, there was nothing wrong with a new Swamp Thing. The story was better for it. Instead of a small tale of jealousy, a wide-sweeping tale of international espionage, secret scientific research and murder takes shape. Swamp Thing is created and immediately believed to be responsible for the death of the very man he is…and through a series of events must protect the person that has vowed to destroy him.

This is more than a simple comic book hero story, and yet all of the elements are happily there to lap up in full. We have our reluctant hero, protecting the weak and sacrificing himself for the greater good. At the same time, it’s a story about monsters and their origins. It questions the monster within and without, believed and perceived.

Dark Genesis does have it’s DC roots firmly on the ground. A trip to Gotham City does produce a cameo from Batman, so you’re very aware of the Universe Swamp Thing inhabits. 4 years ago

Based on Joe Sacco’s personal journey into the Unoccupied Territories, Palestine can seem like a rambling collection of Palestinian stories – some pro-Palestinian, some bordering admonishing, some questioning high birth rates, some of it simply self-centered on the comic he’s all to aware that he’s drawing at times…

And then you realize that this hyper-awareness is really the best that anyone can do when writing this story. You can tell Joe thought he’d find a few stories about the prisons and occupations, but when the stories turned into a flood, what does one do? Worse yet, what does one do when it becomes abundantly clear that there are no clear cut right and wrong sides? There are clearly wrongs but the sides become problematic.

Joe’s story succeeds best when he puts himself in the line of questioning – individuals asking him what he hopes to accomplish. Mothers telling detailed stories of dead sons and then, without a beat, saying they’ve told this story before – so what will he accomplish? Being asked why UN Resolutions regarding occupying lands don’t apply to them. Being asked why a won war is not a won war in Tel Aviv.

Joe’s wondering what the long-term outcome of humiliating refugees will be is the easiest question to answer in the book. His book chronicles the last bit of the First Intifada in 1992. Hamas is mentioned briefly in parts as an extremist organization in Joe’s world. In the world of 2009, this extremist organization has made news again and one can’t help but wonder if Joe’s lingering question of what happens to those that feel they’ve been humiliated too long had been partially answered…

In the end, Sacco offers no answers. This is his trip because he’d wanted to see the other side and hoped to find answers – but instead, he found a tangle of more difficult questions and problems. Even where Joe felt like he would be able to make small differences, he finds himself facing perspectives that he had not at all expected. In one scene, he offers to take two Israeli women through to the Arab Market to show them that it’s safe and worth the trip. And while they make it to the market, Joe’s prior confidence is seemingly crushed as he feels the paranoia walking to Damascus gate. A walk he’d made a few times a day suddenly became a claustrophobic journey where every movement may have meant something else – something potentially dangerous. And while they were safe, he knew his desired result was lost. 4 years ago

Finished – from my LibraryThing Review:

Berlin: City of Stones is an ambitious story of a city between wars struggling with what it was and how it should regain power in the future despite being shackled by treaty. Several stories intertwine and time periods fold over on one another, but we are guided for the most part, by Kurt Severing & Marthe Muller who sometimes interact directly with other characters and sometimes just pass them briefly in scenes.

This common thread allows us to sample so much of what can go on rather than to concentrate on a single aspect. While the majority of the book is designed to lead up to Blutmai, it’s not all conflict between Nationalists and Communists. It’s the hope of capitalism and economic reform in zepplin manufacturing; it’s the hope of new movements in art; it’s the deep-held belief that the Republic is strong.

It’s a stark book and my only complaint is that the shifting time period in the middle chapter drifts in and out without much warning for a history lesson that is still largely told in flashbacks. Still, this is a very good read and an easily forgotten time of what many thought would be a new era of hope and change – not just the lull between two bitter wars. 4 years ago

This is a book that can easily be seen as a self-absorbed spiral that’s one-step shy of a badly kept diary, but we’re lucky that Seth has actual talent.

This is that rare look into a life where the reader is all too aware of what Seth should know he has, while Seth is actually smart enough at times to know what he has, but at the same time he allows himself an obsession that will just keep him from really getting to the bottom of things.

In It’s a Good Life, this obsession is Kalo. Kalo is presented as a gag comic writer of small note from the 40s and 50s with a mildly amusing New Yorker cartoon. Finding out more information about Kalo becomes Seth’s overriding passion to the detriment of his personal relationships – not that Seth sees much of this during the hunt. Then again, when one is trying to make a paragraph of a footnote there’s plenty of time to stop asking yourself questions in the name of your quest.

The comic is gorgeously drawn in a blue-grey-green. 4 years ago

The graphic novel follows a unnamed lifelong friend of Lizzie Bordon as she attempts to make sense of how such a tragedy not only befell her friend, but came to be blamed on her as well. (The narrator is based on an unpublished memoir from a resident of Fall River that was discovered in 1990.)

Fantastically drawn in black and white, the frames reminded me of old newspaper drawings. Geary immediately jumps into the action, describing the sweltering heat of that fateful August and introducing the Bordon family at a distance as the story remains true to our narrator’s point of view. While the narrator purports to be a confidant of Lizzie’s, there are no great secrets revealed – no intimate details, no sensational confessions, not even a transcript of the jailhouse visit. So while this does prevent a fairly uncluttered point of view, it also seems to be somewhat of a tease as it only serves to present a good reason to give Lizzie the presumption of innocence.

Rather than concentrate on the murders, the fallout and investigation are the meat of the matter – and why not? Crimes of the Century are a national pastime and this was one of the biggest. It had everything – wealth, social status, spinster daughters, rumors of family strife and enough idiosyncrasies amongst the living and dead to keep things fresh in the news. If we would like to fool ourselves into thinking we were better about privacy or somehow classier about gossip, this case should put those fantasies to rest. Geary presents the citizens of Fall River as lookie-loo extremists – standing outside the house for nearly a week in hopes of gaining glimpses of he bodies or of the sisters. If they weren’t standing outside, they were granting interviews to newspapers to offer of sensational “facts” that would later be retracted (Geary presents some of the articles as printed in an appendix).

All in all, this is a quick read and an interesting look into the events in Fall River. The point of view is fresh with a small town that has been thrust into the spotlight feel to it. 4 years ago

At twelve, Freddie Bloch finds the security of his family and home gone in the wake of the Great Depression, an alcoholic father, the untimely arrest of his brother and the promise that there are jobs “somewhere.” In an effort to at least find his father again, Freddie sets out from California to Detroit in hopes of reunion and adventure.

Instead, Freddie finds a life not of adventure, but one of base survival and of quick life lessons. He meets a fellow hobo early on, Sam, who likes to call himself the King of Spain. Through Sam and Freddie’s story, the Detroit Labor riots of 1932 are vividly recounted, the tension of anti-communist resentment, desperation for jobs, racism and Freddie’s desire to find his father all coming to a head at once. The drawings of this incident are fantastic, recounting iconic photos from the day.

The book deals with the fallout after Freddie comes to realize he will never reunite with his father who may or may not have made it to Detroit in search of a job. The book shifts after Detroit, as most of the country is no longer optimistic about rumors of jobs, but rather has resigned themselves to finding a way to survive.

The black and white drawings are well-done and detailed, capturing mood and tone as an additional character in the book. This is no cartoon-cheery depiction of hard events – it’s hard times and hard places for people who had not ever expected to know that kind of life. 4 years ago

If there’s one thing Frank Miller is good at, it’s atmosphere. His talent for creating living, breathing universes for each of his works shines through best in the story of the Battle of Thermopylae.

First, to get the problem of Herodotus out of the way. The Battle of Thermopylae was recounted in The Histories and has been largely taken as the factual accounting of Sparta’s valiant effort to hold off Xerxes and his forces. 300 does not assume to replace Herodotus, nor does it ever claim to be more than a story of what might have happened those days. Discuss amongst yourselves: What makes Herodotus’ version anymore accurate than other accountings?

Onto Frank Miller. This is the technicolor, hyper-testosteroned (my word), retelling of a story we’ve all come to know and love: the few against the many with impossible odds for nothing but the sheer glory and rightness of what they’re doing. Miller tells this story in a brisk fashion, fleshing out Leonidas in ways that make him both more human and more of a larger than life myth than even Sparta could have hoped. This is a story of war and carnage with the backdrop of the Spartan way and nothing else. It’s a graphic novel one simply sits back, takes it in and enjoys. 4 years ago