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Duncan is a dense work. There are a lot of words on a lot of pages, but even more than that, Hines' pages of art demand scrutiny. His art serves his story and his story serves his art. It's possible that this volume represents the most ambitious use of the comics form yet. There may be other contenders, but I don't think I've seen them. This is a book that deserves second and third readings. Which makes it nice that the first reading was such an absolute pleasure....
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While Building Stories may not function so much as a traditional novel—offering a common Western narrative structure of beginning, middle, end—it does what it does very well. There is no overall build of tension, no climax, no denouement—but there was never any pretension to such things. Beyond the impossibility of discovering The Correct Order in which to read Ware's creation, his intension is less about unveiling a plot as it is about discovering a life lived. This is the life of the Woman, and by the end of it you will know her as well as you know many of your friends. She is undressed, not for your approval so much as for your empathy. This is the closest many of us will come to walking in another's shoes....
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Perhaps Daytripper's biggest success is that it saves itself from being cliche. Instead, Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá actively work to suppress cliche and to reign in formula. At least I imagine that they worked hard at it, because they deliver such a completely compelling work that I have to imagine bloodied sweat staining everything in their vicinity save for the gorgeous art. Daytripper is moving without contrivance or manipulation. And that right there is something....
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Thompson's sense of the sacred and his ability to convey it in ink is breathtaking. He offers his readers these holy moments, these frozen, fluid, organic treasures. These sacramentals. Whether he intends to lead the reader into a religious experience or not, his work really is very spiritual. As spiritual as an atheistic holy experience can actually be at any rate. There may be moments in Miyazaki that approach the wonder of the sanctuaries that Thompson builds in Blankets. It's for this reason (among others) that Thompson's second book remains one of my favourites, even years after having first encountered it....
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Every now and again, a comic comes out that assures me that the medium can tell certain kinds of stories in a way that no other medium can touch. Every now and again, a comic comes out that despite its natural humility asserts itself as a model to which the medium should aspire. Every now and again, a comic comes out that just flat-out knocks me off my feet and makes me think that everything is going to be alright after all. Berlin is one of those....
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It's not often that I'll be stunned—actually stunned—by a book or story. Despite its unwieldy title (one that prevents me from being able to recommend it in verbal conversation), Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms stunned me well and good. f there is one way by which to properly describe this book, it's human....
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For those familiar with Miyazaki's films, the art will seem a familiar prototype, an early version of what would become the Ghibli house style for the next thirty years. In tone, Nausicaä probably closest resembles the sometimes violent action and environmentalism of Princess Mononoke (though those that weary of that message shouldn't be overly put off by its expression here). The story is long and many panels are more text than imagery as Miyazaki attempts to sensibly exposit his narrative. The tale requires patience and perseverance, but it rewards its pursuers. There are a number of great adventures told through the comics medium, but Nausicaä is so far—and pretty easily—the best of show....
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Habibi is a major work in comics literature and Thompson's first since the nearly-six-hundred-page Blankets. Comparisons will be obvious. Both works traffic deeply in religious language and colour their texts in displays of sacred ferocity. Both explore the boundaries and need for love and human contact. Both play with non-linearity in storytelling, skipping back and forth and only revealing the past in time to illuminate the future. These two creations are very much the work of the same author and it's a joy to see his voice maturing....
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Reading Asterios Polyp is a daunting experience. Or maybe not so much the reading, which can be accomplished easily enough, but the being able to speak sensibly about it afterward. I feel kind of like I did after finishing 2666, only not quite so out of my depth. Like Bolaño, Mazzucchelli's work here displays a breadth and depth that overtly requires multiple readings in order to find ground solid enough to speak with any authority about the book....
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Big Questions is a curious animal of a book. Its method of gradual production threatens the sense that Nilsen knew what he was doing all along or that the book can be read as a single cohesive work. Nilsen, as he explains in the book's backmatter, began collecting the occasional one-page scraps of talking-bird cartoons he'd been producing for years. Almost accidentally, it seemed, a narrative began to form around these sometimes thoughtful finches. And then at last, the addition of arbitrary violence from the American military machine set in motion a grand tale spanning a milieu approximately the size of a sprawling backyard....
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Toothless and tamed. Declawed and domesticated. Over time, the old legends evolve from being terrible and terrifying to existing as pacified gentilities. As the world is industrialized (and more, technologized), our fear of the fantastic is replaced by something more civilized. We've traded the savage for the banal. And certainly, some of us prefer the latter to the former. Because fearing fantasies is distasteful to a society that is smarter than that, we make our monsters into men and our men into monsters. And as much as we gain for the transformation of our cultural lore, we do lose something in the process....
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Mother, Come Home's opening set is a bit oblique and I feared I had picked up another bout of art comix childishness, that kind of book where you feel like you're spending time with a stereotypical high school theatre student (something infantile like Monologues for the Coming Plague, perhaps*). Hornschemeier continues on like this for six pages and by the fifth I had almost gotten into the flow of what he was doing. I was even able to sort of appreciate it. But I absolutely did not want to read 128 pages in the same vein, so turning that seventh page was like a boon from heaven. As if God in his wisdom had known exactly how much I could take and inspired Hornschemeier to rein it in at exactly the right moment....
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The Arrival, for all its pages filled with complicated, detailed artwork, plays only one note. It has only one theme, only one agenda. The Arrival is simple and will not be distracted from its only purpose. To say that Tan's book plays one note should not be confused for saying that the book is one-note in any pejorative sense. It may not juggle two fistfuls of interweaving themes and character arcs. It may not demand seven consecutive reads in order to discover its meanings. It doesn't need to. The Arrival does what it intends to and does it so very well that it doesn't need anything else....
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Reading Neil Gaiman's (sprawling) work, Sandman—the work that bought him fame in the beginning—from beginning to end, I was struck by what may be a weakness on my own part. Gaiman, I believe, is at his resolute best with the shorter narrative. The sparring match, the experiment. Sandman is a curious work because it is itself a grand, arcing story forged of numerous arcs that develop Gaiman's narrative direction but  it is also fraught with individual, self-contained, singular episodes whose purpose seems merely to add flavour to the entire literary meal. And it is in the space of these singular episodes—which never last longer than a chapter's breadth—that Gaiman proves his genius....
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After several excellent journalistic comics featuring the Bosnian war and its aftermath, Sacco returns once more to the Palestinian conflict. And this time he has a far more specific goal in mind. Footnotes in Gaza, at 432 lushly illustrated pages, offers a new avenue for Americans who support Israel unreservedly to experience a paradigm shift and the opportunity to experience the conflict from the eyes of those who hold a perspective unique from anything we could ever muster on our own....
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I am entirely out of my depth to sound out Yotsuba&!'s charms, but perhaps we should just leave it at this: whenever a new volume arrives in the mail, I curl up comfortably with my wife, finding the best lighting possible under such snuggly conditions, and I read each chapter to her aloud, trying to muster in my own voice the clear enthusiasm in Yotsuba's own. And then we both smile a lot....
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With few exceptions, Kindt's stories are told without flaw. Art and word conspire together to craft unique narratives, each with purpose and goal, driving forward his story of secrets. Super Spy‘s greatest strength doesn't lie in its inventive plotting or uncommon characterizations. (Many of his stories seem lifted from other works I've read or seen and most of his characters remain archetypical.) The book's strength instead lies in the very human way in which it approaches a world that is far beyond the coping mechanisms of its contributors. These people, no matter how thinly sketched, are always people—are always worth the time of your consideration. They are just as sad, broken, and hopeful as real people are and when their stories end, those conclusions are just as stupid, pointless, and tragic as they would be in real life. ...
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Powell continues to show himself a creator who is absolutely worth paying attention to and Any Empire may even be better than Swallow Me Whole, which was sublime. The great thing about these books (I mean, beyond the stellar art) is how well they stand up to multiple reads. Powell crafts a rich tapestry of both visual and narratory tricks that serve to inject subsequent investigations with a freshness and interpretive excitement. Any Empire is a good book, a great book....
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It's almost cliche at this point to praise Nate Powell's Swallow Me Whole, but it's not like there's any honest alternative. The book is just too good for anything else. Talented illustrator? Check. Talented storyteller? Check. Imaginative? Funny? Insightful? Worthwhile? All systems are go. Powell's art reminds me of some delicate hybrid between Craig Thompson and David Lapham—and amusingly, Swallow Me Whole is like some strange cross-pollination between Blankets and Silverfish. Okay, well not really. But kinda....
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The greatest tragedy is that there aren't currently more volumes available. Children of the Sea is one of the most exciting works unfolding in contemporary comics and the fact of its apparent hiatus is heartbreaking. There are a handful of comics whose production is intended to evolve over the course of years and whose production I will follow doggedly. Jason Lutes' Berlin. Adam Hines' Duncan the Wonder Dog. Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze. And now, hopefully, Children of the Sea....
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Moving Pictures is a fantastic little book. A novella of sorts, exploring the interrogation of Ila Gardner, a young Canadian curator of third-rate art in German-occupied Paris, by Rolf Hauptmann, a member of Germany's Military Art Commission. The Commission is tasked to retrieve famous works from the French who have squirreled the works away to prevent the theft (and possible destruction) of their art. While the single interrogation comprises the backbone of the story, the Immonens add depth and explanation via multiple brief flashbacks....
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The Walking Man follows a nameless protagonist as he takes casual strolls around his city, simply taking in the wonder that is found in every mundane thing. There is no single narrative arc to follow unless one considers the glorification of the contemplative life through a series of vignettes to constitute an arc. The walking man is healthy, intelligent, careful, attentive, and the social member of a loving relationship. One cannot be certain where he finds the time or by what method he carves it from his schedule because Taniguchi doesn't allow the work to even broach the matter....
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Beyond proving himself a masterful plotter, Urasawa does something rare in having his characters age. We see them as ten-year-olds, as teenagers, and at ages thirty-five, forty, fifty-five, and older. While most authors would want to keep their protagonists young, handsome, and beautiful, Urasawa lets them spend significant time in the form of raggled muffins. Their lives are hard and few age well. All of this, of course, plays well with one of Urasawa's themes: the question of growing up vs measuring responsibility vs and wondering if the games children play ever really end. For all its compulsively delivered thrill sequences and hell-yeah moments, 20th Century Boys can sell poignant pretty well when it wants to....
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Vaughan's book is of that very best kind of science fiction—the kind that presents the standards of society and forces you to question them and consider their weight without (and this is the important part) rendering judgment itself. The best science fiction makes you think. It prompts the reevaluation of one's mores and assumptions about one's world....
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One of Sakai's great talents is in his visual storytelling. His art flows naturally and his panel design is masterful. Some of the most beautiful pages are silent and filled with panels; each of these panels illustrates part of a picture-story that initially seems unrelated to the narrative intent but ends up providing context or mood for everything that is to follow. Sakai's art has a wonderful, lyrical quality to it and it's incredible that he's been able to maintain his more-than-twenty-five-year schedule of producing one chapter per month. He really is one of the best creators in the medium....
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I don't even like baseball. So when I say I adore Cross Game, a series which is rather unapologetically and blatantly about baseball, you should read in your tea leaves that this is a comic worth reading. Tasseomancy being infallible and all....
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