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Personally, this is one of my favorite books to pick up every time a new collected volume comes out. I anticipate each new arch in the story and am rarely let down. In sixteen volumes (and one prose novel), the book has only been Not Good twice (individual reader frustrations over socio-political matters aside)....
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Eagle is paced like a thriller. Whether we're wondering how Yamaoka is going to gain points on his latest rival or how Jo is going to react to the latest bombshell about his life, his love, or his parents, the trip is an exciting one. I first read Eagle as it was released in America around the turn of the century, but with all the presidential campaign hoo-ha going on the last couple months, I thought I'd like to reread the book. After all, I remembered enjoying it a decade ago. When I say it's paced like a thriller, I'm not kidding. I blew through all five 400+ page volumes in two days. I may have stretched my one-hour lunch breaks to an hour and ten....
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Feynman is a wonderful book, well-written (with the now-deceased physicist as our interlocutor) and presented with a relaxed art-style that communicates the easy-going spirit of the man effortlessly. The book also delivers what I had wished Logicomix would have: a concise, detailed explanation of its hero's central Remarkable Idea. Feynman won a Nobel Prize for his work describing and solving quantum electrodynamic principle (QED). If magnets are not the kind of thing that can be explained to laymen, QED is the kind of thing that probably shouldn't even be named. Still, I was hungry to get a taste (and therefore appreciation) for just what Feynman did that was so incredible. Feynman delivers by recreating, in the book's final pages, a lecture on QED that Feynman delivered in New Zealand to an introductory-level physics class. It's tough to follow, complex, and probably a bit above most of our heads, but I was glad that it was there. And the book is probably better off for its inclusion....
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Kate Beaton, for whatever reason (I suspect witchcraft), is a funny, funny author and the volume and duration of my audible response to Hark A Vagrant! bears able witness to this truth. In fact, I am almost certain my wife was annoyed by the series of sustained chuckles, low guffaws, and outright laughs that from across the room continually interrupted her own reading of The Anti-Federalist Papers. Or it could have just been that she was reading The Anti-Federalist Papers. Regardless, the history I was reading was much more entertaining that the history my wife was reading....
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Because this book may actually be more about relationships than it is about heroic deeds, Samnee's ability to convey winsome character interactions is essential to its success. Thor: The Mighty Adventure, if meant for the cinema instead of the comics form, would probably be one of those films that gets marketed as a summer blockbuster but is really much more successful because it appeals to more than just the testosterone fantasies of teenage boys. The building relationship between Thor and Jane is sensitive, believable, and actually pretty compelling. Probably lots of people would like it if they gave it a chance....
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The book is challenging but, I think, rewards the patient and persistent reader. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in a book that falls a little outside the boundaries of the average comic story—especially if one can overlook what may end up being the fetishization of the stereotypical (and therefore infantilizing) mind-blowing trifle. Despite what may (or may not!) end up being weaknesses, Gogo Monster almost certainly demands thoughtfulness of its readers. And that is never a bad thing....
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"The Journey" is not the story of a dinosaur protagonist but instead the story of a massive migration. I'm reminded of Planet Earth's segment on the migration in Africa toward the Okavango Delta. Delgado depicts a collection of herbivore dinosaur herds moving from arid lands toward a lush forest. Their way is perilous and they are followed closely and picked at by predators. If there is a protagonist at all, it is the combined herd, striving forward while being winnowed and whittled. It's magnificent and I'm so very glad that Delgado chose this direction for the third series....
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I'm not huge on true crime (though I've enjoyed Eric Larsen's The Devil in the White City—me and 98% of the people who've read it!—and Rick Geary's Treasury of 19th/20th Century Murder) and I rarely see it handled in a way that makes me want to take it up as a regular staple in my reading queue, but I loved Green River Killer. If I run into a few more examples of the genre that are this good, I might just revise my position to: Avid Reader of Good True Crime....
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In Castle Waiting, Linda Medley accomplishes something unique by proposing a medieval fantasy setting and then using it mostly to set stage for a series of character-driven episodes of people who mostly just talk about their lives....
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David Petersen's Mouseguard is a so-far-incredible series that pits medieval mice against both their common predators (snakes, owls, weasels, etc.) and their own kind. As the series is yet to be completed, it's hard to judge how well the series-as-whole will hold up—but if Petersen continues to show the kind of storytelling attention and illustrator's care that we see in the first two volumes, the final result will be worthwhile indeed....
Mouse Guard: Fall 1152
Mouse Guard: Winter 1152 Review

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The typical collision between art and commerce forms the central conflict of Market Day. Mendelman is on the cusp of first-time fatherhood and goes to market to profit from his creations. He is already nervous about the prospect of his new responsibilities and is plagued by dark premonitions of his wife's death in childbirth (he, like the stereotypical artist, is something of a drama queen), but what will happen if things do not go as expected at market? As the clouds of pessimism gather, Sturm allows us to spend more and more time in the tumult of Mendelman's psychological morass....
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Ooku is a work of alt-history. It posits a Japan that never happened** and traverses eighty years of would-bes. Taking a page from Y: The Last Man, author Fumi Yoshinaga oppresses 17th-century Japan with a plague, called the redface pox, that decimates the male population of the nation (other countries seem unafflicted). By the time the disease has worked its course, there is only one man for every five women. The national character evolves quickly and drastically under these new terms and the roles of men and women within the society undergo sharp shifts in vocational direction....
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I enjoyed Lost at Sea for what I perceived to be a kind of fantastic (as in fantasy) verisimilitude, a portrait of what young life and young love look like. Even if Lost at Sea's version of those things is too magical to ever actually exist, the tone rings true. Raleigh's friends were my friends or maybe idealized versions of my friends. Their problems and reactions may be heightened, but the kernels are the same as mine were; the seeds from which their apocalypsis germinates are probably common to us all....
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Guarnido is an incredible artist. Not only are his character designs prodigy-level, but his use of these figures is completely liquid. His miniature biography reveals that he's trained in animation. It shows. Characters move in believable, extra-human mannerisms, filling the space of their panels with regality or temerity or fury or pathos or joie de vivre—with whatever aura their stories demand. Guarnido's sense of locale is likewise impeccable, and he supplies a full-fledged world for these denizens to inhabit....
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The book is stereotypically (fairly or otherwise) French in its laissez-faire depiction of sexuality, which will almost certainly be off-putting to some readers. Hubert & Kerascoët walk a fine balance between depicting the attitude that sex is just sex and showing that sex has built-in consequences. While highlighting the tension between the two perspectives is not their object in this work, they still dally with the conflict—and this dalliance goes a long way toward turning Miss Don't Touch Me into more than just a common revenge thriller....
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While Tokyo Is My Garden is the story of what will happen to David and how on earth will he pull out of this scrape, it's also the story of a dream. This book is the compiled navigation charts for a group fantasy. David is kind of really completely obnoxious in that he's living the life so many nerdy young white males would drain the blood of virgins for—and worse, he deserves it as much as they do. He's kind of losery, kind of a bum, kind of not the kind of person you'd expect to be rolling in models. Unless you're the very particular kind of person who could find Boilet and Peeters' story remotely believable....
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t took me a while to get a handle on exactly how to approach the book. The fact of the sheer silliness of moments. The fact of the gorgeous and highly detailed landscapes intruded upon by Disney-esque cartoon characters. The fact of main characters who die 300 pages in to the 3000-page epic. The fact that every woman in the book is topless. The fact of mixing faith and fantasy so seamlessly in a book that I believe is trying to promote the teachings of Buddha. And the fact that Buddha isn't even born until the end of the first volume. It was a weird mix, but after not too long, I found myself quite at home with his unique style and let the story wash over me....
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