Graphic Novel Review: The Seeds by Ann Nocenti and David Aja

Posted on December 22, 2020 at 10:41 am by Gene Ambaum

The Seeds by Ann Nocenti and David Aja. Dark Horse / Berger Books, 2020. 9781506705897. Collects The Seeds # 1 – 4. 128pp.

This graphic novel takes place in a toxic future where it’s safer than not to wear a gas mask everywhere. The planet is dying but who cares because it’s a crappy place. There’s a walled zone where neo luddites have gone to start an anti-tech revolution: no internet, no phones, anarchy. A few aliens live there (and cross to the other side of the wall, too), lurking about, sampling seeds from our world (that’s genetic material, I think). Things are not better inside the zone. Maybe, somehow, mankind is not quite doomed, in which case seeds the aliens have collected will be worthless. Hope exists in the form of a love story between one of the aliens, Race, and his human lover, Lola, who may be pregnant. A reporter, Astra, is on their trail, trying to write the kind of clickbait her newspaper needs. Or maybe it’s the kind of huge story she longs to write?

In moments it’s not quite apocalyptic, and it’s my favorite graphic novel from Dark Horse’s Berger Books imprint so far. Aja’s cinematic art, with its stark blacks and old school screentones, keeps it compelling throughout.

Guest Book Review:  Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics by Dolly Parton

Posted on December 19, 2020 at 8:53 am by Gene Ambaum

Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics by Dolly Parton. Chronicle Books, 2020. 9781797205090. 380 pp.

Anyone who knows me knows that Dolly Rebecca Parton is my favorite person in the world. She is an excellent singer/songwriter, a savvy businesswoman, a cherished family member, and much more. I am rarely quiet but I do think this fellow Southern girl could render me speechless.

Dolly has come out with this beautiful, oversized book. It includes lyrics and the stories behind them. There are also photographs galore of album covers, stage costumes, family members, and other Dolly artifacts plus more anecdotes. It feels like Dolly’s personal scrapbook, and thumbing through it will pique your interest in one of the best people on this green earth.

Graphic Novel Review: Stepping Stones by Lucy Knisley

Posted on December 17, 2020 at 11:28 am by Gene Ambaum

Stepping Stones by Lucy Knisley. Random House Graphic, 2020. 9781984896841. 224pp.

Jen loves comics, dislikes chores, and hates snakes. She’s in charge of the farm’s chicken coop, but prefers drawing (which is especially awesome in her hideout in the barn, with the cats that live there). She’s kinda getting used to life in the country with her mom and her mom’s boyfriend Walter, including working their booth at the farmers market. Then Walter’s daughters come for a visit. The older of the pair, Andy, is a bit of a know-it-all who takes charge of everything. She starts naming the chicks Jen cares for, and things get worse from there. Jen’s mom and Walter see the value of what Andy does, but it’s totally irritating to Jen. (They do finally bond as part-time sisters, in part due to Jen’s comics, and in part because none of the girls loves life in the country.)

Knisley’s graphic novel for kids is based on her own life: after her parents split up, she and her mother moved from New York to a small farm. This is a great book about moving on after divorce and trying to become part of a new family unit, with a bit of math trouble thrown in. (Knisley discusses her dyscalculia at the end of the book.)

Graphic Novel Review: Kairos by Ulysse Malassagne

Posted on December 15, 2020 at 10:36 am by Gene Ambaum

Kairos by Ulysse Malassagne. English translation by Anne and Owen Smith. First Second, 2020. 9781250209610. 190pp. http://www.powells.com/book/-9781250209610?partnerid=34778&p_bt

Nils and Anaelle are spending a few days at a remote cabin. On the first night, everything is peaceful until the fireplace erupts in a blue explosion. Armored and sword-wielding dragons appear from another world, and it quickly becomes clear they’re there for Anaelle. In the fight that soon follows, she’s much more of a badass than she seemed. But the dragons capture her and take her through the portal. Nils isn’t going to just let that happen, so he leaps through in pursuit.

What follows is a fresh take on the rescue-the-princess fantasy subgenre. Anaelle’s parents want her to marry, to keep their power intact. (She’s to marry her father, which no one is excited about.) Nils has little but his recklessness and his anger to help him save the woman he loves. Turns out that, along with a few new friends, may be probably enough. His quest will change him, though, and things won’t turn out like he expects.

Malassagne’s drawings are as kinetic as any manga action sequences I’ve seen, and the book has a mix of things I hadn’t expected — bloody violence, social justice themes, and kawaii characters.

If you’re a librarian in a school, give this a read before putting it on your shelf. It’s not that I think it’s inappropriate, but it’s more adult than you might think, with little hint of that in the initial pages.

Graphic Novel Review: Familiar Face by Michael Deforge

Posted on December 10, 2020 at 9:43 am by Gene Ambaum

Familiar Face by Michael Deforge. Drawn & Quarterly, 2020. 9781770463875. 176pp.

The people and the city in Deforge’s latest graphic novel are continually optimized and updated, without warning and seemingly at random. It’s all supposed to be an improvement (but it’s clearly not); the new body you wake up in may not be intuitive, and the street you’re driving on may suddenly have no exit.

The narrator is struggling because of her job in the complaints department. (The complaints are shown in triangular panels, in black and white, and some information is redacted.) She can’t discuss the complaints with the woman she’s in a relationship with, Jessica, who also can’t tell her about her own work in the city’s maps department. And then one day Jessica is gone from the apartment they share.

This is a very lonely book. The anthropomorphic search engine is the friendliest thing about it, and the complaints are the most amusing. But they’re not amusing the narrator, who longs for the love of her life. Deforge’s weird, semi- and completely abstract art really works here with a viewpoint character trying to make sense of such a shifting, confusing cityscape in which people are hard to distinguish from furnishings and whatever is on the street.

Graphic Novel Review: Arlo & Pips: King of the Birds by Elise Gravel

Posted on December 8, 2020 at 10:08 am by Gene Ambaum

Arlo & Pips: King of the Birds by Elise Gravel. HarperAlley, 2020. 9780062982223. 64pp.

Arlo (a crow) and Pips (a small, yellow bird) look for food and shiny things. As they chat, Arlo reveals (as he brags about and shows off) facts about crows. Basically Arlo thinks he’s the greatest, cleverest, most beautiful kind of bird in the world. Even though Pip tries to set him straight, Arlo won’t even admit that any aspect of being a crow is anything less than great. This includes his harsh singing voice (caw!), though it is amazing how Arlo and other crows can imitate sounds though, including voices and even car horns.

This is different in format from Gravel’s nonfiction Disgusting Critters series, but equally enjoyable and a little more silly. In 2020 she also produced four new books in that series: The Bat, The Toad, The Cockroach, and The Mosquito. If I’d read these books as a kid, I’d probably have become a biologist.

Book Review: Deadbomb Bingo Ray by Jeff Johnson

Posted on December 3, 2020 at 11:33 am by Gene Ambaum

Deadbomb Bingo Ray by Jeff Johnson. Turner, 2017. 9781683367246. 277pp.

Deadbomb Bingo Ray is part of Philadelphia’s criminal underworld, a man with a reputation for creative problem solving and getting revenge on those who try to cross him. And yet someone is trying to take him out. There are folks on his tail, a woman who says she’s trying to hire him (he knows she has other motives), and a hit squad or two. Ray is clearly going to survive the adventure — he over prepares and over thinks every aspect of his safety as if it’s his superpower — but the question is will everyone else in his life make it through unscathed? Specifically the physicist he unexpectedly finds himself falling in love with, and his sweet little dog? Ray also has a hilarious secretary, and his buddy / partner Skuggy, a sometimes dapper dude who demands his favorite meal before he’ll get to work with Ray.

This is dark, violent entertainment with a bit of a love story. It’s worth reading for the moment Ray kills someone with a sharpened bicycle spoke. And yes, you do find out how he got the nickname.

Graphic Novel Review: Aspara Engine by Bishakh Som

Posted on December 1, 2020 at 10:01 am by Gene Ambaum

Aspara Engine by Bishakh Som. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2020. 9781936932818. 250pp. Oversized, full color.

The eight stories in Bishakh Som’s oversized graphic novel have such subtle colors that, in some case, I wondered if I was imagining the tint of the ink wash. It’s a marvelous effect, and it goes hand in hand with conversations that feel both real and unreal, and with story elements both fantastic and futuristic. I can’t recommend this book enough, but it’s hard to talk about without spoiling things. Issues of gender, identity and queerness are addressed in many of the stories. There’s a mermaid, a “pet” that freaked me out, a humiliated “stalker” who I somehow felt a little bad for, and an unexpected, elegant bit of time travel

It’s worth noting that I started reading Aspara Engine a few times before my brain clicked with its pace, and then I couldn’t put it down. I’m currently enjoying Som’s graphic memoir, Spellbound, and I plan to read her graphic history of prefab bathrooms at some point soon, too.

Graphic Novel Reviews: Batman: Overdrive and Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed.

Posted on November 26, 2020 at 11:00 am by Gene Ambaum

Batman: Overdrive by Shea Fontana, illustrated by Marcelo Di Chiara. DC Comics, 2020. 9781401283568. 336pp. Part of the DC Graphic Novels for Kids line.

Fifteen-year-old Bruce Wayne is learning martial arts, sneaking out of his house to try his hand as a hoodied vigilante, and trying to solve his parents’ murder. Out to find parts to restore a muscle car that belonged to his father, he meets Mateo Diaz, and the pair end up chasing a familiar cat burglar stealing from Diaz’s uncle’s scrapyard. It’s not too long before Diaz and Selena Kyle are helping Bruce work on the car, and then helping him go up against Gotham City’s Falcone crime family. There’s a bit of romance, and a lot more teen angst than I’ve seen in most books “for kids” but this is enjoyable. (Maybe DC needs a branded line of tween graphic novels?)

Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed by Laurie Halse Anderson, Illustrated by Leila Del Duca. DC Comics, 2020. 9781401286453. 186pp. Part of the DC Graphic Novels for Young Adults line.

Diana is the only teen on Themyscira where the Amazons wait behind a barrier, invisible until they’re needed to defeat the Great Evil when it returns. She longs to be a powerful, good Amazon and a great warrior, but her body is strange and she’s given to bouts of weakness. When there are signs of trouble in the outside world, she tries and fails to convince her mother that the Amazons should help. Then refugees start to wash up on Themyscira’s shore, and only Diana rushes into the water to save them, after which she finds herself stuck in our world and unable to return home.

For a time she lives a refugee camp in Greece. After her abilities as a translator become apparent, she gets out of the camp with the help of Steve Chang and his husband, Trevor, who eventually bring her to the US. The fact that she’s new to our world leads to both humor and alarm, and allows her to question confusing examples of inequality and racism that she encounters. The book is super obvious in its social justice focus, and Diana even goes up against child traffickers, but it’s a good read — the story of a teenage Wonder Woman far from home, standing up for what’s right will doubtless appeal to older kids and younger teens, and it’s the kind of book we want them to find on library shelves.

Both books leave me confused as to the difference between the labeling of DC’s Young Adults and Kids lines, respectively. But kids will ignore that, so perhaps we librarians all should, too?

Graphic Novel Review: Water Memory by Valérie Vernay and Mathieu Reynès

Posted on November 24, 2020 at 10:40 am by Gene Ambaum

Water Memory by Valérie Vernay (artist and colorist) and Mathieu Reynès (writer). Roar, 2017. 9781941302439. 96pp. plus some drawings and reference photos in a graphic journal at the end.

Marion and her mom, Caroline, move to Caroline’s childhood house in a small seaside town. Her marriage recently ended, her mother has just passed away, and no one has lived in the house for thirty years. It has a great view that includes a lighthouse, kind neighbors, and a bit of mystery — what’s the meaning of the strange rocks around town, and the carvings on them? Do they have anything to do with the cranky old loner who lives in the lighthouse?

Marion is not a brilliant teen detective, but she’s just enough of a snoop to keep the plot rolling along. She asks her mom’s new boss about her grandfather, who went out in his boat one day and didn’t come back. Gradually she finds out more and more about a town legend involving sea deities and those lost at sea.

The story has a slightly creepy edge and, in a genre defying way, little action. The illustrations are wonderful, the people seem real, and this little seaside town feels like it could be just about anywhere. I wish I’d read this book on vacation, looking at an ocean, but reading it at home while badly in need of a vacation was the next best thing.