Graphic Novel Review: Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang.

Posted on April 30, 2020 at 9:43 am by Gene Ambaum

Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang, with art assists by Rianne Meyers and Kolbe Yang plus colors by Lark Pien. First Second, 2020. 9781626720794. 436pp plus notes and a bibliography of sources.

Gene Yang documents a possible championship year in the life of the Bishop O’Dowd High School boys basketball team, the Dragons. Yang is not a basketball fan, but he pulled me into the book by adding himself to the story (he taught at Bishop O’Dowd), showing his awkwardness as he begins interviewing Coach Lou and learning a bit more about the game. There is a lot of on-court action, which is great, but Yang also sits down with the starters and tells their stories. Along the way he also shares the history of basketball. My favorite parts, though, involve Yang himself, from the handshakes to his sincerity to the way he shows himself creating comics and dealing with the opportunities that have come this way.

I’ve enjoyed every book Gene Yang has created, but this is my favorite. (And I don’t care much about basketball.)

Graphic Novel Review: Stargazing by Jen Wang.

Posted on April 28, 2020 at 10:15 am by Gene Ambaum

Stargazing by Jen Wang. First Second, 2019. 9781250183880. 224pp including an afterward about how the story relates to Wang’s life.

Moon Li and her mother have been having some trouble, so Christine’s parents let them move into the mother-in-law unit behind their house. Christine is worried about Moon living there because she’s heard Moon is a bully. After a meal at Moon’s house, and her mom’s amazing vegetarian dan dan noodles, she and Christine seem on the way to becoming friends. They even decide to dance together in the school talent show, to a song by Moon’s favorite K-Pop star. There’s some distance between the two as Moon doesn’t seem interested in learning Chinese, and her energy feels a bit out of control (especially compared to Christine’s, whose parents watch her every move). After Moon gets into a fight at school, and Christine gets a little jealous of her at a birthday party, she embarrasses Moon, and then things get serious.

The friendship between Moon and Christine has a flow that feels realistic, and it’s enjoyable to watch Christine try to navigate the small awkward moments between them as they grow closer. I’m giving this one to my daughter, who’s been a fan of Wang’s books since Koko Be Good.

Guest Book Review: Dog Heaven written and illustrated by Cynthia Rylant

Posted on April 25, 2020 at 8:46 am by Gene Ambaum

Dog Heaven written and illustrated by Cynthia Rylant. Blue Sky Press, 1995. 9780590417013. 40 pp.

Guest Review by NowBrusMom.

This is a special story to me because it was the last bedtime story I read to my beautiful Bassett hound/pit bull/beagle mix. I was still known as Murphy’s Mom then, and I guess part of me always will be, but I am now facing the challenges of raising a pit bull/pointer puppy named Brutus.

I take comfort in this amazing story by Rylant. I needed to read Dog Heaven to remind myself and Murphy that he wouldn’t be in pain anymore. There is an afterlife for him and all the other animals we have ever known and loved. Knowing he gets all the treats, pats, and walks he would ever want is comforting. I also cried during the story knowing Murphy and other pets are allowed, on occasion, to visit earth to check on their people. This was Rylant’s first attempt at illustrations, but her pictures are worth framing — they will comfort each of us who has lost a pet. (For the record, there is also a Cat Heaven.)

Graphic Novel Review: Penny Nichols by MK Reed and Greg Means, art by Matt Wiegle.

Posted on April 23, 2020 at 9:44 am by Gene Ambaum

Penny Nichols by MK Reed and Greg Means, art by Matt Wiegle. Top Shelf, 2019. 9781603094481. 206pp.

Penny is smart and funny, making the best of temp jobs when she gets the chance to help make a low-budget, gore-filled slasher movie. She gets sucked in by everyone’s enthusiasm, and soon quits temp work so that she can be involved in every aspect of the production. The movie itself is entertaining in a 1980s, direct-to-VHS way, and the personalities involved are all hilarious.

At the beginning of the book, you’ll fall in love with Penny as she passes out juice samples at a health expo while trying not to go insane. The date she goes on afterward is so cringeworthy. When she makes up a bedtime story for her sister’s kids, you’ll wish Penny had been your babysitter. She’s just fun to listen to and is the most entertaining character I’ve read about in a long time; a chatty, well-meaning smart ass who gets shit done. Plus the movie in the book is full of fake murder, and artist Matt Wiegel has as much fun with that as Reed and Means did writing the dialogue.

Graphic Novel Review: Cosmoknights by Hannah Templer.

Posted on April 21, 2020 at 10:25 am by Gene Ambaum

Cosmoknights by Hannah Templer. Top Shelf, 2019. 9781603094542. 216pp.

Pan dreams of living in space and working on spaceships, but her friend Tara is a princess, and Tara is never going to get to leave Viridian and explore the galaxy. Next week there’s a cosmoknights tournament (think people in cool robot suits), and Tara’s family is going to marry her off to the winner. She asks Pan to help her run away.

Cut to years later, and another tournament where cosmoknights are battling for the right (for their sponsors to) marry a different princess. It’s a kinetic, tech heavy version of jousting complete with robot suits. Pan, working at her dad’s garage, doesn’t want to watch. Afterwards, one of the competitors and her partner end up at Pan’s house for a bit of anonymous medical care. Pan is confused by why a woman warrior would compete in such games, and finds out they don’t believe in them, either. In fact they’re gaming the system. Soon Pan is running for the spaceport to join them.

Lots of action and bright colors make this an incredibly compelling start to what feels like it may become an epic story.

Guest Book Review: An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good  by Helene Tursten

Posted on April 18, 2020 at 8:58 am by Gene Ambaum

Let’s Make Ramen! A Comic Book Cookbook by Hugh Amano and Sarah Becan

Posted on April 16, 2020 at 9:41 am by Gene Ambaum

Let’s Make Ramen! A Comic Book Cookbook by Hugh Amano and Sarah Becan. Ten Speed Press, 2019. 9780399581991. 184pp including an index!

This book has pretty much everything I would have ever thought to ask about ramen. My favorite parts from the introduction: the history of ramen, including the invention of the method of flash-frying ramen noodles in 1948, and the “Some Of Our Favorite Bowls” spread which serves as a great overview to ramen and the rest of the book. Making stock from scratch still seems like a lot of work, but the “Homemade Instant Ramen Cubes” sound like something I might try. (“Fast Weeknight Ramen Broth” is even more my speed.) “A Noodle Primer” with Kenshiro Uki of Sun Noodle and Ramen Lab (he’s not the book’s only guest star) made me hungry, and reminded me of my ex-stepfather rolling out his own pasta when I was a kid. There’s a section on meat along with lots of vegetarian options throughout including “Pickled Shitake Mushrooms” which sound amazing.

This book is pretty much guaranteed to make anyone hungry, and may have gadget-oriented folks like me shopping for pasta rollers and pressure cookers.

Graphic Novel Review: Lily the Thief by Janne Kukkonen.

Posted on April 14, 2020 at 10:48 am by Gene Ambaum

Lily the Thief by Janne Kukkonen. English translation by Lola Rogers. First Second, 2019. 9781250196972.

Lily, an ambitious young thief, is tired of getting easy jobs. She wants the thieves’ guildmaster to assign her real burglaries, and she’s annoyed that the other, more experienced thieves don’t think much of her. After she overhears the guildmaster telling her mentor that she’ll never get any of the tough jobs, she helps herself to one of the guild scrolls (and the job it contains). Her mission: to steal a bit of treasure from a coffin in the Earl’s castle. The problem: it’s heavily guarded, The Brotherhood of Fire wants it, and what’s she’s done has angered her guildmaster as well. The job doesn’t go well, and Lily is soon doing even more dangerous work to try to save herself and her mentor.

This is a fairly lighthearted, beautifully drawn graphic novel with a bit of magic, spookiness, and violence. I’d have read it to my kid when she was in grade school, and I think young readers are really going to love it.

Guest Book Review: Paradigm Shifts: Typewritten Tales of Digital Collapse and Escapements: Typewritten Tales from Post-Digital Worlds

Posted on April 11, 2020 at 10:01 am by Gene Ambaum

Paradigm Shifts: Typewritten Tales of Digital Collapse, Edited by Richard Polt, Frederic S. Durbin, and Andrew V. McFeaters, Loose Dog Press, 2019. 9781097972630.

Escapements: Typewritten Tales from Post-Digital Worlds, edited by Richard Polt, Frederic S. Durbin, and Andrew V. McFeaters, Loose Dog Press, 2019. 9781097991105.

Guest review by Robert in Silicon Valley.

My high school’s literary annual was typeset on expensive, rationed mimeograph masters. Only our most accurate typists were entrusted with the work. In college, a fiction writing class focusing on building a science fiction world, then populating it with characters and their stories. Our final project was a compilation produced at a nearby copy shop via photocopier, and the modes of its master copy ranged from highly legible to sketchy dot matrix printers.

Paradigm Shifts and Escapements take me back. The editors, prominent figures in the online typewriter community — “The Typosphere” — solicited stories and poems in which these 20th (and in one notable case, 19th) century machines save the day, or are of use when the day can’t be saved. The machines each author used for the final, correct copies of their work are credited at the end of each selection. The wide range of typestyles and spacing are reproduced, just like the reader made for my college class anthology. It’s not quite the same as the 1880’s newspaper clippings I’ve seen in which the pigeon who’d carried the dispatch got part of the byline, but it’s close.

In only one notable case does the scribe resort to the conceit that the typewriter itself authors the story: “Eat Cake” by Jos LeGrand, in Paradigm Shifts, is written as if by a crotchety, protesting 1876 Sholes & Glidden, with rickety ALL CAPS included. This short contribution was actually typed ON a 1876 Sholes & Glidden, the machine that helped make the QWERTY keyboard the standard. Other authors use two or more typewriters to perform a few typographical trick, including using different typewriters to indicate different narrators. One author’s end of story typewriter credit even thanks his local library for letting him borrow an IBM Wheelwriter while his own typewriter was being repaired!

The subtitles accurately reflect the focus of each volume: Paradigm Shifts is full of tales of just-post-digital collapse: electric power grid woes, electromagnetic pulses,  dread disease, climate disaster, and combinations the aforementioned problems. Escapements offers views of the post collapse world in recovery, or at least in some form of equilibrium, usually without digital tools coming back: rebuilding communications and transportation, exorcising typewriter demons, a young and pregnant typewriter repairer faced with racial intolerance. Across both books there are thrillers, science fantasies, hardboiled crime stories, and even a a tale of indescribable weirdness that could have come from the typewriter of William S. Burroughs (“not the falling” by Jim Pennington, in Escapements). Both volumes also feature stories with cats! If you don’t mind idiosyncratic and shifting typesetting, you might want to give Paradigm Shifts and Escapements a try.

Guest review by Robert in Silicon Valley.

Graphic Novel Review: No Ivy League by Hazel Newlevant.

Posted on April 9, 2020 at 9:32 am by Gene Ambaum

No Ivy League by Hazel Newlevant. Lion Forge / Roar, 2019. 9781549303050. 205pp plus a few pages about their process at the end.

Newlevant’s fictionalized memoir “about a pivotal summer in [their] life…It was a multi-car pileup of race, class, gender, and teen hormones.” Her originals, done in black watercolor paint, are reproduced with a dark green ink in the book, which look super good.

Seventeen-year-old Hazel is homeschooled. They, their fifteen-year-old boyfriend, and another friend are making pro-homeschooling videos as part of a contest, hoping to win money to see a band they all like in Washington, DC, in the fall. Then Hazel’s dad tells them about a summer job removing ivy from Forest Park. They’re hired, but then Hazel gets off to an awkward start with the other high school kids there — they think Hazel is a bit weird and that the food they eats is bougie. Work gets more awkward when Hazel starts obviously crushing on a supervisor, and a few games of Fuck, Marry, Kill seem to indicate things are getting better with the other workers (though then everything gets much worse again for a bit). All in all this is feels like one of the most realistic graphic novels about teens that I’ve read, which probably makes it a bit too realistic for some high schools.