graphic novel

BookBin2016: Batgirl Volume 5: Deadline

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batgirldeadline

What? Two reviews in an hour? What is this madness?

It’s called quick reviews of lackluster graphic novels. #spoilerz

I finally got around to reading Volume 5 in the New 52 Batgirl reboot. Apparently, Deadline also is the last in this series before they rebooted the character again, moved her to a different location, changed her look, and changed her appeal to be more “youth-centered.” Translation: Batgirl ain’t for my old ass anymore.

Of course, this final Batgirl from the Gail Simone run wasn’t really for me either. I felt totally disconnected and confused by several of the stories in this collection. I’ve either forgotten key plot points from the previous four volumes or DC did to me what Marvel used to do all the time when I read X-Men comics (and that pissed me off just as much then as it did now with this collection).

I hate when comics become part of a story arc that runs across several titles. I mean, it’s okay every now and then, especially if you have a huge story that you know will require more than just one particular superhero and will deserve the wider audience (as I seemed appeased when they pulled this same thing in the third collection). However, I felt as though several themes in this collection were pieces from several different (and mediocre) puzzles that I simply didn’t care enough about to piece together. Also, it strikes me as frustratingly and offensively greedy of comics companies to demand that readers invest so much money into being able to get the whole story when all they might care about is one faction of the comics universe.

[Loba Translation: I don’t give a damn about Batman. Stop trying to make me give a damn.]

Final Verdict: Just as it was with my last Batwoman experience, I’m drawing the line at 5 with Batgirl. I won’t be following Babs and her roomie Alysia to Burnside.

BookBin2016: Blacksad: Amarillo

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amarillo

Back once more with another graphic novel from the Blacksad series by writer Juan Diaz Canales and artist Juanjo Guarnido. We haven’t had a new novel from this duo since their 2012 offering A Silent Hell. I gave that novel a bit of a lackluster review in comparison to my ebullient review of the first Blacksad collection.

I’m afraid that my review of this latest novel, Amarillo, is going to be even less enthusiastic. Guarnido is still producing stunning artwork for this series, but I feel as though perhaps Canales has reached his creative limit with this character’s story. I honestly found this tale trite and dull. Perhaps it’s because of my ongoing struggle to get into detective stories, but I ultimately think that it’s because there wasn’t really a story worth telling here. Perhaps it’s either time to let our private dick retire or take up residence with a different storyteller. However, I would like for Guarnido to continue being his artist. Guarnido’s art continues to be top shelf.

Final Verdict: I’ll hang on to this one for the artwork (another from my own collection!), but I seriously doubt whether I would give another novel from this series a go.

BookBin2015: The Art of War

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taow

One final entry for the 2015 Book Bin. I knew, even as I was writing the reviews I posted on the last day of last year, that I was forgetting a book. It frustrated me to no end that I could not recall even that it was a graphic novel. Thankfully, during a trip this weekend to the library, I ended up seeing the book I knew was missing from my 2015 reading list, happily tucked back on the graphic novel shelf where I first found it.

The Art of War is, of course, based on the same-titled ancient military philosophies of Chinese General Sun Tzu. This novel, however, takes Sun Tzu’s teachings and filters them through a two-color rendering of the philosophies as they apply to this futuristic (but still stunningly violent) thriller.

To be honest, the power of this graphic novel doesn’t reside in writer Kelly Roman’s rendering of Sun Tzu’s philosophies. Instead, the strength rests squarely in the hands of artist Michael DeWeese. Stark, stunning, bloody, visceral, and all with a little red thrown in for good measure to a purely monochromatic palette. DeWeese made me continue to turn the page, even when I had long lost interest in Roman’s tepid tale.

Final Verdict: I wish I had remembered this novel before now. I would have much rather ended 2015’s BookBin reviews with the one-two Harper Lee review I posted than this dud of a read. I also wish I had read more than 29 books last year. My track record has continued to drop with each year I do this. Competitive streak aside, reading has always been incredibly important to me. Watching my record for reading plummet with each passing year means that I’m slipping in time put aside to enjoy something that has brought me endless hours of joy my entire life. That’s just not acceptable. I need to fix that this year.

BookBin2015 Final Tally: 29

BookBin2015: Ghost World

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ghostworld

I don’t really know how it happened that I never read Daniel Clowes’ graphic novel Ghost World before now. I’ve also never seen the movie based on the novel. I’ve had it on my radar for years, and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the first movies I ever added to my Netflix queue. I’ve just never taken the plunge and moved it to the top.

[Loba Tangent: I just watched the trailer and read the plot of the movie. First, I love how early this was in Scarlett Johansson’s career. Also, what the hell ever happened to Thora Birch? Second, that plot sounds jilted. I suppose that answers my question of how they made a mainstream movie out of this comic, which doesn’t really have a central point other than the exploration of the post-graduation dystopia and ensuing tumble into adulthood, as set in the culture-defining era of early 90s grunge and disenchantment. They didn’t make that movie. They made another movie. And it sounds…questionable. Maybe that’s why I haven’t rented it yet.]

So, the graphic novel is…uh, I think I just pretty much explained most of it in my tangent. The two main characters are Enid Coleslaw and Rebecca Doppelmeyer, both highly cynical, highly sarcastic, highly amusing. They’re best friends at the time of their high school graduation, both into the same things, the same people, the same warped and weary view of the capitalistic, consumer-driven wasteland of unnamed America in which they live. Enid is slightly more of all these things and slightly less popular with the boys than Rebecca, which I think gives her the sharper edge and ekes her out as the star of the novel. She seems to be the one intent on making things happen, whereas Rebecca is more content with being a follower and the recipient of male affection.

Clowes does a fantastic job of showing the everyday fluctuations of relationships and the stilted stumbling journey that we all take as we move away from the cloistered safety of our adolescence and into the stark reality of adulthood and figuring things out on our own. Also, the natural evolution of Enid and Rebecca’s friendship from beginning to end was believable, relatable, and not the least bit melancholy. And make note that it was no small thing that Clowes chose two female characters as his protagonists, or that the novel was so well received by fans and critics regardless of the fact that it wasn’t a male-driven coming of age story for the comics fandom, which continues to be a holdout of male domination.

Final Verdict: I very much enjoyed this novel and foresee it becoming a part of my graphic novel collection. I kind of have a feeling that I might not have the same reaction to the movie…but I’m willing to give a go.

BookBin2015: The Cape

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thecape

So what do you think my reaction is going to be, based on all that you’ve read here at the lair of my love for Joe Hill, when I stumble upon a graphic novel based on one of his short stories? Um. Let me think.

I’m going to grab it from the shelf like I’m a wild dingo and it’s the first food I’ve seen in a week, and I’m going devour it in one sitting, that’s what’s going to happen.

So it was with The Cape. Although, for full disclosure, this graphic novel is based on a short story by Hill as translated for a comic by Jason Ciaramella, with art by Zach Howard and Nelson Daniel. This being said, I don’t know exactly what comes from Hill’s story and what might be uniquely Ciaramella. All I have to say is, whoever thought of dropping a grizzly into a convertible as retribution against the driver? That’s just mighty twisted brilliance right there.

Other than that, this graphic novel is a “what-if” tale about a young man who had a horrible accident when he was a kid, falling from a tree while playing with his brother, and never really recovered. Instead, he kind of just slides through life without drive or ambition or any will to do anything. That is, until his girlfriend breaks up with him and he finds himself living in his mother’s basement. It’s here that he discovers his mother didn’t throw away the cape he wore as a kid (and was wearing the day he fell from the tree). It’s also here that he discovers that the cape from his childhood can make him fly. Forreals.

Does he take this newfound ability as a sign that he should change his life and begin to do good? Come on, now. This is a Joe Hill story, people. Of course he doesn’t! He uses it to exact revenge on everyone he believes has wronged him. Which, by the by, leads to the grizzly bear dropped into a convertible.

Brilliance.

To be sure, the bleakness runs thick through this tale. We begin our journey feeling sympathy for our primary character, Eric, when we learn that his father was killed in battle and Eric wears one of his dad’s Marine Corps patches on his cherished cape…and then he falls from the tree and suffers severe trauma that continues to plague him through his adolescence…but then? Then, when he returns home and discovers his cape and its powers? Not so much with the sympathy anymore. Hill’s characterization of a megalomaniacal turd blossom is overwhelmingly successful. Ciaramella breaks it all down satisfactorily for comic consumption, while Howard and Daniel provide solid, straightforward line work and coloring for the visuals.

Final Verdict: I liked this novel well enough and thought the artwork was enjoyable, but I don’t really see any reason to add this to my graphic novel collection at this time.

BookBin2015: My Dirty Dumb Eyes

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mdde

This might possibly be one of the most randomly fortuitous grabs I’ve ever made at a library. I saw the chaos-in-neon cover of Lisa Hanawalt’s My Dirty Dumb Eyes and decided on a whim that it looked like something that I could at least give a go. It ended up being a funny, surreal visual romp that gives nary a fuck as to whether it’s poignant or pithy or cerebral. It just wants to be. Period.

Hanawalt’s humor is uniquely her own, coming through in the loveliest of visual and linguistic ways. She’s a sublime storyteller, slightly puerile when it comes to bodily functions, slightly precocious when it comes to all else, and overwhelmingly endearing when it comes to simply being herself.

There’s not much else to say about this weird, wonderful collection of one-offs, movie reviews, personal stories, and visual sundries. You kind of have to see it to believe it.

Final Verdict: I have added this to my wish list. It’s not an imperative purchase, but it is one that I envision making a lovely addition to my library.

BookBin2015: 99 Days (Vertigo Crime)

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99days

I think the thing that struck me the hardest about Matteo Casali’s graphic novel 99 Days was the mention of how most people in this country heard more and remember more about Kurt Cobain’s suicide than the atrocities that occurred around the same time in Rwanda.

For the record, Kurt Cobain killed himself on April 5, 1994. Beginning two days later, from April 7 to July 15, 1994, the Hutu-led government of Rwanda targeted the Tutsis for extermination, killing between 500,000 to 1 million Tutsi

BookBin2015: Batwoman Volume 5: Webs

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batwoman_webs

This, sadly, is going to be both my shortest Batwoman review and my last Batwoman review. At least for now. They’ve ended her solo run and, while there is one final graphic novel out there, I have no intention of buying it. I couldn’t care less how Marc Andreyko ended this series. By the time I finished this graphic novel, I was left so apathetic that I couldn’t even muster the energy to be furious that the last two pages pretty much seemed to imply that Batwoman was about to be raped by her new nemesis, Nocturna.

Okay, not completely bereft of fury. Seriously, DC? It’s not okay for Batwoman to marry her girlfriend but it’s okay for her new enemy to mentally Roofie her as she’s trying to fall asleep and trick her into believing she’s someone else so that Batwoman won’t fight her off? Oh, and really subtle artwork in that last panel, of Nocturna, who is apparently a vampire or vampire-like character, penetrating Batwoman with her fangs while Batwoman arches back against her while wearing just a camisole and undies. And with a look on her face as if she were enjoying what was happening to her. Great message there. Absolutely.

What utter bullshit. Sorry, but there’s no tactful way to put it. The whole novel was just example after example of piss-poor writing and some of the most mediocre artwork to ever grace a Batwoman comic. There was nothing satisfying about any of this collection, starting with Andreyko’s terribly anticlimactic ending to the story arc that Williams and Blackman started (and should have been allowed to end, dammit). And then to end the novel on that so-not-kosher, rapey WTAF were you thinking note? Allow me to be thoroughly clear with this sentiment, DC Comics. Fuck. You.

So utterly disappointing. Thanks, DC, for ruining my current favorite character from your comics line. Oh, and it looks like you’ve turned Batgirl into a character I don’t really want to follow anymore either. Thanks. For nothing.

Final Verdict: The only redeemable thing about this collection is the clean copy of that great WWII-era artwork of Batwoman as one of the ball players from the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. I think I’m probably just going to slice that out and then get rid of the rest of the book. Not even going to donate it. Just going to toss it in the recycle bin. That’s how much I hated this collection.

BookBin2015: Locke & Key: Alpha & Omega

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alphaomega

Okay, this one is going to be very brief, as Alpha & Omega is the last in a series of graphic novels that I already have professed multiple times to love. Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez created a tantalizing, terrifying world in this series of novels that I definitely cannot wait to revisit in its entirety, thanks to the box set I bought earlier this month.

I have to say that this final novel did let me down a bit, but I believe that this was due more to the setting in of the depressing truth that this was the last Locke & Key visit I would get to make to Lovecraft, Massachusetts (yes, that still cracks me up every time I think about it). I think a sliver of responsibility for this disappointment also rests with the fact that so much time passed in between all my forays into this realm. Again, looking forward to re-reading them all at once, rediscovering what made me love this series in the first place, and hopefully discovering some more of the many enthralling ways that Hill and Rodriguez blew me away with their artwork and storytelling.

Huzzah and hooray.