Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: Above the Trenches

I have read and reviewed every graphic novel in this series (go see), and this one is a sequel of sorts to Treaties, Trenches, Mud, and Blood in that it also is about World War I. However, this one does not look at the broad scope of the war but at a specific area, namely the origins of aerial combat. 

It is crazy to think that people took their lives into their own hands in early airplanes and even crazier than not even ten years after man-powered flight was invented that someone thought to use these vehicles for war. At first, they were used to scout troop movements and plan assaults, then they were used to drop bombs, and finally someone had the bright idea to strap guns onto them. 

At the time, just flying an airplane was somewhat a daredevil enterprise, with lots of risk involved and little in the way of safety equipment. This book follows a small group of brave (or foolhardy, depending on your viewpoint) young Americans who enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in order to take part in a war that the USA had not yet entered. Their intention was to become pilots and help fight in the skies, and this book chronicles the long, bumpy road many of them took in order to become soldiers. Spoiler: As people who engage in highly dangerous situations they also frequently smoke and drink. Also, most of them die or get killed over the course of the war.

What is excellent about this book is how it puts a human face on the war. There are many stark, pronounced personalities among the pilots, and it is very easy to get to know and root for them. Also, as with all the other volumes in this series, there are plenty of details that make the past come to life. Among the various topics also at hand are the intricacies of dog-fighting, string of technical innovations, military developments, and a code of honor among all pilots. 

It is amazing to me that this book not only encompasses so much information but also communicates it clearly while also making for a compelling, human story. And I have not even mentioned how many visual references must have gone into depicting the intricate uniforms, planes, and people involved in the war. From the lack of reviews I have found online, not many people review the twelfth entry in a series, but I feel it bears repeating just how marvelous and exceptional this book and the entire series are. The art is phenomenal, the stories moving, and the facts fascinating. NHHT continues to be the gold standard for nonfiction graphic novels.

Author Nathan Hale (not related to the Revolutionary War spy) is a highly accomplished graphic novelist, so much so that I named one of my annual favorites list categories after him. Aside from his great success with this series, he has also published the fictional graphic novels The Mighty Bite,  One Trick Pony and Apocalypse Taco. He has also drawn a few others, including Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack.

Above the Trenches was published by Amulet Books, and they offer more information about it here.

The Thud

The Thud is a graphic novel told from the perspective of Noel, a young man who lives with his "mumsie" and is excited about his upcoming birthday and present of going to see his favorite band AC/DC. Everything literally comes crashing down one day when he hears a thud from the next room. 

It turns out that his mother had a stroke and is now in a coma. Because he is developmentally disabled and cannot live on his own, he is taken to Neuerkerod, a German village where most of the inhabitants have developmental disabilities. There, he has to learn to make sense of and live his own life.

Everything has left Noel disoriented, and it is through his eyes that we get to know the lay of the land and the locals. His friend Valentin is obsessed with dates and times, and his strictly scheduled proclivities sometimes clash with Noel's more freewheeling tendencies. Noel also develops an unrequited crush on Penelope, while another young woman named Alice, who is epileptic, tries in vain to gain his attentions. These relationships show both a relatable sense of humanity as well as humor, especially when people's intentions get mistaken. These scenes are often sweet and heartfelt, not pandering, and the humor does not come at the characters' expense.

The artwork is colorful and highly expressive. I love how the characters are distinct, with unique sizes and shapes and imbued with personality. These aspects come out strongly in the episodic fashion of the story, which is structured as a series of sequential short stories. I love how this book develops a longer narrative over the space of these stories, with the reader and Noel both getting more of a sense of this village and the people who live there. It even introduces some historical context, about this village that has existed for 150 years and the dark days of Nazism, when many of the village's citizens were deemed unfit to live. 

Finally, I loved the open-ended, powerful way that the book concluded. It is a beautiful, thoughtful, and respectful look at people who are often overlooked, ignored, and/or underestimated. You will fall in love with these characters.

This book was created by artist/scholar Mikaël Ross and translated into English by Nika Knight. Ross has created a number of comics works and received Berlin’s Senate Department for Culture and Europe’s first graphic novel scholarship. He speaks about The Thud in this interview.

All of the reviews I have read about this book have been positive. Publishers Weekly called it a tale "told with an endearing combination of empathy and humor." Andy Oliver wrote, "Ross mixes poignancy with humour in a book that runs the emotional gamut, culminating in a heartrending finale where events come full circle." Kevin Wolf opined, "Everything about this graphic work is touching … emotionally … visually … conversationally between characters"

The Thud was publish in the US by Fantagraphics, and they provide a preview and more information about it here.

The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth

Hannah Arendt is a writer/thinker whose work on totalitarianism has come back into popular demand these days of "interesting times." The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt is a biographical chronicle that gets at her private and public lives in interesting fashion. It follows chronologically, beginning with her precocious and troubled childhood. As you can read from the following excerpt, her father's descent into syphilitic insanity was only part of the experience:

 

 

I got these preview images from Tablet Magazine

She was also a brilliant thinker who worked and studied with contemporary movers and shakers of the time, most notably Martin Heidegger, who was both her teacher and lover for a number of years. Over the course of this book, she escapes twice from the Nazis, once from Germany and the second time from Paris, and the third escape more has to do with how she reconciled her own thinking with Heidgger's, even as he was a Nazi sympathizer. She was a complicated woman who lived in complicated times, and I feel that her thinking is vital for dealing with thoughts of personal responsibility and justice, especially today.

In many ways, this book is dense with events, ideas, and the past. There is some built-in support in the footnotes, which helped the reader keep up with all the various historical figures, provided context, and served as further avenues for reading and research for those inclined. The art style is on the sketchy side, but I feel it is still rather evocative and energetic. Overall, this book provided me a compelling and very informative reading experience.

Ken Krimstein created this book, and his extensive research is apparent from the plotting and footnotes. His comics work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker, and other high profile venues. He has a collection of cartoons called Kvetch as Kvetch Can, and he also teaches at DePaul University. His prose writing has been published in McSweeney's. Krimstein speaks about his work on The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt in this print interview, this podcast interview, and in this comic.

The reviews I have read about this book have been largely positive. Kirkus Reviews gave it a starred review that concluded, "A compelling performance with great pacing that makes abstruse political theory both intelligible and memorable." Publishers Weekly called it a "fascinating if cluttered biographical portrait." Bookmunch summed up, "Krimstein’s artistic style may not be to everybody’s tastes but the story he tells, of a woman who fought for the importance of thought itself, is one that needs telling and retelling."

The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt was published by Bloomsbury, and they offer a preview and more here.

The published provided a review copy.

In the Future, We Are Dead

I got this book as part of backing Birdcage Bottom Books' Kickstarter for 2018. In the Future, We Are Dead is a collection of nine short stories about death. They are rendered in black, white, blue, and red, via color pencils, and I was quite taken with the artwork. It is mostly done in a realistic style, which combined well with the prose to create great effects. In the excerpt below, for example, it punctuates a thoughtful, philosophic moment with a hilarious, if dark, counterpoint.

This book explores a topic that touches all of our lives, and I feel that Müller's comics are at once deeply personal and also surprisingly universal. I felt with her as she described the deep fears she felt as a child about death and the potential afterlife. Not only was she preoccupied by the potential terrible causes of death, including sickness, nuclear war, or grave injury, but she also wondered about what would happen after.

These various stories touch on different periods of her life, and it was fascinating for me to see just how her thinking transformed over the course of the book. She began to imagine the ghosts of her relatives in her grandparents' living room, which had formerly been used a place for viewing the recently deceased.

She pondered the fate of mummified Buddhists while she practiced  yoga and struggled with the corpse pose (Savasana). She thought about her relationship with an elderly neighbor and how personal and distant it was. She also explored her familial relationships, particularly at her father's funeral, and when she attempted to view her own life through the eyes of her brother. I found this book to be profoundly thoughtful, relatable, and personable. It is an impressive North American debut, a graphic novel that explores both life and death in excellent fashion.

You can learn much more about this book's creator Eva Müller and her work by visiting her website. I am looking forward to checking out more of her comics as they become available in the US.

All of the reviews I have read of this book have been glowing. Publishers Weekly concluded, "This reflective graphic novel looks the Grim Reaper in the face—and sees that he isn’t an enemy, after all." John Seven called it "a work of self-scrutiny that finds profundity by finding the commonality in what can seem so personal and singular to us." Robin Enrico called it "a strong North American debut for Müller as it showcases her artistic abilities and the breadth of her storytelling."

In the Future, We Are Dead was published by Birdcage Bottom Books, and they offer a preview and more information about it here. I also found another preview, featuring different pages here.