The Sword, Volume 1: Fire

There are lots of stories where someone finds out that everything they know is wrong, but The Sword shows how great they can be. Dara Brighton is a paraplegic college student at home with her family one night when three mysterious strangers with supernatural powers break in. They keep calling her father Demetrios and demanding that he turn a sword over to them.

When he refuses to acknowledge what they are saying or possessing any sword, they kill him and then turn to killing his family. They do not kill Dara but leave her without hope of escape in a burning house. As the house collapses she falls into a space underneath the foundation and finds a sword sticking in the ground. When she grasps it, she is instantly imbued with incredible power and can again walk. After she escapes this wreck, she begins to piece together what has happened, beginning with the possibility that her father was over 3000 years old.

The Luna Brothers, Jonathan and Joshua, are both graduates of the Savannah College of Art and Design. They have created a number of comics series through Image Comics, including Ultra and Girls. More about their work can be found at their official site. More about their views and thoughts on The Sword can be read in this interview or this one for the Onion A.V. Club.

The Sword originated as a monthly comic book series that began in October, 2007, and it is still being published. In the end, there will be four collections of the story, and the following volumes will be Water, Earth, and finally Air. Reviews have been largely enthusiastic. Eric Rupe called it a "must read." Nina Stone called it "a thrilling, original, edge-of-your-seat, read with compelling yet easy-on-the-eyes artwork." More reviews can be read at Goodreads.

Read the first issue of the series here for free.

Road to Perdition

Before it was adapted into a movie starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, Road to Perdition was a graphic novel written by Max Allan Collins, a mystery writer with years of experience writing short stories, comic books, novels such as his Quarry series, and the Dick Tracy newspaper strip. The art was provided by Richard Piers Rayner, a British artist whose meticulous style takes time to produce. He has done a range of work for Marvel, DC, and this book's publisher, Paradox Press.

The plot of the book follows Michael O'Sullivan, an honorable and efficient assassin for a mobster, as he is left bereft of allies after the death of most of his family. Left alone with his son Michael Jr., he strives to travel undetected to mount separate attacks on the parties that have wronged him. His years of experience working in organized crime give him a great many resources to gather weapons and wealth while also striking where his enemies would hurt most. In seeking his revenge, he crosses paths with John Patrick Looney, a real life gangster who operated out of Rock Island, Illinois. The actual Looney appears to be a colorful character from various accounts. He was also quite brutal at times, as is seen in the multiple attempts he makes to stop O'Sullivan's vendetta dead.

Road to Perdition is inspired by the classic manga series Lone Wolf and Cub, which follows the exploits of a traveling assassin and his infant son in feudal Japan as they try to get revenge and regain their family's honor. Only this tale is set in the Depression era US Midwest, with cameos by Eliot Ness, Al Capone, and a few other notables. The popularity of the book and movie spawned a sequel series of graphic novels, called On the Road to Perdition, with art by José Luis García-López, which told of events that ran concurrently with the original tale. Additionally, there are two prose novels that depict Michael Jr.'s life as he ages and begins his own career, first as a soldier then in organized crime.

Critics generally enjoy the book even if many offer that the story itself is not a very original one. Bruce Kratofil enjoyed reading the book, even with limited experience reading graphic novels. Time Magazine's Andrew D. Arnold said that the book was "a neglected work of smart, tense, hard-boiled crime comix with more going on than just the usual violence." David Kozlowski called it "a solid, fast read." If not original, at least the story is well told.

A preview of the book is available here.

Sloth

A lot of small towns have a place that attracts urban legends. In Sloth, that place is a lemon orchard where serial killers are said to bury the bodies of their young female victims. Or maybe there is a mythical goatman who is looking for some poor soul to take his place prowling the grounds. Three teenagers, Miguel (whose nickname is the title of the book), his girlfriend Lita, and best friend Romeo, go into the orchard late at night with a video camera hunting for a glimpse of any supernatural creature.

Mostly, the story revolves around the relationships between these three. Miguel lives with his grandparents after his drug-addicted mom mysteriously disappeared. At the story's beginning he slips into a coma because he can't deal with his life, and he remains in that state for a year. After he wakes he finds a different world where people have matured a bit and gone in different directions. As he gets back into his routine however the trio happen upon something in the orchard and their lives take several turns in reality. By the end of the story, the reader has to wonder what really did happen with these people.

Gilbert "Beto" Hernandez wrote and drew this fantastical coming-of-age tale. He is most famous as part of the Hernandez Brothers, the creators of the long-running and celebrated comics series Love and Rockets. He has won multiple Harvey Awards during his career, and in 2009 he won a United States Artists Fellow Award in Literature. He is also a co-creator and co-star on The Naked Cosmos, a low budget TV show about an eccentric prophet.

As many of Hernandez's works, Sloth has been well accepted. Critic Bill Sherman stated that Sloth "is arguably the cartoonist's most self-realized work to date." Walter Biggins called it "graceful" and "mesmerizing." UTEP graduate student Cira Montoya also celebrated the book and provided some ways that teachers may be able to use it with a class.

More information and a preview can be found at the book's official page from publisher Vertigo.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale Volume 2: And Here My Troubles Began

In 1992, this volume won a Special Award Pulitzer Prize, marking it as one of the most celebrated graphic novels ever. Maus II continues the narrative began in Maus I, and nowadays both books are typically published together as a package. Here we see the continuing relationship of Art and his father Vladek as they alternately bicker, share moments, and work on this oral history. Vladek is getting older, and he is trying to put more of his life in order, but he is also being overwhelmed by powerful emotions. The bulk of Vladek's account here is his time spent in Auschwitz, the largest German concentration camp.

Spiegelman calls the place Mauschwitz here to keep with the thematic representation of his narrative, but the real place was the site of torturous labor and death for almost all who entered. This slideshow begins to show what conditions were actually like inside the camp. Today, many of the building still stand, as a dual museum/monument to past events. Through his resourcefulness and luck, Vladek manages to survive his horrible ordeal, and the moments where the prisoners win their freedom are almost more troubling as they are happy.

Reviews of Maus II are almost universally positive. Ty Burr at Entertainment Weekly gave it an A+. There are many 5-star ratings for it on Goodreads. Aside from the Pulitzer Prize, it received a National Book Critics Circle Nomination in 1991, and Spiegelman was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1990 to foster his artistic ventures.

Spiegelman has gone on from Maus to create a great number of other comix work, most notably of late, In the Shadow of No Towers, his account of the 9/11 tragedy and its aftermath.

Some preview pages are available here from the book's publisher, Pantheon.

Life Sucks

Being a vampire would appear to be one of the most romantic or exciting things ever. Popular images that appear in works like Twilight, True Blood, The Vampire Lestat, and even traditional works like Dracula highlight the sexy, hypnotic, and savage side of those mythic creatures. Life Sucks tells a different kind of vampire story. It centers around Dave, a young man who was turned into a vampire in order to work the graveyard shift at a 24-hour convenient store. His master, Radu, is not about conquering the world but for getting someone to mind his store so he can play cards with other vamps.

Little things complicate Dave's life, such as having to adjust to living off blood in contrast to his human life where he was a vegetarian. On a day to day basis, he also has to deal with late night poseurs who play at being vampires, and the inconsiderate day shift guy coming to work late and causing him to have to hurry home to beat the sunrise. This last instance puts him into contact with Rosa, a girl who he has a crush on, and he convinces her to give him a quick ride home. As a cover, he mentions having to get home to watch his favorite telenovela, and the seeds for a friendship (and maybe more) are planted.

Life Sucks was written by Jessica Abel and Gabe Soria and illustrated by Warren Pleece. Abel has been active in publishing graphic works for almost two decades, and her most famous works are Artbabe and La Perdida. Soria is a fiction writer and music journalist who has done some work on Batman Adventures. Pleece has been a published artist for more than two decades now, with work appearing in 2000 AD, Hellblazer, and the graphic novel Incognegro.

This interview between Soria and Kurt Amacker sheds some light into the genesis of this tale. Abel adds her own details about the book in this interview with Brian Heater.

Reviews of this work are mostly positive. Johanna Draper Carlson wrote a lukewarm review about it here, pointing out how it borrows elements from the movie Clerks as well as noting Pleece's low-key art style. This review from Bookshelves of Doom called the book "lots and lots of fun." Elizabeth Bird called it a "fascinating, thoughtful read."

A sizable preview is available from the book's publisher, First Second. An additional 11 page preview is available from New York Magazine.

Y: The Last Man, Volume 1: Unmanned

The last man on earth is a great science fiction go-to for telling stories, and I am Legend is just one of many such tales. Typically though, the women are usually all dead or absent as well. Not so in this volume. Yorick Brown is the last man left in a world where all the other males (everyone and everything with a Y chromosome) have been felled by a horrible event. This event was violent and bloody, as men everywhere simply bled out and dropped dead. The result is catastrophic: planes fall from the sky, cars crash, and social systems are devastated.

In the absence of half the world's population, the women are tasked with establishing a new social order and also cleaning up the mess left by billions of dead bodies. In this volume we see the efforts of female politicians and the wives of politicians vie for control of (what's left of) the US, and the highest ranking member of the Cabinet becomes President. Additionally, we see that many of the other survivors have banded together into loose confederations to defend themselves and consolidate power. Chief among these groups is the Amazons, a band of violent warriors who see the current state of affairs as an act of God against a corrupt, patriarchal system.

Yorick is not the only male left however. Ampersand, his pet capuchin monkey that he was training for his magic act, has also survived somehow. Together, the two try to navigate a hostile world in order to find Yorick's mother, sister, and girlfriend Beth, who was in Australia when the event occurred. Among those trailing Yorick are US government agents, Israeli soldiers, and the Amazons, all for their own reasons.

This high concept story first appeared in a comic book published by Vertigo from 2002 until 2008. Yorick's adventures carried over 60 issues and are collected into 10 separate trade paperbacks. The series was written by Brian K. Vaughan, a popular comics writer who has also a producer and principal writer for the TV show Lost. The art by Pia Guerra and Jose Marzan, Jr. won the 2008 Eisner Award for Best Penciller/Inker Team.

Y: The Last Man has its share of fans and critical praise. Volume 10 of the series was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Series, and Y won the Eisner Award for Best Series in 2008. A range of positive reviews can be found at Goodreads. A very thoughtful review about more of the feminist aspects of the story is at Fannie's Room, and a more middling review can be seen here at Grovel.

The first issue of the series plus a preview can be downloaded for free here from Vertigo.

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea

Is creating a graphic novel worth getting blacklisted by an entire country? Guy Delisle might be a good person to ask. He is a French-Canadian animator who spent two months in 2001 (before 9/11) supervising animation work out-sourced to North Korea. While there, he took notes on what he saw and experienced; these became the basis for this graphic travelogue. Apparently the fruits of his labors are not much appreciated by the current regime.

This result may not be so surprising given that Delisle does not paint a positive picture of North Korea in general, and of its capital city Pyongyang specifically. His response may be best understood via his situation there. Sequestered in a lightly inhabited hotel with limited dining options, Delisle was not allowed to travel without an accompanying guide. When he did get to travel, he was constantly confronted by bleak, spare surroundings, omnipresent images of Kim Jong-il and his father Kim Sung-il, and propaganda praising North Korea and decrying its capitalist enemies.

So he paints a depressing national portrait. Most of the North Korean people are shown being fed a constant stream of propaganda through images, song, and film. They are fearful not to say or do anything to appear critical of the state. Stores are full of huge quantities of the exact same items, with hardly any buyers. Electric lights are scarce; fresh fruits and vegetables are only made available when foreign dignitaries are present; there are no traffic lights, and entire sections of the city are kept off-limits. Also, half finished construction projects, including the colossal, 2-decade-old shell of the Ryugyong Hotel and a largely unused opera house, abound.

Delisle has worked as an animator for more than a decade, working in a number of Asian countries. His wife is an administrator for Médecins Sans Frontières (known as Doctors Without Borders in the US), a job that has led to their family living in a number of different countries. Delisle has turned these experiences into other illustrated travel stories, including volumes about China and Burma. This news story from the National Post and this interview with TimeOut Hong Kong shed more light on his reasons for creating these works.

Reviews about this book are a bit mixed. Some reviewers, like Gary Butler see it as a work of activism, giving voice to a people who live in fear and cannot speak for themselves. Andrew D. Arnold speaks about how he is glad to see light shined on a country shrouded in secrecy while being disappointed that Delisle did not delve into how this experience changed him or add any particular constructive insight into the exchange between cultures. This range of reviews from Goodreads goes further with criticisms, with some reviewers calling Delisle racist and condescending to the North Korean people.

Pyongyang was originally written in French but was published in English by Drawn & Quarterly. They publish periodic news updates about his work here. They also have an 8 page preview available in pdf format here.