Graphic Novel Resources

Thursday, May 15, 2014

The 14th Dalai Lama: A Manga Biography

The Dalai Lama is an internationally known religious figure, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people who has lived in exile since 1959. This book chronicles his life from the time he was 2 years old and showed the signs of being the reincarnation of the religious and political leader. He left his home of humble means and went on to be taught by monks and to assume his role in the Buddhist faith and as ruler of Tibet.

Following in the years after World War II, Mao Tse-tung led the Cultural Revolution in China, and communism came to great prominence. The communist Chinese forces eventually turned their attention to "liberating" Tibet from an imperialist regime and returning governance to the people. These invading forces are depicted as cruel and savage, committing many atrocities against the Tibetan people.

The invasion led to great periods of unrest, and the Lama was challenged on many sides as a young leader. Although he advocated non-violent resolutions to the situation, he finally fled to India.The last part of the book focuses on him in more recent years, winning the Nobel Peace Prize and being an advocate for a free Tibet and various humanitarian efforts and institutes.

This book is part of a series of Penguin-published manga biographies about such figures as Gandhi and Che Guevara. I think it is a great introduction to the life of the Dalai Lama, and it has as many facts as a Wikipedia entry and much better graphics. That said, I found it a tad dry, just the facts without much emotion. The traditional manga style is attractive, and it probably makes the book much more universally accessible, but I also think the art is a bit generic, bordering on antiseptic, and when coupled with an overly journalistic writing style, the whole enterprise comes off as polished but not so enticing. There is much preaching to the choir, and I am not so sure this book would win over converts who were not familiar with these facts and struggles.

I was not able to find much information on this book's creator, Tetsu Saiwai. From his publisher's biography I learned that he has drawn many educational manga over the past 20 years and that he is a puppeteer and puppetry enthusiast.

The reviews of this book I have read are positive, though not overwhelmingly so. The Examiner's Raymond Herrera recommended, "For those younger readers out there that would like to read a historically based manga that is both entertaining and educational this is surely a manga worth looking into." The reviewer at Publishers Weekly felt that this biography lacked nuance and "Tetsu's lack of perspective ultimately works to flatten, not enhance, the story." CNN's Gabe LaMonica reported positively that "Saiwai’s book is a quick read packed with the history of a life that spans nearly eight decades. It’s a tribute to the book’s form that so much is conveyed in such a small space."

The 14th Dalai Lama was published in the USA by Penguin.

Saturday, May 10, 2014

"21" The Story of Roberto Clemente

Roberto Clemente was the first Latino player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was a record breaking batter who played outfield for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Over his career he won two World Series, amassed 3000 hits, and had a rifle of an arm, but most importantly he became involved with many humanitarian efforts and gave much to those in need from other countries. He died in 1972 in a plane crash while in the process of delivering supplies for disaster relief following an earthquake in Nicaragua. Major League Baseball honored him by naming an award after him, "given annually to a player who demonstrates the values Clemente displayed in his commitment to community and understanding the value of helping others."

Those are the facts of Clemente's life, and this book "21" takes them and breathes life and energy into them. Working with a limited palate of color, the art is full of personality, verve, and emotion. Below you can see a scene from Roberto's childhood when his love for baseball was kindled.

I got a good sense of four major periods of his life: his childhood coming from little means, his frustrating minor league years (drafted by the Dodgers, he was not called up, perhaps because they did not want too many "dark" players on the club), his impactful major league career, and his humanitarianism. There is great storytelling throughout this book, but where it really shines is in the baseball sequences. Here, Santiago cuts loose with imagery, line, and design, creating some scenes of beauty and wonder.

Of course there had to be some editing of his life and some areas were not given as much space. Santiago journalistically shows some of what Clemente had to deal with, including announcers Anglicizing his name to "Bob" (which he hated) and yelling "Arriba! Arriba!" (a la Speedy Gonzalez) when he made a big play, but he does not really comment on how these things may have affected the ball player. I also saw much reverence in his depiction of Clemente, but not so much about how much he impacted baseball as a player who drew many more Latino players into MLB with his huge presence. However, Santiago more than makes up for these absences with his rich portrait of Puerto Rico's history and culture intertwined with Clemente's life. I learned quite a bit more history of the island than I expected to, and that context enlivens everything. Even with the limited color palate, this story is vibrant and rich.

Wilfred Santiago, like Clemente a native of Puerto Rico, put much love, craft, and detail into this book. He is a graphic artist currently living in Chicago and is at work on a biography of another titanic sports figure, Michael Jordan, called Bull on Parade. Santiago speaks about his art and career in this interview. Much more information about Santiago's work on this book can be found in this article.

"21" has received much positive attention and praise. It was named one of the Library Journal's Best Books, a YALSA Great Graphic Novel, and one of Booklist's Top 10 Graphic Novels. Comic Alliance's David Brothers called the book "a treat," and added, "its 200 pages fly by, the visuals are great, and the dialogue dead-on." Spitball's Mark W. Schraf summed it up as "captivating, revealing, and dramatic." Offering a contrary opinion, Jeffrey O. Gustafson wrote that this book is an excellent comic but a poor biography full of "cardboard cutouts moved around at the service of the plot."

Its 200 pages fly by, the visuals are great, and the dialogue dead-on.

Read More: ’21: The Story of Roberto Clemente’ Blazes Trails And Breaks Hearts | http://comicsalliance.com/roberto-clemente-biography/?trackback=tsmclip

a treat. Its 200 pages fly by, the visuals are great, and the dialogue dead-on.

Read More: ’21: The Story of Roberto Clemente’ Blazes Trails And Breaks Hearts | http://comicsalliance.com/roberto-clemente-biography/?trackback=tsmclip

An excerpt and more information is available from the book's publisher Fantagraphics here.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Andre the Giant: Life and Legend

Box Brown is someone whose work I follow. He makes comics and also promotes an independent spirit for other comics creators with Retrofit, the publishing company he runs. I love his desire to publish comics of all shapes and sizes. I love his clean lines and geometric figures. I love how the deceptive simplicity of his stories and his artwork combine into some truly evocative and emotional scenes. I think he has created some masterful comics and also some well done shorter pieces. I have noticed upon reflection that his stories tend to focus on exceptional loners or isolated people, like Noah from The Survivalist, who is striving to survive in a doomsday scenario, or Phoebe, a banker who is looking for some summer fun in Beach Girls.

Brown is also a big fan of professional wrestling, and I think he has found his ideal subject in Andre the Giant. Andre was huge in a couple of senses. He suffered from acromegaly, a hormonal disorder where too much growth hormone is produced. He grew to be 7 ft 4 in tall and he weighed well over 500 pounds (maybe tipping the scales at 700 toward the end of his life), and his immense size catapulted him to the top of professional wrestling. He found international fame and toured the world. He fought boxers in exhibition matches. He even went on to bigger fame in Hollywood as Fezzik in the classic movie The Princess Bride.

Brown shows all of these highlights from his life, including the incredible fact that he was neighbors with playwright Samuel Beckett, who ended up driving Andre to school when he grew too large to take the bus. But he also shows a lot of the small moments, with Andre playing cards on the road, his prankster side (he apparently was a big fan of farting in elevators), and his self-medicating with alcohol to sooth his many aches and pains. Andre is presented as a looming but tragic figure and not without faults. Brown depicts a few instances culled from different accounts where he was casually racist and also recounts how later in life he became somewhat of a deadbeat dad. Brown makes the giant human but also shows his flaws and darker sides, and those aspects are what make this graphic biography truly compelling reading. It is simultaneously an exposé and a tribute to the man.

Box Brown speaks more about his work on this book in this interview and also this interview. He also has a lot to say about his life and career in this interview with Tom Spurgeon.

Almost all of the reviews I have seen about this book have been positive. Alan David Doane wrote, "If you don’t care about the subject matter, I suspect you’ll still enjoy Andre The Giant: Life and Legend; if you do care about wrestling in general or Andre in particular, I have to think you will love this book." Publishers Weekly called it "An engaging biography of a literally larger-than-life character." Chris Sims summed up, "There’s a love in this book, but there’s an honesty, too, and it comes through in every scene, even when the truth, strictly speaking, is exaggerated just a bit." Friend of mine and scholar Bill Boerman-Cornell regretted that there was too much drinking, swearing, and violence in this book to use it for school purposes, "because this is a subject kids would really be interested in."

Andre the Giant: Life and Legend was published by First Second. They have a preview and more information here. Another 10 page preview is also available at Tor.com.

Thank you, Gina, for the preview copy!

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

The Graphic Canon, Volume 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest

Representing huge swaths of literature in visual manners is a huge undertaking, as is trying to review all the intricacies of such a volume. Because it's that time of the year for me, I do not know if my brain or energy level is up for the task of describing these myriad adaptations, but suffice it to say that as a whole this book is impressive, thought-provoking, striking, daring in parts, and excellent for fostering discussions about representation and analysis. Russ Kick's third volume of the Graphic Canon contains a huge range of styles and interpretations of literature beginning from the late 19th century and extending to the end of the 20th, and it touches on more works from outside of the traditional European canon than the second volume did.

My favorite things in this book are the scattered "Three Panel Review" comics by Lisa Brown. They just tickled my funny bone with the way they simultaneously commented on and distilled books into comic strips.

A good number of the entries are more visual interpretations that do not have much textual accompaniment, such as

Graham Rawle's photo-diaramas of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Laura Plansker's photo-diaramas of Animal Farm

T. Edward Bak's spare adaptation of The Maltese Falcon

PMurphy's impressionistic panels from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Onsmith's frenetic panels interpreting J.G. Ballard's Crash

Other entries melded illustrations with the original text, such as Anthony Ventura's interpretation of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

Other entries used more sequential art styles and conventions to both adapt and interpret literary works.

Sonia Leong's appropriately manga-flavored version of Reginald

David Lasky re-imagining James Joyce's Ulysses as mini-comics

Peter Kuper adapting more Kafka tales in paranoid, impressionistic ways

Trevor Alixopulos capturing the wild, deranged sides of Lord of the Flies

Jason Cobley coordinating a contextualized "Dulce et Decorum Est"

C. Frakes 1-page chapter summaries of The Age of Innocence

There is even a smattering of nonfiction pieces, such as Steve Rolston's adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway newspaper article "Living on $1000 a Year in Paris."

One of the aspects I appreciate most about this book is its selection of artists. I was unfamiliar with many until seeing them here for the first time, and I am glad to have been introduced to their work. As you can see from the images above, there is so much to peruse, mull over, and digest in these images. This book is chock full of literary and aesthetic goodness.

I have not been able to find many reviews about this volume in particular, but the entire project has generated much praise and good will. Henry Chamberlain called Volume 3 "such a mighty undertaking that you just can’t go wrong." The folks at Publishers Weekly named it one of the summer's best books and called it "the most beautiful book of 2013."

The Graphic Canon, Volume 3 was published by Seven Stories Press. Excerpts, information, reviews, and more can be found at the book's official site.

Thank you so much to Jesse for the review copy!

Friday, April 25, 2014

Sweet Tooth, Volume 1: Out of the Deep Woods

I very much enjoy the work of Jeff Lemire in general. I think that his spare and brutal Essex County Trilogy was inspired and brilliant. His superhero work on titles like Animal Man was well crafted, and his original works like The Underwater Welder and Trillium are incredibly well plotted and characterized. He is a multiple award winner, and I very much enjoy his atmospheric and deceptively simple-looking art.

Out of the Deep Woods collects the first 5 issues of Sweet Tooth, Lemire's 40-issue series of comic books set in a post-apocalyptic USA where a nuclear plague is wiping out humanity while also spawning hybrid creatures that combine features of humans and animals. One of these hybrids is Gus, who lives in an isolated cabin in the woods with his father, the only family (human being actually) he has ever known. Gus is 9 years old, full of his dad's religious teachings, and widely ignorant of the ways of the world. He also has some survival training, which comes in handy after his father dies. Of course, he eventually runs afoul of some humans.

Original scan from iFanboy. Also, as you can see here this book has some mature language and violence, so I recommend parental guidance.

He ends up tagging along with a strong, silent type named Jepperd, who seems to be offering protection but may also have ulterior motives of his own. I won't go on further to spare spoilers, but let me just say that this story gets addictive pretty quickly. This first volume excellently sets up the premise and characters and also sets a suspenseful and compelling narrative in motion. I know that this genre is very popular and almost omnipresent right now, but this book is exceptionally done and well worth exploring. Lemire speaks extensively about his work on Sweet Tooth all the way until the series' conclusion (so there are spoilers) in this interview.

All of the reviews I have read for this series have been full of praise. iFanboy's Paul Montgomery gave this volume 5 stars and added, "I'd be really happy to see a book like this go on for however long Lemire wants it to proceed." Joey Esposito called it "a great hook into this new series." Ian Aleksander Adams called it "amazingly irresistible. It’s executed very very well and makes for an enjoyable read."

Out of the Deep Woods is now titled Out of the Woods, apparently, and was published by Vertigo. For more information, you can visit the book's official blog, though it has not been updated in a long while.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

The Adventures of Superhero Girl

Faith Erin Hicks has been knocking the ball out of the graphic novel park for a while now. I very much enjoyed her books Friends with Boys and Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong. She is a graphic novelist, webcomics creator, and animator whose growing list of impressive works also includes The War at Ellsmere and Brain Camp. Today I am looking at a compilation of her webcomic, The Adventures of Superhero Girl.

This series began as a strip in Halifax's free weekly newspaper, The Coast, and was also published online. It follows the exploits of a superheroine who is trying to make it in the big city. She has a roommate, short job prospects, and a good, occasionally strained relationship with her mom and golden child older brother.

She does her requisite superheroic duties, which include fighting aliens and ninjas, and of course she also rescues cats from trees.

Aside from creating art packed with personality and verve, Hicks does an excellent job playing with superhero conventions and mixing them with more mundane matters. I think she is awesome at delivering laughs as well as evocative scenes and characters.

The most obvious shift in the compilation from the webcomic is the introduction of color by Cris Peter. He is well versed in coloring comics for all manners of companies, and I enjoy how he makes these strips look slightly pixelated, like print comics did before the 1990s.

I like these comics in either black and white or color, but I thought I'd include an original just for contrast.

The reviews I have read about this book have been overwhelmingly positive. Hillary Brown compared it to Friends with Boys, offering that "this collection is less polished in many ways, but also more charming, especially with Cris Peter’s smart coloring and halftone-dot backgrounds." Laura Sneddon made an impressive list of this book's positive features: "brilliant and funny comic with great characters; starring a woman superhero (whoot!); ninjas!; accessible without any prior comics knowledge; equally enjoyable with said knowledge; kitties!; lovely physical book with extra features and great colouring; suitable for all ages!" Joe Grunenwald summed up, "Your bookshelf will definitely a brighter place for having Superhero Girl on it."

This collection was published by Dark Horse, and they provide a preview here. The online version of the comic can be found here.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Revival, Volume One: You're Among Friends

This book collects the first five issues of the hit comic book series. Its premise is a familiar one: the dead have come back to life. But this book is not so much a zombie story as it is a detective yarn. The plot and characters are a fresh take on noir stories, with elements of family relationships, media sensationalism, suspense, religious fanaticism, utter confusion, and horror all set in a sleepy, rural Wisconsin town. The main narrative follows police officer Dana Cypress as she tries to get to the bottom of the situation and also solve a murder mystery. Because of this isolated "the dead are rising" situation, she can speak to the victim, who can't remember what happened, which is pretty horrible. Dana is a single mom whose boss is her father, which creates not a little tension. She also protects a few family secrets (I don't want to give anything away), which creates more tension. I very much enjoyed this aspect of realistic personal relationships in the plot.

But this is not just a crime/mystery/family book. It is also chock full of horrific and creepy images. This ghoulish gallery gets established from the very first scene, where we see a local reporter doing a fluff piece on people with strange jobs. As she is interviewing and recording a junior mortician at work in the crematorium, the unthinkable and unexpected happens:

In time, we also get to see a mysterious, ethereal form haunt the woods in search of a baby:

And not least of all, we get to see that not all of the "revivers" are coherent or in control of themselves, especially not this older woman who is dealing with some major dental issues:

It might go without saying, but this book is for more mature readers who can deal with blood, guts, swearing, and adult themes.

The two driving forces behind this book are writer Tim Seeley and artist Mike Norton (I love the name of his website). In terms of comics, Seeley is probably best known as the co-creator of Hack/Slash, but he has done a bunch of work with various companies, including a long run on G.I. Joe. He loves horror stories and is excellent at setting tones and spinning compelling tales with interesting characters. Norton is a comics veteran probably best known for his Eisner Award-winning webcomic Battlepug, but he also has drawn a great many comics for numerous publishers. He is a masterful visual storyteller. Both creators talk about their work on Revival in this interview.

All of the reviews I have read about this book have been glowing. CBR's Doug Zawisza called the series "an unexpected windfall that evokes an uncomfortable feeling, piques interest and taunts curiosity. It's a good read with great art and a weird, wild diversion from anything else on the stands this week." Alex Lupp gushed, "if you are a fan of character dramas with a tinge of horror and supernatural then this comic-book is a must read!" Drew Bradley summed this book up as "an unsurprisingly great debut to what will hopefully be a long series."

You're Among Friends was published by Image Comics. Here is a preview from Comic Book Resources.

The series is on-going and is currently on issue #18. There are also two additional trade paperback collections available now.