Tag Archives: graphic novel

September 7, 2011 · 12:03 am

Berlin – City of Stones: Building to Better

     Little to say about Berlin: City of Stones except that I liked it more and more as the book went on, which makes me think that I might need to continue with the series (how long is the series? I don’t know). My initial dissatisfaction was with the wide cast of characters and my apparent inability to keep them all straight, but as the book went on I worked them out, and so, enjoyed it more (definitely the case where the reader is at fault!).

I did enjoy the attention to Germany in the interwar period, as I find too often the historical fiction I read about Germany seems overly preoccupied with glamorizing Hitler, or making it out like Germany’s history was somehow an inevitability. This book nuances the emergence of National Socialism against a wider international history and a focused exploration of particular families and individuals who made decisions that impacted ‘history’ as we know it now.

I had to say the sexy scenes in the ‘Garden of Eden’ were just weird.

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June 22, 2011 · 6:13 pm

Un Lun Dun: Mostly Good

           After a little meltdown last night about my rate of reading in the last month and a half, M. reminded me that 10-10-12 is not a race or competition, but is an exercise in me loving to read. And someone how that pep talk (that wasn’t, I don’t think, intended as a pep talk) gave me the zip I needed to finish off Un Lun Dun, a mostly terrific young adult fiction book with illustrations (which category will it fall into?).

China Mieville might be better known for his adult fantasy novels (or so my friends who read fantasy tell me), but Un Lun Dun (pronounced UnLondon) is deserving of its own credit and following. The book follows our un-hero, Deeba, as she finds herself in the world of UnLondon – a shadow city separated from London, but not necessarily different from the ‘real’ city in terms of xenophobia, class conflict, and most prominently, environmental concerns.

After several – unecessary – chapters about Deeba’s friend the “Shazzy” (I say unnecessary because they do not add to Deeba’s characterization and rather than advancing the plot, these chapters stall its development. What these chapters do offer is a space to sketch the setting of UnLondon in some detail, a “setting up” that might easily take place on Deeba’s second visit) Deeba finds herself tasked with battling “The Smog,” a malicious force bent on destroying both UnLondon and London by consuming it with fire. This (somewhat?) allegorical menace allows readers of any age to connect the consumption patterns of the modern city with environmental toxins and pollutants and makes a vigorous case for “nothing” as the solution to this problem. The solution of “nothing,” is to me a poignant conclusion for the novel as it advocates at one at the same time that “nothing” can be done to solve the problem/character of the Smog, and yet simultaneously suggests that it is by doing less, or by doing “nothing,” that we might combat it.

In any case, the climatic battle between Deeba and the Smog is by far the most engaging section of the book. The rest of the novel is something of a trudging affair, a journey that is not all about the journey and rather all about the expected climatic-awesomeness of the destination. That the climax did meet my expectations of awesomeness was pleasant, but I’m not convinced the slog to get there was worth it.

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April 17, 2011 · 12:20 am

Gorazde: Difficult

           War correspondent Joe Sacco’s graphic novel, Gorazde, is difficult to read. It reports on the experiences of Edin, a Bosnian Muslim, during the siege of Gorazde and describes in text and image the atrocities committed during the siege of the city and of neighboring towns, and of the violence of diplomatic decisions that favoured political expediency over human life and well-being.

As I read the book (in a single sitting, it’s entirely captivating) I asked myself what made the graphic form so effective in expressing the individual and collective suffering as compared to text-based reportage. I’m not sure I have a good answer (again, see my comments on my new-to-graphic-novels) though I suspect that it has to do with pacing. Sacco does well to slow down the pace of reading in scenes of high tension and great suffering, and in so doing required this reader to pay – uncomfortable – attention to scenes I might have more readily surged through in a text-based version. With little choice but to read snippets of sentences set against black-and-white images of intense action, the graphic version demanded my investment in each character, and in each scene that I certainly wanted to avoid reading about.

While I found Sacco entirely effective in using graphics to describe and pace his narrative, I also admired the text of the book, which did an admirable job contextualizing the conflict, while also attending to individual stories and experiences (one two-page spread, in particular, featured a compendium of “interviews” which aptly captured shared and different responses to the return of Serbs to Gorazde).

I’m not sure I appreciated Sacco’s sometime self-congratulatory digs at other reporters who “only” came to Gorazde for one or two days, while he spent considerable time in the city and made multiple trips. I appreciate the difference such reporting experiences must effect in the kind and quality of writing produced, however, I nevertheless felt these comments were less effective in attacking the West’s apparent disinterest in the suffering and death of others (as was perhaps the intent) than they were in conveying Sacco’s confidence in his reportage expertise. While many of Sacco’s self-reflexive comments approach the difficult question of why he should be able to leave and return to safety with little trouble, I do not think the text goes far enough in interviewing the reporter himself.

That said, it’s an incredibly compelling story and one, oddly I suppose, made better still by the difficulty of its reading.

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March 27, 2011 · 8:52 pm

Tricked: Yes, I was.

                       When I was putting together the 10-10-12 list, Alex Robinson’s Tricked, came up on a number of “best of” lists in the graphic novel categories. This being the case, I’m worried about the rest of the recommended texts, because I didn’t like Tricked, at all.

I didn’t like the plot (six seemingly independent narratives predictably collide in a climax that is neither surprising (though it ought to be), nor compelling as a woeful musician who can’t write a new song until he’s inspired by a sexy young ‘muse’! is subject of an attempted shooting by a crazy! man! only to be saved by the fraud who is redeemed! all in the restaurant of the kind gay couple reunited with their daughter! and served by the ill-used, tender hearted, fat-but-still-beautiful! waitress).

I didn’t like the characters (each more predictable than the last, with the faint exception of the sports fraudster who is only interesting because the reader has zero sense of his motivation for being a fraudster, except maybe that he likes to spend money on whores).

The graphic parts are okay. I don’t know whether having read Jimmy Corrigan means that every graphic novel after is going to feel like a tremendous disappointment, but after Jimmy Corrigan the graphics in Tricked are a tremendous disappointment (see post on JC for caveat about my assessment of graphic novels). I’m not capitavated by word bubbles that have icicles to convey anger, nor wowed by pages of spirlaling word bubbles to convey lunacy. I’m coming to understand that the really engaging and interesting graphic novels are not those that use the simple pairing of emotion/place with graphic as a way to add to the meaning of the text (e.g. a crowded place has overlapping word bubbles; or, embarrassment has characters with flushed cheeks), but who use the graphics to create a meaning all its own, where the text is the addition, the superfluous detail, perhaps even unnecessary because the graphics impart their own significance. Anyway, Tricked doesn’t have these singularly significant graphics, just the ‘oh gosh, he’s upset, and I can tell he’s really upset because there are angry lines radiating from his body.’ (I continue to be wholly self-conscious about my reading of graphic novels, so if I’m way off base here, I do apologize, I’m new to graphic analysis and open to correction.)

So: bleh plot, no characterization worthy of note, and ineffectual graphics. I was told this was a “great” graphic novel by reputable sources. I was… tricked.

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