Merry Wanderer of the Night [Search results for comic book] 

I went to Daydreams, the comic book store in Iowa City a few weeks ago to ask for some really great comic books. The guy at the counter didn't wait a second to put a copy of The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye in my hands. I was intrigued-- I'm not a humongous zombie fan, although lately I've become more interested in how zombies represent humankind. This appears to be of interest to Robert Kirkman as well because in his introduction to the book because he says what he 's going for is not "goofy characters and tongue in cheek antics" but rather to "show us how messed up we are." And he does a great job of doing that.

Rick Grimes, a Kentucky cop, wakes up in the hospital after a gun wound to find that the hospital is completely empty. Or at least that is what it appears until opens the door to the cafeteria and finds the floor covered with zombies. He runs out of the hospital to find there are zombies everywhere, and returns to his house to find it abandoned. He then goes out on a search for his wife and son who could quite possibly be dead. The beginning of this story was gripping and I was turning the pages so fast to find out if he would find his family again, or if he would be taken over by zombies.

The comic book gets a little sour towards the middle though. This comic book doesn't have the most sincere dialogue around the middle parts. There is a lot of shouting and anger, but it all felt very stiff to me which made the whole experience of the comic book a little dull. Towards the end the characters talk about their life before the zombies and how they envision life in this new world, and that is when the book really starts picking up. The dialogue stays at this mature level for the rest of the comic book, and by the end I wanted to jump up from the bench I was sitting on to go get the next book and find out what happens next.

Overall this is interesting idea and I'm interested to see how it plays out. The artwork is fabulous, grayscale, and really detail oriented. I hope the mature dialogue carries through to the next book because there are so many ideas that could be explored if only the writing was a little stronger.

I'm giving Volume 1 a C.

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As part of my Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay readalong I'm posting reviews of comic books all week. Today's comic book is Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile

, which I purchased at the Twin Cities Book Festival. I've heard a lot of great things about this comic book on podcasts, blogs, and from friends. I honestly don't know why I waited so long to read it because the idea attracted me immediately. All of the characters from fairy tales and fables have been chased out of their homelands and now live in various parts of New York State. They fit in with humankind, but they also have their own governance and rules. Snow White is the Director of Operations. She divorced Prince Charming after she found him in bed with her sister (yeah these aren't PG) and she has got an attitude in this book. Love it.

There are five parts to Volume 1 but the story is linear. From the very beginning we know something happened to Snow White's sister, Rose Red, because Jack (like Jack in the Beanstalk), comes rushing to the cop, Bigby Wolf, to try and get him to investigate the case. Jack is Rose Red's sister, but Bigby questions their relationship. At the apartment Bigby sees nothing but blood all over the apartment, and speculates that Rose Red is dead. She doesn't tell Snow White right away though, and Snow White wants to murder him because of it. While all of this is going on all of the members of Fabletown are preparing for a huge Remembrance Day celebration to remember their homelands.

When I initially heard about a comic book based off of fairy tales I figured it would probably be cute. Fables is not cute, it's incredibly dark and sarcastic-- which I love. Bill Willingham manages to push these characters further than I've ever seen in a parody. Others have wondered if characters are really happy when the story ends, but Willingham looks at them like real people. And he looks at their immortality-- sure Beauty and the Beast get married and live happily ever after, but can you really live happily ever after for eternity? If you've never read a comic book before I think this is a great one to start with. The stories will be familiar to you and you can get used to the style of comic books easily with this one.

I give volume one of Fables a B.

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The day has finally arrived for discussing The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

. One month ago I decided to host a readalong for this book, and some of you along the way have dropped by to say if you loved it or hated it. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is the story of Joe Kavalier, an escaped Jew from Nazi-invaded Prague, and his cousin Samuel Klayman who lives in New York City. When Joe arrives in New York Sam doesn't know what to think really, but they bond over a love of art and comic books. Together they decide to create a comic book that will fight the Nazis and hope to earn enough money to bring the rest of Joe's family to New York. Joe is the artist, the creator, the escapist. Sam is the brains and negotiator. Together they battle monsters throughout this epic story by Michael Chabon.

When I started this book I was still in a bit of a slump from Middlesex. I just loved Middlesex, and every book I read after it felt a little pointless. I mean, it just wasn't going to be as good as Middlesex. But when I started The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay I got that same feeling in the pit of my stomach that I did within the first ten pages of Middlesex. That feeling that whatever I'm about to read is going to be absolutely amazing. They're very similar in some ways. They both have long, breathy prose that makes you want to read slowly and soak every last page in. They're both terrifyingly long, but difficult to put down even though neither have them have super exciting plots. There are exciting moments in Kavalier and Clay, like when Joe is escaping from Prague or when they find out they've been cheated by the owners of the company who publishes their comic books-- but Chabon is not a suspenseful writer. If Kavalier and Clay were written by Dan Brown the story would have been more of a page-turner in those instances. What keeps the pages turning with Chabon is his well-developed characters and recognizable relationships.

Oh, and did I mention Chabon is the master of bringing comic books alive in prose? Because he totally is. Check out this passage for proof: "His eyeballs seemed to clang in their sockets. He felt as if someone had opened an umbrella inside his rib cage. He waited, flopped on his belly, unblinking as a fish, to see if he would ever again be able to draw a breath. Then he let out a long, low moan, a little at a time, testing the muscles of his diaphragm. "Wow," he said finally. Sammy knelt beside him and helped him to one knee. Joe gulped up big lopsided gouts of air. The German man turned to the other people the platform, one arm raised in challenge or, perhaps, it seemed to Joe, in appeal" (192). The book is full of examples such as this, where Chabon can slow down town just through words. And when he slows down time his writing becomes the panels of a comic book. One line is one panel, and as you're reading you see everything happening as if it were drawn for you. It's masterful.

And the epic quality of his writing is perfection, this passage stopped me cold on the bus, "So much has been written and sung about the bright lights and ballrooms of Empire City--that dazzling town!--about her nightclubs and jazz joints, her avenues of neon and chrome, and her swank hotels, their rooftop tea gardens strung in the summertime with paper lanterns. On this steely autumn afternoon, however, our destination is a place a long way from the horns and the hoohah. Tonight we are going down, under the ground, to a room that lies far beneath the high heels and the jackhammers, lower than the rats and the legendary alligators, lower even than that bones of Algonquins and dire wolves" (267). The light changes in this passage. In just two sentences Chabon takes the dimmer switch from dazzling and dancing bright lights, to dark, low light where shadows are everywhere. It plays with your emotion. You're entranced by the beauty of the city, then frightened by unknown underground.

I could go on and on about Chabon's writing and how much I loved Kavalier and Clay-- but I think I'll give some other people the chance to discuss. What did you like about this book? What did you not like about it? Did you even finish it? Have you ever read anything about Chabon before and after experiencing this do you think you will again?

Oh I'm giving this an A by the way, like I even have to say it. In January Books on the Nightstand is hosting their own readalong of this book-- so if you didn't catch it this time around try to get in on theirs! And if you have a review of this book please add it to the Mr. Linky. If you don't have a review, please leave a comment with your thoughts!

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Michael Chabon's book Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands is 1. The most physically beautiful book I have ever read and 2. A manifesto about reading and writing which touts the importance of genre fiction and comic books. So take those last two things and combine them with my undying love of Michael Chabon and you have basically described a perfect book for Ash. I only had to read the first essay about the modern short story and find the following quotation before I really fell in love, "... I would like to propose expanding our definition of entertainment to encompass everything pleasurable that arises from the encounter of an attentive mind with a page of literature" (14). These are ideas that made me start my blog, but Chabon has a way of putting the ideas in my head into beautiful words on a beautiful clean white page in my McSweeney's copy.

The book is a series of essays about books, or reviews, depending on how you read them. He covers Shelock Holmes, The Road, The Golden Compass, and way more. Chabon gushes over is favorite writers, their techniques, their passion. It's a bit like reading blog posts by Chabon, which is exciting because you come away from the book with tons of book suggestions from an amazing author. If Chabon liked it I'm willing to give it a try. Since the book is a series of essay it's not really made to be a sit down and read for a couple hours book, but I read this over winter break and found myself finding excuses to escape and read... a book of essays? Is that even possible. It is my friends. Chabon writes so beautifully about books and connects them to the human experience so well that any bibliophile will drool over the (have I mentioned how beautiful this book is?) cover.

"... a mind is blown when something that you always feared but knew to be impossible turns out to be true; when the world turns out to be far vaster, far more marvelous or malevolent than you ever dreamed; when you get proof that everything is connected to everything else, that everything you know is wrong, that you are both the center of the universe and a tiny speck sailing off it nethermost edge" (93-94).

I just loved this quotation, possibly because I read it right after finals week and was feeling very much like I was sailing off the nethermost edge of my earth. But it is a really good example of how Chabon can work words and make a series of essays something that is incredibly captivating. I'm really not doing it justice, if you love to read you will at least kind of like this book.

And now I have to verbally drool over the cover a little bit. There are three parts to the book jacket, each depicting a different world. The illustrations are beautiful and if you need a break from reading you can always take one of the jackets off the book and explore that world for a little while. You can be entertained by this book without even reading. It's fabulous! The pages are nice thick paper and the most vibrant white I have ever seen in my entire life. Even if you don't like that book that much I'm sure you will squeal with delight just holding it.

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Yesterday was the long awaited Twin Cities Book Festival. I got to Minneapolis on Friday night and was excited to see a Borders right across the street from my hotel. I went there right away of course, but didn't end up buying anything. That, of course, doesn't mean I didn't buy anything on Saturday.

This is the nice stack I came away with. To be fair four of these books are literary magazines (which were only $2 each, it's amazing I didn't just buy the entire table) and one of the magazines is for a friend. I got two issues of Creative Nonfiction, a magazine I love for obvious reasons but rarely get. I talk about Number 31 yesterday in my Awesome Essays post because the subject is publishing and writing in 2025, which seemed to be a huge theme in the panel discussions I went to. Check out that post to share your ideas! I also got Number 23, which is about Mexican-American writers, something I've recently become interested in. I got a little poetry magazine called Bateau and the Alaska Quarterly Review for my friend Michael.

As far as actual books, I got the first comic book in the Fables series, A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler (the publicist, Courtney, did a great job selling the book to me), and If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home by John Jodzio from Replacement Press. I'm super excited to read all of these!

Yesterday was a very long and exciting day. Right away in the morning I met Reagan from Miss Remmers Review, Sheila from Book Journey, Kim from Sophisticated Dorkiness, and Alea from Pop Culture Junkie. We all had a great chat about books and life before heading over to Sheila's panel discussion about the future of publishing. Her panel was awesome-- and Kim and I said that she answered all the blogger questions just how we would have answered them. After the panel we browsed some of the tables where publishers and authors were promoting their books.

It was a huge crowd! I was excited to see so many people interested in books all in one room. We all went to get lunch with Liz from Consumed By Books and Joanne from Jo Jo Loves to Read. We talked about books (more) and life (more) and then headed back to the festival because Kim, Alea, and I wanted to go to a panel about comic books and comics that Bill Willingham was speaking at. I never realized there was such a great comics scene in Minneapolis and I'll definitely be checking into the other speakers' work as well.

Later at night Sheila, Reagan, Kim, and I went to Borders for awhile and I found a bunch of books I wanted but didn't buy any, which I think deserves a round of applause. Then my boyfriend met up with us and we went to a Chinese place for dinner.

Take One: Reagan, Sheila, me, and Kim.

Take 423: Reagan, Sheila, me, and Kim.

So that was my fun exciting time at the Twin Cities Book Festival. Hopefully I'll get to go again next year and we can do another Midwest Book Blogger meet-up again soon!

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I have decided to host my first readalong! The book I want to read is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

by Michael Chabon. This is a book that I've had for at least six years and I have started multiple times, only to set it aside for something else. Well it's time to read it! I've read so many rave reviews of this novel and know a lot of people with similar taste to me who loved it. I want to do this as a readalong because I thought maybe if some of you joined me in reading the book I might actually finish it this time! And if you're rereading it, all the better.

Here is the description from the back of the book: Joe Kavalier, a young Jewish artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdini-esque escape, has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. His Brookly cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit America- the comic book. Drawing ont heir fears and dreams, Kavalier and Clay create the Escapist, the Monitor, and Luna Moth, inspired by the beautiful Rosa Sakes, who will become linked by powerful ties to both men. With exhilarating style and grace, Michael Chabon tells an unforgettable story about American romance and possibility.

My copy is about 560 pages, so it's on the longer side of things. I'd like to have it finished by mid-October November, so I think this readalong will end on October 18 November 1. If you'd like to participate then on October 18 November 1 you can come here to post your thoughts on the book, and if you have a review then you can share that with us as well. Towards the end of this month I think I will post a progress report of my own and check in to see how everyone else is doing, if they've started yet. I really hope some of you join me in this readalong! The book is supposed to be fantastic, it won a Pulitzer after all, and it's something I think a lot of you would enjoy. I've included a Mr. Linky here where you can sign up with the name of your blog so I can get an idea of how many people want to participate, and if you'd like you can post about the readalong on your blog (I'd really appreciate it!) and link back to that.

Please help me read this book!

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A new Spider-Girl series just started last week, so I did something I haven't done in four years. I bought an issue of a comic. At $3.99 this was a pretty serious decision, but I couldn't wait. Why all the excitement? Well there was quite a bit of buzz about the look of the new Spider-Girl, otherwise known as Anya Corazon. It's not secret that females in comic books are usually represented with humongous breasts and they seem pretty ditzy. From what I've read, the artists and writers working on the new Spider-Girl tried to make Anya look like a normal teenage girl (she pretty much does, no huge boobs here) and act like a normal teenage girl (I would actually say she seems more mature than the normal teenage girl). As someone interested in comic books, reading, and feminism, I was all over the new Spider-Girl.

Anya is your average teenage girl, except for the fact that she is a superhero which makes her late for class and gets in the way of her homework and social life. Anya isn't a superhero in that she has superpowers (something a lot of Marvel fans are complaining a lot). Rather, Anya seems to have decided to become Spider-Girl, which is something this issue explores. I really like Anya for this because her decision to me makes her seem like she has a higher calling and that she wants to be dedicated to helping others--something I think a lot of people around me are interested in as well. Her father is a reporter who mostly works with the Fantastic Four in this issue, and at the beginning of this issue they are just moving into their new apartment together. Anya is struggling to find her place as a superhero amongst the big names her father works with, but that doesn't stop her from doing everything she can to fight crime.

Most comic books have a running story and dialogue in most panels. Spider-girl has both of these things and you can read Anya's texts and Tweets along with the story. I really loved this aspect of the comic book as someone obsessed with social media. You can even follow The_Spider_Girl on Twitter to see what's she up to in between issues. As a comic book I think this represents the present generation pretty well. Overall this was a great experience-- the artwork was interesting and active, and the story line was complex enough to carry me through the entire issue without feeling bored, but not so complex I ended the issue confused about what just happened. If you're looking for a start into comic issues, this might be a good one to start with.

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I was immediately intrigued by Marilyn Johnson's new book This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All. After all, I want to go to library school and when I was in high school I used to make comic books where I was the superhero. So the idea shown on the cover, a librarian with a cape off to save the world, was attractive to me. Once I started reading I was surprised to find out that Johnson isn't a librarian herself, but rather a librarian stalker like me. Except that I plan on becoming a librarian and as far as I could tell she did not. I think the book was even better (at least for me) written from the perspective of a non-librarian because it made it more interesting for an outsider. In this book Johnson talks about the changing world of libraries, the problems with digital records and the plus sides to them, the stereotype of the librarian, and what librarians do outside their jobs. And I'll admit this right away, the book made me even more positive that library school is what I want to do in two years.

The book is divided into 12 essays, really, about different aspects of libraries and librarians. One of my favorites was How to Change the World, which talked about librarians that work in other countries and with students from around the world, specifically underprivileged countries to help their nations advance in society through technology. As a blogger I really enjoyed The Blog People, which is all about librarian bloggers (several I'd never heard of even though I follow a lot of librarian blogs). She also touches on the danger of blogging for librarians, particularly young librarians. Even though many librarians know the Internet is the future of libraries and want to further that research, there is still resistance from other librarians. Follow That Tattooed Librarian was also an entertaining look at the stereotype of librarians as old, crotchety ladies when there are plenty of librarians that don't fit that stereotype one bit (Hello! Time Traveler's Wife anyone?).

I read this book at the same time as Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age, and while Scrolling Forward as insightful and certainly made me feel like I knew more about digitization, Johnson was just so much better at making things exciting! Her descriptions alone deserve an A++; "This is the greatest and most fraught romance of modern society, the marriage between the IT staff and those who depend on them" (39). That is just great. This didn't feel like a how to guide on librarianship, it felt like a documentary in which the most exciting possibilities of the career were explored. I've seen a lot of reviews that complain about her extended discussion of the game Second Life. Apparently this game is pretty popular within some groups of librarians and Johnson was obviously a little obsessed with the game when she was writing this, but I just didn't care. Everything else was just so awesome, so perfect, that John could have ranted on about Second Life for another 25 pages and I would have listened to her. Because she completely captured my sentiments about libraries by the end of the book; "We'll always need printed books that don't mutate the way digital books do; we'll always need places to display books, auditoriums for book talks, circles for story time; we'll always need brick-and-mortor libraries. But another library, the ninetieth in the system, is growing explosively in cyberspace" (187).

This book deserves an A.

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Astrid is British. She plays bass. She's seventeen with one year left of high school. She fights with her parents. She has a sweet hairdo. She is dreaming about her imaginary friends.

When I picked up Suburban Glamour

I thought it would just be about a punk high school girl, which it is, but it's also a fantasy story which I wasn't expecting at all. Astrid's dreams are becoming reality, and it seems like the creatures from her dreams are dangerous. The only thing distracting her from them is this new store in town run by a punk New Yorker named Aubrey who Astrid wants to be like in every possible way. Well there is that, and the fact that everyone around her is telling her what to do, telling her to figure out what she wants to be, and telling her to stop concentrating so much on her music and focus more reality (Wow I've never experienced anything like that before!).

I might be a little biased in my love of this comic book. After all, Astrid reminds me a lot of myself in high school, and actually a lot like myself right now. But then again I'm not a huge fan of fantasy and still loved the fantasy aspect of this book. Whenever life gets hard we wish for something else, thinking it would be easier, and this is precisely what Astrid experiences except she is actually offered a different life and has to decide if she wants to take it or not. Truly fitting for a story about a seventeen-year-old, because that is the age when you have to make so many choices. Where you will go to college, what you want to do with your life, and who you want to be.

The artwork kinds of harkens back to the Blondie comic strip. Not exactly, but the way things are placed and outlined kind of reminds me of that. The images are cleaner than the comic strip though, and light is played with a lot in this book. It seems to be moving in order of morning to night, but that actually threw me off a little bit with time. I thought all of this was happening in consecutive days, but towards the end of the book I realized this was not the case.

I'm going to give Suburban Glamour an A.

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So as I've mentioned on here a few times before one of my jobs is a reading tutor. I work with struggling readers at an elementary school twice a week. I'm still off right now but I wanted to start my children's book reviews this week. This first book is one of my favorite books to use for tutoring. SuperHero ABC by Bob McLeodis the only book I could get one student to read and enjoy. And I mean quite literally the only book. The student was really interested in video games and superheroes, so as soon as I saw this book I knew it would be perfect for him.

Unfortunately the language is a little difficult for a struggling second grader. the book is divided into two parts. There is the normal story, which is the description of the superheroes. These are all alliterative and fun to say. There are also speech bubbles in the scenes. These are easier to read, so I had my student read those parts and then I read the descriptions. After reading the book a few times he caught on to some of the words as well.

This book has amazing art work and I really enjoyed how interactive the scenes were. I can't stress enough how great this book is for beginning letter sounds! That was something we really focused on. For those of you who don't have kids around to share books with this is still a fun book to check out. I was really into comic books as a kid, so this was a fun one for me too. And some of the superheroes are annoying and fun to complain about. Laughing Lass just happens to be one of my most loathed superheroes.

Pub. Date: January 24, 2006
Publisher: HarperCollins
Format: Hardcover, 40pp

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Today I have a little something different. Last week when I wrote my review for American Born Chinese I couldn't help but think to myself What do I really know about any of this? I've reviewed a decent amount of graphic novels on here, and I read them quite a bit as a kid, but I still feel incredibly awkward reviewing them. I am under the impression that this is the sentiment from a lot of bloggers and readers who are interested in the graphic novel but don't know how to look at it critically. To try and remedy this here and for other people, I asked my graphic novel enthusiast friend Ron to give his thoughts on what exactly makes a good graphic novel and what he looks for. Please check out his thoughts!

In its simplest form, a graphic novel is a bound collection of comics between floppy covers. It may be part of a series, about six to eight issues, a standalone story, or an omnibus edition, which contains about thirty issues of a single series. Pinning an exact definition down for the term is tricky—there isn’t a concrete set of terms to define things within the medium. For example, in front of me sits Brit, a series of one shot issues—bound like graphic novel collections. But we’ll push the hardcore ontological stuff to the side for now and just focus on sketching out the graphic novel in broad terms.

The real key to understanding the graphic novel, and comics, is to understand that neither of them are genres. They are mediums, like film or books or even video games. All movies aren’t action films, nor are all comics about superheroes. So, like films and books, there’s something for everyone. Last week, I got my brother hooked on Brian Wood’s series, DMZ, which isn’t about superheroes at all, instead a second American civil war. While superheroes may have the highest profile in the industry (for example, Captain America’s death makes news) there are many individual genres to choose from.

Reading a graphic novel is also something that needs to be decoded by the reader. There are general guidelines to reading a graphic novel, determined by the positions of captions, panels and bubbles on the page. From both the written and artistic perspectives of the medium, a good graphic novel should never confuse the reader within the page or delay him or her from moving to the next panel in a clean transition. This is of course assuming you’re not dealing with a book that’s intentionally breaking these rules, just like in postmodern fiction.

But, as avid readers, it’s not all about reading the story from cover to cover and shelving the book. Graphic novels can be analyzed just like the rest of literature, but it may take some getting used to. Though comics are the synthesis of words and images, the brunt of the analysis comes from the image itself, like in film. It uses a very similar visual vocabulary, the borders of the panels act in ways similar to a film frame. If a character takes up most of the panel, it suggests power, the same way it does in film. If the panel is canted, it suggests similar unease. The comic differs from film in that it’s static images, not fluid cuts on a single frame. There is a larger context to panel design in how they work as a whole on the page.

The filmic analogy, however, doesn’t capture the breadth of actually analyzing a graphic novel: the words are important, too. Most of the text in a graphic novel is dialogue, that’s the way it should be—cluttering the page with explanations of the action is redundant, poor storytelling (postmodern and meta considerations aside).

Further mish-mashing mediums, the words even have power beyond their literal meanings. Bold words indicate important or stressed words, but the author doesn’t supply an emotional indicator afterwards, like “sadly” or “angrily.” The words don’t just sit on the bottom of the page, like filmic subtitles do. Different fonts can also hold different meanings. In David Mazzuchelli’s atounding Asterios Polyp, each character “speaks” in a unique, creator-designed, font, suggesting their different voices on a symbolic level. Comic book dialogue is unique to individual readers; it’s active reading.

This dense toolbox gives creators a lot to work with, so readers need to be diligent in identifying the particular tropes a writer or artist is employing. Some creators, like Alan Moore, will use everything at his disposal to construct the comic, while others, like Frank Miller, only use tools to highlight important elements in more standard stories. But much of the time, stories can be absorbed without worrying about postmodern dialectics within the work, or analyzing it as closely as English majors are wont to do. Once the medium is unlocked, the most important thing is to pinpoint interests. Like zombies? Grab the zombie book. Like superheroes? Your choices are plenty. Like Vikings? We’ve those, as well. So next time you find yourself near a comics outlet…stop in and have a look.

A little too serious for my own good,

RON.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us Ron! Be sure to check out Ron's blog Entertainment Etc.

A couple of week ago Ron stopped by to talk to us about what makes a good graphic novel. It seems like a lot of you out there agreed with Ron's thoughts and some of you were looking for a good place to start with graphic novels. Ron compiled a great list of some of his all time favorites. I've read about half of these and I can vouch to their greatness!

Boiling the medium down to just a few recommendations is…impossible, but I’ll do my best to provide an interesting and diverse list. Even so, superhero comics will comprise a healthy portion of the list because they are so integral to the medium. I’ll also try to mix ongoing series with singular, one-shot works. Away we go—

Watchmen/The Dark Knight Returns

These two works are closely linked despite being vastly different when it comes to content. Watchmen is the arch-comic, the comic of comics, not only because of its brilliance, but it’s also a comic about comics. This is something the movie didn’t adequately capture. Writer Alan Moore spins a “Golden Age” story out of control, warping it into a self-reflexive mirror to the superhero genre, and artist Dave Gibbons subverts classical style, yet doesn’t seem like a carbon copy of it. This is a perfect comic.

In The Dark Knight Returns, Writer/Artist Frank Miller redeems a laughable Batman by infusing him with eighties pop-culture sensibility. The story sees Bruce Wayne as an old man, forced to once again become Batman in order to stop a brutal crime wave in Gotham City. The work, while whitewashed in eighties action movie veneer (Miller’s Wayne owes more to Clint Eastwood than Adam West), also explores the enduring nature of the character and his relationship to other heroes in the DC universe. It’s a rip-roaring read, but it’s also Miller at his cleverest—there’s a density to the work that he rarely has been able to recapture.

(Further reading: [Moore] The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen I & II; From Hell; [Miller] Batman: Year One; Daredevil: Visionaries Volume 2; Sin City.)

Criminal

Ed Brubaker is one of my favorite writers, and this is the reason why. Criminal pulls on the pulp origins of early comics as well as film noir and blends it into one outstanding package: contemporary but timeless stories about the criminal underworld. The tropes may feel familiar, but a good story, especially a crime story, isn’t “predictable” so much as it is inevitable. If there’s one thing this series has in spades it’s that sinking feeling.

(Further reading: Captain America; Sleeper; The Immortal Iron Fist; Gotham Central.)

Asterios Polyp

This is one of the most formally experimental pieces that I’ve ever read. Writer/Artist David Mazzuchielli uses everything at his disposal to construct a fascinating character study of a dead-beat architect named Asterios. It’s a vibrant book, story-and-art-wise, with each character constructed in interesting colors and character-specific fonts. It’s simply a pleasure to behold.

(Further reading: City of Glass.)

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
This is an amazing work, something you’d lend to non-comics to get them hooked on the medium. It plays simply at first, but unfolds beautifully, each chapter adding a layer of complexity to the story. The art is outstanding, too, and lends to the credibility of the story itself, about a death in the family and so much more. The story will resonate with any reader, and that’s the highest praise I can give it.
(Further reading: Dykes to Watch Out For.)

Daredevil Volume 2 #16-19, 26-50, 56-81

This run of issues comprises Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s run on the book, a run that is simply outstanding. The most common phrase associated with the series is that, “Daredevil spends as much time out of his costume as he does in it,” which is a simple way of saying that the run is unusual within the genre. It’s more than that, though. Bendis’ characters speak in dialogue closer to David Mamet’s theater aesthetic than “word balloon banter,” and he fractures the timeline brilliantly to deal with heavy thematic concerns about the real power that a hero holds. Maleev’s art is also outstanding. He brings gritty realism to the book, and employs specifically cinematic techniques to convey the story. It’s a terrifically exciting body of work.

(Further reading: Powers; New Avengers; Ultimate Spider-Man.)

Scalped

This book is similar to Criminal (I could see them shelved together, yes), but offers a unique slant on the crime genre. Instead of portraying the underbelly of a city, Scalped digs into an Indian reservation in the Dakotas in which a sleazy FBI agent tries desperately to bring down the corrupt man who runs the rez, Lincoln Red Crow. The best part of the series is that it doesn’t pull any punches, everything writer Jason Aaron throws at the reader means something, and either pushes the plot forward dramatically or tells the reader something important about a character. The stakes in this book are incredibly high.

(Further reading: The Other Side; Wolverine: Weapon X.)

As I said, great list! Be sure to check out Ron's previous post and his blog Entertainment Etc.

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Scott Pilgrim is 23 years old and has spent the past year trying to get over his last girlfriend. It looks like he is finally going to get over her when he starts dating a high school girl named Knives Chau. So... Scott is kind of a loser. The entire graphic novel is written in a video game style, with the specifics of characters listed as they appear on the pages. Scott is in a band and when they play the pages look eerily like the video game Rock Band. The entire book is basically Scott trying to progress to the next level, which includes finding out who this rollerblading, Amazon delivery girl Ramona Flowers is. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life

is basically a celebration of all things twenty-something and the culture that surrounds that generation. The best character is definitely Wallace Wells, Scott's gay roommate, and even he kind of turns into a jerk at one point in the book (and he only gets a 7.5 rating at the beginning, so we know he isn't perfect). Bryan Lee O'Malley does a great job of summing up their relationship in two panels that show their apartment. Everything in the apartment has a label on it and we quickly find out that most of the stuff in there is Wallace's and Scott just uses it, including Wallace's socks.

Which is probably why I really, really loved it. The language was spot on and not gluttonous like the language in Juno. All of the characters are pretty unlikeable, Scott is a loser, Ramona is kind of an oddball, Knives is gullible teenager, and most of Scott's friends are mean, but as twenty-year-old you recognize that most of the people in your life fall into these categories too. It doesn't have anything to do with hipster culture, as many have said, because, let's face it, if Scott Pilgrim was a hipster he wouldn't have any friends and he would have much better taste in clothes. Bryan Lee O'Malley's drawing style is also not hipster enough to create a graphic novel about hipsters. It's not manga but it's not what we typically see from comic book artists today. It's almost more like a webcomic style--which I was totally on board with.

The book moves rather quickly and I suppose at time it might be a little too fast. If you didn't understand the language or world O'Malley assumes you understand the book would probably be difficult to get through. I can't speak to that, as I did understand it. If you're a college student I don't see how you wouldn't understand it, at least a little bit. I really can't speak more highly of the first volume in this series, so I will just end by review and hope you all give Scott Pilgrim a try.

I give Scott Pilgrim an A.

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Background on my guest reviewer: John is my 9 year old son. After several years of reading problems due to his ADD, John was a very reluctant reader. Reading was always difficult for him and whenever he was asked to read, he would get upset and shut down. Then one day, I happened to discover the Horrid Henry books. They hadn't been released in the States yet, but I believe I found an excerpt online. I showed it to John, who showed a bit of reluctance at first. Then I read the few pages aloud to him. And he was instantly drawn in to Horrid Henry's world! Ok, now back to John's review!

This is my review of Horrid Horrid Henry's Stinkbomb

. Horrid Henry is rude, impolite, and thinks that the pranks he pulls are funny. He thinks only of himself. Henry has a little brother named Perfect Peter. Peter is perfect. He is very polite and isn't selfish.

Horrid Henry's Stinkbomb

is made up of four stories. I'm going to tell you about my favorite story:Henry Reads a Book.

Horrid Henry's class is going to have a reading competition. Whoever reads the most books wins a trip to a brand new amusement park. Henry gets excited when he hears this and asks if comic books count. His teacher, Miss Battle-Axe shouts "NO!" I don't understand why comic books don't count; they are books afterall! Oh, and they also have to write a book report for every book they read.

Henry plans to start reading as soon as he gets home. Instead, he reads comics (not allowed!), watches TV and plays a computer game. Suddenly, it is the end of the competition and Henry hasn't read one SINGLE book! He tries to steal Perfect Peter's books from him but can't. He goes to his room and thinks he can just write down the names of all the books in his room, but remembers he has to write a report for all the books he reads. Miss Battle-Axe would recognize the books and would know that Henry didn't read them. So he makes up the titles of books and adds them to his list.

The next day at school, the winner is announced. It is Clever Clare! She read 28 books! Henry is so mad! Then, Miss Battle Axe notices that Clare accidentally wrote one book down twice! There is now a tie between Clever Clare and Horrid Henry, so they both win tickets. The tickets are to Book World (this doesn't sound like a very exciting amusement park to me, Mom, but you'd probably like it!). The story ends with Henry screaming "ARRRGGGHH!!" So, even though Henry wins the tickets, he sort of also learns a lesson about lying about the books he read. The prize is one that Clare will like because she loves books, but it's punishment for Henry because he doesn't like to read.

I then asked John why he liked the Horrid Henry books:

I like the Horrid Henry books because it has nice people in it as well as Horrid Henry. It reminds me of me and my little brother, Justin. (I ask, which character are you in the book? His response: I am Perfect Peter and Justin is Horrid Henry. I always act polite, and Justin is not.) I like the Horrid Henry books because they are chapter books that are easy to read. They make me laugh! And Horrid Henry does do some mean things, but at the end of each story he usually learns his lesson! I want to read the rest of the Horrid Henry books and hope my library at school will get them. I think my friends will like them too. Besides Henry and Peter, there are some other characters with funny names like Moody Margaret, Rude Ralph, and Beefy Bart. I think the names are funny but it's good because they also describe that person!

I just want to wrap up by reiterating what John said about why the Horrid Henry books are so fabulous. Children are drawn to Horrid Henry because he is bad, but don't think that the Horrid Henry books promote or encourage bad behavior. They don't..Horrid Henry in some manner does get punished or suffer repercussions for his actions. In addition, the illustrations are humorous and at a level that early readers can comprehend. I found that while my son loves to read these to himself, they are best experienced if read aloud!

To learn more about the other Horrid Henry books, please visit Horrid Henry's Facebook page! Thank you to Sourcebooks for providing John copies of the Horrid Henry books!

In Fables 1 we learned that all the characters from fairy tales, or Fables as they call themselves, are hiding out in New York City since their lands were taken from them. This, of course, doesn't include the animal Fables like the three little pigs because how are three pigs supposed to hide out in New York City? All of the nonhuman Fables were sent to a farm in upstate New York where Snow White goes to check on them once a year. This year she finds that the town is in complete unrest and there is a threat for an uprising. Since Snow White is rather gullible she doesn't notice what is happening right under her nose, but her sister Rose Red as an inkling for what is happening.

Bill Willingham draws quite obviously from Animal Farm and The Lord of the Flies to create this comic book, which is something most book nerds will appreciate. It was bizarre experience to read it because I wasn't sure if I was supposed to side with Snow White or with the animal Fables. It seems like the animal Fables are evil, but then at the same time I can see their point. It would really suck to be locked into upstate New York and never be able to live simply because you look like an animal and not a human. And while they make some rookie mistakes, they actually seem to be pretty smart. They figure out how to make guns they can use and they trick Snow White pretty easily. Snow White seems to be pretty dumb during this whole thing, and I have a hard time rooting for a dumb person.

The artwork is really some of the most beautiful comic art I have ever seen. The colors in this are outstanding. The pages are particularly bright because of the animals, as you can see from the cover design. They really pull you into this world where strange and unlikely things happen. I was also pleased with how well animal emotions were portrayed in their faces, which I think would be much more difficult to achieve in animals than it is in humans.

Fables Vol. 2: Animal Farm

is overall a much tighter story than Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile

. It helps create the world but doesn't spoon feed us information, we find out things slowly with the characters. It is some great world building. My only complaint is that the last fourth of the book seemed extremely rushed. I don't want to give away why I think that is because it would ruin a pretty important part to the story, but I think it's worth mentioning. I was satisfied with the ending because I felt it promised I would find out more in the next volume, but if I don't find out more I'm going to be pretty disappointed.

I give Fables 2 a B.

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Right now I'm still having that experience you always have at the beginning of the semester where everything is new and exciting and awesome. Today has been extra great because my first class is about comic books, my second class is taught by a professor I love, and my third class is piano. And I got home at 3:40 which is earlier than I ever got home last semester (I actually get to make dinner for my fiance for once!) so I just have good feelings all around. I didn't even mind buying textbooks this afternoon, see pictures below for happy faces with textbooks.

To be fair, I had to buy The Best American Comics 2010 and Picture This: The Near-sighted Monkey Book

for my comic book class and I actually wanted the books, so I didn't mind forking over the cash for them. I will be less enthusiastic about purchasing my entrepreneurship books tomorrow. I'll probably be pretty cranky about the whole thing.

This is also the post where I say my brain is still scrambled from my trip, so I probably won't be on my normal schedule again until next week. I need a few days to write posts, get organized, figure out how exactly my post schedule is going to go this year. All fun stuff I know. But now I'm off to enthusiastically do my homework before the excitement wears off!

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Confession time: I watched Father of the Bride

and Father of the Bride 2

on an alternating daily fashion for at least one year of my life. I woke up and watched as much of that day's movie before I went to school, then came home and finished it after school, and did the same thing the next day, and the next day, and the next for one year. 365 days. Which means I've seen each movie a minimum of 183 times. I'm honestly not kidding about this. I was around eight when the obsession consumed me. I just loved those movies, and I adored Steve Martin. Mostly because he reminded me of my dad. I'm not a huge fan of stand-up comedy, but I was interested in Steve Martin's autobiography Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

simply because he had such a huge impact on my childhood, and in turn my life. I read his novella Shopgirl a year ago, so I knew that Steve Martin was a fantastic writer. Within the first ten pages of this book I knew I was in for something great.

Actually on the first page he shines, "My most persistent memory of standup is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future; the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next"(1). I've never been a stand-up comic, but that description instills the fear and heightened awareness he must have experienced every single night. He ends the chapter in a similarly fantastic fashion, describing why this book is a biography and not an autobiography: "In a sense, this book is not an autobiography but a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know. Yes, these events are true, yet sometimes they seemed to have happened to someone else, and I often felt like a curious onlooker or someone trying to remember a dram. I ignored my stand-up career for twenty-five years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years" (3).

The rest of the biography relays the events of Steve Martin's life, and it must be said that the first half of his life covered is rather boring. This isn't really a great biography to read if you want to hear a really interesting, fabulous story about a celebrity. Martin worked at Disneyland, he didn't get along with his father, he liked doing magic tricks. He's different, but not astounding. All of that said, I felt like I knew Martin pretty well by the end of this biography simply through his writing. He can be repetitive, and there were times I wondered why he included the information he did-- but overall I loved this book.

I give this biography an A.

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This review is actually two reviews in one. I read I Saw You over the last couple months and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz last month. These two graphic novels could not have been more different, but I enjoyed them both tremendously.

I Saw You...: Comics Inspired by Real-Life Missed Connections

is an anthology edited by Julia Wertz which has short comics inspired by Craigslist's Missed Connections section. It is totally black and white and a couple of my favorite comic artists, Liz Prince and Lucy Knisley, were featured in the anthology. I must say that anthology was a bit hit and miss. The missed connections that actually happened to the comic artists tended to make better comics than the ones based solely off advertisements. It also felt like the same trope was repeated: old creepy guy after hot young girl. It seemed a little too easy. The comics that stood out made this one worth reading, and I love the "Me too!" moments I got when the artists talked about love. I'd say this is one to check-out from the library if you can, unless you're really interested in missed connections like me. If nothing else you'll learn a lot about comic artists you've never heard of before. I'll definitely look for Julia Wertz's look in the future, as her comic (on the cover) was one of my favorites.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz graphic novel could not be more artistically different from I Saw You. Skottie Young's artwork is extremely colorful and detailed. This is one example were the artwork worked perfectly with the story, always the happy medium in graphic novels. I read The Wizard of Oz when I was a kid but I don't remember it too well since I've seen the movie many more times. As far as I can tell the graphic novel sticks with the story of the book. The pictures add a lot though. Shanower is great at combining cute and creepy, which I think describes The Wizard of Oz extremely well. The Scarecrow was my absolute favorite character-- he is totally creepy but in this adorable cuddly way.

My only complaint about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is it relied too much on the reader's presumed familiarity with the story. I'm familiar with the story and I still felt like there were some plot holes. Overall it's a good story and I felt the artwork added more to the story than the imagines in the film did. Definitely a must-have for any Wizard of Oz fan or anyone who enjoys Tim Burton-esque artwork and storytelling.

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Coward

is the first volume in the Criminal series by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. It is a dark crime novel with lots of shooting, drugs, and police chases. It reads like Grand Theft Auto on the page-- except they're not stealing cars. The main character of coward is Leo, whose father was a professional pickpocket. Leo started pickpocketing when he was eight years old and that is the life he has always known. He isn't necessarily happy with this life though, and he is terrified he will end up in jail like his father. He is taking care of his father's friend, Ivan, who is addicted to heroin and serves as a daily reminder for what he could end up like.

I'm not a huge fan of crime, murder, police chases, etc, but I really enjoyed Coward because I think Leo has very normal fears for being a criminal. Above all I think he wants to live a different life from his father, and a lot of characters in the comic book express the same sentiment, but he just doesn't know how because it's easier to do what you know than to go off on your own to try something new. This is also shown through his friend Greta, who is involved in one last heist to make some money before she and her daughter move away for a fresh start.

After reading The Walking Dead I was thrilled to see such great narration. We get the story from Leo's perspective, which is extremely reflexive and self aware. There is also great, believable dialogue that falls back on a few old favorite crime phrases, but is overall enjoyable to read. The drawing style was good, but I didn't feel it was necessarily totally unique. I listened to a conversation recently where someone said comic books are usually one or the other, good narrative and okay art, or great art and okay narrative. If I'm comparing The Walking Dead and Coward I would say The Walking Dead has great art and Coward has a great narrative. It all just depends on what you want. Apparently I like a great narrative more though (big surprise) because

I'm giving Coward a B.

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One of the major perks of living in Iowa City is that it's a huge hotspot for writers. This past week was the NonfictioNow Conference which occurs every two years. I'm all over this conference because I love Nonfiction. Only about a third of the events were open to the public and I went to three events. The first and biggest event I went to was the Alison Bechdel reading. I was really excited about this because I loved her book Fun Home. The reading was unlike any reading I've ever been to. Since she is a graphic artist she can't really do a normal reading, so instead she creates a powerpoint with one panel on each slide and then reads the text that goes with the panel. I really enjoyed this and found that it was a lot easier to pay attention to than a normal reading.

After she was done I got my copy of Fun Home signed and got a picture taken. They were also selling broadsides of a comic she did that were printed at the University of Iowa Center for the Book. I got one of this and can't wait to find a frame for it!

Friday night was the Rebecca Solnit reading. I've never read anything by her, but I ran into my nature writing professor who gave the introduction for her and he enjoys her work. She is a probably most well known as a nature writer. I enjoyed this reading, although there were some technical difficulties with the microphone. She took it in stride though. She talked a bit about being political and being a writer, and how being an artist doesn't make you exempt from caring about politics. She talked quite a bit about Bill McKibben too, who has obviously taken the political writer status to a whole new level.

Saturday evening was a reading of more local people who write narrative nonfiction. Andre Perry gave a great introduction to this topic, mentioning how when he was school he would turn in essays and his teacher told him they were fiction because they were narrative. This is a pretty common idea, actually, but I find that some of the best nonfiction is narrative. Ryan Van Meter was the person I was most interested in hearing because I talked about his essay First as an awesome essay. He read an absolutely beautiful essay about hunting and animals. It had this spinning quality to it, where he started in one place, went to another, then returned to that original place. I wish I could have it in front of me to really parse out.

Overall what I saw of the conference was really great. This week I spent most of my time talking about comic books. I reviewed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (which I loved!) as well as four comic books: Fables, The Walking Dead, Coward, and Suburban Glamour. Be sure to check out those reviews!

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