May. 27th, 2008

cerusee: a white redheaded girl in a classroom sitting by the window chewing on a pencil and looking bored (Default)
Novels/prose books:

Heyer, Georgette: Footsteps in the Dark
(English. Mystery. Witty! Georgette Heyer. This one reads a bit like a Nancy Drew or a Hardy Boys novel for adults, and I think I mean that in a good way).


Graphic novels:

Spiegelman, Art: Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began
(Spiegelman really knows his way around a visual metaphor).

Various: Graphic Classics: Mark Twain
(it's good and it's fun, and Rick Geary always rocks my socks, but the main thing I get from this book is a renewed desire to read Twain as prose. Also, I felt that some of these adaptations were a little short on illustration. As I can read Twain's prose whenever I want to, I felt a bit cheated on that score).

Geary, Rick: A Treasury of Victorian Murder: The Mystery of Mary Rogers
(Geary does not fail to rock my socks with this.

I am unsatisfied over not having an answer to the mystery, but unsolved mysteries are par for the course here--it's not a fault of Geary's presentation of the material. It just so happens that I hadn't heard of this mystery before reading the book, so I had no existing sense of the mythology that sprang up around Mary Rogers' murder. I did already know some of mythologies of Lizzie Borden and of Jack the Ripper when I read Geary's books on them, so I was already anticipating those non-resolutions.

I really don't know why I can enjoy graphic novel true crime stories when the prose kind generally leave me loathing every part of the process. I think maybe because the kinds of true crime stories that make it into contemporary comics tend to be historical, and often the stuff of legend? To me, writing stories based on enduring cultural lore does not feel so sickeningly dehumanizing as what crowds the true crime shelves in bookstores...some of the motivation is the same (we thrill to the gruesome details of the crime, the intense emotion, the extremes of personality), but it's a little more...I don't know...processed. Passed off to history, with the families no longer around to be injured. Like fiction, there's no longer anything really at stake, and no one to be hurt. It's why historical fiction doesn't bug me when RPF does.

And a great deal of the appeal specifically of these Geary works is that the murders ARE unsolved and can almost certainly never BE solved, making them a sort of intellectual exercise, like mental chewing gum).


Manga:

Mashima Hiro: Fairy Tail vol. 2.

Kanari Yozaburo, author, Sato Fumiya, artist: The Kindaichi Case Files: Treasure Isle
(called it. Sort of).

Nakazawa Keiji: Barefoot Gen vols. 1-2
(the introduction is by Art Spiegelman. You know, it's hard to say which of these WWII-related works is more depressing, Maus or this.

I strongly recommend this manga to anyone feeling dissatisfied with works like Grave of the Fireflies or Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms for not discussing Japanese culpability in WWII. The author's father was anti-war, and the manga is a fictionalized version of the author's own life--by pure chance, he survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima, lost most of his family at that time, and struggled to survive afterwards--and his father's (and presumably the family's as a whole) anti-war stance is laid out loud and clear, as are the dire social consequences of not supporting the war (among other unpleasant things, not being able to borrow food from neighbors when your pregnant wife and five children are slowly starving to death). The manga also firmly acknowledges Japanese racism and mistreatment of Korean and Chinese laborers; this is discussed in the context of the family's friendship with a Korean neighbor, who repays their open support and friendship with food he can barely spare.

Reading this is like a reading a weird hybrid of The Drifting Classroom and something by Tezuka: unrelenting horror and death in a blasted landscape, as written by a humanist who over and over and over again calls for peace and human friendship, infused with childlike optimism, energy, and the moral depth and clarity that only a wise adult can really possess. It's humanism from someone who has literally seen with his own eyes absolutely the worst that people can do to each other, and who still believes that we can be better than that, and who can show you both.

Highly recommended, but expect it to hurt).


Taniguchi Tomo: Aquarium
(I am slowly working my way through all the works reviewed in the shoujo issue of The Comics Journal!).
cerusee: a white redheaded girl in a classroom sitting by the window chewing on a pencil and looking bored (so badass)
Graphic novels/comics:

Eisner, Will: The Will Eisner Reader
(this stuff never gets old).

Brennan, Michael: Electric Girl vol. 2
(Bugaloo! C'mon, someone had to say it. This was kinda only okay; I might have liked it better if I started with volume 1, but since the stories are all stand-alones, it seems like I shouldn't have to? It was sort of cute, occasionally rising to "mildly interesting"; the writing just passes muster; art's solid, cartoony, good stuff, but nothing earthshaking. I welcome the diversity of material in the field; I don't think I'd buy this for myself. On the plus side, it's always interesting to see superhero tropes handled outside of a superhero universe).

Alexovich, Aaron: Kimmie66
(another Minx offering, for anyone keeping track. I enjoyed this. I don't really dig the Nick-cartoon-style art, but Alexovich knows how to work it. The writing is solid, sometimes clever, and he's got a lovely ear for narrative voice; it's a lot of fun to read the words he writes. It's a good book, and worth picking up, and a treatment of futuristic virtual reality, net society, net identity, and artificial intelligence that did not at any point make me want to shake the author until their head snapped back. That's always refreshing).

Baker, Kyle: I Die At Midnight
(Jesus fucking christ I love Kyle Baker. I'd propose to him, but I'm fairly certain he's happily married and has a lovely daughter and also it would be weird for him. But he's just that good. And he's so cool! He has a dazzling signature style; his comics look completely amazing and not like anyone else's, he's clever, he can put together a solid story, and the madcap hijinks! And the wry, in-passing social commentary! And the in media res character sketches that plunge you into a brilliant, colorful, energetic story! Have I mentioned that he's frequently hilarious? My preference in comics art is for clean-ish black and white art, but brilliant Kyle Baker may yet seduce me into color).

Gaiman, Neil, author, and Clive Barker, artist: Violent Cases
(cool to look at, cool to read, ultimately probably pointless. It was a disservice to zip through this at the library, although I feel I gleaned the essentials. I will say that it likely deserves its praise; it is awfully readable for a style that can easily descend into irritating meandering (this danger exists for art and writing both, and god help you if they don't gel), and that that narrator looks suspiciously like Neil Gaiman. And I would take this over any of Gaiman's prose novels).


Manga:

Tatsumi Yoshihiro: The Push Man and other stories
(I'm not sorry I read this, despite it being depressing in a nasty, profane sort of way, and with no sense of redeeming importance, but boy am I ever glad I borrowed it from the library instead of buying it for $20.

I think it's good comics, and an interesting example of the variety possible within the medium. But unlike Will Eisner, this stuff gets old).

Hirano Kohta: Hellsing vol. 1
(I can see the appeal. It's silly and way too violent, but against my better judgement, I will probably read more; I like the ridiculous characters).

Tanaka Masashi: Gon Swimmin'
(containing: Gon Becomes a Turtle, Gon in the Desert or something to that effect, and Gon and His Posse or something to that effect. The word "posse" was definitely in the title. I didn't have pencil and paper at the library, sorry.

Please don't think less of me for this, but OMG OMG OMG HOW CUTE AND AWESOME. This is my first-ever Gon book, but I assure you it will not be my last, because this is brilliant and hilarious. TINY CUTE T-REX. AND SOMETIMES HE HAS A POSSE OF ASSORTED FELINE PREDATORS. WHY NOT? HE'S GON. HE CAN DO THAT IF HE WANTS. And the art, oh wow, what amazing art!

When Chuck Norris goes to bed at night, he checks under his bed for TOPH. When Toph goes to bed at night, she checks under her bed for GON. And when she finds him there, they cuddle up and go to sleep like Gon snuggling with an emu in the desert, because they are essentially the same soul split into different bodies. And species. And families).

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