bookblogging

Novels/prose books:

Kipling, Rudyard: The Jungle Book II.


Graphic novels:

Weissman, Steve: White Flower Day
(wtf).


Gipi: Garage Band
(I didn't know Gipi's art could be so beautiful! His people are always sort of ugly-beautiful, but the landscapes and buildings in Notes on a War Story were blasted and ruined and sad. Here, his horizons and buildings and fields and houses are quietly, soulfully lovely

I'm not disaffected white male youth, so I can't say Gipi's stories really speak to me on a personal level, but I love the way he paints them).


Hosler, Jay: The Sandwalk Adventures
(like Journey into Mohawk Country, this is good, intelligent execution of an enticing conceit. Both Hosler's depiction of Darwin and his notes on him suggest that Darwin was a likable person, as well as an interesting and admirable one, and this comic has made me interested in reading more about him. Props for a sympathetic treatment of religious faith in a story in which it is important to distinguish between metaphysical and scientific questions and ways of thinking; the world needs more of that and less of the sort of racist, religiously intolerant shit David Collier wrote in his story for Rosetta.

You require proof? Darwin asks. Replies Mara, the follicle mite who lives in Darwin's eyebrow and believes he's a god: I do if I'm going to give up everything I've ever believed in. And so begins the conversation.

That exchange is not all of what there is to be said about faith and reason, but it's an important piece of it. This is a worthy comic, and a charming one. Recommended).

bookblogging

Graphic novels:

Jason: Hey, Wait.

Eisner, Will: Minor Miracles.

Seagle, Steven T., writer/creator, Teddy Christianson, artist/creator: House of Secrets: Foundation
(called Rain's "secret." She was just too blase about it all--which contrasted very sharply with the way Traci told her own story--and the details were different each time. Good art, not a bad book, but not a very impressive one, either).


Horowitz, Anthony, author, Anthony Johnston, script, Takasaki Yuzuru and Kanako Damerum, artists: Stormbreaker: The Graphic Novel
(to paraphrase Berke Breathed:

"This has brought the word 'bad' to new levels of badness...this bad book just oozed rottenness from every bad scene...simply bad beyond all infinite dimensions of possible badness.

"Well, maybe not that bad, but lord, it wasn't good."

The art was actually fine, although I think I'd have liked it better uncolored, but jesus god, what an inane and pointless piece of writing this is. It was stupid and derivative without being entertaining, silly without being funny. Yes, I know it's a children's book, but that's no reason for it to stink).


Hosler, Jay: Clan Apis
(another winner. This is purely delightful; I laughed and smiled and squealed at almost every page (except for the times I got misty)--it's just so fun and clever! Hosler's biology-themed graphic novels deserve a place in every public and school library, and should be recommended reading in biology classes--they're not a substitute for a course of learning, but they'd make an excellent supplement to one, because they bring a sense of humor and wonder, and, no pun intended, a feeling of life to biology.

An exchange between worker bee Nyuki and her brother, the drone Zambur:
"I just gave you honey so you can go cruising for chicks?"
"Yes!"
"And if you hook up with a queen, it will be fatal?"
"Most definitely!"
"Give it back."

The whole book's like this, folks. I dare you not to love it.

Hosler is a good artist, a good writer, and an imaginative creator--his comics remind me just a bit of Watership Down, the speculative "what stories would these animals tell, if they were sentient and trying to understand the world?" grounded firmly in the physical reality of the animal's place in the ecosystem. So very cool. Again, recommended).