bookblogging
Jul. 28th, 2008 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceruseeGraphic novels:
Talbot, Bryan: Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment
(I feel like I should be able to list this five times, as it took me five times longer to read it than most graphic novels I've this summer. Fortunately, I have a lot of practice reading Alan Moore comics--I've read Snakes & Ladders, f'r cryin' out loud, and all of Promethea and From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, although I did skip the incredibly long prose notes at the end because the library was closing--so dense, multi-media, fact-heavy works like this are old hat to me. I loved it! My children's-lit educated sister is a huge Lewis Carroll fan, and has beautiful framed prints of a pair of Carroll's photos of Alice Liddell on her wall; after reading this, her love of Carroll makes more sense to me, and I feel an urge to actually go read the original texts, which I have not read, although like most of Western Civilization (and a lot of non-Western Civilization), I am generally familiar with the contents.
I was greatly impressed with this for its educational value, for its awesome super meta structure, for its entertaining qualities, and for taking full advantage of its form (and for using masking to good effect). I can see the seeds of this in A Tale of One Bad Rat--the story idea grown out of biography and literary reference with a geographic anchor, the interest in the creative imagination--but in the non-fictional Alice in Sunderland, Talbot doesn't get derailed by the need to do proper duty to a social issue originally intended only as a plot device. This is marvelous, and belongs in any essential comics or graphic novel collection. I recommend it, although make sure you have plenty of time and a comfortable chair if you do read it).
Talbot, Bryan: Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment
(I feel like I should be able to list this five times, as it took me five times longer to read it than most graphic novels I've this summer. Fortunately, I have a lot of practice reading Alan Moore comics--I've read Snakes & Ladders, f'r cryin' out loud, and all of Promethea and From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, although I did skip the incredibly long prose notes at the end because the library was closing--so dense, multi-media, fact-heavy works like this are old hat to me. I loved it! My children's-lit educated sister is a huge Lewis Carroll fan, and has beautiful framed prints of a pair of Carroll's photos of Alice Liddell on her wall; after reading this, her love of Carroll makes more sense to me, and I feel an urge to actually go read the original texts, which I have not read, although like most of Western Civilization (and a lot of non-Western Civilization), I am generally familiar with the contents.
I was greatly impressed with this for its educational value, for its awesome super meta structure, for its entertaining qualities, and for taking full advantage of its form (and for using masking to good effect). I can see the seeds of this in A Tale of One Bad Rat--the story idea grown out of biography and literary reference with a geographic anchor, the interest in the creative imagination--but in the non-fictional Alice in Sunderland, Talbot doesn't get derailed by the need to do proper duty to a social issue originally intended only as a plot device. This is marvelous, and belongs in any essential comics or graphic novel collection. I recommend it, although make sure you have plenty of time and a comfortable chair if you do read it).