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bookblogging
Jul. 23rd, 2008 04:06 pmGraphic novels:
Huizenga, Kevin: Curses
(Kawy, Kawy, thank you for recommending this to me! You have such good taste in books. And at last! A D&Q book in which the characters are not all jerks! Like Kawy, I recommend this one.
I will be pondering Huizenga's vision of suburban life and its mysteries and fantasies. The ogre in the basement, the magic gasoline and the magic styrofoam take-home container, the plastic bag, the migraines, insomnia, bad joints...it's ironic of course, but it also works literally as a translation of fairy-tale structures into American suburban landscape and life; the everyday artifacts of your life infused with mystic potential. That's as ambiguous and weird as it is appealing, but clearly there's some love, too, in the story about insomnia, with the graveyard wandering and the nighttime bicycle rides along the wide, tree-lined streets. And hatred for the starlings, that fit so well into the suburban settings that they blight and pester. Oh, what a cool book! I took my time reading it, because it deserved that.
( And la la la, I am a Universalist--Unitarian Universalist--so Jeepers Jacobs would not approve of me and my fundamental lack of fear of hell. )
Vance, James, writer, Dan Burr, artist: Kings in Disguise
(oh...wow. Like Busman's Honeymoon, it's clear in places that this started life as a play...but it adapts into this form very well. Recommended.).
Menjivar, Jose: Cicada
(neuroses, serial adultery, suicide...the lighter side of comics).
Gross, Milt: He Done Her Wrong
(omg, this is my kinda wordless novel. Circa Lynn Ward, but possessing a sense of humor--a very broad and brilliant sense of humor, as all the best cartoonists have--and not another stinking woodcut book. Recommended!).
Kochalka, James: Fantastic Butterflies
(I am continuing to dig Kochalka).
Miles, Scott: Big Clay Pot
(oh, what a nifty premise, and what a sweet, sad little book).
Manga:
Takada Yuko: 3x3 Eyes: Blood of the Sacred Demon, 3x3 Eyes: Curse of the Gesu
(the former reads almost like a pilot in its own right. Now that would make a good series intro! But it's still not the first volume, and I still have no idea what the first volume is, or if my library even has it. I could Google it, but I refuse to, on principle. Starting with volume 1 shouldn't require research).
Hirano Kohta: Hellsing vol. 5
(...oh, I think I see some plot. Neato!).
Huizenga, Kevin: Curses
(Kawy, Kawy, thank you for recommending this to me! You have such good taste in books. And at last! A D&Q book in which the characters are not all jerks! Like Kawy, I recommend this one.
I will be pondering Huizenga's vision of suburban life and its mysteries and fantasies. The ogre in the basement, the magic gasoline and the magic styrofoam take-home container, the plastic bag, the migraines, insomnia, bad joints...it's ironic of course, but it also works literally as a translation of fairy-tale structures into American suburban landscape and life; the everyday artifacts of your life infused with mystic potential. That's as ambiguous and weird as it is appealing, but clearly there's some love, too, in the story about insomnia, with the graveyard wandering and the nighttime bicycle rides along the wide, tree-lined streets. And hatred for the starlings, that fit so well into the suburban settings that they blight and pester. Oh, what a cool book! I took my time reading it, because it deserved that.
( And la la la, I am a Universalist--Unitarian Universalist--so Jeepers Jacobs would not approve of me and my fundamental lack of fear of hell. )
Vance, James, writer, Dan Burr, artist: Kings in Disguise
(oh...wow. Like Busman's Honeymoon, it's clear in places that this started life as a play...but it adapts into this form very well. Recommended.).
Menjivar, Jose: Cicada
(neuroses, serial adultery, suicide...the lighter side of comics).
Gross, Milt: He Done Her Wrong
(omg, this is my kinda wordless novel. Circa Lynn Ward, but possessing a sense of humor--a very broad and brilliant sense of humor, as all the best cartoonists have--and not another stinking woodcut book. Recommended!).
Kochalka, James: Fantastic Butterflies
(I am continuing to dig Kochalka).
Miles, Scott: Big Clay Pot
(oh, what a nifty premise, and what a sweet, sad little book).
Manga:
Takada Yuko: 3x3 Eyes: Blood of the Sacred Demon, 3x3 Eyes: Curse of the Gesu
(the former reads almost like a pilot in its own right. Now that would make a good series intro! But it's still not the first volume, and I still have no idea what the first volume is, or if my library even has it. I could Google it, but I refuse to, on principle. Starting with volume 1 shouldn't require research).
Hirano Kohta: Hellsing vol. 5
(...oh, I think I see some plot. Neato!).
