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| Monday, January 8, 2007 02:56 PM |
| Graphic Novels Galore |
 by Fëanor |
Poppy sent me in to pick up some library books for her a while back, and when I came out with them, I had somehow also acquired a huge pile of graphic novels - pretty much every interesting one they had. I'm slowly working my way through them. Here's what I've read so far:
Astro Boy - The classic manga that (sort of) started it all. This was an English language, left-to-right, Dark Horse reprint of volume 8 of the collected original series. Normally I'm pretty adamant about doing things in order, and starting from number one, but this was the only Astro Boy the library had, and I figured I really needed to start my Astro Boy education, so there you go. Unsurprisingly, Astro Boy is a pretty typical manga, mixing the incredibly dramatic and depressing with the incredibly goofy and silly. These particular stories, originally serialized in the late '60s, try to deal with issues like civil rights and the use of nuclear weapons in an interesting and thoughtful way, but then indulge in weird slapstick and bad puns. I was kind of impressed by its willingness to take on the big issues, but not really drawn in by the rather childish art and weird tone changes. It's an important historical document, but probably not something I'll continue reading.
Playback - A recent graphic novel adaptation of a Raymond Chandler work that (IIRC) started life as a screenplay that never became a movie, but did eventually get turned into a novel. The dialogue, characters, settings, and plot are all classic film noir stuff; you can almost hear Bogart and Bacall saying the lines as you read them. It's no Big Sleep but it's a fine piece of work that sucked me in and kept me reading.
Y: The Last Man Volume 1: Unmanned - I read a lot about this series, but unlike with Astro Boy, I held out until I could get my hands on book 1. The premise is that some kind of plague or curse (it's unclear this early in the series) kills all the male beings on Earth in a moment. Everything with a Y chromosome is gone - except for one young amateur magician/escape artist named Yorick and the helper monkey that he's training, which he calls Ampersand. Again, at this point, nobody knows why only he and his monkey survived. He sets out to find his mother, his girlfriend, and his sister, but is quickly swept up in larger events of the new chaotic world. As the last man on earth, he is important to many people, some who wish to harm him (like the crazed amazon cult), and others who wish to clone him. Luckily, the President of the United States (who was originally the Secretary of Agriculture, but took on her new role, in a twist that "Battlestar Galactica" later stole, due to the fact that everyone ahead of her in the chain of command was a man, and so died) gets a hold of him and pairs him up with a tough secret agent who can protect him. It's an interesting story, obviously with plenty of interesting examinations of gender and politics, and has a neat sense of humor and is loaded with pop culture references, but it's also deeply disturbing. I appreciate what it's doing, but I don't think I'll continue reading it.
Nexus Archives Volume 1 - I'd never heard of this before, but it looked vaguely interesting, so I picked it up, along with Volume 2. It's...different. Although it's definitely American, it has the odd mix of extreme violence, melodrama, and corny, goofy humor that I expect from manga and anime. It's sort of a space opera/superhero thing. The title character is a mysterious, arrogant man who has visions of evil tyrants and torturers in his dreams, then goes out and slays them via the use of his invincible energy powers. He also has a monkey-alien friend named Dave. I wasn't a big fan of it at first, but I kept reading anyway, and it kind of got me interested and sucked me in. The writing isn't great, but the corny humor ocassionally amuses me (especially the ape-alien kung fu master Judah "The Hammer" Maccabee), there's some fun action, and the stories keep me interested. I'll probably read volume 2, since I already have it. But unless that one is really good, I don't think I'd seek out any more of these books.
Futurama-o-rama - Another collection of Futurama comics - this one appears to be volume one. I'm not finished it yet, but it's the same kind of stuff that I've read before, and it's affecting me the same way; I find it vaguely amusing, but there's nothing that leaves me ROFL.
So, to sum up, I'd call Playback my favorite book so far, but nothing really blew me away. Still, I've still got quite a pile of books still left, so hopefully something in there will be really good. |
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