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Tag: graphic novels

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

I don’t know what I can really say about Persepolis that hasn’t been said already.  What I love about the first volume of Persepolis is that it’s always about how Marjane interprets the events around her, much more than it is about the events themselves.  As she and her family live through the Islamic Revolution, watching its agenda shift and their country change around them, little Marjane acts on what she thinks she understands.  There’s a lovely bit where she insists on spending all her time with an uncle who’s a political dissident.  Although she is initially interested in him…

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Ordinary Victories, Manu Larcenet

I got this at the library because I am always on the hunt for good graphic novels, and it said THE BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL OF ALL TIME EVER or something like that on the front.  I believed this because I’m easily taken in by the printed word.  Fortunately for me, this may actually be one of the best graphic novels of all time ever.  I loved it.  I really, really loved it.  It’s translated – I didn’t even care!  Hooray for Joe Johnson, the stalwart translator!  Mr. Johnson, you have done an excellent job in translating, and thanks for that,…

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THE SEVENTH FABLES BOOK MWAHAHAHAHAHA

I mean, not really mwahahahahaha.  I didn’t particularly need an evil laugh there, just because I finally read the seventh volume of Fables; though it was nice to read it, and it reminded me how cool and fun the Fables books are.  I stayed up last night to read it, which I thought would be okay, and I’d still get eight hours of sleep, but I wasn’t counting on a) the fact that I was going to start, and then insist on finishing, Ordinary Victories, and b) how much there were going to be wild dogs fighting furiously outside the…

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Reinventing Comics, Scott McCloud

So Shan said that she found it difficult to read Understanding Comics because it was lots of information coming at her all it once – and I thought that was ratcheted up a few notches in Reinventing Comics.  It was still full of interesting things to consider.  Scott McCloud talks about the directions comics are taking, the revolutions that have to take place for comics to Take Their Rightful Place, including limited representation by anyone who isn’t white and male.  He handles these delicate subjects quite well, without being a jerk at all or failing to recognize his position of…

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Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud

In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud writes about the structure, creation, history, and vocabulary (among other things!) of comics.  He does it, of course, in graphic novel form, with a little cartoon Scott McCloud telling us what is going on.  I love this because when he talks about a technique that graphic novels use, voila, he can show it to us too!  The book never becomes boring, which is partly down to the fact that it’s an interesting topic, but also partly because the form allows a lot of room for humor.  (I was going to write “and whimsy”, but I…

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The Tenth Circle, Jodi Picoult

I know, I know.  I know I said I was done with Jodi Picoult.  But I was at my aunt and uncle’s last night, and I had The Charioteer but I am in London, I don’t have loads of books with me, and I didn’t want to use up The Charioteer because I love it so much.  So I read The Tenth Circle, which my aunt and uncle had on their bookshelf.  The issue: date rape.  The court scenes: none – shocking, I know.  However, there is a murder. As Jodi Picoult’s books go, this is not one of her…

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Mother Come Home, Paul Hornschemeier

I was just saying the other day that I never find good graphic novels to read by myself.  So today I was at the library and I decided I was damn well going to learn how to be independent and find a good graphic novel all on my own.  Yeah, and review it here, so other people would know about it too.  Mother Come Home is a graphic novel about a seven-year-old boy called Thomas Tennant who loses his mother, and how he and his father deal (or don’t deal) with the loss. I said in my review of The…

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The Savage, David Almond and Dave McKean

Another book recommendation from Nymeth – since I just read Skellig, imagine how pleased I was to find that that same author wrote a book that Dave McKean illustrated.  Dave McKean used to be my favorite living artist, before I bought my sculpture and discovered Cetin Ates and his genius, so now Dave McKean is my second favorite living artist. I do not love his work less than I used to love it, I just love Cetin Ates’s work even more than that. The Savage is about a young boy called Blue who recently lost his father.  A teacher at…

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The Case of Madeleine Smith, Rick Geary

Oh, dear, the plight of women throughout history has been really dreadful.  The Case of Madeleine Smith is a graphic novel (graphic history, I guess) about real-life Victorian lady Madeleine Smith, who may or may not have murdered her lover Emile L’Anglier (though she probably did murder him, the book strongly implies).  It’s a straightforward, fairly impersonal depiction of the story – could just as well be the Classic Comics version!  The book deliberately (I assume) sets the reader at one remove from the players in the story, so it’s more of a history than a story.  I would have…

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Death: The High Cost of Living, Neil Gaiman

For a quick interlude between new books, I paused and reread Death: The High Cost of Living.  Neil Gaiman has written two graphic novels about Death, and this one’s the one that’s actually about Death.  Although Death: The Time of Your Life is also very, very good.  In this one, we get the story of how Death becomes a human once every century, for one day.  This time, she meets a bored, slightly suicidal kid called Sexton Furnival, and they go around town looking for fun.  They look for the heart of an old, old woman called Mad Hettie, and…

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