Comic Review: Sisters

While I wasn't that fond of Drama (the characters acted too maturely for middle schoolers and there was too much, well, drama!) I did like Telgemier's first work, Smile and since this was another autobiographical work and set in the same time period I was more than happy to find out why her books don't stay on the bestsellers list for days or weeks but rather months and years. Seriously! Every time an old-school comics fan writes a lament about kids not reading comics anymore and that they must simply do something my twitter feed is filled with people pointing at her work and reminding the rest of us how insular the comics sphere can be. 

Sisters by Raina Telgemier

Webcomic Review: The Littlest Elle

Initially I was going to hold off on changing how I did webcomic reviews until the new year but what the heck, I'll talk about it more in my end of year round-up post in about a month but I've decided that I'm going to start doing reviews of completed webcomics I follow as if they were a comic or manga series (even if I reviewed them while they were still on-going since I've done that for manga as well). Of course, this series actually ended months back and I was waffling on whether or not to start doing these reviews now but I have a bit of a lull in my schedule and this artist does have a few other active projects so I'd like to highlight one that she's done to help get people interested in the ones she's still working on (I'm also impressed at anyone who manages to work on three separate webcomics at once, no matter what the update schedule is!)

The Littlest Elle by Elle Skinner

Webcomic Review: The Littlest Elle

The Littlest Elle by Elle Skinner

The life and times of Elle Skinner, cartoonist and devoted cat lover.

I'm really not sure why I didn't try this comic sooner, especially since I like Elle Skinner's other comics (Missing Monday and the collaborative Erstwhile, both of which I've talked about in years past) and this is another mostly-autobiographical, slice of comic which I is a genre I clearly adore. Elle Skinner's art is always on the sketchier side but compared to her other two comics (and especially this one in Erstwhile) these comics look a bit rough which I think is what initially turned me off. However the punchlines are fantastic and often when the comic ends on a more serious note it feels like it's getting across a rather sweet, important message. I remembered one of her comics which said that, as an introvert, at conventions she just does her best to pretend to be an extrovert which I really took to heart and try to do in situations like those (and clearly it works since when I met her at SPX she was really outgoing and friendly!). It is a bit long but the beauty of comics like these is that you can easily start reading them and then catch up when you have a chance later on and I speak from experience when I say that it's amusing but not repetitious when marathoned. So add this to your list of slice of life comics to check out and try out her other ones too!

Comic Review: Relish

As a heads up, tomorrow is March 1st which means it's the start of webcomic review month, ie all my regular reviews will be on hiatus until April 4th, which ironically will be yet another comic review, hope you guys are here for the pretty pictures!

As with many books I talk about here, I was both interested and hesitant about reading this one. On the one hand, it had plenty of fantastic reviews but on the other most of these reviewers also liked Knisley's other book, French Milk, which I hadn't enjoyed at all. When I got the book from the library I opened it up, glanced through, and realized I recognized her style from another place, a quick google search later was reassured of my sanity when I found Stop Paying Attention (which I had read before). It's an autobiographical webcomic that gets updated every now and then and, as is the case with auto-bio comics that aren't just about the events in the artist's life but the feelings and meanings that went along with them, I liked some of them and some of them were complete misses for me. With that I just hoped that the focus on food would be something I could relate to the entire time and jumped in.

Relish by Lucy Knisley

Webcomic Review Month 2013: Chaos Life and Cooking Up Comics

Nope, didn't skip B, just didn't have any comics for that this year that were far enough along in their stories for me to feel comfortable reviewing but next year I should have some! And as another quick note, apparently the rest of the universe also thinks that March is a fantastic time to talk about webcomics and Comic Mix is holding their annual tournament bracket involving webcomics. I think I saw some complaints about it last year (the usual popularity contest/people spamming the polls stuff, although sweet Jesus you can technically buy votes this year) but at the very least it's a great way to find new webcomics, they're starting with 300(!!) this year, so go give that a look!


Chaos Life by A. Stiffler

A semi-autobiographical, but often exaggerated, comic about the life of A. Stiffler and her wife.

I don't read as many autobiographical comics as I used to these days since, well, if they go on for years and years you just get a little bored by them (I certainly don't want people to go through tons of drama but some people are just better than others at humorizing their lives) so perhaps it works in my favor that Chaos Life has a bit of an erratic update schedule. Of course the fact that this comic appeals to my sense of humor, more than a bit whacky and Stiffler makes fun of herself just as much as anything else in the comic.

Chaos Life updates a bit erratically, usually once a week,  but can be found over here and they have plenty of ways to let you know when it has updated, no print edition as of writing..



Cooking Up Comics by Alisa Harris

Weekly recipes in comic form!

I was a little hesistant to talk about this comic, while I do talk about autobio comics, which are non-fiction, this almost seemed a bit too non-fictiony for my blog. And then I remembered that I review whatever I want and that I want more people to read these recipes so of course I should talk about it! The recipes are all easy to follow, her illustrations and written directions are quite clear, although I'll admit that I haven't used any of the recipes yet since I've been too busy since I discovered the site (she also posts a lot of vegan recipes which I'm less interested in but I know that's a big plus for other people). But she has a wide variety of recipes (all handily laid out in a single page and arranged by type no less!) so if you enjoy cooking at all peruse the site a bit and see if anything catches your eye!

Cooking up Comics updates every Wednesday, although it looks like it might currently be running guest strips right now instead of the regular comics and it sounds like the comic will end and be collected into a book in the next year or two.


2012 "B" Comics
2011 "B" Comics

2012 "C" Comics
2011 "C" Comics 

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Fall On Me, Fishbones, The Fox Sister

Since one can never have too many webcomics (okay yes you can but roll with me here) I found out about this webcomic tournament over on ComicMix this morning and encourage everyone to go over, see their list of nominations (which I believe is over 200 comics) and if you have any comics to give them a vote. I don't really care who wins in the end but it's a great way for smaller comics to get exposure, all of the comics are currently updating ones which is more than I can say for some of my reviews, and I was even able to find out that a comic or two I liked had come off of hiatus thanks to the list, so go on over there!
Side note, I think I have the creators of The Fox Sister correct but I'm still really tired so if I got them wrong someone please correct me sooner rather than later. Last year's reviews.

Fall on Me by Adriana Blake
 A simple autobiographical, slice of life comic dealing with daily life for Adriana Blake and her husband.

There are a surprising number of (semi-) autobiographical webcomics out there, tvtropes calls them journal comics as a catch-all term, and what's even more amazing is the amount of variety you can get from a rather mundane and ordinary topic. This one chooses to focus on the cute moments between Blake and her husband and succeeds in being cute but not overly sugarly. It's perhaps not the best comic to marathon in one go, it reminds me a bit of Aria in the sense that it's much more about the interaction between the people and there's no "plot" to connect everything together, but it's a nice pick me up to read a few times a week. The series is also translated by the author into Spanish, I don't come across many webcomics that have been translated so I'll try to note that whenever it comes up.

 

Fishbones written by Jisuk Cho and illustrated by Yuki S.

 Set in a fictional city on the east coast of the US back in 1999 Ferris Levinstein would be perfectly content with a quiet, everyday life but with family in the mob that sometimes seems like a pipe dream. Of course, no one has ever asked him to join the family, or even talks about it in front of him except for his friend Demos, but who knows how long that will last.

I only warmed up to this series recently, when I initially tried it there wasn't a lot published and so far the story has been very character driven and you need a solid amount of page/screen time to establish a character. I do hope the story becomes a bit more plot driven later on, it involves the Mafia after all, there's just so much room for fun there, but the characters have interesting dynamics and I'd like to see a lot more of those explored as well. No clue where the story will end up going but for the moment it's an interesting read and I'll be continuing with it. It also appears to have a Russian translation

   

The Fox Sister by Jayd "Chira" Ait-Kaci and Christina Strain

Set in 1960s South Korea, Cho Yun Hee and her sister seem to be the only survivors of a fire that killed their parents but Yun Hee knows the truth, it was a kumiho that killed them and it seems to have taken the form of her older sister in the mean time. It's been years since then but it seems that the kumiho is still stalking her and trying to finish what it started while also becoming close to an American named Alex who has taken an interest in Yun Hee and her dog.

Another comic that is still relatively new but it has a good start under it's belt and it seems like a number of things are about to be explained so I feel confident recommending it to people. It's not obvious from the banner but the art has a very nice feeling to it, it's not quite as detailed as some other comics but the smooth lines manage to convey a lot of motion and emotion in the characters so I feel like too much detail would actually clutter the art and take away from that (and it's not like there is no detail work in the comics as well, there's actually a surprising amount when you look closely at the artwork). I'm also really curious about the setting, since I don't read as much manhaw as I do manga I almost never find stories set in Korea and I never find historical fiction set after 1940s, period*. I feel like those are enough reasons to recommend this comic, even if it it's a bit on the short side now, and hope that it continues as strongly as it started.

*ironically enough, many American school never find enough time to really teach any history after world war II as well so without a textbook or historical fiction my knowledge of the time period is especially sketchy, hence why I'm excited to actually see a story set then. 

Comic Review: To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel

A slim book that I picked up at the local library, this was a book that looked more like middle grade reading than young adult but it seemed interesting and I flipped through a few pages which also seemed fairly interesting so I thought why not. I'll also admit that the next few comics I'm reviewing are rather large so I wanted a few shorter works as well in case time got tight and I needed to read something really quickly to keep the reviews here balanced. Besides, I like stories where dancing is a major focus so this kind of story seemed right up my alley.

To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel by Siena Cherson Sigel and art by Mark Sigel

 Summary: An autobiographical story of Siena Cherson Sigel growing up dancing in the 1970s and 80s, first in Puerto Rico and then at the American School of Ballet in New York City.

The Good: It's a quick and charming read that's sure to make the reader wish they did ballet (or that they could go see one soon) even though Siena mentions some of the hardships she had doing ballet. That said, a lot of sports stories focus a lot on the pain and the things the athlete has to give up for their sport (sometimes leaving the reader wondering why they keep doing the sport in the first place) but this book maintains a happy, positive tone the whole way through and it's easy to see why Siena was willing to give up other parts of her life for ballet, her love for it comes through clearly.  

The Bad: Sometimes the transitions between sections were a little rocky and it would have been nice to have even a single reoccurring minor character, very few people in the story are even named which is a bit unusual for any story. This could be explained by the fact that that story was rather short and every panel had to be important but I would have liked the story to be a little longer and give more details on various parts of Siena's life. The story felt complete but I felt like she could have kept the readers attention just as well if the book was a little longer. 

The Art: The book is in full color and the art style is a light and slightly sketchy style which I feel like I've seen in other graphic novels aimed at this age group. The art is a little simple but it works well to compliment the story and, with something as visual as dance, it adds to the story and I think makes it work much better than if Siena had tried to explain everything using just words. 

I think this book is a good example of middle grade writing that's interesting and done well enough to appeal to older audiences as well (which is why I keep reviewing it, I'm trying to find those books that are good regardless of your age). I would love to know more about Siena's life or read more stories in general that feature ballerinas, too bad that not many come to mind right off hand. 

Manga Review: A Drifting Life

So back in early December I still had a couple of weeks left in school but, having finally finished Buddha, I had nothing left to read. I revisited the school library and picked this book out of the upstairs comic section since I’d heard a number of good things about it. I was initially intimated by the length of it (I told myself that one 800 page book wasn’t nearly as bad as eight 300 page volumes for Buddha, didn't make it seem any smaller) but I’m really glad I read it, not only for the story but for the insight in the history of manga.

A Drifting Life by Yoshiro Tatsumi

Summary: An autobiographical story with the names changed, young Hiroshi loves to make comics and is coming of age in a boom time for manga. Although most of the manga he draws are short stories or quick gag comics he has a deep love for longer stories and incorporating more cinematic forms of story telling. This isn’t what the publishers are looking for however so he is constantly trying to balance out drawing what pays and drawing this dream of his.

The Good: Lots of pages but it makes for surprisingly quick reading. The story flows smoothly and it’s separated into many chapters so it’s easy to pick it up, read a little, and then go do something else. Some people won’t find the subject material (young boy trying to make it in the publishing world in the 1950s) interesting but as a fan of slice of life I found it gripping. I also found the bits of the story that dealt with the publishers (rejecting this story on these grounds, troubles with the manga renting stores) fascinating, especially after sitting back and realizing how far manga has come from the 1940s and 50s. Most people will be able to figure out quickly if this is interesting to them or not but I really encourage manga fans to try it, it certainly won’t hurt if more know more about manga itself.

The Bad: The story ends in a rather odd place and I still don't understand the reasoning for it. I expected the story to end when Hiroshi came to some sort of conclusion about his work but it instead ends in the middle of a protest in the 1960s that doesn’t have more than a slight thematic connection to the work (maybe Tatsumi realized the story was getting too long and decided to end it there?). Odder still is how there is then an epilogue in the mid-90s dealing with the anniversary of Tezuka’s death and we still don't see if Hiroshi is happy with his work or not. After seeing Hirohi’s life so meticulously recorded from age ten up to his mid-twenties it just felt abrupt, and I really did want to see him find happiness and success in his work, no matter how long the story was.

The Art: The art is rather simplistic, odd considering it’s an autobiographical work and I’m used to see more a more detailed style there, but the art does it’s job and supports the words in the story (even if the simplistic style made it hard to tell many of the characters apart). I liked how the various works Hiroshi created where shown in the story (usually just their covers), it was interesting to see how his work (and really almost every other manga-ka’s work in the story) was very similar to his idol's, Osama Tezuka. I thought that spoke volumes about the history of manga, how the medium has changed and grown so much more diverse; today most manga-ka have a distinctive style but it looks like that happened when the medium moved away from solely doing gag comics and short stories (I’d love to see if anyone has done any research on the subject or if my theory is completely off). And finally, as a warning, the book is flipped* and at 800 pages I found it a little hard to hold.

An excellent book that probably won't interest the casual manga fan but I would still recommend anyway. And my library still has a few more series that I haven't gotten to yet, think I might try Akira next...

*reading this right after reading the also flipped Buddha made me feel as if I was committing a crime against manga….