Comic Review: The Wicked and The Divine (volumes one and two)

While I haven't been watching a lot of movies lately I am been up to my ears in comics and manga! Part of this is that I on occasion remember that the DC library actually stocks current comic series and I finally had a chance to check out a series I had quite a bit of good buzz about. Actually, I only requested the first volume, as soon as I tore through it I immediately jumped back online for the second volume and I'm hoping they get the third trade soon!

The Wicked and The Divine written by Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Jamie McKelvie

Comic Review: Ms Marvel Volume 1: No Normal

I've been hearing great things about this comic for a while but it didn't occur to me to look for the collected issues at my library until I stumbled across one. I also didn't realize that the second collected set is also out now so be assured, as soon as I find that I'm reading that one too and bemoaning how short these volumes are compared to the manga volumes I'm used to.

Ms Marvel Volume 1: No Normal written by G. Willow Wilson, art by Adrian Alphona

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

Comic Review: Boxers and Saints

I have mixed feelings on Gene Luen Yang's other works, I've liked some like American Born Chinese and questioned the writing in others (like the Avatar spin-off comics) but the dual nature of this story caught my eye from the beginning and the seemingly universal positive reviews of the story further intrigued me. Plus, after hearing Yang talk about this work and his upcoming comic at Small Press Expo I was garunteed to check it out, hearing people eloquently talk about themes important to them in their writings gets me every time!

Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang

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

Comic Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Search Part One

Hmm, so it appears that my library does not yet have Wandering Son Volume 4 and that it is in fact still in the process of ordering, guess that review won't be up for a while. I had originally hoped to push this review back a little bit in the hopes that my library might get the second volume soon so there wouldn't be a large gap in reviews but, since I recently found out that there was also a third volume in this series and my library just got this volume, it looks like that plan of mine is also a bust. Drat, well, time to talk about Avatar (and it appears that I somehow forgot to review The Promise when I finished it sorry about that folks, might get to that in the future might not!). In case people are confused, yes this is a direct sequel to The Promise which is a direct sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender and I do recommend reading The Promise before The Search, although you could probably follow the story relatively easily if you haven't.


Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Search (part one) written by Gene Luen Yang, illustrated by Gurihiru

The 2013 Wrap-UP

It’s that time guys, time for my big, 2013 wrap up post! As usual I’m going to be talking about all media I consume in one big post since not only is that just easier for me but also because while some areas are easy to talk about (like anime) there are a lot of areas where it’s going to be a little, messy. But I’ll talk about that as I go along! First though a bit of housekeeping, as people have already noticed I’ve started using ads on the site, I’m trying to be more diligent about putting in referral links (should have some to Right Stuf soon, although sadly the reviews that get the most views are the ones which don’t have a physical release yet), and I’m going to change it up a bit more next year as well. When I started the site three years ago the format I chose, breaking everything up into their own sections, was a good idea since it made me consider multiple parts of the show and often made it easier to get going while writing. However I feel like I’ve grown past that point so starting January first I’m going to shift to a more free form style just like almost everyone else uses, and that will be for everything I review. Also, I feel like by doing this the infrequent little essays I write, which for the past year have just been going on my tumblr, will fit in better and I can post those here as well, just trying to catch up to the rest of the blogging community since I like what they’re doing and want to be part of it myself.

So, with that out of the way, here’s what my favorite things of 2013 were!

Comic Review: Bayou (Volumes 1 and 2)

Sorry for the delay guys, for some reason I seem to be stuck working closing shifts all the time at work (I've been home for dinner once in the past seven days, hurray) and once I get home I'm so spent from dealing with prissy holiday retail customers and from dealing with your usual mix of coworkers (some great some not) it's hard to write something that I'm satisfied with. 

As for the actual review, if I had realized that this wasn't the full series I might have chosen not to review it, since my library had two books I just assumed that was all their was. Of course, having done a little research now I can see that the second volume came out in 2011 and there doesn't seem to be any word on when a third volume will be out which is always worrying. I'm fairly sure that volume two isn't supposed to be the final volume not only because I don't see anything saying that it is but also because, well, it's not a good stopping point for a story.

Bayou (volumes one and two) by Jeremy Love

Summary: Lee and her father are sharecroppers in rural Mississippi and life isn't good, or safe, if you're not white. Determined to prove that her father was wrongfully imprisoned Lee goes on a journey to another world to bring back the truth.

The Good: It's not easy to set a story in the historical American South (historical fiction these days is usually defined as stories set pre-1950 but that statement holds true up until at least the 80s) because all of the opposing forces of American culture and politics, especially in regards to personal beliefs and people's rights to exercise them are amplified to the extreme. Therefore it's hard to write a story that acknowledges them, since they are at least on a basic level a part of everyone's life, and Love I feel like greatly succeeds with his refusal to romanticize or attempt to explain roughly Great Depression area Mississippi near New Orleans. With that as a base the rest of the story flows well, in the real world at least, and I did like the mythology he created, it was both old and new and felt really interesting.

The Bad: I believe I've said this before at some point but making a story by re-imagining another, older one is hard. Doing that with a well-known, trickster character is harder yet and I think a large reason why the second volume just didn't sit as well with me was because of Br'er Rabbit. He was so different from the stories I heard as a six or seven year old and in such a way that it felt like Love was trying to be "edgy" not "an alternate look at a well-known character". The story also seems to be setting itself up for a reveal I'm not a very big fan of in fiction, one that I feel like exists to suddenly give another character sympathy without having to do anything and when that appeared in the last few pages it really did sour my mood on the entire story. Other than that, I do feel like the pacing doesn't quite match the plot, in some ways Lee's story has a very tight deadline but the story seems to meander a bit to give the character's more time for, well, meeting other side characters I guess?  

The Art: The art style isn't one I favor, I just don't like the too-soft, as if everything was colored using the gradient tool, art style and the designs were a bit strange as well but there's certainly nothing wrong with it. Although, when you combine the fact that I'm not wild about the art with the fact that I think the story is about to do something I dislike I'm not exactly foaming at the mouth waiting for the next installment.


It's a little hard to rate this, there's not much wrong with the story, aside from the pacing a bit, yet it just didn't connect with me. I think that if I was reading the completed story at once then I probably would have liked it more but again without even a whisper of when the third volume will be out that's not going to happen anytime soon.  

Comic Review: Off*beat (volume two)

Well I had a rather charming surprise at my new local library, they have quite a bit of manga! I'm starting to think that my local library was a bit crap for having so little (that or it was so throughly spread out between the branch libraries I never got a chance to see what they really had) and this library not only has manga but it has quite a few longer running series that I had always wanted to try and some older books like this one. I didn't think I'd have a chance to read this one any time soon since, to the best of my knowledge, Chromatic Press hasn't started selling new copies yet and I'd have to wait for those to trickle down into the libraries. I will note however that for some reason this particular book was missing some pages, I don't think I missed anything terribly important story wise, I wouldn't be reviewing it if I had, but if it seems like I did feel free to chime in in the comments!

Off*beat (volume two) by Jen Lee Quick

Summary: Tory continues to try and get closer to his neighbor and classmate Colin in order to figure out what exactly is going on in Colin's sometimes mysterious life.

The Good: In the effort of full disclosure, I'm having a bit of trouble remembering where volume one ended and volume two began which in one way is a good thing, it shows just how cleanly this story flows, but does mean this is going to be a shorter review. I'll admit that I liked this volume a bit less since it felt more like build-up, being able to read chapters from volume 3 immediately afterwards was a relief especially since it showed that Quick really does have a well plotted out story in mind. One thing I do remember liking a lot about this volume is how even though Tory is absolutely convinced that Colin is part of a secret government project the story presents it in such a way that as a reader I was never sure if he was right or completely crazy. I think that presentation was on purpose and that's something that's quite tricky to pull off correctly and I thought it gave the story an extra level of interest. 

The Bad: I'm so happy I don't have to say "and then it ends forever so we have no conclusion!" since that would be a pretty big negative against the series. The third series is already being serialized in Sparkler Monthly and picks up immediately from where the second volume ends and honestly that takes care of both my biggest problem with the series and that also starts rounding out the characters a bit more which was my other large complaint about the series. People will probably disagree with me but I just found Tory and Colin a bit too flat, Colin spent the first volume barely interacting so it was hard to see what his actual personality was (other than "quiet" and "a bit sullen") and Tory is so obsessive with his stalking that it's as if that one quirk defines his entire personality. Like I said, the third volume is definitely the start of the final act so both of those problems start to fade and that leaves me with no real issues with the series at the moment.

The Art: No big changes here from the first volume, Quick continues to draw in a style that looks a little rough but grew on me over time. I also feel a bit weird critiquing it since I started out reading her later work (Witch's Quarry) so I know that all the problems I have with this work (faces are a bit too similar, backgrounds can get rather simplistic and overly reliant on screentones) are improved upon in her other works yet I hope the art for the last volume isn't too different since a radical style change would be even worse. And, in writing this review, I just realized that the CP editions have new covers and just wanted to quickly mention that I like the new ones (with new logo) better than the old TokyoPop ones, much more focused composition.

So, if you enjoyed the first volume of Off*Beat you'll enjoy this one even more and then should run over to Sparkler Monthly to read the rest. Otherwise, if you're a fan of lite-BL stories where the relationship isn't the main focus then you should give this series a shot, I was pleasently surprised to see that it was as good as I had been told anyway.

Comic Review: Zuko's Story

This is a bit of an odd Avatar comic and that's not just because I got it for free at Otakon (there was a booth for a New Jersey anime con, I believe it was AnimeNext who had a box of free stuff and just asked that we spread the word about where we got it so there you go!). When the The Last Airbender movie came out there were two tie-in comics, one that was a summary of the film (which apparently wasn't that great either) and this one which is supposed to be what happened to Zuko between the time he was banished and the events in the first episode. I've actually wanted to read it for a while, I had heard the writer (not sure which one) was a fan of the show and I've always wondered if the story might be considered "canon" for the cartoon show since it sounded like Mike and Bryan liked it fairly well, wonder if anyone out there knows the answer to it.

Zuko's Story written by Dave Roman and Alison Wilgus, art by Nina Matsumoto

Summary: Before Aang awoke from his 100 year sleep in Avatar: The Last Airbender the stage was already being set for a showdown that would dethrone the fire lord and bring balance back to the world. A few years earlier another key event happened, Prince Zuko of the fire nation was shamed in a duel against his father and banished, given the quest of capturing the Avatar. While this was a terrible thing it also gave him a chance to see the world and start to understand what this war his father continued to wage really meant.

The Good: Well I guess you can say one good thing came out of that trainwreck of a movie (I've seen some people say Korra happened because of that but I'm not so sure) because I actually liked this a lot more than the first volume of The Search. This story could fit into the ATLA canon easily, Zuko is consistent with the character we saw in the series and the story fits thematically as well into his overall character arc. Truly I think that's the best praise this story could receive, I don't think this story works well if this is your first introduction to the franchise but if you're already familiar with the show then go ahead and pick it up, it fills in the gap between Zuko's banishment and episode one and actually gives an explanation for where the blue spirit came from.

The Bad: It's a bit jarring to see how quickly the story progresses here considering that it took the better part of two seasons of the show to reveal exactly what happened to lead to Zuko's banishment. I wish it had been a bit longer but I can understand that they just wanted a quick tie in piece of material and it does work fine for it's length, it just could have been better if longer (which funny enough is my exact same complaint with currently airing show Avatar: The Legend of Korra). The story does feel a little limited, unsurprisingly since there's only so much they could do without disrupting the rest of the story, and weirdly enough about a forth of the book is just showing the initial sketches for the first 20 or so pages, but overall it's pretty solid work.

The Art: The art follows the movie's designs (character, clothing, and setting wise) which did make this a little jarring at times, although at least here Zuko's scar looks like an actual scar and not an accident in hair and make-up (well, at points it actually looks like he was mauled by a bear but that's still an improvement over the movie's effects). The movie designs do lend themselves to some nice artwork with all their details and the fight scenes look nice as well, although for some reason I can't quite pinpoint everything does look a little rough, probably due to the pen and ink style of shading.

I'm giving this book a 3 out of 5 for being a nice addition to the franchise yet not a must read for every fan. I certainly recommend it but I can't admit that I'll probably reread it that often, might end up donating it to a library or such sometime soon. 

Comic Review: Ivy

For this final comic book I checked out of my local library I went with one just because it looked nice. The cover was nicely done (both art wise and how the binding blended in) and I liked the size of it in my hands. That was it, a purely superficial reason and given that comic books are half art anyway it felt like a pretty good reason to me.

Ivy by Sarah Oleksyk

Summary: Ivy lives in a small town and like all small town girls she has big dreams, to be a world-famous painter someday. But between her friends hanging out with other people, her mom telling her she has to go to college for business, not art, and the reps for art schools not liking her art it seems like the whole world is against her until she runs into a guy and suddenly it seems like a whole world of possibilities open up.

The Good: Well, if for some reason you haven't seen any of the many other stories out there about a teen in a small town who wants to be an artist (truly amazing how many want to be artists/writers versus any other career out there) then, well, this is a thing. It's got a solid beginning, middle, and end and a main character with a more complicated life which I feel like is more "realistic" than the many stories out there where a character has only one problem in their life instead of many. I'm sure many people would like it but Ivy just rubbed me the wrong way and since this is a story about her that means there wasn't much I did like about it. 

The Bad: I believe that high school is one of the harder settings to do right since so many high schoolers are, well, asses, so you must portray that and yet still make them sympathetic to the reader so they care about what happens to these asses. This book does not succeed, while it's understandable that Ivy is under stress and is going to lash out she does it so often and with so little provocation sometimes that I just got frustrated with her, she's the not the kind of character whom I want to read about and root for (the chip on her shoulder is so big I wonder if there's any shoulder left). I was actually more frustrated with her mother than Ivy, I'm not sure if her mother was supposed to come off as a complicated person with a lot of issues or if Oleksyk didn't realize she had made her do a 180 by the end of the book but either way Ivy's mother came off as a rather flat character who was more plot device than fleshed out. Towards the end of the book there's a scene where Ivy is talking to another character, Charolette, who says that she had a lot of the same problems Ivy has gone through and all I could think was "but she at least seems like a more interesting character, why not make the story about her instead?!"

The Art: I liked the art, it had a rounded style to it that I prefer and some screentoning and shading to it, although when I saw the cover I did hope for a minute that it might be full color since I loved how the colors on the cover were done. It's not and oh well, it looks fine without it, I especially loved all the detail but into the scenery (especially how consistent it was) and the paneling flowed nicely as well.


I'm only giving this story 2 out of 5 stars since by the end I completely disliked Ivy and while I didn't feel like "she got what she deserved" I couldn't help but think that her wake-up call to what the real world was actually like was a long time coming. If you'd like to try out the book at least some of it is up on Oleksyk's website here.

Comic Review: Still I Rise

I picked this book up at my local library not sure if I would like it, much less have anything to say to constitute a review on it, but reminded myself that even if I didn't like it I was practically guaranteed to walk away from it knowing more about American history than when I started. Over the years I've become more and more frustrated with the history classes I've had yet despite that I don't actually go out and try to read a lot of non-fiction history books on my own, something I think I need to change even if most of them, unlike this one, won't leave me with much to talk about here.

Still I Rise by Roland Laird and Taneshia Nash Laird, illustrated by Elihu "Adofo" Bey

Summary: Taking it's title from Maya Angelou's poem of the same name, this comic shows  how Africans first came to the Americas and their long struggle to be recognized as Americans will the same rights and minds as everyone else.

The Good: I most certainly walked away from this book with more knowledge than I did going in, which was incredibly thorough for a roughly 200 page book. It also managed to convey something that none of my history classes ever had, this was a constant struggle for rights and freedom, not something that cropped up every now and again but something that was always in the background. In some ways I'm not surprised, my history classes were a bit selective and we tended to study periods, not look at history as a whole, but it's still sad that it's taken me so many years to actually put that into words. And this book didn't just talk about the African-Americans who were politically involved in trying to obtain rights, it also focused on the scientists, the inventors, the artists which was great since it showed that they were (and still are) a complex group of individuals, not just a group of people who can be boiled down to a single issue.

The Bad: I found this book a little much to read in one sitting or even two, it's surprisingly dense, and really wish it had been split into chapters or such since I had a hard time figuring out where a good stopping place was and really needed a few. I also wish that more of the people in the book had been labeled, I was able to guess at which parts were "made-up" conversations to convey a point and which ones were likely real quotes and, even though I could type them into google and see what comes up, I do wish the people had simply been labeled instead. Finally, while I did like the fact that the story had two narrators connecting and explaining all the events (whom I assume were representations of the two authors) at the very end their conversations felt less polished, like I was reading an unscripted argument between two people instead of, well, an argument with two sides that need to be presented. This only happened at the very end, I started wondering if tensions were just boiling over, but other than that I really did like having two, visible, narrators instead of one.

The Art: The art is, well, not in a style I like and I found it to be sloppy at times. Flipping back through it it's hard to articulate what I felt like when I was reading but a lot of the people look rough and caricaturist to the point where I had a hard time telling if someone was new or if we had seen them before and in a couple of places it looks like Bey just didn't have some particular technical skills. I'm ignoring the last 10 or so pages since they were drawn about 10 years later (the book was originally published in 1997 and then republished in 2009), although there is unfortunately a stark stylistic difference between the two and that's also where the aforementioned arguing between the narrators also happens. I do think that it was a good idea to make this story a comic instead of a prose book, it fits the pacing much better, but I do wonder if Bey had some trouble with the deadlines since the art seems to become even cruder and more "off model" the closer it gets to the end and that did bug me as I read it.

The amount of history in this book and the relative readability of it (I wasn't kidding about how dense it was) I'm giving this four stars out of five and really glad that I took it home and read it after all.

Comic Review: The Last Dragon

Yet another strange thing I pulled from a library, this time from the not-so-local library whose stock of manga and comics I am rapidly consuming, and I went for this one purely because I've read a series by Jane Yolen that involved dragons and liked it (it's also one of my examples of just how weirdly close fantasy and science fiction can be, literally the only thing that keeps it from being fantasy is the fact that it's on a colony planet in the future with low technology, just about everything else could have fit into a fantasy novel). And hey, I've read things for far stranger reasons before, let's see how this one does!


The Last Dragon Written by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Rebecca Guay

Summary: There have been no dragons on the isles of May in centuries but, as is often the case in stories, one dragon egg survived, slumbering, until a mishap cracks it open and as dragons are wont to do it soon grows and begins to devour anything it can find. The islanders remember the old tales but they are not dragonslayers so while they do all the can they also begin a search for someone who can kill the beast before they all perish. 

The Good: I suspect this story is a comic instead of being a prose short story is because of how short it really is. It took me next to no time at all to read it and without the artwork I would have finished it even faster which I suppose means that this was a good choice format wise. The story flowed well and the pacing was quick which also fit the story well, but other than those technical details there was nothing about the story which really grabbed me enough to like it or even find memorable. So let's move onto that:

The Bad: While not bad or terrible the story just felt, flat. We've all seen stories about the last dragon (or more rarely some other mythical creature) awakening and wrecking havoc and we've all seen stories about unlikely hero(s) coming together to defeat it using cleverness instead of sheer strength. And this story just didn't play with any of these ideas, everything played out exactly the way you expected, from the overall story to how the characters interacted and for me that makes for a dull read. This time I can't even say "but it's old so of course I've seen other, later, stories do it better," nope this is from 2011 and, even if it theoretically spent a long time in development, it's still new enough that everyone involved must have seen the story in a dozen iterations elsewhere and I can't help but wonder why it's so dull then.  

The Art: This might be me seeing something that's not there, however while I liked the art there were a number of pages I saw which looked unfinished, as if a few layers or filters had been left off and I noticed that when simply reading through, not carefully rereading just for the art. Again, this could be me but it threw me out of the story a little bit, when I came back to it I developed the same opinions about the art that I had for the story, it works, it's fine (I do like the style) but it didn't really add anything to the story (except time spent reading) or do anything with it that I find truly memorable, this isn't a story I expect to remember any longer than a few months down the road.


I guess I'll give this one a 2.5 out of 5 since it's certainly technically competent and not terrible but, like last week, if for some reason someone does want to read a story about the last dragon or whatnot tell me, I'm sure I can think of a better story for you to read instead.

Comic Review: Smile

Sorry that this one is late guys, weirdly enough it wasn't exams that threw me off schedule but all the last minute errand-y thing I had to do before graduation, gonna see if I can catch up by Monday but since my graduation isn't until Sunday that might not happen. And also, I'm gonna try but I might not have a comic review for this upcoming week, I've plain ran out of books that catch my eye at the libraries, heck I even read Abandon the old in Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi and you know what, I just didn't feel like reviewing it. Part of this might be because I saw the blog post by one of the First Second editors talking about how they would rather have someone review a book (that they got from them) if they felt like they wanted to write a review rather than they were obligated. And I just don't feel like I would have anything meaningful/important/useful so yep, I read it, liked A Drifting Life more which I recommend and let's talk about this book now which I do have things to say about!


Smile by Raina Telgemeier

Summary: Raina was excited to get braces since all her classmates had them and this would make her more normal, although when she knocks out her front two teeth her braces suddenly become a lot more complicated and end up being a part of her life a lot longer than she expected.

The Good: Last week I praised Nothing Could Possibly Go Wrong for the mundane aspects of it and, unsurprisingly since this story uses braces as part jumping off point part unifying theme, I'm going to do the same thing here. Usually braces, and glasses, only pop up in stories (middle grade stories anyway) as a device either to denote someone as a nerd or as a "look this character is just like you and me!" one off story which has always struck me as odd since so many kids in America do have braces. And wow did I emphasize a lot with Telgemeier's story (headgear? Yep. Crying in the orthodontist's office? Yes and worse!) and even though it's set a few decades back it doesn't feel dated in the slightest and I think that people, kids and adults alike, will be able to enjoy it for another few decades. Even if braces are replaced with something less painful the rest of Telgemeier's story will still be more than relevant.

The Bad: This was a pretty solid story and I don't have any real criticisms of it. It did take me a little while to realize when it was set, although that was me being silly not really the story's fault, but it felt paced well within the story and it was easy to see what choices Telgemeier was going to make. Best of all, as I semi-mentioned earlier this is a middle grade story and even though I normally don't like those as much I think this works great as an all ages book and it doesn't talk down to it's audience, honestly since it does that right just about any problem would seem minor by comparison.

The Art: The book was in full color which I thought was a good choice, it gave the art a certain color it just wouldn't quite have had if it was just in black and white tones, it wouldn't have fit with the art's nice rounded style. I guess it sounds odd to talk about if an artist's style fits the story or not, especially since I don't often run across a story where I feel like the art is completely wrong for it, but what i mean here is that this is a autobiographical comic and even though the art is what people would call cartoony it doesn't use things like over-exaggerated reactions or huge sound effects which would have felt totally out of place in the story. In that respect it's also a good example of how you don't need a super realistic art style to tell an autobiographical story, then again I could have pointed you to half a dozen webcomics to also prove that point.


So, a good 3.5 or 4 out of 5 stars for this and a hearty recommendation. I've heard that Telgemeier has another book out there and I will need to make sure to track it down in the near future and see what that one is about, probably sooner than later given my lack of buffer.....

Comic Review: Aki Alliance

Bit of a weird title here, I think it's actually a print book but well over a year ago I was linked to where you could read the whole thing online, read a bit, did some other things, and never read the rest. Lately I've been trying to clean up my "webcomic to read" folder so I tried downloading the book to see if that made it a bit easier to read (it didn't, you have to continuously scroll down, I was hoping it would be in separate pages for ease of reading). And then I decided to just get through it in one go since with as many things as I have going on these days I'd probably just forget about it for months again otherwise, the problem with having a large backlog.


Aki Alliance by Ryan Estrada

Summary: Aki has a problem, well, two actually. The first problem is that she has tried out and quit just about every club in school. The second problem, spawning from the first, is that she has no friends from alienating every girl at school by doing this and she wants to make friends. So one of the girls in her class proposes a challenge, make friends with every girl in the class before they graduate and Aki accepts.

The Good: When all is said and done the story has a pretty good sized side cast and despite the fact that most of them only appear a few times they all felt distinct and individual. Rounded? Ehhh, that varies but it certainly didn't feel like Aki was running into the same few stereotypes over and over and these character interactions literally carry the story. The other bit that carries the story, in my opinion, is the humor and it's present in spades throughout the entire story. It's zany, only sometimes grounded in logic, and certainly makes the story more entertaining, although I'm not sure I would actually label this story a comedy so that fact that the humor helped carry the story for me isn't a good sign.

The Bad: I was rather frustrated with the ending, it ended up being what I would point to as an example of "telling not showing" which isn't a good thing to be. Aside from that, I was disappointed by Aki in the end. No I didn't expect her to grow and change that much in the story, that's not her character, and she did change a bit but only the smallest iota (that ending more of less proved it). So, what was the point of this story then? It's not heavily plot driven, it's character driven with characters who don't change much, whom I also didn't find entertaining, am I missing something here?

The Art: Half of the chapters are done in what I'd call the stories "normal" art style and the other half are done in wildly varying styles which sometimes match up with the chapter at hand and other times don't. I think I would have been a bit more forgiving of these shifts if they had been more evenly spread out, the other styles appeared more and more as the story was going on and to me it felt like Estrada was growing tired of his story and was having to spice it up any way he could (which I'm sure wasn't the case but the thought did cross my mind). Again, this is just personal preference on my part, and some of the art styles really did match the chapters at hand really well, but I wish they had been more evenly spread out.


In the end I give this just 2.5 stars out of 5. Should you read it? Weeeeell it's free, but then again you can find free anime streaming and free books on Amazon and I wouldn't recommend you consume all of those, there's some real tripe out there! In the end this just wasn't a story for me and I can see it appealing to more of a middle grade audience but even then this wouldn't be the first thing I'd think of if asked to recommend titles for middle schoolers. 

Comic Review: Manga Man

Guys, next time I'm sick please keep me away from the library, I obviously have no restraint and will even check out books I've passed by before/heard meh reviews about. Which was this book, I swear I've heard this premise elsewhere before and I really hope that they at least pulled it off in a more humorous fashion.


Manga Man written by Barry Lyga, illustrated by Colleen Doran

Summary: Ryoko Kiyama was living a normal life (for him anyway) when he falls through a rift into another world quite unlike his own. He looks different, special effects follow him around, and he just generally doesn't fit in. Marissa Montaigne

The Good: There were a few funny gags that had to do with Ryoko reading the story from right to left instead of left to right and therefore he would do something before he was supposed to, too bad I'm so used to reading both ways that I automatically switched and it took me forever to figure out that that was the gag.

The Bad: Looking at the author's bio it seems like he's worked on purely American comics before which, while not a bad thing, seems to show since the entire work can be boiled down to "ha-ha, manga is so silly!" without any mention of how weird, well, every other kind of comic can be. Also, the way I had heard the book pitched was that a manga character falls into a western comic book world yet, while that is the case, that reveal doesn't come until really late on and a reveal that comes that much later after the readers have figured it out is frustrating. As for the actual plot, it was dull. It was a love story (and I just noticed that Marissa's last name looks an awful lot like "Montague," wonder if that was on purpose) where neither character really got fleshed out and the conflict magically resolved itself at the end. In short, it felt like a half-baked idea that got cranked out over a few days and probably would have been less terrible if more time had been spent on it. 

The Art: Yeah yeah yeah we know, manga always has really weird chibis and special effects compared to the oh-so-normal looking American comics, wait, really? The last title I can remember with tons and tons of chibis in them was Magic Knight Rayearth (and I feel like some other works by Clamp employ more chibis than usual) but these days it's rare for me to see super-deformed characters outside of a beat panel (where someone is delievering a punchline). It's true that my tastes go more towards older shonen/shojo or outright seinen/josei but regardless, that didn't make me get any less annoyed at the "manga" art. It was fun when the characters started playing with the panel edges and such but the art also was the kind of western style which is trying to be more realistic but does so by making it look like the artist traced real faces for each shot and then added too much shading. It's a style I've never really been fond of so that certainly didn't help it out in my eyes.

So, nope, don't recommend this to anyone unless you really want to read something bad while having a drinking game or something. Man I hope that last book I checked out (which I won't even be talking about until December) turns out better than this one.....

Comic Review: Ichiro

Another pick-up from my "I have a headcold and therefore this seems like a good idea" library visit so there's no real reason I read this particular book. No reviews, no word of mouth, just going in blind and hoping it was a good choice. And apologies that this is up a day late, school continues to eat up a lot of my time, especially on weekends these days.

Ichiro by Ryan Izana

Summary: Ichiro is a half-Japanese American who was born and raised in Brooklyn by his mom after his dad died when he was young. A rather average kid he's taking the news that he and his mom are moving to Japan for her teaching job pretty well although he doesn't know much about his heritage. He's skeptical of some of the myths and stories his grandfather has to tell but learns first hand that some stories have more truth in them than others.

The Good: Based on the book blurb I thought there would be a lot of conflict between Ichiro and his grandfather or Ichiro and Japanese ways in general, neither of which happened and I was happy to see that that author didn't take the easy way out when it came to setting up conflict. Ichiro has a fairly good relationship with both of his grandparents (one of whom seems like a bigot and one who was fine with his daughter marrying an American, I can't remember the last time I didn't see a character like that used as conflict in a story) as well as his mother so it was nice to see that the overall conflict was more internal (well, minus the part where he's thrown into another world). And it was nice to see the characters talk about war and how it's often a complex thing, especially given all the stuff that happened/was done by Japan in World War II which is brought up.  

The Bad: I didn't like Ichiro for most of the story because, for a bit of a dumb reason, he reminded me a lot of my brother when he was younger and how he would blindly believe these (obviously crazy to everyone else) ideas and that was frustrating enough to live with, I certainly don't want to be reminded of that in a book. On the flip side I this does makes Ichiro a rather realistic young teen, just the kind where you wait a few years and hope that they eventually grow up. Other than that, I was rather frustrated that in the end the tanuki, which had a lot of time devoted to it, was nothing more than a plot device and one that was tossed aside once it was used. It was also frustrating to see how a lot of things went unresolved by the end. Ichiro has grown as a character and his character growth is resolved, that I had no trouble with, but it seemed like the story set up another conflict and then only used it as a background, not even a metaphor, and that frustrated me. I'm fairly sure that this story is completed at just one volume, it feels completed in every other way, but I would have loved to that background to have gotten it's own story.

The Art: The book is in color and rather cleverly used different color schemes to differentiate between different places (and to indicate if the characters were speaking Japanese or English instead of having the readers try to guess which language). It's fairly monochromatic as a result but different colors for different places, although I have no idea why the prologue, which has very little to do with the rest of the story, is in full color.


So, not a great choice but the story had some nice parts to it. But man, I would have loved a story about how the gods had changed and grown since the myths were made, I wonder if I could find a story like that actually.....

Comic Review: Shay's Story

Scott Westerfeld, author of the Leviathan series, has written a few other young adult series and by far his most well known was the Uglies series, a trilogy (with a fourth book that's more a companion novel than a true sequel) set about 300 years in the future after humanity almost destroyed itself when a virus destroyed/set all the oil on fire (as far as I recall anyway, it's been a few years since I read these books) which also resulted in society being reshaped. Now people live with their parents when they're very young, dorms for a few years (from around 12 to 16), after which everyone undergoes a mandatory surgery to become "pretty" after which they move out of the dorms into another part of the city where they live out the rest of their lives. I'm saying all of this since this book doesn't really say any of that and none of the original books do either, it's something you have to put together   (probably because otherwise red flags would go up in the reader's minds immediately). However, I think that people do need at least a bit of background to enjoy this story, or maybe a lot of background....

Shay's Story written by Scott Westerfeld and Devin Grayson, illustrated by Steven Cummings

   
Summary: Shay wants the same thing every teenager wants, for her sixteenth birthday to hurry up and come so she can finally undergo the operation that will make her beautiful and let her live a life of luxury in New Pretty Town for years to come. Shay isn't quite a normal teenager though, she's a bit "tricky" what with modifying her hoverboard to fly higher and faster than the limits will let it and sneaks over into New Pretty Town to pull pranks. She falls in with some life-minded people and they find out about the biggest tricky thing of all, how to escape the city and go live completely in the wilderness. Shay isn't so sure she wants this though, but the things she sees in the city start to convince her more and more.

The Good: While Tally is the main character, the mover and shaker, of the series Shay is an incredibly important character (although mostly because she usually ends up in conflict with Tally, hmm) so it's nice to fill in the gaps of her story and see how she got involved The Smoke which triggers the entire rest of the series. She is an interesting character, even though she's a bit flat here, and it was nice to see what some of the locations in the story looked like since, IIRC, the original book were a bit light on the descriptive details.

The Bad: I don't think this book works if you're completely new to the series because there is simply so much backstory to know to understand what the characters do. Why are the cities bad? While in the first Uglies book a reader could pick up on what was going on there are barely any clues to let a new reader figure out the truth and without that there's almost no reason for the characters to leave in the first place. Aside from Shay none of the characters seem to get any development, Zane is radically different from how he appears in the books (which is on purpose and about the only foreshadowing we get for my previous complaint), David seems more cocky (or like an ass, your mile may vary) than he did in the books, and Tally almost gets the worst of it since her development in the books often happened when Shay was off-screen. So when you combine those two things with the way the story itself flowed (choppy, it was split into a ton of super short chapters, it was impossible to get a grasp on the passage of time, characters came in and out of the story almost randomly) and I just can't say that this book was good or worth reading by any but the most hardcore fan. 

The Art: I shall be blunt here, this is not the medium to tell this story. An all text medium doesn't work really well for the story (it took me forever to catch onto the fact that the "ugly" characters were in fact normal) and a comic doesn't work either since, well, everyone looks pretty and there is supposed to be a huge, noticeable difference between uglies and pretties and, unless you're Urasawa* or someone who does more horror work, everyone is going to look pretty. Recently the Uglies books had their film right's optioned it was announced that they were in talks with the special effects team that did the work on Captain America for the body modifications, that would work but here where everyone is manga-pretty it just doesn't and that means a major part of the story doesn't make sense. If everyone already looks so great then why do people care about the surgery? I have to admit that the art here was in a style I'm not so crazy about (I see it in a lot of comics which  feel a lot like "OEL Manga") which uses a lot of flat, dark screentones which just doesn't work and there were times when it was confusing to figure out what order to read the panels in (something again that I see much more in comics like this than I do in webcomics which just baffles me). It's not a bad looking book, don't get me wrong there, but it just doesn't work.


So yeah, I had heard that some parts of this story didn't work, went in expecting that it would be at the very least okay and came out rather grumpy. It sounds like they want to make more graphic novels to help fill in the gaps of the series and, while on the one hand I'm curious to see what else happened to Shay when she was offscreen, and I can't really say no to books I find for free at a library, I really doubt now how good they would be. 



*who draws amazingly distinct faces, it's something about the noses