Juvenile Fiction/Graphic Novel: Rise of the Robot Army, Robert Venditti & Dusty Higgins

Rise of the Robot Army (Book 2 in the Miles Taylor and the Golden Cape series)

Robert Venditti, illustrated by Dusty Higgins 

ISBN: 9781481405577

Miles gets addicted to the power of the cape and the kick of doing good, and gets kidnapped by a crazy guy with a robot army.

These are fun because they're set in Atlanta, they're prose novels for the most part, but switch into graphic novel format when the character of the Golden Cape is active, and because the author is trying very hard to purposefully subvert the tropes of a superhero narrative and show how hard it is for a normal person to always do what's right and what's best, when they're just normal people faced with powerful temptations.

Supporting Cast: A+. Miles' dad, poor guy. I just want to buy him a drink. At least he's got a girlfriend now. Doctor is cool but needs a bit more characterization. New girl is hella interesting and I hope she's permanent and not treated poorly by the author.  

Plot: A.  Emotional arc is dead-on and perfect for the age-group (honestly, it's perfect for most people all their lives, when you really look at it) and the physical plot/perilous situation is 1) creepy as heck, 2) very nicely built on the first book, 3) subverts superhero-story tropes where people have obvious names to show they're bad-guys or good-guys without actually making the storyline ANY LESS CREEPY (well-done, that is), and 4) is solved relatively rationally and by the characters making informed and purposeful choices instead of getting deus-ex-machina'd (although I do think perhaps dad had a bit of a mild ret-con to his character so that Miles doesn't get murdered at the end of the book).

Fun, silly, engaging, thoughtful, and peopled with fun and interesting characters that are tropey without being any less interesting and individual. I'm really impressed, and really enjoying this series. 

YA Novel/Graphic: Draw the Line, by Laurent Linn

Written and drawn in sections by Laurent Linn, this isn't as solidly half-and-half graphic novel and book like The Adventures of Hugo Cabret or the more recent Miles Taylor and the Golden Cape.  Still, there's a decent amount of illustrated material, which really adds something to the story.

Draw the Line
written and illustrated by Laurent Linn
ISBN: 9781481452809
Read August 20

Adrian has a lot of talent, but he's also a pragmatist (perhaps a pessimist) - he knows that artsy gay online comic creators aren't really the power players at school, so he's WAY into the closet, about everything.  His wardrobe is made of muted greys and taupes, he keeps his head down, and no one besides his two similarly-marginalized friends has any idea what sort of ideas and passions make him tick.  But all that changes dramatically when Adrian watches a flamboyantly gay classmate get savagely beaten at a local diner, and Adrian makes a terrified stand that puts him in the spotlight, and into the sights of school bullies.

It was a little heavy-handed at times, and the progression was a bit quick, and the ending a bit pat, but I forgive those in the interests of having a mostly upbeat and positive story, despite the focus on some tough issues.

I don't know if there's anywhere more for Adrian's story to go, but it might be interesting to see Linn tackle a slant-wise sequel that focuses on one of the other characters involved, several of whom have really strong potential for a powerful story of their own.

Graphic Novel: The Last Dragon, Jane Yolen, illustrated by Rebecca Guay

The Last Dragon
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Rebecca Guay
ISBN: 9781616558741
Read August 15, 2016


An introduction by Neil Gaiman is sweet, but unnecessary for this sweet and delightfully traditional dragon slaying fairy tale.

Once upon a time there was an island that was plagued by dragons, who just adored eating people.  Apparently we taste good.  The folk banded together and slayed them all.  Now it's hundreds of years later, and dragons are a faded memory - all dead, all gone.  Until one final egg hatches, and a new dragon begins to grow up in the woods, all fire and hatred and appetite.

We join a healer's family and a pair of young boys searching for a hero, all desperate to save their town from this re-born threat from the past.

The art is beautiful, the characters are individualized as much as possible given the short length of the story, and a sweet little romance doesn't detract from the plot to destroy the dragon and save the townsfolk.

Graphic Novel Book Club: New Suicide Squad, vol. 1 Pure Insanity, by Sean Ryan et al

Our last graphic novel was intended to tie in with the new Suicide Squad movie, and from what I hear, audiences liked that movie just about as much as our readers liked the New Suicide Squad collection.  By which I mean they're not liking it much at all.  Interesting how that works out.

Anyway.

New Suicide Squad, Vol. 1: Pure Insanity
collecting New Suicide Squad issues 1-8
ISBN: 9781401252380
writing: Sean Ryan
breakdowns: Tom Derenick
artists: Rob Hunter, Jeremy Roberts, Norm Rapmund, Vicente Cifuentes, Scott Hanna, Trevor Scott, Mark Irwin, Batt
colorist: Blond
letterers: Taylor Esposito, Dave Sharpe

Read August 2016

So the OLD Suicide Squad was disbanded apparently, so Amanda Waller is working with a bull-headed, homicidal, over-achieving Vic Sage (what a name) with his hand-picked new Task Force X (why so many names, y'all?) purposefully picked to cause as much strife and mayhem as possible.  Poor Amanda.

So returning from the old team we have Harley, Deadshot, and Black Manta, and Vic drags in Deathstroke and Joker's Daughter (who really isn't, but ok, let's have more crazy women with strange issues about the Joker being the formative male figure in their lives because THAT's totally not sexist and old news already).  At some point the Australian dude and Totally Not Evil Flash get dragged into this ridiculousness, just to have more characters involved I guess?

I'm sure there is a plot, I just couldn't find it.  The team gets sent to Russia to research something, and explodes it instead (quelle surprise), gets sent to tactically explode something in China, and DOESN'T explode it before a bunch of vat-grown mutant (does DC have mutants?) supers lurches zombie/Doom-like out to pummel them (they eventually explode things).  Then there's Chinese Superman, who I think dies because they can't figure out what to do with him... and all the while Vic the dick and Amanda are jousting for position back at HQ.

Anyway - it's a hot mess.  The women are simply crazy - no characters there to speak of.  Harley's a far cry from the self-possessed crazy but somewhat self-aware character she is in her flagship series (review coming soon for that one), and Joker's Daughter is simply a mess and spends most of the time being useless or unconscious.  Characters defect or are invalided out nearly every issue, making it difficult to care about the team.  Honestly, the only one I felt anything for was Black Manta, who really just needs to get out of there and find a team of reasonable people to work with.  (Good luck, man.)  Waller is presented sympathetically, Vic is amazingly cardboard for being the major antagonist, and honestly Waller's assistant has the most "humanizing" moments in the whole thing.

Art was decent, but oddly stretched and warped in places, like the panel layout wasn't finalized before the scenes were drawn, and someone just used the stretch tool in MS Paint to make things fit in their new locations.  Lots of red, lots of explosions as backgrounds (saves drawing buildings) lots of cement-bunker environments or nearly-empty cubical farms.  The women (save a few moments for Waller and her assistant) are constantly sexualized, even when in the middle of mayhem, or when unconscious.  The male characters are differentiated by costumes, and that's about it.  Once in their prison/psych uniforms, I had trouble recognizing characters from earlier panels.

Not hugely recommended, but there's a possibility for interesting development for Manta and Waller, so if you're interested in them, it might be worth it.  Otherwise, the characters are mostly there to provide a superficial reason for all the explosions.      

Graphic Novel: The Nameless City

The Nameless City
Faith Erin Hicks
colors by Jordie Bellaire
ISBN: 9781626721579
Original fantasy graphic novel, first of hopefully a long-running series.
Read June 28, 2016

The Nameless City has been conquered serially by outsiders for as long as history remembers.  The invaders always pick a new name for it, but for people who live here, the city is nameless, and the need to name it is a sure mark of an outsider.  The Dao are the current masters here, and Kaidu has been sent over by his mother to be a part of the new empire.  He doesn't fit in with the war-mongering kids that he's training with, but he does find a friend - of sorts - in the city street smart Rat.

Love all the colors of people, and the close look at colonialism and oppression, and the limitations of people in power trying to keep power and perhaps do some good as well.

I'm really looking forward to the second book!

Graphic Novel Book Club: The Surrogates, Robert Venditti & Brett Weldele

Our penultimate title for the year-long graphic novel book club experiment actually got turned into a movie with Bruce Willis!  (The movie wasn't very good, unfortunately.)

The Surrogates
Robert Venditti
art by Brett Weldele
ISBN: 9781891830877
Read July 10, 2016

Think Blade Runner, but everyone (well, pretty much everyone) WANTS to be artificial.  Shades of Ready Player One in there also.  Robotics and cosmetics industries have advanced to the point that "surrogates:" (remotely-controlled real-life robotic avatars of a particular person) are more commonly seen than actual flesh-and-blood people, who are all at home, connected to their computers to run the surrogate's actions in real-time.  Surrogates are faster, stronger, prettier, and allow people to be free from worries of actual physical damage to their real human bodies (except for getting fat as shit, getting deep-vein thrombosis, or getting bedsores from sitting in one place all day, none of which is referenced at all.)  Things are great until some mysterious freak starts frying surrogates, and suspicion falls on a modern-day prophet figure who is rabidly anti-surrogate, and has amassed a religious army in a recently-allocated reservation under his own local rule, where surrogates are not allowed.

Interesting questions of social consciousness, of abdicating personal responsibility, and of the line between helping people who need assistance (surrogates were initially medical devices intended for medically "locked-in" people) and making shitloads of money on luxuries that quickly become common or standard.

I would have liked to see a lot more depth in the world building - I think there were some ideas and concepts that weren't very well meshed up with human psychology and the reality of life in the world, but it was also an interesting, if slightly dark and depressing, mystery thriller.

Graphic Novel: Feathers, by Jorge Corona & Jen Hickman

Feathers
writer & illustrator: George Corona
colors: Jen Hickman
letters: Deron Bennett
ISBN: 9781608867530
Order vs Chaos, white vs black feathers, street urchins, and a scary cowled figure trailing blood-red mind-controlling music.

Poe was left with his foster father as a small feathered infant boy.  His father wishes to keep him secret and safe, but Poe sneaks out during the daylight hours to help the Mice - the street children of the wild Maze outside the giant walls of the orderly City.  Bianca is a bored spoiled child of the city, and she runs away during a trip out into the Maze.  Paired up with Poe, the two children discover a sinister plot that threatens all the children of the city - inside and out.  Further, Poe discovers more about his heritage and two mysterious "narrator" figures hint at further stories to come.

Something very "Steamboy" about the bare-bones plot of a strange boy - an outsider even among outsiders - joining forces with an upper-crust girl against semi-mystical forces of evil, but beyond that overarching association, it's a fun story that reads quickly and very clearly with a smallish cast of quite neatly individualized characters who all serve important character or plot functions.

The panels are clear and generally easily followed, but some of the action scenes are a bit muddled or unclear, and we're left to consult the character dialogue to figure out what happened.  I really like the inclusion at the end of the process pages and original pitch along with commentary from the author/illustrator to show his thought-process in developing the story and the character appearances.  

Graphic Novel Book Club: Princeless, Volume 1. Jeremy Whitley and M. Goodwin

Princeless, Volume 1 (originally: The Arduous Business of Getting Rescued, later subtitled Save Yourself)
writer: Jeremy Whitley
art and colors: M. Goodwin
letters: Jung Ha Kim
ISBN: 9781939352545
Spunky Princess of Color discovers a sword under her bed in her tower, and rides her dragon guardian (who is of course her friend) off to rescue her other sisters from durance vile in their own towers.

Princess Adrienne is introduced as a child, repulsed and analytically rejecting her mother's recitation of a traditional fairy tale of a "fair princess" getting rescued from a tower by a prince who slays the evil dragon.  Fast forward a few years, and dad (King, and really imposing and grumpy) has drugged her and stuck her in exactly that same situation.  Adrienne's not having it, so she co-opts her dragon and sets merrily off on adventure, stopping first to rescue her  youngest sister from her room in the palace home.  Of course, things never go according to plan, and there are some interesting digressions along the way (including an extended running gag about "women warrior" armor as fashion clothing rather than as practical armor, visually-checking several iconic designs along the way.)

This softcover volume includes issues 1-4 of the comic, along with a few short excerpt comic pages about various secondary (and maybe to-be-important-later?) characters and their own unfortunate experiences.

Suitable for kids, but maybe not for reallly little ones, or for sensitive ones.  Safe bet would be 2nd grade and up.

Comic Book Collection: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol 1 & 2 (issues 1-8) Ryan North & Erica Henderson

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol 1
ISBN: 9780785197027
Collecting The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl issues 1-4, & Marvel Super-Heroes #8 from 1990
writer: Ryan North
artist: Erica Henderson
lettters: VC's Clayton Cowles
trading card art: Maris Wicks, Kyle Starks, Chris Giarrusso

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol 2
ISBN: 9780785197034
Collecting The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl issues 5-8, & material from GLX-Mas Special #1, Thing #8 (from 2006) & Age of Heroes #3.
writer: Ryan North
artist: Erica Henderson
letters: VC's Clayton Cowles
trading card art: Eloise Narrington
colors: Rico Renzi

Bouncy, lighthearted, feisty, and openhearted.  I love Squirrel Girl so much, and this is only the beginning - she was one of the survivors of the Secret Wars mixup, so there's a second set of Squirrel Girl issues starting later in 2015.

This set of issues is a complete arc, and gives a great introduction to the character, who has shed the odd costume from the 90s, but has kept the indomitable spirit and spunky nature that made her such a niche favorite despite long absences from official line-ups.

New Arrival: Juvenile Graphic Novel: Help Us! Great Warrior, by Madeleine Flores & Trillian Gunn

Help Us! Great Warrior
Madeleine Flores with Trillian Gunn
ISBN: 9781608868025
Um.. The great warrior is a green kirby thing who fights evil (even though she'd rather just chill), I guess?


I came at this cold, so I may not be the best audience for it, but the cover was cute and strange and had multiple women of color on it, so I thought - eh?  Why not!?  I'm now intrigued and very confused.

The Great Warrior is a green kirby blob that lives in a village of other (blueish/greyish) blobs.  Their village keeps getting destroyed by demons from the monster realm, and Hadiyah (an unexplained human (actually not a human, more of a djinni/guardian angel/earth spirit thing), along with "Samson the magnificent" who is the Great Warrior's best friend...? ) basically drops in and says, Great Warrior, you have to go fight the demons because they keep destroying things.

Then in a great plot twist (it wasn't very twisty) it turns out that Great Warrior has a deep dark secret of her own, and she has to make a hard choice to keep her village and her friends safe.

I enjoyed it.  I don't want this review to seem negative - I really did have fun reading it, but I was sooooo confused the whole time.  Are there other ones before this?  I can't figure it out from a search (and not to brag, but librarians are pretty good at searching) and I don't know.  Technically over the course of the story we learn everything we need to know for the story to work, but it seems so offhanded and by-the-bye that I really feel like there's other stories or background info that I'm not privy to.

It was interesting, and peculiar, and odd.  But lots of powerful female characters (good and evil) although Hadiyah got fridged and Samson got stuck in nursemaid territory in order for the plot to progress (grrr argh).  Interesting and lively, but weird.  

Book Club, Graphic Novel Collection: Marvel Civil War, Mark Millar & Steve McNiven

Marvel Civil War Event (collecting Marvel Civil War, issues #1-7)
writer, Mark Millar
pencils, Steve McNiven
colors, Morry Hollowell
letters, VC's Chris Eliopoulos
ISBN: 9780785121794
Read May 1, 2016

Graphic Novel Book Club read for May.

I really hope that I like the movie more than I like the comic event.  This collection of seven issues has the core of the Civil War storyline, but as much of the character development and specific moments were parceled out into the individual characters' comic runs, the characters here are flat and dispirited and prone to making decisions that appear to be out of thin air, or changing their minds for what seems to be no reason.  The artwork has lovely framing and is well-laid-out, but the combo of McNiven and Hollowell makes for characters who look like they are plastic dolls or an early cheap attempt at computer-generated artwork.  Not my favorite look.

If you've been under a rock for a while, Marvel decided they needed a giant universe-roiling "event" and wouldn't it be cool if two of the major players in the universe were on opposite sides and got to fight each other!  Yeah!  Or something.  So in the story world, some punk kid supers did something stupid, and then Tony Stark and Steve Rogers both reacted stupidly, and a whole bunch of forced decisions and rampant stupidity later, there was a big smackdown superhero fight  (and some smaller ones) until things were sufficiently shaken up to make the Marvel head honchos happy.

Punisher gets some good moments (I especially liked Spiderman's poignant suggestion that Rogers and Castle are essentially the same soldier, but from very different wars and very different social responses).  Spiderman gets shafted (when is that ever a surprise) and Doctor Strange gets the boot.  Unsurprisingly, he, along with all the mutants, and Wakanda (at least at first), basically says "not my circus" when asked to choose sides.  Steve doesn't really have a character, Tony's a giant bag of snarky comments and bad decisions, and SHIELD and the general public exist as a metaphoric stick to justify and consolidate shaky plotting.

Not the best, but if the cinematic universe continues as well as it's begun, I don't begrudge the source material.

 

Graphic Novel: Collected Run; Black Widow, Nathan Edmondson, Phil Noto, et al.

Black Widow: The Finely Woven Thread (Vol 1) 
Collecting Black Widow #1-6, and selections from All-New Marvel Now! Point One #1
Writing, Nathan Edmondson
Artist and Covers, Phil Noto
Letterer, VC's Clayton Cowles
ISBN: 9780785188193

Black Widow: The Tightly Tangled Web (Vol 2)
Collecting Black Widow #7-12, and Punisher #9
Writing, Nathan Edmondson
Artist and Covers, Phil Noto
Letterer, VC's Clayton Cowles
Punisher Artist and Covers, Mitch Gerads
Punisher Letterer, VC's Cory Petit
ISBN: 9780785188209

Black Widow: Last Days (Vol 3) 
Collecting Black Widow #13-20
Writing, Nathan Edmondson
Artist and Covers, Phil Noto
Letterer, VC's Clayton Cowles
ISBN: 9780785192534

This is a hard one to review because I REAALLLLY WANTED TO LIKE IT SO MUCH!!! Black Widow deserves some good stories, and truly can be an engaging character, and OH MY GOD Phil Noto's artwork is freaking gorgeous with everyone's pale glassy eyes and slightly washed-out palette with sharp slices of black holding everything together. But the story just didn't hold up. I mean - it wasn't BAD, but it was just... eh?

Inspired by the riotous success of Fraction's "off-duty" Hawkeye run, Marvel tried to re-spark the lightning with Edmondson and Noto.  And they knocked it out of the park with the artwork, but Edmondson is not quite Fraction, and the story and dialogue and character development just weren't there. Again, nothing objectionable, but it's very slim pickings. Nat is working for SHIELD now, and whenever she's not spying and assassinating (and also doing commando work, or running gun battles, or taking down helicopters... ?) for SHIELD, she's doing it on her own under false names, making money as a merc taking down "bad guys" (by a very tenuous definition of bad guy) for guilt money to send to the families and friends of the people she killed during her Red Room years.  Why she doesn't feel the same about the people she ganks for SHIELD, or for herself while doing these "penance money" missions is frankly beyond me, because we never get to see enough of her character to wonder about it. Edmondson takes the "I'm alone and lonely and I WALK ALONE" vibe a bit too seriously, even to the point of including a feral cat slowly being adopted as a through-plot.  A bit tooooo on the nose for me.

The over-arching plotline is supposed to be about this dread organization Chaos, but it's incoherent and muddled and the capstone issue that's supposed to clear everything up didn't do anything of the sort.  A final set of codas - a flashback to an early hit in Cuba under the auspices of the Red Room, interspersed with scenes from a fill-in-the-blanks SHIELD  (?) rescue op, does even less to satisfy - if we'd seen more flashes of that sort of cold-blooded past throughout, perhaps things might have acquired some depth?

Ah well.  The art is bloody freaking gorgeous, and the story isn't painful so much as paint-by-numbers, so if you like Nat and like looking at beautiful scenes and people, definitely check it out.

Graphic Novel: Collected Run: Hawkeye, Fraction, Aja, et al.

This review covers the entire run of Matt Fraction's Hawkeye: Issues 1-22, plus Young Avengers Presents 6, and Annual 1.

Volume 1 (the hardcover) was also our Graphic Novel Book Club book for March 2016

Hawkeye, Volume 1
Collecting Hawkeye #1-11, and Young Avengers Presents #6
Matt Fraction, writer
David Aja, main artist
Matt Hollingsworth, main colorist
Chris Eliopoulos. letters
Javier Pulido, artist for #4 & 5
Steve Lieber & Jesse Hamm, artists for #7
Francesco Francavilla, art & color for #10
Annie Wu, "romance covers" for #8
ISBN: 9780785184874

(Hawkeye, Volume 1 is a hardcover containing the issues collected in the softback Vol. 1 and 2.)

Hawkeye, Volume 3: L.A. Woman
Collecting Hawkeye #14, #16, #18, #20, and Annual #1
Matt Fraction, writer
Anne Wu, main artist
Matt Hollingsworth, colorist
Javier Pulido, art and cover for Annual
ISBN: 9780785183907

Hawkeye, Volume 4: Rio Bravo
Collecting Hawkeye #12 & 13, #15, #17, #19, and #21 & 22
Matt Fraction, writer
David Aja, main artist
Matt Hollingsworth, colorist
Francesco Francavilla, artist, covers, colors for #12
Chris Eliopoulos, art for # 17
Jordie Bellaire, colors for #17
ISBN: 9780785185314

Short review: It's amazing. It's everything perfect about comic books. Go read it.

Longer review.  What we have here is a perfect look at heroes off-duty - this run gives us Hawkeye when he's not off "Avengering" with the other heroes.  He goes home to his apartment, has cookouts with his neighbors on the roof, deals with tracksuit mafia (Bro) and tries to do the right thing and help out his friends.

This being Hawkeye, he screws things up on the regular.  He also gets the everloving snot stomped out of him on the regular.  He starts the run in traction, and ends it temporarily deafened. I love that we see the consequences of his choices here - he's not Cap, he's not got armor, and it shows. Poor Clint.  

We also get to see the other Hawkeye: Kate Bishop of the Young Avengers.  She pops in and out of Hawkeye's life for the first dozen or so issues, but then there's a bit of a mess that sends her off to Los Angeles to try her hand at solo heroics. Which is really an excuse to get her into the clutches of Madame Masque and her creepy shenanignans over there, and also to get Clint on his own.

What I like about the collected issues is that they've decided to make Volume 3 into the Kate Hawkeye book, and Volume 4 into the Clint Hawkeye book - so Volumes 3 and 4 alternate comic issues and give you a full story of one Hawkeye or the other, whereas if you read them during the actual run, you'd be alternating between the coasts every month or so until the finale.

The run is pretty fantastic. It's internally cohesive, has stakes that range from the mundane to the global conspiracy, has roots in the real world (there's an issue about Hurricane Sandy) and ties back into the Marvel universe (shout-out to Moon Knight!) all while keeping the focus sharply on the Hawkeyes and their attempts to be heroic and good, and to beat the bad guys without lowering themselves to the level of the bad guys. Truly excellent writing.

Now for the art. I can't enjoy a comic unless the art appeals to me, and boy howdy does this appeal.  Aja (pronounced A-ha) is a genius, and Hollingsworth's colors are like an intensive study course on color theory and how to color block without making people's eyes bleed, or boring them to death.  Annie Wu's exuberant work shines through in the retro covers of My Doomed Love and in the wild excess of Hollywood with Kate (although I felt the chibi "internal voice" was a peculiar choice).  The scenes are fresh and powerful and flow beautifully - I rarely felt lost (I always feel lost in the thicket of panels) even when we're being led around by Pizza Dog, or in an issue where everything's narrated in sign language and lip-reading.  Massive appreciation for stellar work by everyone involved.

I have to say, I know all good things come to an end, and runs often don't make it quite to their full potential, but I really do feel like this one rose to the challenge, smote it to death, and strutted on into the sunset.  I'm truly sorry that it's over.

Graphic Novel: Delilah Dirk and the King's Shilling, by Tony Cliff

Delilah Dirk and the King's Shilling
Tony Cliff
ISBN: 9781626721555
Sequel to Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant (reviewed here and here)
Delilah and Selim's adventures on the continent are cut short by a megalomaniacal officer, landing them in England's high society.

So in the first book, poor Selim was the one who didn't fit in.  This time around, Delilah is back home, and she's fundamentally unsuited for English country squire life.  I read this with the first season of Downton Abbey fresh in my mind (even though the time-periods are different, the society is very much the same) and I cringed at her continual flouting of social norms, and the diffident but pointed tactful comments by all the other members of society trying to nudge her gently back into an accustomed set of behaviors.

The duo has been performing good deeds on the continent, but they're interrupted by the escalating war between England and France, and when they're forcibly picked up (and then framed for spying) by an over-ambitious redcoat, they find it expeditious to return to England for some damage control.  Delilah tries, she really does, but her direct methods don't fit in at all in England, and while Selim's natural diffidence and propriety make him a better fit socially, his utter unfamiliarity with his surroundings (and Delilah's continued inability to explain what is even going on) make him nearly as ineffectual as she is, although slightly less socially problematic.

The whole thing ends with a wild chase and an explosive finale, and ends up with Delilah having made peace with her mother, but also leaving her with her first real long-term enemy.

It JUUUUST came out, and already I want the next one so badly.  Uggghhh.  Patience is not my virtue.

Graphic Novels: Hinges (Books 1&2). Meredith McClaren

Hinges Book 1: Clockwork City
Meredith McClaren
ISBN: 9781632152534

Hinges Book II: Paper Tigers
Meredith McClaren
ISBN: 9781632155245

Read April 11, 2016

I wish I had known that book two ended on a cliffhanger.  I would have stopped with Book One until there was an actual ending.  Personal niggles aside, this is an interesting series with good potential for young adult or tween reading programs.  Orio is an independently-animated puppet (?) clockwork (?) mechanical person (?) who is suddenly integrated into a small society of similar people in a small isolated city bounded by a great wall.  Each person has an assigned mechanical companion in the form of an animal called an "odd" (shades of daemons and Golden Compass) but the reader notices what Orio does not - that her chosen "odd" is in fact an interloper.  Before the first slim book is over, this mistake will cost Orio her whole world.  The second book takes place in the great wild outside the city, and reminded me greatly (in a good way, I swear) of the very bad, and very short-lived TV show that built on the premise of the movie Logan's Run. (which I feel obligated to inform readers, has nearly nothing to do with the premise of the BOOK Logan's Run, or the many sequelae).  The "villains" of the two books remind me of yet another foe: the chalklings of Brandon Sanderson's Rithmatist.  In Book Two, Orio and her odd (named Bauble) quickly find a companion - a feckless runaway from yet another city that claimed to be the only civilized place in the world.  The two (three?) explore an underground city that seems to have been abandoned or destroyed, and Book Two leaves the reader (viewer?) on a literal cliffhanger.  The author/artist's blog estimates that Book Three will be out in February/March 2017.  

It's beautiful and wild and atmospheric, and a very slight story.  Very mythical and fairy-tale-ish.  Lots of questions raised and not directly answered.

Manga (Book Club Read) Wolf Children, Mamoru Hosoda & Yu

Wolf Children: Ame and Yuki

Mamoru Hosoda, illustrated by Yu (Original character designs by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto)

Translation by Jocelyne Allen, lettering by Tania Biswas & Lys Blakeslee

ISBN: 9780316401654

Hardcover Manga compilation of the original manga series companion to the Wolf Children film.

Read April 3, 2016

Our April read was also our first manga for the book club.  Attendance was slight, and I wonder if people either didn't want to try a different format, or if there is just not much overlap between traditional comics/graphic novels and with manga.  (or more likely, it was still the tail end of Spring Break, so people could have been out enjoying the lovely weather.)  

Regardless, it was a cute story, and another nice light read after February's War Story, and the upcoming Civil War (the comic, not the movie - I'm honestly not looking forward to slogging through the comic series again, but it is what it is.)  March's Hawkeye Vol. 1 was likewise beautiful, and the full review is upcoming, although I did a short teaser review in September.

Back to Wolf Children. The story is simple and bittersweet (as are most shoujo anime/manga) and focuses on the very brief childhood of two siblings raised by a very young, but determined widowed mother.  The children's father is a brief and mythological figure in the very beginning of the story, who dies tragically trying to provide for his infant children.  

After his death the story has roughly two parts - the first section focuses on the mother, Hana, as she tries to keep her children's changeable natures hidden from society while living in the middle of a big city, and navigating health scares and poverty.  

Once she realizes she can no longer keep the children hidden and protected in the city, the story moves to a property in the countryside and the focus shifts to the two children and their developing personalities and natures.  Yuki, the eldest, begins by being fierce and adventuresome, but after an incident at school, she begins to despise and fear her wolf nature.  Her younger brother Ame starts life as a weak and sickly boy, but after an accident in the woods, he associates nature with strength and challenge, and becomes enamored of the wilderness and of his own innate wildness.

The story finishes as the children reach the wolf equivalent of adulthood - still very young by modern American standards.  As to be expected by shoujo manga, there are no real inversions of tropes, and the plot is predictable and minor - the real focus is the beautiful line-work of the art, and of the focus on individual moments in character interactions: the harried and frantic mother with a sick child that she can't take to the hospital, two wolf-toddlers tussling in an apartment, feelings of alienation at school and in the woods, interactions with neighbors and friends.  All these are sweetly and truly drawn, and make the slight story worthwhile and lovely.  

While I haven't seen the movie yet, if it covers the same ground as the manga, it would be a delightful way to introduce very young or very sensitive children to anime - before they're old enough to enjoy Ponyo or Kiki's Delivery Service for example.    

New Arrival: Wordless Picture Book: The Only Child, by Guojing

The Only Child
Guojing
ISBN: 9780553497045
The author draws on the lonely memories of a childhood as a Chinese "only" to create a fantastical cloud-land fable of isolation and being lost.

Guojing includes a short preface that tells how as a six year old child, she got lost traveling between her parents and grandmother's houses.  In reality, the forlorn author trekked through the cold until she found familiar landmarks, making her way safely back to her family on her own.  In her imaginative wordless picture book (almost a graphic novel in the format of the panels and narrative pacing) a much-younger-seeming child has the same initial experience, but instead of a boring trudge down empty roads, this child wanders into the forest and is aided by a beautiful elk, then introduced to a magical land in the clouds where otters float on clouds, and the insides of blue whales are inky universes filled with stars and wonders.

Interstices show the worried parents setting off in search (cued by a delightfully pithy letter "Gone to visit Grandma" left behind) and worriedly fretting as the bus travels along, before jumping back to the fantasy world up in the clouds.  Adventure time over, while the tired roly-poly child sleeps, the magical elk journeys back to the real world to find her home, and when she awakes, leads her straight into the arms of her family.

Beautiful and haunting and sweet, and oh-so perfectly captures that universal poignant feeling of isolation and loneliness.  

Graphic Novel (Book Club Read): Notes for a War Story, Gipi

Like my recent Storytime, our Graphic Novel book club also branched into Italian territory with this interesting sort-of-biographical graphic story by the Italian artist Gipi.  Sadly, neither the content nor the execution were a hit with our particular group, but the topic did spark interesting discussions about wayward teen boys and gangs.

Notes for a War Story (Originally Appunti per una storia di guerra)
Gipi
ISBN: 9781596433038
Read February 1, 2016  

Follows three village boys of undetermined nationality who are impacted by a raging unspecific war that leaves their towns and villages randomly bombed into oblivion.  The narrator is the "outsider" Giuliano, accompanied by the naive foster boy Christian, and led by Stephano, "little killer," the de-facto ringleader of the group.  The trio (mainly due to Stephano's bravado and bluster) are quickly taken under the wing of a criminal mob and used as low-level thugs, enforcers, and collection agents in the city, basking in their "luck" at finding a job that pays good money and makes them respected.  All this ends when the gang leader decides that becoming "patriots" and "freedom fighters" means essentially living the same violent criminal life, but being celebrated for it.  On the day they are assigned assault rifles and sent off to actually fight in the war, Giuliano flees, and the story ends with a somewhat shaky coda of a documentary filmmaker interviewing the now grown man about his past experiences and his current sadness at not seeing his friends since that day.

2015 Review Round-Up: Graphic Novel: Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, Tony Cliff

Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant
Tony Cliff
ISBN: 9781596438132
Read December 2015 for Graphic Novel Book Club

Previously reviewed here.

All of that remains true, and to add that the sequel is offically named and release-dated:
Delilah Dirk and the King's Shilling
out March 8 2016
(yay we're finally in the same year as the release Oh MY God I've waited FOREVER!!!)

2015 Review Round-Up: Juvenile Graphic Novel: Baba Yaga's Assistant, Marika McCoola & Emily Carroll

Baba Yaga's Assistant
Marika McCoola, illustrated by Emily Carroll
ISBN: 9780763669614
Read December 2015
Gruesome but light-hearted romp through a magical forest outside the modern world.

Her grandmother was her only comfort after her mother died - her botanist father was distant and didn't understand her.  Grandmother would tell her stories of her own childhood, when she braved the terrors of Baba Yaga with her own mother's doll to help her.  When grandmother passes on, and her father starts eating dinner with a new date - one with a bratty child at that, Masha knows just what to do.  She snatches up her matryoshka dolls, snips out the classified ad; "Assistant Needed ASAP... Enter Baba Yaga's house to apply." and heads into the forest.  From there on, we're into a madcap magical adventure where Masha (with a little help from Grandmother, and perhaps some from Baba Yaga herself, not that she'd ever tell) Masha learns that she really does have a place in the world, and even finds it in her heart to rescue the bratty maybe-eventually-little-stepsister.

So fun, and so subversive.  Loved it.  Reminded of Nimona, and of Ms Marvel, and of the Hildafolk stories, where the normal mundane and the utterly magical are just a stones throw apart, but no one in either world seems to notice or care.