A stack from Jubilee Library - 11.10.06
When I first got my library card at Brighton, I was only allowed to check out eight books. On my first visit, seven of those were graphic novels. Here's a loose and talky review.

I sing the novel fantastic: The Best of Ray Bradbury: the graphic novel - ed. Howard Zimmerman

Oh man. I love Bradbury and I love comics, so I'm afraid you're not going to get a very impartial view of this one. It's excellent. This collection is a wide range of artists doing some really wonderful short stories, and it makes for a very solid collection all around. Bradbury's writing is incredible on its own, and very visual, so at first I thought this illustrated approach might almost be redundant.

But for the most part, the imagery does work very well, enhancing the text and often bringing a new richness to it. Some of the works rely a little too heavily on Bradbury's narration, but even then, the art is so strong one almost doesn't mind. Not much to say on this book, except that I highly recommend it.

Ow, my honor: Blood-Stained Sword - Dan Wickline (writer), Ben Templesmith (artist)

This one is noteworthy only because it's so unintentionally hilarious, at least to me. It's a very short (48-page) book, supposedly set in a "dark and grim future drunk on technology"... though it could really just be present day with minimal lighting. The utterly cliche story follows a modern-day samurai who must clear the name of his murdered father and avenge his death at the hands of an unscrupulous corporation. Throw in some romance, corporate power struggles, and a lot of improbable action. Oh, and honor. This is all about HONOR... because they're Japanese, dig? It cracks me up. There's also all this gun-versus-sword stuff, which is also great.

Templesmith does a decent job with this painfully trite script. His work is, as always, gritty and visceral and full of a rough energy that is particularly satisfying for action. And maybe it's just because he tends to draw people without much extreme variation, but his portrayal of Asian characters is one of the best I've seen.

However, good art can't support an utterly boring and predictable story, especially one that's populated with stock, two-dimensional characters. Dont bother with this one.

Insert LA joke here: Criminal Macabre: a Cal McDonal mystery - Steve Niles (writer), Ben Templesmith (artist)

The same duo that gave us the awesome and now-famous 30 Days of Night. I like Templesmith a lot (he also does Fell, the one comic I regularly buy, and Hatter M, which I talked about in the Comic-Con review); his style is quite unique and, with its sparse and skritchy linework and muted colors, presents a marked and welcome departure from mainstream comic art. For a book like this, his default settling of vague creepiness gets ratcheted up to pleasingly unsettling levels of Woah Freaky, and his flair for rather brutal violence goes a long way, without becoming gratuitous. As for the story...

Cal is an occult private eye, jaded and sardonic, stalking the streets of Los Angeles for the monsters he's gifted/cursed to see. This story sees him on an increasingly dire case where, against all precedent, vampires and werewolves join up for some sinister plot and a lot of havoc.

Cool, yeah? Except that Cal is a nothing new. A slovenly, hard-drinking wiseass, world-weary yet still a maverick, rubbing elbows with the undead and nonchalantly shooting up boogiemen... meh, it's Constantine and a whole lot of other grubby, semi-bitter monster-fighters. Cal has an extremely well-spoken ghoul friend and also takes on a tough, no-nonsense female detective, but neither of them are much more than familiar type characters. Cal's own pseudo-noir monologuing narration feels somewhat forced and self-conscious, even though there's some faint sense of self-deprecation at times.

Still, the book has some moments of rather inspired wry humor, and even though the story isn't particularly original at all, it can be entertaining. Though it's certainly not the mind-blowing, paradigm-shattering work of twisted genius its touted to be by, ahem, Rob Zombie in the introduction. While I certainly can't compare to the literary expertise of Mr. Zombie, I offer my humble opinion that this one rates a C, or maybe a B- if you just want something mindless and fun to look at.

We're all mad here: Arkham Asylum: Serious House on Serious Earth - Grant Morrison (writer), Dave McKean (artist)

Wooooaaaaahhhh. Lemme just say right now, this is pretty incredible. I admit that I'm not very familiar with the Batman mythos, but you don't have to be to enjoy this. I can see, though, that knowing the characters a little better, especially the more obscure ones, would give a greater satisfaction, as they appear here in rather oblique ways (the presentations are, I suspect, quite unusual compared to regular Batman depictions), and are never explicitly introduced or explained. However, in the context of this story, that sense of freefalling strangeness - almost a sort of displacement - is essential, and it works really well as here.

The plot is fairly straightforward: Batman is called in to deal with a hostage situation at Arkham Asylum, where the Joker has gained control of the place. As Bats struggles with his enemy, the other inmates, and his own inner demons, we also follow the interwoven story of Amadeus Arkham, the asylum's founder and, we learn, a man not without his own dark history.

McKean brings all the disturbing beauty of his surreal, multi-textured Sandman work to this book, and also gets to make good use of his delicate painting as well. Really, this is a staggering showcase of his myriad styles and dazzling techniques; yet the art never overwhelms, but always works hand-in-hand with the text. Morrison's writing deftly flickers between the calm tone of Arkham's journal entries, to the abstracted and often quite unnerving dialogue of the inmates. Still, I have to talk a little more about the art. The visuals are quite astonishing, and McKean expertly deals with space and pacing; sometimes he uses standard six or eight panel grids, but then he breaks into full pages, floating panels, or other unconventional layouts. The images create a grim delirium of half-glimpsed horrors and ominous shadows, all made more unsettling because we rarely see the entirety of these nightmarish visions.

I know I make it sound like the art is ostentatiously or distractingly good, but that's really not the case. This is truly a fine example of writing and artistry blended together to make a complete whole that is neither text nor image but... a graphic novel. Seriously, read this one now. Intensely dark and imaginative, it's a knockout.

The stars my destination: Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution - Howard Chaykin and John Francis Moore (writers), Mike Mignola and P. Craig Russell (artists)

I initially picked this up because of the art. (Hey look, it's Mignola! No wait, it kinda looks like P. Craig Russell... oh, it's Russel inking Mignola. Ha, I'm good.) Now, apparently, Ironwolf used to be a comic back in the early 70s? I'd never heard anything about it until I found this book. But dang. I wish there was more of this. Basically, it's a sort of Star Wars-y thing, with a large dose of Firefly future-retroism, but more Restoration than Wild West. There are wooden space ships, "vampires" and cat-men ala genetic engineering, and plenty of timeless violence, drugs, and intrigue.

The plot is a bit sketchy at times, but mostly it's a Count of Monte Cristo-esque story of a guy who, though cruel treachery, loses his power (and noble stand for freedom) to his evil brother, and winds up in a coma for a seven years. When he comes to, he finds that the political situation is just as bad as he could fear, but that he's also become something of an outlaw hero legend since his disappearance. He manages to find a long-lost comrade and sets off to get revenge and, maybe, to upset the corrupt and opulent powers-that-be.

I wasn't terribly impressed with the story, and none of the characters really got much development. Some of their motivations and zealous dedications seem flimsy, and the political situation is never satisfactorily explained. But the visuals are outstanding, and given the team we have, that's not too surprising. Still, it's a heady, gorgeous display of brilliant design and flawless action. The setting gives us a curious aesthetic of kinda Horatio Hornblower in space with monsters and a bit of a steampunk flair. It sounds like an incongruous jumble of stuff, but it actually works out quite well and makes for a believable world. I only wish the story gave us as much sense of history and detail as the art does.

Verdict on this is a high B, maybe an A-. Definitely worth checking out, but probably not something I'd buy.

Aw baby, why you gotta be like that?: Steampunk: Manimatron (vol. 1) and Steampunk: Drama Obscura (vol. 2) - "created, written, and drawn" by Chris Bachalo and Joe Kelly

It's called Steampunk - I had to read it. Actually, I remember seeing the first volume in a used bookstore somewhere, but I didn't buy it and now I recall why. It's just... not good. Well, actually, the main problem is, it could be good. It comes pretty close, sometimes. But its weaknesses are just too many, and that ultimately makes it a big mess, all the more frustrating because it has so much potential gone to spoil.

First off, my biggest complaint is the art. Bachalo did the distinctly wonky Generation X, and that style pervades the work here. I kinda like it, even though it sometimes veers into the dorkily cartoonish; but here, it becomes a maddening overload of... stuff. Seriously, there's just too much stuff everywhere. In a way, I have to be a somewhat impressed that someone has crammed in such a ridiculous amount of detail; each page is positively seething with it. But it's visual overload. It's irritating and confusing and rather hurts to look at. What's more, there's a horrific lack of clear layout. I suppose they're trying to be innovative or exciting with panels jumbled all over, and characters actually jumping over and between panels, and action zigzagging here and there... but holy crap, it's awful. It's messy at best and completely bewildering at worst. It's not good when you have to hunt around for people or have to study a page for minutes just trying to tack the action.

Further compounding this visual warzone is an excessive use of "fancy" sound effects, all illustrative fonts and bright colors. Argh, it's like getting firecrackers thrown in your face. It doesn't help that the font of speech is almost as wild. Various characters have different fonts for no apparent reason. (The differentiated font thing is used to great effect in other comics, notably Sandman, but it only works when it has clear, understandable purpose and a certain degree of subtlety, both of which are sorely lacking here.) And even more obnoxious is the eccentric placement of speech bubbles, making it even more difficult to figure out what's going on and who's saying what.

While it seems like the art side got carried away with trying to be crazy and creative, the story and character side falls flat. We've got comically bumbling pair of commoners, a proud and fierce (and skin-tight costume-clad) warrior-woman, a mysterious evil henchman with terrible skills, and our tortured, reluctant hero who's tormented by a loss of memory yet equally haunted by a lost love. His name, by the way, is Cole Blaquesmith. Guh. The arch-villian is just as bad, although I kinda feel obliged to like him because it seems as though they designed him to appeal to me. Only thing is, they go rather too far and end up with a rather grotesque character who really is just the standard mad evil genius type. Named Mortimer Absinthe (see what I mean?), he looks like Dream of the Endless crossed with a glam rocker on crack and mixed with a liberal dose of fantasy heavy metal aesthetic. He's the worst perpetrator of the font madness; each speech balloon of his is loaded with erratic, outrageous fonts; I guess it's meant to convey his insanity and eclectic influences, but it's mostly just jarring and annoying.

The story takes place in an alternate-history Victorain-ish London, where Absinthe is dictator and hope looks seriously dim for the ragtag Resistance that can't even rally itself to fight against him. Enter our angsty Cole and hints of past dealings, and stuff happens. Sorry, it's just not really worth getting into. But argh, it could be! There are some good ideas and concepts, but they only get bogged down in unoriginal writing, hackneyed characters, and the eye-twitch inducing art.

It makes me sad. I love steampunk with a fierce passion - the possibilities of drawing on history and inventing alternate-history, and creating exciting collision of technology and magic and science and myth... it's a wonderful genre. But there's so little of it out there that's good. With this one, I was hoping its grim, gritty aspect would present an interesting take on things. But alas, it's just a dreadful muddle of too much and too little, resulting in a really disappointing mess.