Birth of a Nation by Aaron McGruder, Reginald Hudlin, and Kyle Baker

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Title: Birth of a Nation
Author: Aaron McGruder, Reginald Hudlin, and Kyle Baker
Number of Pages: 137 pages
My Rating: 4/5

When the mostly-black residents of East St. Louis are prevented from voting due to a "glitch" that lists them all as felons, they demand a recount. When all they get is an apology, they do the unthinkable: secede from the United States.

This was recommended to me when I posted about Truth: Red, White & Black, also illustrated by Kyle Baker. To be honest, the summary didn't grab me all that much, but I figured what the hell, why not? and put it on my wishlist. Not like graphic novels take long to read anyway.

I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I anticipated. The writing's great and I was laughing at something on practically every page. And Baker's art works a lot better here than it did in Truth, where his cartoony artwork felt a little out of place.

One thing I didn't really like was the format. It's not a comic book, or even a series of comic strips. Neither is it a text story with illustrations. It's kind of a weird hybrid, with panels laid out like a comic, but with the narration and dialogue (mostly dialogue) underneath each panel, and I found it kind of hard to follow sometimes.

Mooch on BookMooch.

Comments

[triestine.livejournal.com]

with panels laid out like a comic, but with the narration and dialogue (mostly dialogue) underneath each panel

This is not so unusual for comics; artists sometimes prefer it to text balloons because they find them too intrusive in panels, taking too much space, or obscuring much of the scene.

[roadrunnertwice]

Yeah, that's kind of a Kyle Baker Thing. I really think of him as more a storyboard artist than a comicker. (Fine cartoonist, but I do wish he did actual page layouts.)