50books_poc | Entries tagged with comics

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

Visually stunning, mythic, disturbing comic about a tiny, brave little black girl named Lee, who descends into the underworld beneath the swamp to save her father from a lynch mob, and her best friend from a swamp monster. Volume two continues her quest in a world in which spirits, monsters, and adorable anthropomorphized animals enact American myths and American history.

Jeremy Love said in an interview, "I’ve always been interested in the mythology of America. The south, in particular, seems like a haunted place. You have this region that is covered with blood but produces so much beauty. I never really felt connected to African mythology until I started reading Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus tales. Seeing how elements of African mythology were interwoven with American folklore was the spark. What led me to the Uncle Remus tales was Disney’s Song of the South, a film I’ve always had mixed feelings about. I felt I as an African American creator could reclaim that mythology.

I thought this world would be the perfect place to stage an epic fantasy tale. I could mash up elements of the Civil War, blues, African mythology, Southern Gothic and American folklore and show how they form a tapestry that is the American South."

If you can deal with the sometimes horrific and violent content, made about ten times more disturbing because so much of it deals with real history, not to mention real racist imagery, this is an extremely powerful and satisfying work.

I especially recommend it if you're even passingly familiar with African-American history, folklore, and folk songs. I don't think you have to catch all the references to appreciate this, but it adds a lot if you do. In volume two, for instance, a character is introduced early on, and then named a little later. He works as a character even if you've never heard of him before, but I actually exclaimed aloud with delight when his identity was revealed.

Bayou Vol. 2

In case this may sway someone to read this, the mystery character is below the cut. (CAPS not mine - that represents a huge font.)

( Read more... )

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

A gorgeous, haunting comic book with echoes of everything from the very best bits of Stephen King to some of the very worst bits of American history, with detours into a very creepy take on Alice in Wonderland, not to mention Br’er Rabbit.

Lee is a tiny but very determined little black girl living in Charon, Mississippi, 1933, on the banks of a bayou full of strange beings whom no one but she sees, or at least no one but she acknowledges. When her white friend Lily is taken by a folk song-humming monster, Lee’s father is jailed for kidnapping Lily (basically because he’s black) and is under threat of being lynched.

Lee ventures into the bayou to save her father and her friend, and so begins her journey into a twisted Wonderland in which the racism and weight of history that exists above the bayou also plays out below, enacted by monsters and giants, butterfly-winged spirits and talking dogs.

This is one of the most purely American works I’ve read in a while, and it gains a lot if you can catch at least some of the passing references to history and folklore. I’ve heard the argument that so much American fantasy is set elsewhere because America doesn’t have enough history and folklore to draw on. Apart from that this leaves out most of America's actual (Indian) history and folklore, this brief book alone proves that even recent history and folklore is sufficient for fantasy: though this volume is short, it’s the start of a series with a distinctly epic feel.

The art is gorgeous, often with a pastoral, children’s book illustration feel, which only makes a lot of the often-horrific images even more disturbing. Some panels, like one of Lee standing against the sunrise with the silhouette of a crow flying overhead, are simply beautiful. The colors are almost translucent, like watercolors.

I liked this a lot, and will definitely be following it. It’s beautiful to look at, deals with a lot of folklore and history that’s very close to my heart, and Lee is exactly the sort of heroine I adore, a prickly, real-feeling person who ventures into completely unknown and dangerous territory armed with nothing but love, courage, and a big historic axe. (And, eventually, a shotgun she borrowed from a swamp monster.)

Bayou

Volume 2, which is available for pre-order now, comes out in January. Bayou Vol. 2

This entry was originally posted at http://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/864548.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

holyschist.livejournal.com

2. Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese is a graphic novel with three stories that gradually become connected in surprising (to me, anyway) ways: the legend of the Monkey King, the story of a second-generation Chinese American boy named Jin Wang, and the story of an American boy named Danny and his cousin Chin-Kee, the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype. The last story thread threw me for a loop at first, but it ends up tying in with the others in the end.

Yang's art (colored by Lark Pien) is fluid and lively; it's kind of what I think of as a "memoir" style, a bit reminiscent in its simplified but expressive appearance of graphic novel memoirs like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis or Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. Although the story has fantastic elements, the characters feel very emotionally real.

The intertwined stories are all, in the end, about identity, and especially about owning your own identity in a wider society that doesn't approve of it. It's a beautiful graphic novel, and I really enjoyed it.

Yang has some commentary on different aspects of the book here.

Bonus, completely unrelated, recs: I read these last year or the year before, so too long ago to really review, by Dr. Atul Gawande's Complications and Better are both excellent written and fascinating insight into modern U.S. medicine as well as the science of failure and error reduction. Several of Dr. Gawande's essays have been featured in Year's Best Science Writing anthologies, with good reason, and he has a lot of interesting things to say about the U.S. health care system (if you do not care about the U.S. health care system, the medical stories are still interesting). He has a new book out, The Checklist Manifesto, which I will be reviewing after I read it. (Dr. Gawande is Indian American.)

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

You need the soul of Chengiz Khan to survive a June afternoon in Delhi.

The streets are empty save a few hard-core urban warriors.

I am hunting for a book… Life seems to depend on it.

In this graphic novel in which precisely observed sketches of city scenes mix with indie-style caricatures and the occasional (often hilarious) bit of colored clip-art, a set of hapless intellectuals, one-theory-to-explain-everything fanatics, and vaguely alienated young people wander through Delhi, searching for used books, a cooler persona, true love, enlightenment, sexual potency, and a cup of tea.

There’s very little plot – it’s basically Slacker: Delhi - but I didn’t miss it, I was so charmed by the meticulous detail of the setting, Banerjee’s hipster sense of humor, and all the shout-outs to places and things I recall from my childhood: Phantom (The Ghost Who Walks) comics, used bookshops selling beat-up Perry Mason mysteries, mutton biriyani, Connaught Place, hippies (That morning Angrez Bosch arrived from Rishikesh, armed with advanced knowledge of energy pyramids), the call to prayer broadcast on loudspeakers, outdoor tooth-pullers, mango shakes: every page held a new hit of familiarity.

Corridor: A Graphic Novel

cyphomandra.livejournal.com

All books I'd picked up because of recs on this community.

Kamila Shamsie, Broken Verses. I picked this up because of

puritybrown’s enthusiastic review –- and am very glad I did. About a woman, Aasmaani, in Pakistan, whose mother was a radical activist, and is now missing; her mother's lover, the Poet, murdered; and how Aasmaani deals and fails to deal with these stories, especially when new information comes to light that challenges her beliefs about the past… It's well written, it's complex and different, and every character feels so clearly a part of their world and their community. I definitely want to read more books by her, although I also feel I should read more explicit Pakistani history first.

( Spoilers for ending. )

Cindy Pon, Silver Phoenix. Ai Ling sets out to look for her father and ends up on a quest through a medieval/mythic China that involves multiple encounters with bizarre and fantastic creatures, various gods, and two brothers on a quest of their own that intersects with hers. ( Discussion of ending. )

American-born Chinese – Gene Luen Yang. Overall, I liked this, and the art, but I found the Jin Wang American high school angst storyline the least appealing of the lot. Partly, this is because I feel like I’ve seen it too many times before, and it’s always a straight male teenage angst US high school thing within which all the women become weirdly two dimensional (arggh. Apart from being a comic) and shiny quest objects. Partly, though, it just felt less real – and less interesting – than the monkey king and Chin-Kee storylines – as if the author were relying on a cliché rather than transforming it.

I do like Wei-Chen's line about Jin's hair looking like a broccoli, though.

sanguinity

Noted briefly:

18, 19. Ai Yazawa, Nana, Volumes 11-12.

(Yes, I count manga.)

20. Robert Morales and Kyle Baker, Truth: Red, White & Black.

In which the history of the super-serum that transformed Captain America into Captain America is revealed: in keeping with so much medical testing of the era, it was unethically developed on black test subjects.

I loved the first half of the series, but around the ~~midpoint~~ two-thirds mark it suddenly went off the rails and stopped being about Isaiah Bradley (the black Captain America), and started being all about Steve Rogers (the white Captain America). And not just about Steve Rogers, investing a serious chunk of time in making sure that the readers know that Steve Rogers is in no way responsible for the history of the super-serum, and that he really does not approve of the history of the super-serum, and that if he had only known he would never have been a part of it. Also, that Steve Rogers thinks it's a shame, a crying shame what happened to Isaiah Bradley, and that Steve Rogers is a good, good guy, who's willing to give proper credit to Isaiah Bradley.

I dunno, maybe I'm reading too much into those last, Rogers-centric issues. But apparently Truth began as a parallel history, officially outside of the continuity of Captain America, and then halfway through they decided to bring it into the main storyline? And given that, I do wonder at how the last two issues are devoted almost completely to making sure that white Captain America remains completely untarnished by this backstory.

Anyway, I very much liked the premise, very much liked the first part, and was very eyerolly about the latter part.

One of the things that is very cool about Truth, in addition to the premise, is that it is a veritable festival of historical and literary allusions (OMG, Pinkwater's Wingman!). And in case you do not know these allusions, there is a handy issue-by-issue listing of the allusions in the appendix, including a reading and sources list. Which is very satisfying for a references-junkie like myself. Yay - I like clues about interesting things to go look up next!

21. Joann Sfar, The Rabbi's Cat 2.

(Sfar is Ashkenazi and Sephardic; Rabbi's Cat implies that Sephardic Jews are not considered white in France, which is where Sfar lives. If anyone has better information than I do about how race works in France and in Judaism, and consequently feels that Sfar shouldn't be counted as POC, please let me know.)

A continuation of the previous volume, which was a collection of stories about an Algerian rabbi, his daughter, and her cat. Two more stories appear in this volume: "Heaven on Earth" (in which the Rabbi and his cat visits with Malka and his lion, and there is much, much storytelling all around) and "Africa's Jerusalem" (in which the rabbi meets a Russian Jew who is headed for Ethiopia in search of the true Jerusalem -- a Jerusalem where, yes, all the Jews are black Africans, much to the rabbi's disbelief).

Of the latter story, Sfar says:

For a long time I thought there was no point in doing a graphic novel against racism. That stance seemed so totally redundant that there was no need to flog a dying horse. Times are changing, apparently. Chances are, everything's already been said, but since no one is paying attention you have to start all over again.

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

In a steampunk version of 1897 Texas, singing “tutors” for a giant computer called Cathedral (because it’s housed in one) try teach it self-awareness. The computer was built by Europeans on land belonging to the Latino/a “natives;” many years later, Latina tutor Glory and Sumner, the white son of one of the inventors, fall in love. Their romance becomes even more complicated than it would be anyway when Cathedral finally breaks through to sentience… and wants to incarnate in a human body. And then wishes become reality and it all gets very complicated.

The best elements of this comic are the atmosphere – Texas steampunk with people of color! – and the art, which is stylized, expressive, and often quite beautiful. The characters are more sketches than fully-realized personalities, and the story, particularly toward the end, devolves into a lot of confusing rushing around back and forth from the real world to virtual reality.

If my description sounds appealing to you, you should enjoy this. I did, despite its flaws.

Though Cathedral Child stands on its own, there is a sequel of sorts, though it sounds more like a loosely related story set in the same world: Clockwork Angels

whereweather.livejournal.com

#30. Luba: The Book of Ofelia (Vol. 2 in the Luba trilogy; Vol. 21 in the Complete Love & Rockets)

2005 (material originally published 1998-2005), Fantagraphics Books

Warning: Long and obsessive plot details ahead! This is a crazy long book -- 240 pages -- and incredibly dense, for a graphic novel. Also, the storytelling modalities are highly refined and self-referential, full of interweaving, flashback and allusion; and also it's Part 2 of a three-part series-within-a-series. So I take these reviews as an opportunity to parse the plot, to assure myself that I've actually followed what the hell is going on.

So! This is the second part of Gilbert ("Beto") Hernandez's trilogy about the latest adventures of Luba, his protagonist, in America. (For basics about Luba, you can see my earlier post about the previous book in this series.)

At this point in time, Luba and her children are in the United States, but her husband Khamo is stuck in immigration limbo. Luba continues her quest to figure out what she must -- or can -- do in order to untangle his shady past, police record, and hazy criminal associations, so that she can bring him to join them. (Like most of Luba's accomplishments, this is not really hindered -- and is perhaps made more impressive -- by that fact that, like some of the other main characters living in the United States, she still can't speak a word of English.)

Much of this section's narrative mechanics is fueled by the announcement that Ofelia, Luba's long-suffering older cousin, has decided to finally try being the writer she has always wanted to be. This in-progress "book of Ofelia" gives, perhaps, the collection its title, although the phrasing also seems to imply (in its Biblical cadence) that she is instead the main subject of the book. (Except that she isn't, really; she's not present throughout. I keep thinking about the way that, in Spanish -- as I think I understand it, anyway -- this phrase, "el libro de Ofelia," does not make a distinction between the book *by* Ofelia and the book *about* her. So this book, perhaps, is both.)

(On that note: one other thing I like is how much of the book's dialogue and internal thought-monologues are in Spanish. The switches back and forth are frequent but consistent: the Latin American-born children tend to speak in fluent English to each other, but use Spanish with their parents, and to think in it when introspection is called for; the American-born children and adults think in English, although they frequently and fluently use Spanish with their relations. Hernandez indicates the switches with the widely used comics convention of putting the "second-language" dialogue within brackets (and, in this book, some double-bracketing for other languages, like French). When Hernandez' stories were set entirely in the Central American village from which many of the characters hail, he used to just put a note at the bottom of the first page that everything was in Spanish unless otherwise indicated -- a convention that Jaime has also sometimes used, e.g. in stories set among recent immigrants and jornalero workers -- but now that they've migrated to America, there's a lot more use of both tongues.)

So. What's happening in the Book of Ofelia?

( Obsessive plot details! Avoid if you fear spoilers! )

[Tags I'd like to add: a: hernandez gilbert, i: hernandez gilbert, california, children [*not* "children's"], magic realism, disability, meta-literature]

whereweather.livejournal.com

#29. Same Difference and Other Stories, Derek Kirk Kim
2004, Top Shelf Productions (material originally self-published between 2000-2003)

I really, really like this story. (Also, the edition I'm reading has an extraordinarily beautiful cover, which I wish would show up more readily on Google searches for the book. I just love it a lot.)

This is a collection of short stories, but the book is clearly dominated by the title piece, which at 80 pages makes up more than half the book. (The rest of the pieces are a grab bag of variable interest and quality, ranging from two to eight pages or so.) "Same Difference," though, is a novella -- or a short graphic novel -- and I really dug it a lot. The central characters are Simon Moore and his friend Nancy; both are Korean-American, both are recent college graduates, both are living and working in Oakland and working on finding their adult footing and way in the world. An over-the-top prank played by Nancy, and her insistent desire to follow it up (Nancy has a very forceful personality, to the point of being domineering), leads to a day-trip-cum-road-trip down to Pacifica, the quiet, beautiful beachside suburb where Simon grew up. The day brings encounters and surprises; it ends, as days do, with sunset, night falling, the stars.

It would make this a longer review than I have time for to go into detail about all the reasons I like this work, but I'll throw out a few. I like Kim's aesthetic; by that I mean not just the technical execution of his artwork (which I also like very much), but also the way he chooses to depict things: his sense of pacing, of rhythm, of composition; his interest in quiet spaces and quiet passages, in the emotional value of light and natural and constructed-urban patterns in the environment. (This stuff is not blatantly obvious while you're reading the story, which I think is also deliberate -- it has a cheerful, almost noisy flow -- but it's definitely there.) Also, I like his character design, and I like his characters.

I find myself thinking of this in comparison to other comics I've been reading lately. Adrian Tomine's 2007 book Shortcomings throws up a similar dynamic: the protagonist's best friend Alice Kim is, well, actually almost identical to Simon's best friend Nancy. (Huh. The more I think about those details of character design and dynamic, the more I start to wonder about that. Kim's came first... ) But I like Kim's characters, and story, better: I find the protagonists more realistic (although that's admittedly a complicated term) and more engaging and endearing. Another comparison that comes to mind is Dan Clowes' Ghost World, for reasons which will probably be evident if you've read both books. Once again, though, I find myself liking Same Difference better.

I think the reason might be... or boil down to... because I find Kim's view of his characters, and the world, ultimately much more compassionate and humane than is the case with either Tomine or Clowes? And I like humane. It is ultimately what makes great literature great to me; which is why I'm not really a fan of either Clowes or Tomine, despite the respect I can accord to some of their work.

Your mileage, of course, might vary. This is why the world is full of books! :)

[Tags I would add if I could: california, disability, twentysomething, coming of age, culture shock]

PS: Oh yeah -- the rest of the stories are interesting, too, at least some of them. (A number of the tags I've used apply to them, not to the title story.) I couldn't really get into most of them, though; a lot of this work seems to be Kim complaining about how girls don't like him. They are fairly superior examples of the type, but there's not much depth there. This is, I'm coming to think, just material that many artists have to work through before they can get to plumbing their memories and emotions for richer and more mature work, and Kim has worked his way through it and gotten beyond. (Unlike some other cartoonists I could mention, like Chester Brown, or Ivan Brunetti, or Adrian Tomine, or Dan Clowes. (Oh, excuse me! Did I say that out loud? ;))

whereweather.livejournal.com

#28. Skim, Mariko Tamaki (writing) and Jillian Tamaki (art)
2008, Groundwood Books

Another book that I found through reviews on this comm. (Thanks again to all of you: you keep leading me to wonderful books.)

I enjoyed the book for many of the same reasons others did, especially those mentioned by

kyuuketsukirui,

sanguinity and [Bad username or unknown identity: puritybrown .] As regards the art style, I also loved, as someone else mentioned, that it clearly evokes Japanese aesthetics and the Japanese artistic tradition... but the influences it draws on are not manga. There's something about that, especially given the often troubling aspects of gender representation in mainstream manga (I'm thinking of exaggerated gender dimorphism, neoteny, and hypersexualization), that I found profoundly refreshing and even kind of inspiring.

Very highly recommended. I'm putting Mariko Tamaki's other graphic work, Emiko Superstar, on my to-read list, and I'd love to see other work from Jillian Tamaki. (Actually... let's see. Her website is here, there's an interesting illustrated interview with her here, and I see mention of a 2006 book called Gilded Lilies. Has anyone read it?)

[Tags I would add if I could: spirituality (or: religion/spirituality), high school]

Hey, by the way: [Bad username or unknown identity: puritybrown ,�]did you ever send the Tamakis that fan letter?

whereweather.livejournal.com

#27. The Education of Hopey Glass (The Complete Love & Rockets, Vol. 24), Jaime Hernandez

2008 (material originally published 2005-'08), Fantagraphics Books

Okay, here I go about Love & Rockets again. I feel a little dumb writing in so much detail about each new volume of the series I devour (being on a ten-year catch-up binge as I am), since I'm not sure anyone else is interested. But at the same time, it's hard for me to resist it. Half of the books -- the ones by Jaime Hernandez, about his post-punk ambisexual working-class Latina chicks in L.A. -- I've been following for so many years and love so much that I can't help gushing on and on. And the ones by Gilbert Hernandez, about his ever-more-convoluted Lynchian psychosexual post-magic-realism Mexican American and Central American émigrés in L.A. -- the ones who all seem to sport big breasts, huge butts, impressive penis sizes, and an increasingly complicated array of fetishes... well, those are so involuted that I can't really follow the story line unless I break it all down for myself.

So here we have Volume 24, all about Maggie's best friend and one-time lover Hopey Glass. The overarching narrativethrust comes from the fact that Hopey has a new job. It's a real job, which is really strange for her! As long as we've known her, Hopey was living either with or on other people; or playing bass with a band; or off a small inheritance; or, more recently, bartending and working odd jobs. But apparently she recently took up temping, and now she has -- of all things -- studied for, taken, and passed an exam to become certified as a teaching assistant in the state of California. It's a new school year now, and her job is about to begin.

( What this volume's all about... )

whereweather.livejournal.com

#26. Luba in America (Vol. 1 of the Luba Trilogy), by Gilbert Hernandez
2001 (material originally published 1998-2000), Fantagraphics Books

Ha! Man, I just never stop referencing myself, do I? (Well, well: the internet wouldn't be as much fun if it weren't so easy to be intertextual.)

This is the third Love & Rockets book I'm reviewing, since I am indulging in a catch-up binge on my favorite comics series after years of only-sporadic reading. The first two I reviewed were by Jaime Hernandez, the half of the Hernandez brothers whose work I consistently adore. Luba in America, by contrast, is by Gilbert Hernandez, whose stories, characters, style and subjects are quite different. In an earlier post I discussed my feelings about Gilbert's work, including and especially my ambivalence about his increasingly sexual and sexualizing vision of his female characters' lives.

But, heh, Gilbert was also a bold, compassionate and masterful storyteller at one time, and perhaps is still. If his "weird id display" (as a previous commenter called it) doesn't put you off, there is still a lot of story to admire. So here I am: taking a careful breath, and plunging into the now-complete "Luba trilogy" to see what Gilbert has recently been up to.

( Venga conmigo! )

whereweather.livejournal.com

#20[b]: A Right to Be Hostile: The Boondocks Treasury, Aaron McGruder
2003, Three Rivers Press

This is hilarious. I remember reading The Boondocks on and off while it was running in newspapers (more off than on; I was moving around a lot and not all my papers carried it), and I remember being sometimes impressed but often lukewarm on it. I remember formulating the impression that it was presumably the strip's controversy value and what Amazon somewhat coyly calls its "notoriety" that made it such a big success. (What "notoriety" means here is, among other things, visibly black characters talking about visible black issues, often with no white people in sight(!), and, with enormous daring, going so far as to claim the aforementioned right to be hostile. In America's newspapers! In the funny pages!)

Anyway, reading this compilation, I'm forced to dramatically revise my opinion. This is fabulous stuff. McGruder's incisiveness, cutting wit, characterization and sense of timing are often nothing short of brilliant. The strip really does bring to mind the eminent predecessors McGruder cites as influences in the foreword (Trudeau, Watterson, Breathed). (All of which leaves me unsure why I didn't find the strip quite so awesome at the time, except that it does come to mind that collections allow authors the luxury of picking and choosing; McGruder may have wisely left out a lot of duds. ;)

Anyway. What is awesome about this strip? ( Let me tell you! )

whereweather.livejournal.com

#23. Bayou, Vol. 1, Jeremy Love (writer, illustrator) with Patrick Morgan (colors)
2009, Gettosake and ZudaComics.com (online), D.C. Comics (print version)

A shoutout to

chipmunk_planet for posting about this book back in June. This is the first -- and, I know, not the last -- book I've discovered via this comm that I would have overlooked otherwise, and which I found absolutely amazing

Bayou is an incredibly creepy, graphically startling work of deepest [Black] Southern Gothic, set in rural Mississippi in the 1930s and featuring as hero the courageous young daughter of a sharecropper.

All by itself, that premise would make it kind of remarkable: heroic little girls are in markedly short supply in the comics, much less poor, ragged black ones. The ambition and underlying coherence of this comic's vision, and the graphic aplomb with which it is executed, make it downright astonishing. I am really impressed by Bayou. My only serious complaint about the print version is that this "Volume 1" is really not complete; the story is published serially online, at ZudaComics.com (under the aegis of D.C. Comics), and although this book collection heralds itself as "the first four chapters of the critically acclaimed webcomic series," it doesn't end with much closure -- the author was clearly not planning these chapters to be a self-contained story arc. (That said, it just drove me online to see What Happened Next. :) You can read it online, too (if you have a fast enough connection...)

( More about the story... )

whereweather.livejournal.com

#22. Good as Lily, by Derek Kirk Kim (writer) and Jesse Hamm (illustrator)
Marvel Comics (Minx imprint), 2007

I ordered this book from the library on the strength of the short-story collection The Eternal Smile (reviewed in a previous post), the 2009 collaboration between Derek Kirk Kim and Gene Luen Yang. I have already had a taste of Yang's solo work (in American Born Chinese), and I liked The Eternal Smile well enough that I became eager to check out Kim's solo work as well. So I asked the library for Same Difference and Other Stories, which is Kim's debut collection, published in 2003; and Good as Lily, which is a graphic novel published in 2007 by Marvel's short-lived Minx line for tween girls. (AAARGGH I HATE THAT NAME.)

Anyway. Good As Lily isn't bad, although I don't like it as much as Kim's earlier book (for reasons I will elucidate). ( Here's why... )

All in all a very interesting book, one of the more successful pieces I've seen from the Minx line. (I STILL HATE THAT NAME! And I can't help being glad they got served for it. ;)

[Tags I wish I could add: i: hamm jesse, coming of age, california, magic realism.]

whereweather.livejournal.com

[Note: Tags I would like to add, when it eventually becomes possible: a: hernandez lea, i: hernandez lea, steampunk.]

#20. Cathedral Child, Lea Hernandez
Cyberosia Publishing, 2002 (?)

Cathedral Child is a very curious graphic novel of somewhat confusing provenance. It is also, I think, unfinished. I gather that it was meant to be the first volume of a series that Hernandez called "Texas Steampunk Trilogy," but there were a long series of delays in publishing the book and I don't think the second and third volumes were ever produced.

Which is a pity, because Cathedral Child is full of interesting ideas, and has a unique sensibility and a lot of heart. The ending is very confusing to me, but I don't know how much of that comes from its being supposed to continue on later, or perhaps from the artist having been obliged to cram some extra plot points in where they hadn't been planned. (Babylon 5 season four, anyone?)

So anyway, I can fault this book on several counts of clarity and pacing. On the other hand, conceptually it is fantastic. It is set in nineteenth-century West Texas, where a white engineer, Nikola (I see what you did there!), and his investor/partner, Stuart, have set up shop to build an "analytical engine," which in this setting seems to mean an AI.

They are building their AI inside a mission-style Spanish church, which is referred to as Cathedral, and the "machinists" and "tutors" -- who do the work of teaching and training the young artificial intelligence -- come from among the ranks of the so-called natives, who seem to be Hispanicized Indians. (This is not entirely clear to me, but on the other hand I am not entirely clear on the distinction between "Hispanicized Indians" and the people we now call Mexicans, so maybe that means I have to do some more research myself.) In any case, they are brown people, with Spanish names. And there are really not nearly enough representations of brown people with Spanish names in steampunk at all, much less drawn in a manga-influenced American style, so even if it were just for this I applaud Lea Hernandez a lot.

I won't summarize the whole story here -- I guess I should just recommend reading it yourself, if it seems interesting to you. I do admit I find the book somewhat confusing. Some of the story concepts aren't as clearly brought through as they should have been, and I think that unclearness resides both in the storytelling and in the artwork. On the other hand, I like many of the characters, and some of the ideas are just sublime. It's really too bad the trilogy seems never to have been finished.

(Also: this book, and its writer, raise a "Who's P.O.C.?" question for me. Is Lea Hernandez a writer/artist of color? I am assuming, from her name, her place of origin, and -- here's where it gets really tricky -- from the content of her work, that she is Hispanic, and probably Mexican American. But does that mean she's necessarily a person of color? I don't know. All the (smallish) photos of her I've been able to find online show her with blonde hair. But I don't know if that means anything; many Mexicans have blonde hair... So here I am, including her, but without really knowing. For all I know, I could be wrongly assuming. And we all know what assuming does. I could be making a ming out of my ass.)

whereweather.livejournal.com

#19. Locas in Love, Jaime Hernandez (The Collected Love & Rockets, Vol. 18)
2000, Fantagraphics Books (material originally published in Penny Century, Measles, and Maggie & Hopey Color Fun, 1996-2000)

As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, I have loved Love & Rockets since I was about thirteen. It's one of the great joys of my life that this series (that's what it is, a black-and-white comics series written and drawn by California-based Mexican-American brothers Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez) is, despite all odds, still going; that it has no obvious end in sight, and that I can imagine (though I realize it's unlikely) that it may be with me all my life.

My ability to follow the series closely has varied with my own circumstances, and with the circumstances of its publication. Since about 2000, for various reasons -- the brothers were publishing several different series, the schedule was irregular, I was out of the country -- I have only been able to read issues every now and then, when I came across them in a shop; or, occasionally, spend several hours in a bookstore reading whatever recent compilations they had on hand. With the double inspiration of this 50books project, though, combined with the realization last month that the university library to which I have access (through my job) is willing and able to get even graphic novels for me -- quickly and easily! -- through interlibrary loan, I've begun a binge of catching up. This is freaking awesome, people.

So, even though I have already read Vol. 22 (Ghost of Hoppers, which I own), and the last post I made was on Vol. 20 (Dicks And Deedees), this post is about backtracking all the way to Vol. 18, Locas In Love, which I figured I should read anyway because I thought there might be some material in there I'd missed. (I'm only talking about even-numbered ones here because those are the ones collecting Jaime's work and storylines; the odd-numbered ones are Gilbert's collections. Um, I realize this is incredibly involuted. That's because I'm a comics dork, OK??? And I own all the volumes up to #15, Hernandez Satyricon, so... OK YES I AM A DORK!)

So anyway. Below are some spoilers.

( Spoilers, spoilers... )

I LOVE LOVE & ROCKETS, PEOPLE. And I still hold out hope that someday, someday, those stupid MacArthur people will get their heads out of their butts and do something for the Hernandez Brothers.

[Note: Tags I would like to add, when it becomes possible: superheroes; magic realism.]

sanguinity

Two short works, both 22-page, single-issue webcomics, both by Beth Dillon (Anishinaabe, Metis, Irish) and Myron Lameman (Beaver Lake Cree Nation).

11. The West Was Lost.

Native Steampunk, wherein Anishinaabe warriors -- led by the young woman who is our POV character, Nezette -- travel west to destroy an oil derrick.

The storytelling is non-linear and nearly wordless, with a heavy usage of references from traditional Anishinaabe stories. Consequently, it demands more than a single read, and even with multiple readings may yet be fairly opaque to readers who aren't familiar with the cultural referents.

The artwork is gorgeous. I keep coming back to look at the art again. There are some heart-stirring shots of Nezette in battle that particularly catch my eye, and I love the shots of the oil derrick in flames -- this particular act of resistance makes me very happy. (There are some later shots worth mentioning, too, but that gets into spoiler-territory, so I won't.)

I would very much like to see more set in this timeline.

12. Fala.

A Native rendition of Alice in Wonderland. I don't even begin to get all the references here, which hampers my experience of it, but the stuff that I do get, I like. As with "The West Was Lost," (and, for that matter, Alice in Wonderland itself) the work benefits from multiple reads.

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

After Satrapi leaves Iran at the end of Persepolis 1, she begins a new life in Vienna as an immigrant alone in a foreign land. This is a more familiar story, at least to me, than that of growing up during and after a revolution. But not only is it just as witty and well-observed and poignant as the first book, this one too is full of the sort of surprising turns that a real life takes, even without a revolution.

I don’t want to give away too much of the story. But I have to mention the moment when punk teenage Satrapi is huddled nervously on a couch at a party when she hears sex moans from another room: “Ah! Ah! Ah!” Freaking out, she grabs a book to distract herself, but she can read nothing on its pages but “Ah! Ah! Ah!”

Satrapi’s very solid relationship with her family is even more central to this book, where they are largely separated, than in the last one where they lived together. Despite her encounters with racism, loneliness, political oppression, and, eventually, a complete emotional breakdown, that gives this coming of age story a reassuring overlay: with a family like that, she’s sure to find herself eventually.

Recommended.

See it on Amazon: Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

Both parts together: The Complete Persepolis

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

A memoir in graphic novel form about growing up in Iran during the revolution.

I avoided reading this for a long time because I had the impression that it was one of those worthy, educational, depressing books which are read more for their medicinal benefit than for enjoyment. (Perhaps because reviews often began "This is a very important book.") Those are certainly valuable and necessary, but not often to my personal taste.

I had somehow missed any mention of the fact that Persepolis is extremely funny as well as dark, and not earnestly improving at all. It’s actually in a completely different tradition, that of the memoir of two brutal experiences – war and the less-than-happy childhood – which often inspire black comedy. The other thing I didn’t expect was an odd bit of personal resonance: both Satrapi and I come from Communist families. I only wish that, like her, I had been given comic books on dialectical materialism.

The deceptively simple art meshes with the deceptively simple writing to create a perfect recreation of her child’s eye view, to which she and we bring our own adult perspective. Very funny, very dark, precisely observed, poignant, and witty. I couldn’t stop reading this, and I highly recommend it.