A Little Piece of Her by Zidrou, Raphaël Beuchot

Rating: WARTY!

This is NOT from an advance review copy for which I DO NOT thank the publisher.

I have to rate this negatively because of the shabby way the publisher treats people who ask to review it. The graphic novel was not downloadable as ebooks typically are, but set up in some ass-backward "copy protection" system that means you cannot load it, read a part of it, and get back to it later to finish it. You have to constantly download it. What this meant is that the book was locked away ("archived" they call it) before I could finish reading it, and that shabby treatment of a reviewer, I consider WARTY in the extreme.

I don't get paid for this work, except in that I get to read books! But I'd be read books anyway and thanks to Amazon's deliberate and calculated sabotaging of book prices, I could get all the free books I want from them if I didn't refuse to do business with Amazon.

Jeff Bezos in now the richest man ever, BTW. Ahead of Bill Gates. Ahead of Mark Zuckerberg. Ahead of Warren Buffett, and to my knowledge, and unlike those latter three, he hasn't signed on to the pledge to give away at least half his fortune. Yet the authors who publish with him are lucky to get a fraction of the ninety-nine cents he has very effectively forced many people to charge for their hard work. Ninety-nine cents! That's less than the old pulp writers used to get paid! It would be nice if he gave some of his fortune to help out the struggling authors who've helped make him a multi-billionaire, wouldn't it?!

No, I do this because I love books and I feel people have a right to a chance at being read and getting some exposure, but this publisher seems hell bent on sabotaging that process. The format had purportedly extra protection built into it such that it was not possible to download it - a reviewer like me, who can only get the ebook (which is fine - it saves a tree here and there!), has to read this one on a web page or some fly-by-night temporary platform. If you close the page, you then have to go through the laborious process of accessing it all over again.

Worse, there is no means of conveniently navigating from one page to another on my tablet, except by sliding each individual page up or down the screen. If you want to go back and check something at the start, it's a long chore in a two hundred page comic.

The idea behind this is purportedly to protect the work by specifically assigning it to a person's email address, and I can fully understand the need for protection of copyrighted work, but in practice, this method offers no protection whatsoever, since anyone who can read something like this on their screen can take a screen-shot and copy it very effectively and quite anonymously that way. So to me it made no sense, and all it offered in practice was an inconvenience and annoyance to honest reviewers who would never abuse the privilege we have of getting an advance review copy of a work. As I said, I will not be recommending this, and neither will I be requesting anything to review from this publisher (Europe Comics) ever again.

The World Book of Records by Tonino Benacquista, Nicolas Barral

Rating: WARTY!

This is NOT from an advance review copy for which I DO NOT thank the publisher.

I have to rate this negatively because of the shabby way the publisher treats people who ask to review it. The graphic novel was not downloadable as ebooks typically are, but set up in some ass-backward "copy protection" system that means you cannot load it, read a part of it, and get back to it later to finish it. You have to constantly download it. What this meant is that the book was locked away ("archived" they call it) before I could finish reading it, and that shabby treatment of a reviewer, I consider WARTY in the extreme.

I don't get paid for this work, except in that I get to read books! But I'd be read books anyway and thanks to Amazon's deliberate and calculated sabotaging of book prices, I could get all the free books I want from them if I didn't refuse to do business with Amazon.

Jeff Bezos in now the richest man ever, BTW. Ahead of Bill Gates. Ahead of Mark Zuckerberg. Ahead of Warren Buffett, and to my knowledge, and unlike those latter three, he hasn't signed on to the pledge to give away at least half his fortune. Yet the authors who publish with him are lucky to get a fraction of the ninety-nine cents he has very effectively forced many people to charge for their hard work. Ninety-nine cents! That's less than the old pulp writers used to get paid! It would be nice if he gave some of his fortune to help out the struggling authors who've helped make him a multi-billionaire, wouldn't it?!

No, I do this because I love books and I feel people have a right to a chance at being read and getting some exposure, but this publisher seems hell bent on sabotaging that process. The format had purportedly extra protection built into it such that it was not possible to download it - a reviewer like me, who can only get the ebook (which is fine - it saves a tree here and there!), has to read this one on a web page or some fly-by-night temporary platform. If you close the page, you then have to go through the laborious process of accessing it all over again.

Worse, there is no means of conveniently navigating from one page to another on my tablet, except by sliding each individual page up or down the screen. If you want to go back and check something at the start, it's a long chore in a two hundred page comic.

The idea behind this is purportedly to protect the work by specifically assigning it to a person's email address, and I can fully understand the need for protection of copyrighted work, but in practice, this method offers no protection whatsoever, since anyone who can read something like this on their screen can take a screen-shot and copy it very effectively and quite anonymously that way. So to me it made no sense, and all it offered in practice was an inconvenience and annoyance to honest reviewers who would never abuse the privilege we have of getting an advance review copy of a work. As I said, I will not be recommending this, and neither will I be requesting anything to review from this publisher (Europe Comics) ever again.

Bessie Stringfield Tales of the Talented Tenth by Joel Christian Gill

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I have to rate this negatively because it begins with the fictional version of Bessie Stringfield's life, and from that point onward, it necessarily casts doubt on the rest of the story. Bessie Beatrice White was born in Edenton, North Carolina, not Jamaica, and there was no dramatic crossing of the ocean to Boston during which her mother pretty much succumbed to consumption (or whatever) and her father abandoned her in a hotel. Why the author felt he needed to augment this story with pure fiction, even fiction she purveyed herself, is a mystery.

It's like he felt her story wasn't good enough without it. The author/illustrator seems strangely averse to illustrating faces too, such as her parents, the woman who runs the fictional hotel where she's fictionally abandoned, the woman who adopts her, and the woman who interviews her.

The frame of the story is a woman interviewing Bessie who then recounts her life. For me it failed because it made Bessie seem to be an extraordinarily selfish and self-centered person. It also skips a lot of detail. Like how did she pay for her gallivanting after she took off at age nineteen? It mentions later that she performed in carnivals on her bike, but there's nothing about how she financed her trips at such a young age or where her bike came from. The author seems to have bought into more fiction: that of divine miracles!

The story mentions that she had six marriages and no children, but it fails to discuss the fact that that her first marriage gave her three miscarriages. It also says nothing about why she married six times, whether she abandoned each of those husbands, split from them amicably, or they abandoned her.

It relates that she took off after college and started riding around the US, but her criss-crossing the country eight times was during her time as an army courier. Despite working for the US to help the war effort, she was subject to racism repeatedly, and they didn't even have the "excuse" of having a racist, misogynistic, homophobic jackass as president back then.

So while this is a story worth telling, I did not feel this was the version worth reading, and I cannot recommend it.

Infinity 8 Vol. 1: Love and Mummies by Zep, Lewis Trondheim

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This graphic novel was a bit of a ill-fated cross between iZombie and the Ood alien race from Doctor Who; it takes the worst elements from them rather than the best. I did not like the story. It made little sense and I DNF'd it about three-quarters of the way through. The main character is far too sexualized and without any good reason for it except that this is what comic books do, of course. It needs to stop.

For reasons unknown, the city-sized spaceship containing a variety of aliens is halfway between the Milky Way and Andromeda when it encounters a debris field. Space being only two-dimensional as it so often is in these stories, the ship can't go over the debris, so it's halted and the captain, again for no good reason, decides to investigate.

The investigation is a joke and goes nowhere nor does it try to go anywhere. Once again, just as in Star Trek, we're faced here with a futuristic society in which all of the robotics, and AI, and drones which we have today, has not only failed to advance, but has also somehow inexplicably been lost to history, so instead of robots going out to investigate, we have to send humans. Fallible. Distractable. Weak. Troublesome humans.

So poor is the management of this ship that aliens also get loose. One of this particular alien race (the Ood rip-offs) is in love with the main character while another of the same race wants her dead - again for no reason, while a bunch more of these aliens are trying to destroy the very ship they're traveling on - and the ship the size of a city evidently has no peacekeepers or law enforcement on board! I think that sense continued the journey while the ship got left behind. That hypothesis honestly explains a lot in this story.

I don't think very many sci-fi writers expend much energy on thinking about how their alien races evolved. They simply create the aliens because they think they look cool and that's the way it is no matter how ridiculous or improbable they all are. So these aliens were once again a poor and irrational assortment, all of them derivative of Earth species, so none of them really looked alien.

Worse, these writers have aliens falling in love with humans without giving any thought to the improbability of it. It would be like trying to get people to take you seriously while your story has a human fall in love with a shark or a boa constrictor. I can't take a story like this seriously, and I cannot recommend this at all.

The Last Jungle Book by Stephen Desberg, Henri Reculé

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

In Rudyard Kipling's original Jungle Book stories, Mowgli is first introduced as a wild man living in the forest who is recruited into the forest ranger service because of his extraordinary jungle craft. He marries, has a child, and returns to the forest. In later stories, his childhood is related, but it really isn't quite like the sanitized Disney version (is anything?!).

I was very disappointed in this version, which let's face it is more of an introduction than a story. The blurb was completely misleading in that it suggests that Mowgli (rhymes with cow-glee) has returned to the scene of his childhood to write the last chapter in it - which I presumed would the the dispatch of his hated enemy Shere Khan (which means 'Tiger Chief', not 'lame'! 'Lungri' means lame - it was a nickname for Khan, who was lame). The problem is that none of this happens, nor will it since Mowgli is a silver-haired old man now in this story.

All we get is a pictorial re-telling of the popular version of Jungle Book with nothing new added. It makes Mowgli's vow at the end - to drape Shere Khan's pelt over the council rock of the wolves, all the more hollow, since no such thing ever happened in this story. It did happen in the original jungle books stories - not the draping but the capture of the pelt, so maybe there are more volumes to come, but even if there are, I was so disillusioned with this one that I have no interest in reading any more. This contributed nothing new, and while the artwork was acceptable and the writing not awful, neither of these offered anything truly new, original, or outstanding.

I can see why this was on Net Galley's 'Read Now' shelf. I cannot recommend it. I'd recommend going to Kipling's original material and reading that - and I believe it's all out of copyright now if you're looking for story ideas!

Little Mama by Halim

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a story of teen pregnancy and resultant child neglect and abuse and poor life choices, which effectively forced the young kid to become the mother of the household, but it was so heavy-handed and scrappy and the black/white/grayscale line drawing artwork so sketchy that it failed for me.

It was also sometimes hard to tell which character we were looking at and even what exactly was happening on occasion. It had the feeling, to me, of being unfinished - like a draft story roughed-out in some very quickly scribbled panels rather than something that was designed and crafted, and labored over. I did not like it.

The overall feel of the work was not helped by the copy protection "system" that was employed here. The format had purportedly extra protection built into it such that it was not possible to download it - a reviewer like me, who can only get the ebook (which is fine - it saves a tree here and there!), has to read this one on a web page. If you close the page, you then have to go through the laborious process of accessing it again.

Worse, there is no means of conveniently navigating from one page to another on my tablet, except by sliding each individual page up or down the screen. If you want to go back and check something at the start, it's a long chore in a two hundred page comic like this one.

The idea behind this is to protect the work by specifically assigning it to a person's email address, and I can fully understand the need for protection of copyrighted work, but in practice, it offers no protection since anyone who can read something like this on their screen can take a screen-shot and copy it quite anonymously that way. So to me it made no sense and all it offered in practice was an inconvenience and annoyance to honest reviewers who would never abuse the privilege we have of getting an advance review copy of a work.

So I have to say that other than the one or two other such books I already have lined up for review, I will not be requesting any more books to review that have this kind of protection on them. It's far too much of a hassle and inconvenience and simply not worth my time as a 'volunteer' reviewer, not when I'm also trying to put in time on my own projects.

As for this particular volume, I cannot rate it favorably because it simple did not tell a worthy tale for me. This is an important topic and it deserves a better medium than this to relate it.

Herakles by Edouard Cour

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a 'Read Now' graphic novel at Net Galley and a reviewer takes their chances with works in that category! I frequent it because there is a gem in there often enough to make it worthwhile. This was not such a read, unfortunately. The artwork was monotonous, indifferent, and dull, and the story was lacking in anything compelling, although I did finish it, since it's only 160 pages. Had it been longer I would probably have DNF'd it.

The story is of Herakles (more popularly known as Hercules in the same way that nuclear is too often known as nu-cue-ler in our illiterate society unfortunately). Legend has it that Herakles murdered his entire family and to atone for it, he had to live with his cousin, King Eurystheus, for twelve years, during which time, he could have his indentured servant do whatever tasks he saw fit to lay on Herakles.

Herakles was famously tasked with completing ten labors nearly all of which involved animals. I don't know what that says about ancient Greek society (maybe that it was agricultural back then?). In two of these tasks, he was disqualified because he had help, so he ended up doing the dirty dozen (so to speak!):

1. Slay the Nemean lion, which was a shapeshifter
2. Slay the Lernaean Hydra which had been created for the express purpose of slaying Herakles
3. Capture the Ceryneian deer, which was faster than a speeding arrow
4. Bring back the fearsome Erymanthian Boar alive
5. Clean the stables of King Augeas which hadn't been cleaned in three decades and which held 1,000 cattle
6. Defeat the carnivorous Stymphalian birds which had beaks of bronze
7. Capture the Cretan Bull
8. Capture the carnivorous Mares of Diomedes
9. Retrieve the belt of Queen Hippolyta of the Amazons
10. Rustle the cattle of Geryon
11. Retrieve some of the golden apples of the Hesperides
12. Capture Kerberos, the multi-headed hound of Hades

Clearly these tasks are based on constellations!

The author tries to inject humor into the story but it fell flat for me, and I did not enjoy these adventures at all. I wish the author all the best in his endeavors, but I have no intention of reading any more volumes in this series.

The Leaning Girl by François Schuiten, Benoît Peeters

Rating: WORTHY!

Since Belgium is having such a good run in the World Cup (as of this writing!) it seems like a good idea to review this graphic novel by Belgian comic artist François Schuiten and written by Benoît Peeters. It was such a weird tale that I couldn't not read it!

After a ride on the Star Express roller coaster, 13 year-old Mary Von Rathen starts going through some lean times. That is to say: she is constantly leaning in the same direction, no matter which direction she faces. So let's say purely for example, that she leans towards the east. If she's facing east, she's leaning forwards, if she's facing west, she's leaning backwards and is similarly inclined at every compass point there is. Except that she doesn't lean in an easterly direction - she leans based on something that;s not in this world - a scientific phenomenon that people are studying to find answers.

No one believes that Mary isn't faking this for attention, and she becomes an outcast and eventually she runs away and joins the circus where her balancing act (which requires no effort on her part or parts!) is a sensation, but when she discovers there may be a man who can help her, she runs away again to track him down, and ends up as one of Earth's first astronauts! There she finds what she's been seeking - people with a bent similar to hers, you might say!

This book was beautifully drawn in black and white shaded line drawings, and very well written and it mixes photography with hand drawing and real people with the comic versions. I recommend it.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, Stéphane Melchior, Clément Oubrerie, Philippe Bruno, Annie Eaton

Rating: WARTY!

This graphic novel taken from the original novel by Philip Pullman, adapted by Stéphane Melchior, with art by Clément Oubrerie, and coloring by Clément Oubrerie and Philippe Bruno, and translated from the French by Annie Eaton was a disappointment I have to say. The text was so-so and the artwork was blah. Really blah. It told the story in a very workmanlike manner, with no flashes of anything exciting or remarkable. The colors in the artwork were muddy, and the artwork itself really was unappealing.

I cannot recommend this as a worthy read; instead I recommend either the original novel or the audiobook version of it, which is narrated by Pullman himself along with a cast who play the characters. I like the movie, too. It’s pretty sad when a movie makes well-over a third of a billion dollars and is considered non-viable, but the USA is a very fundamentalist religious society, first amendment be damned, and this is effectively what killed this movie series, I think.

冬には動物園 (Fuyu ni wa dōbu-tsuen - A Zoo in Winter) by Jirō Taniguchi

Rating: WORTHY!

Chevalier Jiro Taniguchi (he's a knight in France!) died last year at the age of 69. I understand that this book, published in 2008, but set in 1966, is autobiographical and tells the story of how he got into manga in the first place - on the production side, not the reading side. That distinction is important, because this work almost never shows him reading a comic! When we meet him, that's all we get: someone on a voyage, or more accurately adrift, apparently never having departed a port. There's no history here excepting in what we learn tangentially as he floats along, carried by life's currents rather than rowing his own passage. As an autobiography it also drifts from reality in that he's a character with a different name in the story.

He is working in a small textile business and hoping to get a shot at design when, on a trip to visit a friend, he finds himself hijacked into working for a major mangaka - a creator of manga. I'm far from convinced that exchanging the life he had in what I understand is a beautiful Kyoto was worth moving to megacity Tokyo for (the population there was ten million even in 1966!), but never having been to either place, knowing only what I read, I have to take his word for it! I do find it intriguing that Kyoto becomes Tokyo by simply moving the first three letters to the end of the word! This works equally in Japanese or English, but whether it means the same thing when switched in Japanese, I can’t say.

But I digress, as usual. His lowly job is filling in the blanks in the artist's work - painting backgrounds and so on. This seems highly suitable since he is himself a background to the lives of others as told in this story. Eventually he gets his own work published and the rest is history. The story is a bit weird at times and slow moving, but overall I liked it and I recommend it.

The Imitation game by Jim Ottaviani, Leland Purvis

Rating: WARTY!

This was disappointing graphic novel which spent too much time on the wrong topics, I felt. Plus it was too long and rambling, and tried to cover too much ground instead of focusing on the core points. That said, it did a better job than the movie of the same name, which was rife with inaccuracies, and no amount of arguing that no-one expects a painting to be a photograph can excuse some of the inexplicable changes that were made in depicting Turing's life at Bletchley Park in that movie, as engrossing and fascinating as it was in parts.

The story is of course Alan Turing's life and his World War Two work on cryptography. Both this and the movie are based on Andrew Hodges's Alan Turing: The Enigma, and at least this graphic novel inspired me to read that, but the biography is over seven hundred pages long, so it will be more of a skim with a detailed reading of points of interest since I do not have the time to read a seven-hundred-page book.

Alan Turing was gay during a time when gay meant something like 'party animal' and nothing more, and when homosexuality was literally illegal - and of course the punishment for a man who loved men was to incarcerate him with a whole lot of men. This made sense how? You could argue (if you were a spiteful SoB) that the way to punish male homosexuals should be to incarcerate them with women, but that seems to me like it wouldn't work either! It makes far more sense not to have it be illegal in the first place!

The art by Purvis was scrappy and unappealing to me and the text by Ottaviani was at times confused or at least confusing and lacking sharpness and clarity, so I took to skimming parts of this. Overall he story was interesting enough to make me game to consult the source rather than read this pale imitation, but as for this version, I can't recommend it.

World of Wakanda by Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alitha E Martinez, Roberto Poggi

Rating: WORTHY!

Is it just me, or did anyone else find it rather amusing that a writer named Gay tells a story here of a lesbian couple? Okay, just me then! Sorry! But Roxane Gay is bisexual for clarification and she was the lead writer here with Coates. This was a graphic novel and I was quite taken by it. The art (Martinez, Poggi) was glorious and the story was engaging and inspiring. It tells of earlier days of Dora Milaje than those depicted in the monumentally successful movie - days when Ayo is newly arrived in the guard and undergoing training. She and her trainer, Aneka, fall for each other and have to fight their confusion as well as each other when training.

Full disclosure: I was in love with Ayo before Aneka was! Not that it will do me any good, but after I saw that scene in Captain America: Civil War in which she says - to Black Widow of all people! - "Move or you will be moved" I was solid gone and wanted to see more of her. She had little to do in Black Panther unfortunately and less to do in Avengers: Infinity Wars, but at least I get to see her in this comic!

This story tells of the two's transition from Dora Milaje to their current comic persona as vigilantes known as Midnight Angels. Gay and Yona Harvey, who wrote a short story depicted in the back of this volume, are the first two black women to write a series for Marvel. Sadly the series was cancelled, so as far as I know, this is all there is. It's well worth a look.

Chimera Book One: The Righteous & The Lost by Tyler Ellis

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I have no idea what this graphic novel was about, even having read it! It made no sense and was so choppy and disjointed, jumping back and forth between sometimes seemingly unrelated events that even when they turned out to be related offered no clue as to what they were actually all about.

The art work was fine enough, but there was no coherent story there so all we had was a coffee table art book. The blurb claims that "...a crew of thieves is hired for a covert mission in the midst of a galaxy being ripped apart by an interstellar holy war." but I don't recall ever a crew being assembled. There was a rag tag group of four creatures who might be the crew referred to, but not a one of them was appealing as a character.

I did see relentless images of an artist's attempt to invent bizarre and threatening alien creatures, none of which had any inventiveness about them, and some made zero sense, which is what happens when an artist with no idea of biology, or evolution tries to invent alien organisms. I cannot recommend this at all.

Oothar the Blue by Brandon Reese

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This story was so tongue in cheek that that I had to go see an orthodontist after I read it. Oothar isn't literally blue, notwithstanding the book's cover. In fact, Oothar is not withstanding anything. He ignores bedraggled dragons. He can't be bothered with railing, wailing wraiths. And he certainly isn't interested in gouging rouge rogue ogres. Nothing seems to bring him pleasure until he finds, after a fit of constructive rage, that a career change is in order, and suddenly, everything is coming up roses!

I'm not sure exactly who this forty-some page graphic novel book is aimed at, but I think it would entertain anyone, especially barbarians with its Aryan barbs. It did me, anyway. I recommend it.

Mystery Society by Steve Niles, Fiona Staples

Rating: WARTY!

This was a graphic novel and it really fell short of the mark. This review is also full of spoilers, so beware. At some points during the reading, I was persuaded to consider it a worthy read, but at other points it made zero sense or was so flat and simplistic that it completely failed to entertain. Add to that the fact that there was no effort to craft a coherent story here and to my overall my feeling that I'm not remotely interested in reading any more in this series, and I'm forced to rate it negatively on balance. This is sad, because the basic idea had potential, and a couple of the characters were interesting. Unfortunately the main characters were a no from the start, and the plot was just silly, period.

The premise is that this young, wealthy, and unhealthily thin couple with the last name of Mystery, are interested in investigating the supernatural and are looking to recruit people to be a part of their investigation team (the Mystery Society). None of this had any background, and no part of the story involved in investigating the supernatural, even though one of their team turned out to be a perfect study subject. When she (a ghoul) joined the team, they showed not the slightest interest in her supernatural aspects! Worse, the couple was diabetes-inducingly sugary, "Darling" each other on every page that it was nauseating.

The story starts with Nick Mystery being taken to jail, yet despite the fact (as we learn later) that he was set up by the government in a huge cover-up and smear campaign, they let him stand there at the prison, and tell his whole story to the press. In what universe would that ever happen? That would be like allowing one of the inmates of Guantanamo to have a TV special to state his case! Read my whips: It's. Not. Going. To. Happen.

So the story he tells is of breaking into area 51 (yawn) to rescue twins who have been kept in suspended animation for decades. He does this single-handedly and without any expenditure of effort whatsoever. Meanwhile back home, metaphorically barefoot and in the kitchen, his wife is interviewing the ghoul with a view to hiring her for their team. So the guy gets all the adventure and the girl is a stay at home not-mom? Why did a female artist even agree to illustrate a story like this? Plus: if Nick is so damned good by himself, why do they even need a team?

Meanwhile, out of the blue, a robot containing the brain of Jules Verne turns up completely out of left field and everyone accepts this story at face value. I am so tired of comics bringing characters from the past into their stories. I guess I should at least credit this one with being someone who was not an American, but still! This happens usually in time-travel stories where the character from the past is always an American of note such as Betty Ross, or George Washington, Jesse James, or Francis Scott Key. It is so tedious to read that crap. So naturally, Jules robot Verne and the ghoul are sent looking for Edgar Allen Poe's skull which has gone missing. Who-the-fuck-cares? Really?

So does the rest of the team then pursue their stated goal of investigating the supernatural? Nope! They're all about breaking back into area 51 to steal the original security vids to clear Nick's name. Which they do again with minimal effort. That's pretty much it. The only interesting characters were the ghoul and the atomic twins. If the story had been only about them, and the other main characters had been omitted completely, this would have made an engaging story, unless of course the twins were rather sexualized as they were in some illustrations. But that failed to materialize and consequently this was a fail for me.

Comic Book History of Comics by Fred van Lente, Ryan Dunlavey, Adam Guzowski

Rating: WORTHY!

As someone who reads and reviews graphic novels from time to time (especially lately!), I could hardly overlook this, and having read it I can say I recommend it. It's pretty basic stuff with regard the artwork (drawn by Dunlavey, colored by Guzowski, and the text (by van Lente) is quite dense at times, so it makes for a long and detailed read, but overall it was truly informative and on occasion eye-opening.

It also features female contributors from history quite prominently, but on the downside, it does not seem to do the same thing for people of color. Whether this is because there were (historically speaking) none in the business, or because what they contributed was relatively little (which i doubt!), or if they were simply overlooked I don't know, but the fact that they're not given a look-in is disturbing. In a similar vein, it features only US comic book creators. It covers nothing of comic book activity outside the USA.

With those limitations in mind, it does seem otherwise quite comprehensive, and it goes into a lot of history, and quirks and fights, and how some aspects of the industry came to fruition, but it doesn't really go into the minutiae of any particular character's creation. This is more focused on the business itself and the key players historically, and some technical aspects of comic production, but it's not so much focused on the actual content the people and business created. For me, I enjoyed it and learned a few things, but I didn't feel it was an outstanding read. It was worthwhile reading though if you're interested in a behind the scenes kind of story, so this is how I rate it.

The Wormworld Saga Vol 1 The Journey Begins by Daniel Lieske

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I wasn't impressed with this story and it reconfirmed my rule of thumb never to read any story with the word 'saga' (or 'cycle' or 'chronicles' in the title). I didn't apply that rule to comic books and now I think I shall have to!

Of course it wasn't aimed at me and maybe the middle-graders it is aimed at will go for it, but for me it was too abrupt of an ending - it never really offered any sort of resolution because it was so determined to leave you on a cliff-hanger to draw you into the next one in the series. This is the problem with series, and why I am not very much a fan of them. I appreciate an author more who leaves you wanting to read on because he or she has done such as good job of investing you in the story rather than one who forces you into a choice by breaking the story in the middle of something.

The art work was colorful but a bit plastic in my view, so it left something wanting, although some individual images were really rather fetching. But the story really wasn't anything new: a kid finds a magical portal into some other world where they magical find themselves a special being. It's been done so many times that if you want to do it again, you really need to bring your 'A' game and I felt none of that here. Indeed, I felt like there was more story told in the blurb than ever we had in the actual story which I think is a first for me.

So all in all I cannot recommend this, although I wish the author all the best in his pursuit of this tale.

Lady Mechanika the Clockwork Assassin by Joe Benitez, MM Chen, Martin Monteil, Beth Sotello

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I've read several Lady Mechanika stories now, both as ARCs and as print books, and this will be my last. While I'm quite willing to put up with the improbability of steampunk stories if I can get a good story, these particular ones simply don't engage me. I don't feel any investment in them. The art is well done, but not to my personal taste: the characters are too tall and skinny which means the women have inane figures - literally hourglass with pencil waists and pneumatic breasts.

Even if we let slide the question of exactly how a clockwork assassin could even work, the story itself was quite simply confusing. A lot of the time I could not follow it at all, but even so it was pretty obvious who the villain was given that this was the only inventor we'd met in the entire story and was superficially the least likely suspect to boot!

I think the big problem with the Lady Mechanika series is that it isn't very well defined who she actually is, so she ends up hanging precariously between genres. Is she a detective à la Sherlock Holmes? Is she a super hero à la Batman? Is she a vampire with those red eyes?! I think the creators want her to be both detective and super hero, but in the end she's neither, and this is the problem. Worse than this, she doesn't invite investment in her as a character, at least not from me. I feel no warmth in her so I feel no warmth for her, and so for me, there was nothing at stake here. I can't recommend this one.

Mae Vol 1 by Gene Ha

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Some of us amateur reviewers don't get to pick the cherry off the top. Once in a while we get lucky, but often, we're reduced to going after the Read Now offers on Net Galley, and this was one of those. It's always a bit 'potluck' in the Read Now bleachers, but every once in a while a gem comes along and this is what I found here. Although it seemed to borrow a bit (there were elements of CS Lewis (the portal to another world), Doctor Who (the many headed robot and the arachnid girl) and even Star Wars (some of the creatures were rather reminiscent of the appalling Ewoks), but that aside it was a fun and original story with a kick-ass female times two, and I typically enjoy that kind of story.

As the blurb has it, Mae is missing her older sister who disappeared several years ago and all Abbie has is memories. Now Abbie's back, from inner space, she's just standing there with that ferocious look upon her face! She is telling fairy tales, and she is making poor Mae wail, but it turns out that Abbie isn't lying as Mae learns, up close and personal, when some of these creatures come over from the parallel work and start going after Mae.

Inevitably the sisters travel back to the other side where everything Abbie told her sister is confirmed, and Mae in turn confirms that she's just as awesome as her sister when it comes to being a strong, decisive, inventive, and imaginative young woman despite the odds. The artwork was really intriguing to me because it had elements of computer-generation and hand painting, so I am not sure how it was done, but I really liked it. I also like the script which was snappy and kept the story moving, but wasn't overly wise-ass or juvenile, and the female characters were portrayed as real females, not as pneumatic adolescent male fantasies, which was a big plus for me. This is a great fantasy, I enjoyed it very much and I look forward to the next volume.

Skin & Earth HC by Lights

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I have to say I was not impressed by this new-age-y comic from a singer who is evidently well-established, but of whom I'd never heard before. The story supposedly is supported by a dedicated soundtrack (a 14-track corresponding album) and there were 3D bar codes in the comic in various place which you were supposed to be able to scan with your phone and then go listen to (as I understood it), but every one that I scanned went to the same place, which was some sort of news page which offered no prospect of music that I could see - and I was not about to read through all the material in search of a song or two that ought to have been up front and center.

After the third time of going to the same web page from a different bar code, I gave up on this, forced to conclude that it was some sort of a bait and switch to get you reading somebody's web site! I got this review copy in electronic form, but there's no clickable link for the e-version! That seemed a bit antique to me. For that matter they could have included the songs right there in the e-version! But comic books are all about the print version, make no mistake, I guess comic book writers really don't like trees very much!

The comic itself wasn't any better. The artwork was fine enough, but the story was non-existent. As far as I could tell, it was supposed to be about a journey of self-discovery - a girl looking for hope in a hopeless world we're told, but if that's really the way you think, then you're already doomed.

Besides, the journey was far too boring and I gave up on it about halfway through. I think some writers view their own lives as way more interesting than they actually are, and can't wait to lay their personal story on as many others as they can. You could argue that this is what writers (prose, poetry or songs) do as their stock in trade, but I'd disagree.

If that is what you're going to do though, you'd better make the journey interesting. It can't just be a pictorial diary of your random thoughts which is what this felt like. I just read this one a short while ago and I literally cannot remember a single thing about it now. Obviously, it made no impression on me whatsoever! I wish the author all the best in her career, but I can't recommend this aspect of it.