Author: Orson Scott Card
Publisher: Marvel
Rating: WARTY!
Script: Christopher Yost
Art: Pascal Ferry
Color Art Frank D'Armata
Lettering VC's Cory Petit
Note that this graphic novel comes with parental advisory
For a review of the movie, see here.
Let's get this out of the way, about the author. According to wikipedia. Orson Scott Card, who is a Mormon by faith, has come out stridently against homosexuality in the past. Wikipedia reports:
In a 2008 essay opposing same-sex marriage, Card stated that he regarded any government that would attempt to recognize same-sex marriage as a "mortal enemy" that he would act to destroy. In 2009 he joined the board of directors of the National Organization for Marriage, a group that campaigns against same-sex marriage. Card resigned from the board in mid-2013
Good for him if Card has indeed thrown in his, er, cards, since it’s none of his business anyway, but I have to say I'm doubtful about such a sudden conversion, if that's what it was. I mention this because this comic book, unlike the movie, depicts the game-changing fight in the bathroom taking place between two naked boys, reminiscent of ancient Greek wrestling! I can’t help but wonder what Card was thinking about when he approved that, given his history! His original novel depicts a lot of male nudity so I've heard, but I'll see for myself when I review that this month. Or more accurately, I'll read for myself! I've already seen it in this version....
Card won the Hugo and the Nebula award for best novel in consecutive years, and to my knowledge, is the only writer to achieve this, so he's respected amongst his peers; however, from what I've read of his out-of-left-field political views (which is hilarious since he's right-wing!), and his homophobia, he seems like a truly misguided human being at best.
So here's the question: what does this have to do with reviewing his novels? I've read several reviews on this novel, both good and bad, and all-too-many of the negative reviews are reviewing him as a person, not the novel as a work of fiction. This is entirely inappropriate. Yes, he may be obnoxious; yes you may detest everything he stands for, but this has nothing to do with how well he's written his novel. Are we to assume that such reviewers boycott movies because an actor or a director in the movie is a homophobe? Do they boycott music because a musician has totally whack political views? I suspect they do not because most people tend to go for the easy target.
This review is about the graphic novel, not Orson Scott Card, and it will be brief, because I plan on reading the original novel this month and I'll do a much more in-depth review of that. So, review the writing, not the writer? That's not always as easy as it sounds because the two are inextricably linked in so many ways! If the writer fails, however, in his execution, in his plotting, in his characterization, in his world-building or in whatever; then he's fair game IMO.
So let's get on with it. To begin with, I'm a bit tired of military tales which show that the best way to form an effective team is to brutalize everyone. It's bad enough in the actual military, but it’s taken to ridiculous extremes in fiction, and this one is worse, because it’s a graphic novel. You definitely don’t want any young children having access to this.
Sample pages:
I did not like this graphic novel. There were multiple problems with it, and the most annoying of these was that any descriptive text in a cell was given a shaded background, thereby making it hard to read the first line (or the last line dependent upon in which direction it was shaded). I saw no point in that. In terms of dialog, it was sparse. There were rather bizarre interludes with a black background and white text which featured anonymous conversations that for me, contributed nothing. There were were many frames with no dialog at all, which contributed nothing from my PoV. The artwork was really good except that it was far too dark for my taste. Yeah, I know it's a dark novel, but I'd still like to see the images! Do we have to predictably and pedantically make every frame dark to ram it home to us how black things look for Ender? I don't think so!
Many cells had zero dialog or description, and a lot of this made the action rather unintelligible. I don't expect writing in very cell and conversation flooding everything: it's graphic novel for goodness sakes, but this misguided attempt at minimalism fell short, as far as I'm concerned, especially when the illustrations failed to illustrate.
I rate this graphic novel warty, but worth a glance for some of the artwork if you're interested in that. I'll hang my overall review of this on the actual novel, which was the primary medium, after all. That will be interesting for me, at least, to go that route since I've pretty much gone in reverse order in this: seeing the movie first, then the graphic novel, and finally, the actual novel.
