Starve Vol 1 by Brian Wood, Danijel Žeželj, Dave Stewart

Rating: WORTHY!

This was one of those advance review copies Net Galley offers as a 'read now', evidently because it isn't getting much attention. Unfortunately most of those are not very good, which is why they get little attention, but once in a while you can find one that is a worthy read, and I struck lucky on this occasion, because out of four such graphic novels I requested, three turned out to be pretty darned good, and this was one of them.

I was attracted to this one because of the unusual subject matter. This was a graphic novel about a chef, and it did not disappoint! Gavion Cruickshank was a TV chef, the owner and show-runner of the ironically-named Starve!, a TV ratings sensation, but he up and quit the show and disappeared for years. Eventually he was found hiding-out in Asia, and all-but blackmailed into coming back onto the show, where he finds himself now a competitor, under the direction of an old rival, and competing in a reckless, crazy, and sometimes literally brutal competition for top chef.

I'm a vegetarian, so I didn't appreciate the brutality of the show, but there really are things like that done in real life, and this was pure fiction, so I didn't let that get in the way of enjoying the inventiveness and break-neck pace of this story. I'm no relation to Brian Wood (to the best of my knowledge!), but I wouldn't mind being related to someone as creative as this.

While trying to reconnect with his grown-up daughter, and fend off his vicious ex-wife, Gavin has to create gourmet dishes from scratch which will charm the taste buds of the show's judges. And he has to do this in each of eight episodes. He manages to keep on top of things for the first three, depicted here, but the novel ends in a modest cliff-hanger. This ain't any TV chef you've seen!

The art work was sharply angular and darkly colored, and suited the story perfectly. it;s not the kind of artwork that is normally to my taste, but here it works and I appreciated that. I liked this one. I recommend it as a worthy read and wish the creative team the best of success with this series.

Demo Volume Two by Brian Wood

Title: Demo
Author: Brian Wood
Publisher: Warner Bros
Rating: WORTHY!

Art work by Becky Cloonan.
Lettering by Jared Fletcher.

This was different and a bit weird. It's volume two, but the stories are evidently unconnected, so you don't need to have read volume one before this one. The first two stories did nothing to sell this comic to me at all. There are six very short and unconnected stories in about 150 pages. Becky Cloonan's drawing is pretty decent - line drawing with some shading. There is no coloring, not even on the cover. I loved the way she rendered some stories, especially the third one titled Volume One Love Story (don't look for the titles to make sense!), wherein one of the characters is very reminiscent of the artist herself, and the fifth one, titled Stranded. These two were the only stories that I really enjoyed.

The first story concerned a San Francisco resident's prophetic dream of some accident occurring in a place she didn't know. Eventually, she discovers where the place is and goes there, and she gets an ending she doesn't expect, but her behavior in running off searching for a third party made no sense given the vision she'd dreamed.

Pangs is for fans of Jeffrey Dahmer and his ilk. I think. I can't say for certain! Volume One Love Story is about an inexplicably OCD woman who is magically able to give it all up, but there's no justification offered for how she came to be that way or how she was miraculously cured except for some magical deus ex post-it note solution. Waterbreather is a bit of a Man from Atlantis redux, but in reverse. Stranded is about time-travel (I think) and the miraculous if tardy undoing of past harms. The last story is about a very destructive relationship between two painfully-evident morons.

Brian Wood's story-telling was a bit suspect and patchy. Some of it made no sense or failed to go anywhere - at least, anywhere interesting. Some of it was so vague as to leave me wondering what the heck I'd just read, like the second story, Pangs (which was about the only one that did have a title which made sense, and which ironically was the one I liked least.

Becky Cloonan must love trees because she makes full use of the entire page - no wasted paper and gratuitous white space here, but the layout of the novel overall was poor. Yes, the chapters were labeled and the pages numbered, but there wasn't much of a transition between one story and another. There was a number, but no introductory page. This was strange because they'd put all the covers in the back of the book. I can't figure out why they didn't put the cover at the start of each story where it belonged.

I think maybe they were swept-up in the graphic trope of larding-up the back end-papers with extra art, and forgot about actually serving the reader. Some stories didn't even have the title, so I had to go back to the contents list each time to find the title for the story I was about to read.

As I mentioned, I really liked the third and the fifth, and I really didn't like the second and the last, which was titled Sad and Beautiful Life, and which incredibly seemed to be trying to justify co-dependent relationships. That's a no-no for me, but as with Pangs, the story was so vague as to be indecipherable. I had no idea what was really going on. Was this just an ordinary co-dependent relationship, or was there something supernatural happening between the couple like out of the movie Hancock? I have no idea. Given the fantasy and supernatural elements in the other stories, I'd guess there was something else going on, but it was never made clear what it was supposed to be.

As for the other two stories, the first, which as titled The Waking Life of Angels was okay. It was interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying, if very mildly amusing. The other one, titled Waterbreather was just odd, and neither really entertaining, nor really off-putting. If I'd read four good ones out of six, I would recommend this, but given that I only got two, I can't. You may find more to like, of course, and may dislike my favorites and enjoy ones I didn't get, but for me I can't recommend it.