Cuba My Revolution by Inverna Lockpez, Dean Hapiel, José Villarrubia

Rating: WORTHY!

Told in stark red and black, this is a story based on the writer's own life. In the story, 17-year-old Sonya has ambitions to be an artist in Habana, Cuba, but ends up joining the Castro revolution and becoming a doctor where she encounters the horrors of war during the Bay of Pigs debacle, and ends up being imprisoned as a CIA spy by her own fellow soldiers. She's tortured brutally, but eventually is released. Despite all of this and the now constant feeling of stress and insecurity, and despite what she sees happening to her country on a daily basis, she continues to believe in the revolution, but as six years slip by and nothing improves - in fact things only progressively become worse - she finally reconciles herself to leaving, and finds the opportunity to move to the USA.

This is what the real life artist and medical trainee did, and she says that the events depicted here were real, but some changes were made to the story. The story serves to show that any radical ideology on a national level like this necessarily becomes a brutal dictatorship and a series of pogroms no matter how idealistic it maybe have been in embryonic form, and no matter how well-intentioned its supporters were. The story is a depressing read, but essentially a true story and I commend it because there are lessons to be learned here.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Rordan, Robert Venditti, Atilla Futaki

Rating: WARTY!

I failed the original novel because it simply was not entertaining, and this is no better. It's the same as the novel so if you came to this via the movie, be prepared for the two to be nothing alike. The movie was significantly better, even though it was average for a movie - and just as racist as this novel.

There is no Gorgon in the novel, which was sad, nor is there a visit to the faux Parthenon in Nashville, and no fight with a hydra. There is no lightning bolt hidden in a shield here, and no wise-cracking Rosario Dawson playing Hades's wife, which was a real highlight in the movie. The final battle isn't between Luke and Percy, but between the token black guy and Percy. Zeus is dressed in a business suit, and in the one single touch I did appreciate, Poseidon is dressed as a surfer dude!

Grover is white in the graphic novel, so I guess they made him black in the movie for no other reason than the one Hollywood always employs: we must have a token black person in this movie so they can't say we're racist. Well guess what, guys - and let me put this in an 'in a world' scenario so you in Hollywood can grasp it - In a world where the vast majority of people are not white, anything that doesn't fairly represent those proportions is racist, period. Get a fucking clue. Even the US is a quarter non-white, so where was that represented in this book? Yeah, you know it.

Every single person in the entire graphic novel was white except for one token villain, who has daughter who was white! I was done right there. This novel sucked and should be boycotted.

Crossing Midnight Cut Here by Mike Carey, Jim Fern, José Villarrubia

Rating: WARTY!

This graphic novel made little sense. It looked interesting in the library from a quick flick through, but when I got it home and sat down to read it, it didn't hold up well, and was not very entertaining, although the artwork by Jim Fern and coloring by José Villarrubia were not bad. It's the tired trope of split twins, with nothing really new or original added.

It's supposedly set in Japan, but the characters nearly all look curiously western. It begins when someone makes a wish to the house spirits for a healthy child without knowing that the mom was bearing twins. The spirit who took the wish returns later after the children have grown some, to claim the daughter for his own. This spirit has power over knives, which makes for some excessive gore here and there. This is one story in which the pet dog doesn't make a miraculous escape.

From that point on, the story is a mess. There are claims not only on the daughter, but also on the son, from another quarter. There is a bizarre incident at the Nagasaki shrine which is also a portal to the other world. I managed to finish this volume and since I had taken two other volumes from the library (The Sword in the Soul and A Map of Midnight), I began on the next one, but I found I could not continue reading it very far. The story seemed to dwell on gore and obscurity and appeared to be going nowhere, so I gave up. I can't recommend this based on what I read.