Honor Girl by Maggie Thrash

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the first of two memoirs I shall be reviewing this month. The other was The Midwife by Jennifer Worth One is a regular chapter book, the other is this one: a graphic novel in which the artwork is rudimentary. It looks like pencil and crayon, and so it looks like a young kid did it, but the thing is that it works for the story and I enjoyed it. This is evidently a memoir about a summer girls camp which Maggie attended and developed a crush on one of the older girls. The story is by parts hilarious and tragic, fun and disturbing. The disturbing part is that anyone would send their young, impressionable daughter to such a psychotic place! But she survived and lived to tell the tale, and it was a most engrossing tale. It's over 260 pages, but it flew by, and I recommend this one.

The Rocketeer The Complete Adventures by Dave Stevens

Rating: WARTY!

I had mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand the story and artwork were pretty decent: well drawn and credible adventures for the period in which it was set. But on the other hand, the "hero" Cliff Secord, aka The Rocketeer, was a complete dick - or perhaps more in keeping with the era, he was a dashed cad and an utter bounder, don't you know!

There were also issues with the plot given how advanced German rocket technology was in World War Two, the issue ought to have been the other way around - the Americans stealing it from the Nazis (which is what they did after the war was over) - not the Nazis looking to steal it from Americans who were way behind them technologically!

Cliff Secord may have been heroic in his actions regarding his rocketeering activities, but I can't get past his jealousy and his OCD behavior towards Betty who was a loyal and decent friend and partner. He treated her abominably, and he never showed any sign that he was about to change. Worse than this, Betty repeatedly came to heel no matter how she was treated. On that basis, I can't recommend this graphic novel at all.

Rooted in King of the Rocket Men from the late forties, and Commando Cody from the early fifties (separate stories about different men who happened to wear exactly the same outfit!), I could have understood this if it had actually been written in the forties or fifties, but it wasn't. It was created in the eighties, so there really is no excuse for Cliff's domineering behavior or for Betty's meek, submissive acceptance of it. I've never seen the movie that came out of this, so I can't comment on that, but I can't condone a modern comic book in which the purported hero treats women this way.

I've seen reviews which try to white-wash this comic by appealing to the fact that it was an homage to Betty Page, but this doesn't excuse the treatment of this woman nor does it excuse a semi-naked Page every few pages, which does nothing to advance the story. I've also seen reviews which suggest that if only Stevens had been allowed to perpetuate these stereotypes, he would have had a chance to mature the characters, but the fact is that he had the chance in this series and he not only failed to address it, he also failed to redress it. The person who really needed to mature here wasn't Cliff Secord, it was Dave Stevens.

Mystique Ultimate Collection by Brian K Vaughan, Jorge Lucas, Michael Ryan, Manuel Garcia

Rating: WORTHY!

Originally created by artist David Cockrum, Mystique's "real" name is Raven Darkhölme, although she has many aliases, and no one really knows squat about her actual name, or her origins or how old she is - it would seem she's at least a century which begs the question as to why she would be interested in anyone of her own apparent age unless she simply wanted to get laid by a young stud. Like Logan, otherwise known as Wolverine, her youth is preserved by her mutation. In Logan's case it's his healing ability. In Mystique's case it's through her shape-shifting, so she sure doesn't look like she's a centenarian.

Being contrary, she rejects the use of the name 'Raven' in this volume, and is going about her routine business of assassinating people who harm mutants, when she finds herself about to be terminated. At the last minute (because rescuers never can be punctual), she's rescued by Magneto, which is a surprise to her because she thought he was dead; however, it's not Magneto, it's Charles Xavier. He's merely projecting Magneto into her brain in order to win her trust and effect the rescue. Well, he fails!

The deal is that he wants jobs done which he doesn't want tied back to him or his mutants, and Mystique represents the perfect undercover agent to carry out his wishes. If she were not wanted by every nation on the planet (except one!), she would have rejected his deal out of hand, but having a lifelong interest in self-preservation, she decides to throw her lot in with him at least for the time being especially since his wishes happen to coincide with her aims for once.

She begins carrying out ops for him which are rooted in the assassination of Prudence, an X-men undercover operative. Prudence was on the trail of a viral agent which has the power to kill everyone who has been inoculated against smallpox, which includes the entire US military, along with medical professionals and a host of other people. Smallpox is a horrible disease, and this mutant version is a huge threat. Mystique takes up the baton and flies with it. She's cool, exciting, inventive, resourceful and every bit the embodiment of a strong female character that I like. Plus she can literally kick ass. Her foes are a match for her (almost!) and the plots are pretty decent. I really enjoyed these stories.

This graphic novel had some truly breath-taking art between chapters done by Mike Mayhew, and though it was superlative, it wasn't so different from the regular panel art that it made me feel cheated as some comics do. Overall this novel was very well illustrated by Jorge Lucas, Michael Ryan, and Manuel Garcia. That George Lucas sure gets around doesn't he? LOL! I've been watching a show on Netflix titled Life which is about this cop who returns to the job after twelve years of false imprisonment for a triple-murder he didn't commit, and the name of the producer is Loucas George! You can't get away from the guy!

One thing I liked about the art is that it seemed a little less "sexploitive" than comic book art all-too-often is where a female character - super or otherwise - is concerned, so I appreciated that. That and the overall quality of the art and of course the excellent stories were what made this a worthy read.

Vögelein: Clockwork Faerie by Jane Irwin, Jeff Berndt

Rating: WORTHY!

This is the precursor to the volume I favorably reviewed back in November, 2014. It's about the titular 'fairy' who is clockwork, and it relates her origin story. It's interesting and I wasn't sure I truly liked all of it, but I liked enough to vote this one the same way I did the other one.

The story is titled "Vögelein" which means little bird and which, in the peculiar German language is pronounced like it's "Few Glean." I think German is an interesting exercise in paradox in that it has a mix of what might be described in genderist terms as masculine and feminine words, and I don't mean in a grammatical sense, but purely in how they sound when spoken. Some are very soft, and might be described poetically as effeminate, whereas others are very harsh sounding, and might be likewise described as macho. It's always struck me most when watching movies about World War Two, where these supposedly tough Aryan types were speaking such a soft language at times, and then could turn around and upbraid someone in much more brutal tones. The contrast fascinates me! It's definitely a beautiful language and a startling mix.

In this volume, we learn how Vögelein came to be, what she represents, and how hard it is for her to live her life when she's so dependent upon people who can easily take advantage of her need to be rewound every day. It was this which finally won me over to favorably rating this - the dilemma and the harsh existence she had been forced into by an act which started out as one of love. I liked the follow-up story better, but I also recommend this one. The author has a website that you might like to visit: http://www.vogelein.com/.

Ms Marvel Vol 1: No Normal by G Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona

Rating: WORTHY!

Admirably written by the talented G Willow Wilson, and nicely and amusingly illustrated by Adrian Alphona, the Ms. Marvel book is actually the first in the series - finally! I can't believe graphic novel writers make it so hard to figure out which collected volume is the first you should read. Is it such a problem to put a big "#1" of the front cover? LOL! It's a good story though, so I want to read more in this series. I think I've now read the first three (but who can say?!), and really liked one and three; two, not so much. Finally I got to learn how Kamala Khan got her super power - and it was by the oddball method of becoming enveloped in an unexplained fog which wafted through the city!

Working on an idea for a super hero novel (not graphic, just text!) myself, I've started thinking about the existing ones a little bit more closely. Becoming empowered by a fog struck me as decidedly odd, because everyone in the city (this is set in Jersey City; Marvel seems obsessed with the east coast for some reason) was likewise exposed, yet only Kamala seems to have developed any super powers from it. Why? This goes not only unexplained, but unexplored. I found it sad that she wasn't curious about why she alone was blessed or cursed. Thinking about other heroes, only one immediately comes to mind - although I'm sure there are more - who developed his power in a way parallel to Kamala, and The Hulk really goes unexplained too, so this is nothing new.

I mean, how did Bruce Banner change, and no one else exposed to gamma rays did? Maybe it's because no one had the exposure he did, yet we're all exposed to gamma rays from space - fortunately not to a high degree. The fact remained that it was he who survived and developed his...condition. Spider-man is a similar case, but though many are bitten by spiders, none that I know of have been bitten by a radioactive spider! Superman doesn't count because he isn't special - anyone from Krypton would have his powers if they came to Earth, as his story shows. Batman and Iron Man are self-made, so they're responsible for their "power". Thor is just like Superman in many regards, so nothing to be learned there. Wonder Woman is also in that category. Green Lantern got his power because he was chosen and imbued with it, just as was Captain America, although in a different manner. Again, anyone in theory could have had their power. So we're back to Kamala being special in an undefined way which few other heroes are. Unless of course she was chosen somehow, but we're left with these unanswered questions, which make her very intriguing to me.

Moving on from the receipt of the power, we immediately get to the story of how she recognized it and learned to live and work with it, which I thought was really well done in this book. It felt real, and natural and organic, and it made for a fun and engaging story, especially since it's tied, in many ways, to her Muslim upbringing, her distance from her traditional parents - and from her school-friends, and her desire to be "normal" yet be able to use her gift to help others. I loved this story and recommend it as a great start to the series. I was unimpressed by volume two, especially the artwork. Volume three was a much more impressive and very amusing volume. I review both of those separately elsewhere on my blog.

Sandman Preludes & Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman, Sam Keith, Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones

Rating: WARTY!

After negatively rating Sandman Overture, I was urged by a Goodreads acquaintance to read this one, which precedes it and which was supposedly better. It wasn't! Not from my perspective; for me, it was confused and unappealing. If I'd asked my youngest son to write a story, and make it as weird and gross as he could, I'd have got something just like this.

Even the titles are confused. How anything can precede an 'overture' I have no idea, unless it's taking your ticket at the door hand having an usher show you to your seat, which wasn't what happened here. This was more like having someone shred your ticket at the door and having Roderick Usher show you to his sister's tomb where she's grossly rotting. 'Prelude' and 'overture' really mean the same thing - a light introduction to something more weighty, but neither of these graphic novels had any weight as insofar as it impacted upon me.

There was only one part of this which made sense, the interlude (as long as we're employing a musical motif!) wherein the Sandman, who honestly looks like a cross between Neil Gaiman and Alice Cooper as depicted here, interacted with John Constantine. That story made sense after a fashion, but it was boring, and it's like the writer and artists knew this and tried to punch it up, but instead of achieving that by making it interesting or exciting, they simply piled on the gross, and declared themselves happy with it. I wasn't.

You'd think someone with the Sandman's powers would be able to find his own sand pouch, but no! After that we went downhill again and I gave up on this when the epilogue appeared about two-thirds the way through, I don't read epilogues any more than I read prologues.

So this was a fail as far as I'm concerned and I'd just like to take this opportunity to send out a general message, not aimed at anyone in particular. You may well adore Neil Gaiman, but I am done with him for now at least. I have literally scores of other authors I want to read instead. I know you mean well and it's admirable that you want to share your enthusiasm for an author. That's why we amateurs do these reviews, after all. We sure get no other reward for it!

But no more Neil Gaiman recommendations and while we're on the topic of advice, no more strident attempts at belittling my views by telling me that I can't review a novel if I haven't finished it, or by suggesting that I just haven't read the right work from author X, and if only I'll just read book Y I'll be in seventh heaven!

If I don't like an author, then reading more of what that author wrote isn't going to make me suddenly like them! No, it's just going to irritate me and worse, waste my time. To paraphrase Gotye, Neil Gaiman is just some author that I used to know, and now I'm moving on to other, potentially more rewarding stories.

Ms Marvel Vol 5 Super Famous by G Willow Wilson, Takeshi Miyazawa

Rating: WORTHY!

I reviewed the previous volume to this (I think - Graphic novel creators make it far harder than it ought to be to follow a series!) back in July of 2015 to mark the end of my year of two reviews per day every single day without a miss, which was stressful, but a great discipline. I wasn't impressed with the comic because the artwork was atrocious, but I was impressed - as much as not, by the young Ms Marvel character, Kamala Khan.

I started in on this graphic novel and found it refreshing. The young Ms Marvel is more like Spiderman in that she's young, has real relationship issues, and has to cope with demands on her time which interfere with her super-heroics. It's also set in a Marvel world where the usual Avengers super heroes have been switched around a bit. Thor is now a female (and still evidently named Thor, not Thora!). Spider-Man wears black instead of his usual red and blue. Captain America is black, but having said that, there's a disturbing lack of African American and Asian American presence in this story.

Ms Marvel is a young teen who is a Muslim (yet she never actually practices her religion), but there's also a Captain Marvel - who I assume we'll see in the movie theaters at some point, although the date keeps on being pushed back, from July 2018 to November, and then to March 2019. Seriously? At least we get Wonder Woman next year, although how good that will be depends on how willing DC is to totally screw-up yet another of their properties. They seem to be batting a thousand so far in that department ever since Chris Nolan finished his excellent Batman trilogy.

I read an earlier comic in this series where I really didn't like the artwork and found some of the story condescending, but this one seems much better and the artwork is far better. The comic was also really funny. Kamala's ex-boyfriend creates two clones of Kamala using technology left behind by Loki, and these clones start to multiply and take over the city. One of them is supposed to represent the scholarly Kamala while she's off super hero-ing. This one can say only "Easy-peasey" and marches around hilariously. The other is supposed to represent the good sister Kamala attending on her brother's wedding preparations, and has only one line related to the wedding. No one seems to think there's anything wrong here! Until the clones start flooding the city.

This one was funny, and very entertaining, and unlike the previous one, made me want to read more in this series.

Turncoat by Ryan O'Sullivan, Plaid Klaus

Rating: WORTHY!

Note that this was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher. More info about this graphic novel can be had at http://turncoatcomic.com/

This tongue-in-cheek and highly amusing super hero graphic novel features Duke and Sharon, who don't get along, which more than likely explains why they're not married any more. When they were together, she shot him fifteen times, putting him in hospital for eighteen months, and filed for divorce. That ought to tell you how infuriating he is. Now he has a restraining order against him, but the real problem here is that she and Duke work for different teams in super hero control programs - clandestine operations designed to cull super heroes before they proliferate everywhere, and thereby keep them down to a manageable number. Let's face it, someone has to do this.

Now though, it looks like Sharon has taken to swooping in on Duke's sanctions, completing them before he does, and getting all the credit. She even took out The Savior, who'd been widely considered not only untouchable, but also invulnerable. Maybe there's more going on here than first meets the eye mask. Like, are these heroes based loosely on well-known super heroes from Marvel and DC, or does it just look that way?

Duke really isn't very good at his job despite his profound detestation of everything about super heroes, so he's not likely to figure it out. He's about as on the edge and you can get without flying off from centrifugal force (and to those pseudo scientists who don't think centrifugal force isn't real, I invite them to hang on to edge of something that can spin, get it spinning really fast, and then let go. If they survive, they can tell me how it doesn't really exist). Duke's also really annoying in an amusing (for the reader) and infuriating (for his fellow characters) way.

Sharon, on the other hand, looks like a kick-ass heroic figure. She'd merit a story all of her own. But she's retired - isn't she? Told with a quirky sense of humor and with a sharp eye for comic book super hero conventions (not those conventions, the other ones), this book had me enthralled and I read it faster than the flash. With a name like Plaid, how could he not be an artist? The artwork was perfect for the tone and genre and the story was brilliant. The only complaint I have is that the lettering was often a bit on the small side and too 'plump' to make out characters distinctly from time to time. It was nothing bad enough to spoil the story, though, so i recommend this unreservedly.

RE*PRO*DUCT Vol 1 by Austin Wilson

Rating: WARTY!

Note: I got this advance review copy from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

From the blurb, this sounded like a good idea for a story, but the execution of it was less than satisfactory for me. It's set in a future world where robots, we're told, have been legally granted the right to life. I have no idea what the author intended that to mean, worded as it is. I mean, is it possibly they could have been illegally granted the right to life?! I took it as meaning simply that they'd been accepted as people. The problem is with defining what 'person' and 'right to life' mean in reference to a mechanical being. Does it mean for example, that they're immortal, always being able to get upgrades and new parts? Does it mean we can make any robot and regard it as a person with no regulation or control? How do the robots come into being in the first place? How did they break out from servitude (or even slavery) into a world of equality? Who instigated it?

There are real issues here which humanity may well end-up facing within the next half century, but they were not explored at all. There is nothing behind that curtain, and instead of anything deep, we got a novel where "the best approximation of a personality" seems to be directly equated with juvenile frat-boy mentality. As such, the story offers nothing which isn't found in those dumb cartoon fathers such as the moronic Homer Simpson and that dickhead from Family Guy, neither of which I can stand.

This isn't the only thing which was confusing in the blurb. The blurb also tells us that "Their intelligence is not artificial, and it may not be the best approximation of a personality." Intelligence and personality are not the same thing, which is why we have a different word for each of them. Phrased the way it is, though, I have no good idea what that means, and it isn't explained in the story. How is it not artificial? Do they use human brains or are we to understand that their artificial intelligence evolved independently of human efforts to develop it? Do they reproduce somehow? None of this is explained which is a bit of a gap given that this is volume one of a series. It felt like those shows which take a human world, and install a non-human character, yet make no allowances for it. A good example of this is Sponge Bob Squarepants, where despite living under the ocean, life is exactly like it is on land in an atmosphere of air, so we get ridiculous events like Sponge Bob taking a shower or working at a grill with flames licking up in the saltwater, which is completely insane, of course. People accept this inanity because it can be funny when it's not maudlin (and if you turn off parts of your brain!), but I expected better from a graphic novel like this.

The art work was so-so, consisting of line drawings with a monochromatic palette which changed hue from one section to another of the book. I have no idea what the colors signified - if anything. The stories were uninspired and uninspiring, and this was mainly because I failed to see how, if frat boys had been substituted for these robots, the story would have been any different. In short, the novel contained nothing I'd hoped for in a sci-fi story, and nothing I'd been half-way led to expect given the blurb, so I cannot recommend this at all.

Wynonna Earp Vol 1 Homecoming by Beau Smith

Rating: WARTY!

This sounded like it might be interesting, or it might be a disaster, and it pains me to report that it was the second of these two options. I counted twenty-seven panels containing blood in the first thirty-two pages. That's almost one per page, which is way too many for a story which makes little sense, appears to be going nowhere, and doesn't even have decent dialog or some humor to leaven it. Essentially it's just another Walking Dead style story with nothing new to offer. Even the art was pretty much Walking Dead. The only "improvement" it had was that it was in color. Don't let the misrepresentative front cover image fool you. the art is nothing like that quality inside.

The main Character, Wynonna Earp is, we're told, descended from Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, presumably with his second wife, Josephine Sarah Marcus, but the couple had no children, and neither did Wyatt with his first wife. I was prepared to overlook that if the story had turned out to be good, but it didn't.

The basis of it is that the United States Marshals Service 'Black Badge' division was set up to fight paranormal creatures. The only ones we see here - at least in the part I read - were 'chupacabra' critters, aka goat eaters. Why, in these stories, the goat eaters never eat goats but always humans is a complete mystery, but the only reason to avoid Wynonna Earp at all cost is that she's boring. I can't recommend this based on the the portion of it that I read, which is more than enough for my taste.

You know, it makes no difference in stories like this if the para-abnormals are zombies, or vampires, or were-wolves, or whatever, the story is always the same. I like my characters and my stories to have something more going for them than endless skulls split with bullets or cleavers, and this failed dismally. It's long past time that writers of this genre came up with something new to say.

Oh Joy Sex Toy Vol 3 by Erika Moen, Matthew Nolan

Rating: WORTHY!

Erratum:
p60 "aught" means nothing! The word required is "ought" as in 'feel compelled to'!

Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan seem like a fun couple who have made an industry out of graphic - and I mean graphic! - adventures with sex toys. This is an adult publication, be warned, with no holds barred - or anything else for that matter. It's also a whopping three hundred pages, so there's a heck of a lot here.

The discussions are frank, open, amusing, and detailed, and they cover topics which are important and far too often badly served in a fundamentalist and conservative nation like the USA: sexual health (both disease-wise and exercise-wise), sex education (inlcuding book reviews), and physical/mechanical sex aids. I've never been a fan of toys myself, but this is evidently a fifteen billion dollar industry, so clearly many people are, and it was climbing out of the closet and into the mainstream, so get used to it!

I don't know anything about Matthew Nolan,but I'm vaguely familiar (in an innocent way) with Erika Moen's work. She's an artist who's been involved in comic books and other art endeavors. She's also a member of Periscope studios which has had a hand in some Wonder Woman comics, so it's good to know that super hero is in highly capable hands if that team is anything like Erika, who reminds me of one or other of the two goal keepers in my Seasoning novel. It's good to know that goal mouth is in capable hands, too!

On a point of order, I have to disagree with her assertion on page 53 that the particular item under review will open up her "world of wanking opportunities". I contend that female cannot truly 'wank' unless she is unusually well-endowed clitorally-speaking. It's just not physically possible although I don't doubt it's fun to try! Masturbate yes! Wank? Not really! LOL! However in the interests of the Equal Right-On! Amendment, women are most welcome to go for it!

I have to say that a lot of what's in here (I'm talking about sex advice and discussion of sexual disease and medical conditions, not the product reviews) is common sense and common knowledge - at least it ought to be common knowledge, but that's just the problem. Because sex has been treated as such a tabu subject, nowhere near enough people are educated on these topics. This is why knowledgeable and responsible publications like this are so important.

This kind of graphic novel isn't for me, and some parts of it felt incredibly naive and gullible (notably the two sections on porn films, where in the one they believed it wasn't staged, and in the other they seemed to be polishing the whole porn industry with a huge shine based on one particular filming session they'd witnessed).

This is aimed at sex positivity, and I can understand that, so I didn't expect anything truly negative from it, but it seems to me they're under-serving their readers if they don't look at the downside of things as well as the upside. They do review a book which touches on some of those stories but it's aimed not at how the porn business works, but at how some performers coped with balancing their professional life with their private life.

The last third of it is guest comic strips, and they cover a variety of topics all related to sex. I didn't find these as amusing as the first two hundred pages, except for Donut's Cream For You which I thought was hilarious. My biggest concern over these though, was that they were heavily biased towards trim Caucasian couples and where women were involved they seemed to be almost exclusively slim and comic-book curvy. While that's common in comic books (and on TV and in the movies and in literature), it's not right, and in a graphic novel like this, which is all about inclusivity, they seemed inappropriate in a way which had nothing to do with their subject matter!

I haven't read the previous two volumes in this series, so perhaps they have a slightly different take on things, but the feeling I have is that they would be very much like this one in tone and approach. That said, I don't doubt that these volumes will be useful and helpful to many people so I have no problem recommending this one. We don't need less of this, we need more! But we also need balance, so keep that in mind, and enjoy!

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Storm Surge by Chuck Dixon, Rik Hoskin, Andres Ponce

Rating: WARTY!

Note that this is an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This graphic novel, which is confused at best, attracted me because the Frankenstein idea is a compelling one even though I haven't had the best relationship with novels on this topic. The problem with this one is that it misrepresents itself. It really had far less to do with Frankenstein than it did with a zombie apocalypse, and if I'd known that's all it was, I would never have asked to read it in the first place.

Written by Dixon and Hoskins, and illustrated by Ponce, this has nothing to do with the original Frankenstein novel which I reviewed back in January of 2014. It's based on Dean Koontz's series of a purportedly reinvented Frankenstein, which failed to live when electrified in its TV incarnation. In it, the "monster" is the hero and Frankie-ducks is the villain (but wasn't that the original story?! LOL!). Note that there never was a 'monster' in Shelley's creation - it was a "creature" - but there isn't a lot of creation going on here. Because American authors are, based on available evidence, largely incapable of writing stories set anywhere other than the USA, this all takes place in New Orleans, during Katrina. That felt highly inappropriate and disrespectful to me

This Victor Frankenstein keeps creating females named Erika. I'm not making this up - Dean Koontz evidently is! In this volume, which is the only one I've read, we're not told why he's doing this, nor why he created a portal to another universe. Instead we learn that he has a whole bunch of naked Erikas bottled (literally) downstairs, which he can activate whenever he wants. The current living one is number five, and she is quite evidently there only as eye-candy, sporting herself in flimsy, clinging, split-sided dresses and intent solely on escape. It's not an attractive proposition and would likely have shocked Mary Shelley, no matter how liberal and progressive she may have been for her time.

The story is largely incoherent, featuring multiple parallel worlds, one of which is undergoing a festering outbreak of zombies. Of all the parallel worlds in all the galaxies in all the universe, I had to be thrown into this one! Why Frankie-ducks feels compelled to take off after Erika 5 when he has a couple of dozen more in his basement is unexplained. Why there are zombies running amok in a flooded New Orleans is unexplained, but it has something to do with electricity, which ironically is something this novel fails to elicit.

It's only a hundred and thirty-some pages, but I couldn't finish it. It was boring, and the art work nondescript. The exploitation of women particularly in the form of Erika, a leading female once again in need of a muscular man to both validate and rescue her, was rife and obnoxious, which I admit seems inevitable in comic books, but it doesn't have to be that way if we chose not to let it, and I sure don't have to support this kind of thing. I cannot recommend this, nor anything like this.

Who Killed Kurt Cobain?: The Story of Boddah by Nicolas Otéro

Rating: WARTY!

Note that this was an advance review copy of a graphic novel for which I thank the publisher.

While I was glad to have the chance to read this, I have to confess up front that I was disappointed. The title makes no sense. We know who killed Cobain. The artwork for the most part was uninspired and even perfunctory, and the story felt too fanciful. Kurt Cobain had an imaginary childhood friend named Boddah, and he wrote a note to this character before he shot himself, leaving the note behind, along with his wife and young daughter.

I'm not someone who thinks that actors and musicians somehow get in touch with the mystical through drug use. I think they're simply juvenile, spoiled, and selfish morons who are often delusional. You can argue that as adults they're in charge of what happens to their bodies, but I don't think you can divorce the adult from the child, not when the child has experiences like Cobain did. He needed a better intervention than the one he got, for sure.

I don't think that Cobain was particularly brilliant or insightful or that his music was revolutionary or particularly special. It was just part of a genre, but in his case, it was magnified and amplified by his life, yet we see none of that here. He may as well not even have been a musician at all for as little reference as we got to his music in this story. I do see how people clambered aboard his bandwagon, because we see this routinely amongst humans. We're very much sheep who are drawn to cults and gangs, and clubs and societies, and to mindlessly jumping aboard bandwagons. Everyone wants to feel special which is paradoxically why we see this herding instinct so routinely.

While I wouldn't go as far as the blurb and claim Cobain is "modern rock's greatest icon" (Google puts him halfway down the first page of images!), it's not at issue that Cobain was talented and had something to say; the only curious thing I find was that evidently he didn't feel this way about himself. That would have been worth exploring, because there's no mystery about his suicide. It was entirely predictable and could have been prevented, but it was inevitable given his circumstances. Preventing it would have required a lot more care, love and real attention than was available to him. Given how hell-bent he was on self-destruction, it may be that no amount could have saved him, but we'll never know.

What I don't understand is the lemming-like rush to label these people heroes and spirit guides to the unknown. They're not. They're sick, troubled children who need help. In his case, heroic would have entailed his giving up drugs, getting treatment for his depression, and taking care of his daughter. The route he took was not heroic; it was cowardly, leaving the child to the single parenting of a woman who has evidenced pretty much as many issues as Cobain did. In many ways she become the hero, sadly fallible as that hero was, yet she gets nowhere near the attention Cobain did. Heroic would have been making a super-human effort to give his daughter a role model of how to cope and make a life, so that she doesn't go down the same drain he did. In that, he failed.

But this is a review of the graphic novel, not the life it depicts, and for me, that also failed. Yes, it told his story from a certain perspective, but it was scrappy and full of gratuitous flourishes. In my opinion, it focused foolishly on the destruction, not on the creation, on a person's weaknesses, not on his strengths - his music. The blurb claims the story is told from the perspective of the imaginary friend, made real here, but that's not the impression I got. Some of the drawings were great, but for the most part, they were so sloppy and indistinct that sometimes it was hard to tell if it was the imaginary friend or Cobain talking, and perhaps that was intentional, because in the end, there was no friend. There was only Cobain alone.

I can't recommend this because I don't see what this gave us that we didn't have before, other than an excessive amount of gratuitous nudity and gore, and none of that is revelatory these days, I'm sorry to observe.

Who is AC? by Hope Larson, Tintin Pantoja

Rating: WORTHY!

Normally I avoid like the plague any novel which has been praised by Kirkus for no other reason than that Kirkus pretty much never met a novel they didn't like, so their reviews are completely worthless and I don't trust 'em! I also liked this novel despite the fact that the author is an I sneer (or is that Eisner?) award winner. Another group of novels I avoid are those which have won awards and especially those which have won Newberys, so I was good there because this one hasn't won such an award - or if it has, I'm unaware of it at this time! Fortunately, this enabled me to read this and I did not regret it.

We know who AC is before she does! AC is a kick-ass, young black female who somehow has super powers transferred to her via her phone while flying to her new home - but the charming thing about her is that she was kick-ass before she ever got her powers. Disgusting and inappropriate as this is given our age difference, I fell in love with Rhea (huge spoiler, that's her real name!!) pretty much from flicking through a few of the pages in the library, and I fell hopelessly in love when I finally got home and read it.

Rhea has a slightly unstable life, but she knows what she wants. She writes fiction and sells it through her friend who owns a small local bookstore. She copies these at a copy shop and binds and pays for them with her own hard-saved cash. Unfortunately, one night she leaves something behind and when she returns to get it, she discovers that the shop is being held up! She plucks up the courage to act, and finds herself transformed into a super hero who would give Hit Girl a run for her money. But this action creates its own problems which AC aka Rhea has to face.

I loved the illustration by Tintin Pantoja, and the writing by Hope Larson was tight and funny, and realistic. I definitely want to read more about this character, and I recommend this as a worthy read.

Einstein by Corinne Maier, Anne Simon

Rating: WORTHY!

I got this from the local library and it was a fun read. It's a great introduction to Einstein, and though it feels that we're rushing through his life while reading this, he did lead a long, full, and very complex life. This bio touches on every important aspect of it, including those which do not present Einstein in a brilliant light. It conveys a little bit of his science, but in a very soft way. This is not the place to really learn anything, even in a simplistic form, of what he accomplished.

It is a good starting point if you're interested in Einstein, his era, or why he became such a renowned figure. In that regard, a small bibliography would have been nice, but there isn't one! The story is still interesting, covers a lot, and is a great lead in to further study or reading. The color drawings are quite simplistic - more scribbles than art, but still they serve their purpose. The authors of this one have written at least two more, about Freud and Marx. It sure would be nice if they wrote a similar number about women.

That said, I recommend this for children and even adults if they want to get an introduction to the man and a very basic groundwork of what he achieved and what he stood for.

Will & Whit by Laura Lee Gulledge

Rating: WORTHY!

I found this in the library and it looked good at first glance. The artwork was cool and interesting, and the story looked entertaining. When I started in on it this morning, it proved to be every bit as entertaining as it promised – which is always a nice feeling to have delivered between the covers! I have to say, full disclosure, that the author suckered me in. The story is set in Charlottesville, Va, where I’ve lived, and within the first few pages there was not only a mention of Doctor Who, but a quote from one of my favorite characters from that show, Sally Sparrow! Way to lure me!

It wasn’t all plain sailing though. The ending was a bit trite and predictable, and seemed to center around the main character miraculously getting over herself and finding validation from nothing more than a guy liking her, which rather sold her out in my opinion, but other than that, it was entertaining and the artwork remarkable.

The main character, Will, is nyctophobic, and has been ever since childhood. She sees some really interesting shapes in the dark, very few of which are out-and-out scary, but some are definitely on the creepy side. Others are truly works of art, and if I saw them, I’d find them fascinating, but Will doesn’t seem to pay that much attention to them despite her fear. Or maybe it’s because of it.

Talking of which, apparently no one locks their doors in this town? That wasn't my experience I'm happy to report! Will is able to go over to her friend Autumn’s house, enter the house, go upstairs, and wake up her friend. That really creeped me out. I seriously hope people do not live in that manner. That person entering the house and going to the teenager’s bedroom might not have been one of her friends.

There was more than one incident of this warped nature. Three friends, Autumn, Noel, and Will take a trip down the river on air mattresses with Noel’s thirteen-year-old sister Reese, who can’t swim. She’s tipped into the water by Noel, who thinks it’s a great joke. The water is extremely shallow at that point, but Reese didn’t know it, and Will never said a word to Noel about how cruel that was, despite her own experience with fear. I have to say that made me wonder about Will. Overall, I rather liked her, but she made that hard to do sometimes, especially when she appeared really dumb with regard to this guy liking her. She was blithely unaware of it, despite herself having advised Autumn of Noel's liking for her, of which Autumn was blithely unaware. What’s with the too-dumb-to-see motif?

We need to get away from the tired trope that girls are too stupid to realize a guy likes them. Yes, I'm sure there are some who are, but you'd think it was every other woman if you judged them by how many times this cliché is played out in novels. It's tedious and it makes the girl look stupid. Maybe you can argue that Will is so self-absorbed by grief over her parents' deaths (a year previously) that she's inured to the attention, but she sure didn’t seem like she was that badly-off for the most part. Besides, this behavior says a volume of other things about the character that are equally off-putting, and if she's that far enveloped in grief, then she sure as hell isn’t going to get over it in the course of a couple of days, as is depicted here!

That said, this novel was interesting, the people were pleasingly and refreshingly not your usual run-of-the-mill types (apart from the stereotypical blindness to attention from the other gender), and the story worked, so I consider it a worthy read.

City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau, Dallas Middaugh, Niklas Asker

Rating: WORTHY!

I tried this novel in the form of an audiobook not long ago and was disappointed in it, which itself was a disappointment because the premise is an intriguing one. When I saw the graphic novel version on the shelf at my lovely loquacious local library, I decided this was the way to go, and I was not wrong. I really enjoyed the novel in this version. The story was adapted by Dallas Middaugh, who evidently hails from the Slash & Burn school of adaptation, because this was stripped right down to the bone. This might not appeal to everyone, but it appealed to me because my biggest problem with the audiobook was how much it ramble and meandered. The art work by Niklas Asker was fine.

The story is, I assume, aimed at middle-grade readers, since the main characters featured here were quite young. Whether they match the age as envisioned by the original author I can't say. The City of Ember is in perpetual darkness and relies on an increasingly unreliable electrical system to keep it lit during the "day." The citizens lead deprived and unhappy lives, constantly unhappy and often short of food. Corruption is rampant. They're assigned work at a young age, and have no choice in their occupation. Our two main characters, Lina and Doon (Lorna Doone anyone?!) however, buck the system and exchange jobs, both getting the one they preferred, but their collaboration doesn't end there.

The two of them start feeling like there are secrets being kept and that living this life in this city isn't all they and their fellow citizens were meant for. They pursue their suspicions and discover an amazing secret. Amazing to them, that is! It's pretty obvious to the reader by then what's going on. The 'ending' was beautiful. I put it in quotes because of course it's not an ending: it's the start of a series. Yet despite that awful and debilitating drawback, I recommend this graphic novel as a worthy read.

Good as Lily by Derek Kirk Kim, Jesse Hamm

Rating: WARTY!

This is a graphic novel which is well illustrated and decently written but I had some problems with it. For one, there is a disconnect between the cover image and the interior images. If this were a novel, I could understand such a difference (between the cover and the character description inside) because the author has no say in the cover and the cover artist (in my experience) either has no clue what the novel is about, or simply doesn't care.

This is why I pay little attention to the cover of a novel, but with a graphic novel, it's different: the creators also do the cover, so why the cover image shows one body style and the interior a completely different one is as inexplicable as it is inexcusable to me. The cover image matches the text in that the main character, Grace, is "chubby" (to use a term employed in the novel). The interior images show a slim main character, which makes no sense when she's described (even vindictively) as chubby. Did the artist not read the novel until it came down to finally painting the cover?! Given this disconnect, parts of the story make no sense.

I'm typically interested in time-travel novels, and this one is a such a story in a sense. Grace is evidently a 2^nd gen Korean teen living in the US. Her parents speak an oddball brand of English which I associate with racist stereotypes. Yes, I know the author, at least as judged from his last name, may well have Korean ancestry, but this doesn't excuse him from employing racial stereotypes. The mom and dad also run a convenience store. Seriously? Could we not get away from that and have them do something non-stereotypical or must everyone be pigeon-holed? This story makes the same mistake that stories featuring western characters do: it's all Caucasian, with only a token sprinkle of Asian and African. This story puts that in reverse: it's all Korean, with a token sprinkle of Caucasian. That doesn't make things better; it makes them just as racist.

On her eighteenth birthday, Grace breaks a piñata, and soon discovers that she has somehow unleashed three other versions of herself: a six-year-old, a twenty-nine-year old, and an elderly one. Despite the fact that Grace's life seems to be well on track and she's heading to Stanford after graduation, she seems to be inexplicably in disarray. She's unhappy with her lot, yet we're offered no valid reason whatsoever as to why this is. The only hint comes late in the novel and is embedded in the title: Grace had an older sister, Lily, who died young. I guess Grace felt like she never measured up to Lily, but since Lily died young there never was anything to measure up to in any practical sense, and nowhere in the novel do we ever get any real sense that Grace's problems lie with her parents' love or with her prematurely-deceased sibling.

The novel is very much like the movie Heart and Souls, wherein several recently deceased people attach themselves to a still-living guy and he, resentfully, has to help them complete unfinished business before they can move on in the afterlife. The same thing applies to Grace's three visitors. They have something to do and it's not clear what. At random points in the story, they disappear one-by-one having completed whatever it is they needed to, but the story is so vague about what it is, we get only the haziest notion of what they accomplished that helped them graduate, and so we receive no solid sense of closure for each of these phases of Grace's life.

For me, the biggest problem though, and why I'm rating this negatively, is Grace herself. We're told that she's going to Stanford, but never does she come off as very smart, or creative, or imaginative. Never do we get any idea as to why she's so down on herself and she never tries to figure it out, smart as she's supposed to be. When the school play production runs into a roadblock, she fails to apply her intellect, and fails to solve it. We're never told why so much money is needed to put on this play, or why inexpensive minimalist solutions wouldn't work.

When the school budget is cut and the golf team survives while the arts are cut, no-one organizes any sort of protest. The 'solutions' run to juvenile car washes and bake sales instead of having people simply approach local businesses and ask for donations of time, talent, or necessary items. There's no way they can earn thirty thousand dollars this way, and there's no justification given as to why thirty grand is better spent on producing this play than in being applied to a more worthy or more encompassing cause.

Grace is also pretty dumb about the guy who's interested in her. It's the tired old chestnut of lifelong best friends not realizing they're destined to be together. It's been done to death, and we're offered nothing new or original here: no twist, no great insights, no passion, no creative interactions, no imagination, and no romance. It's boring and uninventive, and I can't recommend this novel.

The Merchant of Venice (Manga Shakespeare) Richard Appignanesi, Faye Yong

Rating: WORTHY!

I found this at my most excellent library just sitting on the shelf begging to be read. It was adapted from Shakespeare's original and illustrated in an odd elfin-style by Faye Yong. The story was adapted (this typically means trimmed) to fit this format by Richard Appignanesi.

The story was eminently readable and for the most part delightfully illustrated, although the occasional image here and there seemed a bit off to me. The drawings are black and white line-drawings with some grayscale shading, and with a handful of color introductory pages at the beginning, to identify the cast.

The story begins with Bassanio, a Venetian noble, trying to marry Portia, but he has no money. Most of it he spent on wine, women, and song. The rest he just wasted. I'm kidding. Or maybe not: he did squander it one way or another, and now finds that he must get his hands on 3,000 ducats to woo his chosen maiden. Ducats were so named because they were the Duke's coinage and this courting price was something like 80,000 dollars in today's currency (assuming my math is any good, but be warned that it usually isn't). Those Belmont stakes are pretty high you know!

Antonio, the Merchant of Venice, agrees to bail his friend out (yet again), but all his money is tied-up in his shipping ventures. He does agree to underwrite him if he can find a money-lender who will take on the debt. Thus we meet Shylock, a Jewish "banker" who agrees as long as Antonio, who liked Jews about as much as Heinrich Himmler did, guarantees the loan and agrees, famously, to allow Shylock to take a pound of Antonio's flesh if Bassanio defaults.

Over in Portia territory, Bassanio has to contend with Portia's father's will, whereby a suitor must chose from one of three caskets labeled with a taunt rather than the contents. One casket is gold, one silver, and the third lead. Only one of them, however, contains any treasure, in the form of an image of Portia. If the prospective husband picks that one, he wins her hand. Those Venetians, I swear to gold!

Italian loving, had me a blast!
Cruising canals, happened so fast!
I met a girl crazed as can be!
She had me chose, from caskets three!
Venetian days drifting away to, oh oh those Venetian ni-ights!
Tell me more, tell me more, what was top of the picks?
Tell me more, tell me more, like did you get the pix?

The gold casket is labeled: He who chooses me will get what many men want. The silver is inscribed: He who chooses me will get what he deserves, and the lead one says: He who chooses me must give and risk all he has. The Prince of Morocco chooses the gold casket and fails ("All that glisters is not gold"). The Prince of Arragon tries his luck with the silver and discovers that only felt the shadow of joy - Joy, not Portia! Both men are sworn never to reveal their choice or the casket's content. Bassanio of course selects the lead, and thereby wins Portia's hand.

So far so good, but Antonio's ships all founder, and his is now in default to Shylock, who is now particularly pissed-off with Christians after his daughter Jessica ran off with one (Lorenzo), ditching her faith, but replacing it with a boat-load of Shylock's treasure. This turns out to be totally Tubal-er when a messenger arrives with no news of Jessica's whereabouts, like for shore! The vengeful Shylock brings Antonio up before the magistrates in the court of the Duke of Venice.

Meanwhile, Portia and Bassanio having completed their nuptials, but not their wedding night, immediately take-off to Venice to bail Antonio out with Portia's money. They travel with Gratiano and Nerissa, who is Portia's handmaid. Despite Bassanio's very generous offer of twice what Shylock is owed, the latter insists upon his pound of flesh, and all seems lost. Bellario, unable to attend the case himself, appears to have sent a representative named Balthazar. Of course, in true Shakespearean tradition, it's a woman in disguise: in this case, Portia herself. Her assistant is also a woman in disguise: Nerissa, evidently representing that prestigious law firm, Trans, Vestite and Nailem.

Portia begs Shylock to show mercy, but hell-bent on revenge for all the abuse he has suffered over the years, some of which came from Antonio, he flatly refuses. As he is about to scythe his flesh from Antonio, Portia points out that his contract specifies only flesh - not blood. he must, she advises him, not spill a single drop of Antonio's blood, not take a one sliver more than his pound, lest he himself breaches the contract and loses everything, including his life.

Shylock belatedly realizes that he should have accepted Bassanio's generous offer, but now that he seeks to resort to this, he finds he has lost there, too, but Portia points out that he's already on record as rejecting it. Worse than this, as a foreigner (read Jew), who has sought to take the life of a Venetian citizen, he now must forfeit everything, although the Duke does pardon him from his death sentence, and even allows him to retain half his fortune as long as he converts to Christianity - a fate worse than death, it would seem, from Shylock's perspective.

Bassanio gets himself into trouble by rewarding the "lawyer" with a ring he had promised Portia she had given him which he in turn vowed he would never give up. Nerissa achieves the same sort of gift from Gratiano. These guys are morons. Their wives refuse them any bed time until they recover the rings!

Monstress Volume 1: Awakening Part 6 of 6 by Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda

Rating: WARTY!

This final part - certainly the final part I plan on reading - continues to have Maika and the monster explore her consciousness (or unconsciousness if you like) while she's imprisoned in the sarcophagus. The monster looks more like a one-eyed mummy here and less like the evil tarry, sticky creature we've hitherto seen. Maika continues to pine for Tuya, who evidently doesn't feel the same way about her!

The artwork is once again remarkable, but this is supposed to be a story, not a coffee table picture book, and the story has become far too bogged-down to be interesting to me. There's a reason that Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1 - he's quite literally an action figure, and while he is rather trite and simplistic compared with this story under review, he does move (faster than a speeding bullet!). This story doesn't - or more accurately, it doesn't feel like it moves; it feels mired and stagnant, and this made me lose all interest in it which is sad in consideration of how appealing it was in the early parts of this volume. I can't recommend this one and do not feel inclined to pursue this story any further.