#graphic novel review

Short version: Maggie makes the difficult transition from home school to public high school, made more difficult by the fact that up until that point her friends had only been her three brothers.  At school she discovers that her brothers have history she knew nothing about.  All the while she is haunted by a silent ghost from the town’s maritime urban legend.

What I thought: There’s a lot going on in Maggie’s story, everything from a recent divorce to a sort-of new crush to new friends to local history.  It feels like it could make for a more interesting text novel than a graphic one.  I liked that Maggie herself does grow up a little over the course of the story, but not in any profound way like the old genre of buildingsroman usually does.  Yes she does eventually make a stand and take responsibility for certain things in her life, but it’s done very easily and she doesn’t learn a thing about consequences.
I guess what bugged me is that it has such a great setup, and such cute art (the same lady who brought us Adventures of Superhero Girl), but after more than half the volume, the plot hasn’t really taken off, and once it does, it falls back again fairly quickly and benignly.  They spend a lot of time puzzling on what’s the Big Secret that made her oldest brother and new crush such hostile enemies, and the reason for it ends up being so boring I read that part over to make certain I hadn’t missed some subtext, but nope, just garden-variety conflict.  I thought it would be something actually worth their reactions and glares, maybe something humiliating or the crush mistreated someone in a truly unforgivable fashion, but turns out he was just kind of rude a couple times.
The ghost.  Why was there a ghost at all?  They never find out what the ghost wanted, and she mostly served to represent Maggie’s absent mother, without being actually connected to her.  Maggie does try to help the ghost find peace, but the only thing she could think of didn’t work, and the ghost never says anything or offers closure.  Frustrating for everyone. 
Also frustrating was the fact that Maggie blames herself for her parents’ divorce, and the only people who know that she does either don’t care about the pain that misconception causes her, or actually agree with her.  That’s never touched on either, and we’re left with no more closure than with the ghost.
Overall it was okay, I like Hicks as an artist and I like her understanding of the everyday struggle, but this one felt like it needed to be either longer or a different medium.

Read it if you liked: Mercuryby Hope Larson, Adventures of Superhero Girl, also by Faith Erin Hicks, Scott Pilgrim vs the World by Brian Lee O’Malley, anything by John Green.

Short version: Decomposia, princess of the underworld, takes on all the responsibilities of rule when her father falls into a hypochondriac loop.  She begins to buckle under the pressure, but finds comfort in the friendship of the castle’s new cook.

What I thought: The first impression we get here is from the art style, which is so adorable and cute you kind of get distracted by it.  So when the depth of the writing hits, it feels completely out of the blue, even though all the information was there from page one.
Anyway, once the plot hits, you start understanding what is actually going on here.  Watson points out a very large plothole that I’ve seen in every princess story, and which bothers me on a molecular level: royalty means responsibility, it means keeping your kingdom from tearing itself apart, it means foreign relations, and above all, it means shouldering the blame when things go wrong.  Disney would have you believe that being a princess is all Twoo Wuv and glittery dresses, but Decomposia spends most of her time signing paperwork and negotiating with spook factions.  It’s clearly exhausting on its own, but on top of that, she must care for her ailing father as he will not accept care from anyone else.
Here’s where Count Spatula comes in.  He takes an immediate interest in Decomposia, not out of any romantic agenda, but genuine concern that she has not made any time to take care of herself, mind or body.  While providing food he becomes her confidante, then close friend.  Though she’s far above him in rank, he starts giving her advice, nothing specific, just ways that she can rule the underworld and not burn out, such as the importance of delegating and how to put her own needs at least on the to-do list.  Somewhere in all that the king gets word of their friendship, throws a classist fit, and reveals that he has been taking total advantage of Decomposia’s willingness to take all the responsibility of ruling while he enjoys the power.  (This shows itself in other ways, as in the foreign dignitaries refusing to speak to her as she is not the king, even accusing her of lying when she says he is not available and that she is more than capable of addressing their concerns).
Great lessons here.  The joy of food, the difficulty of power, the difficulty of a wide class-gap between friends, toxic parents, resourcefulness as the ultimate weapon–I’d say this is exactly the sort of graphic that young kids (and older kids) looking to get into the Gothic subculture need in their lives, a great example of how to be.  Baby Bats, you can dress like Wednesday Addams and walk around in moonlight all you like, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up cupcakes.

Read if you liked: Zombiliniumby Arthur De Pins, Ghostopolisby Doug TenNapel, Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol, The Nightmare Before Christmas by Tim Burton.

Short version: After a mysterious virus wipes out the entire adult population on earth, 12-year-old Lisa assumes leadership of the children in her city.  She sets up a well-running system of government that can let everyone survive, if she can outsmart rival gangs, starvation, and the ever-present weight of responsibility.

What I thought: The graphic did a lot of things right.  The art was great, the research for how to survive in an urban post-apocalyptic world was thorough.
However.  What wasn’t all that thorough was a decent understanding of how people work.  Lisa’s great for her situation, she’s resourceful and strong and fearless, but the problem is that she is like that all the time.  Her vocabulary and her tone of voice are those of a calm adult, not a twelve-year-old girl who just lost her parents and most of the people she knows, and watched her childhood home burn to the ground.  Alongside her is a team of preteens and precocious youngsters who also have that same mind, who casually throw around words like “retire” and “Molotov cocktail.”
Alongside these weirdly adult kids you have the antagonist, the leader of the nearest rival gang, Tom.  Poor Tom.  He acts and speaks way more like you’d expect a kid to do, all the way down to how he responds to authority figures and how he mimics them once he is in a position of authority himself.  It’s implied that he was beaten quite a bit when his father was around, which makes some of his motivation clearer, but falls too easily into the old trap of “kid gets hit and thinks it’s okay to hit others” which is sometimes true but really ignores that the kid is a human, not a trained animal.  Also in Tom’s corner: he has half his face burnt off by Lisa’s team as they defend their fortress from his gang.
When he eventually does invade and take over her fortress, her solution is to just talk calmly and rationally to him, point out that “stealing is wrong” (totally ignoring multiple counts of attempted murder from both teams), and ask him nicely to leave.  Tom, with his bully persona and face-related grudge and the clear winner of the skirmish, rolls over and quietly walks away.
Sorry,what?  Who the hell would dothat?  Did the author just get squeamish at the idea that he had set these kids up to kill each other, and chicken out at the last minute because the thought was too unsettling?  That’s where the line is?  He could kill off everyone over twelve in the world, but the kids are not to kill each other?  Good thing he didn’t try to go for anything too difficult, like “kids mourning their families” or “diabetic kids run out of insulin” or “What’s sex and what are these weird hairs under my arm?”
Very frustrating.  You want a story of survival, where the children must make Sophie’s Choices in order to see another sunrise?  There’s plenty to pick from.

Read instead: Lord of the Flies by Jim Golding, Battle Royale by Kashoun Takami, Children of the Corn by Stephen King, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Short version: Charlie’s family is determined to start a new life in their new town, but after only one day, his daughter Sailor goes missing under ominous circumstances.  Charlie is contacted by someone claiming to be a witch-hunter, who tells him that not only is Sailor in grave danger, but that she was offered in sacrifice to the forest wytches by someone in the town.

What I thought: If you like horror, you’ll like Wytches.  If you dislike horror on the basis that it’s too unbelievable, or too gory, or too raw in the human element, you will not like Wytches.  I loved that it took the time to really explain what was going on and how all the mechanics worked, but I did not like that they went about it in that old annoying way, where they just say the made-up name for something and expect that to mean anything to someone who is hearing the name for the first time.  Yeah, “Look for the Irons” might be good advice, but if you don’t know that Iron refers to a group of people that’s not useful information.  Fortunately, the main character, Charlie, has some sort of sixth sense that tell shim when a super common word is being used in referance to something not common.  Seriously.  When he asks aloud to his reflection, “Where are you?” just musing to himself about his missing girl, he gets the reply written on his belly, “Here.”
I seriously thought that meant he was supposed to cut himself open, or maybe that the person who gave him the signal was in the room, but no, it somehow got correctly interpreted to mean “Here Point, Vermont.”  Oh yes.  But of course.  That was going to be my third guess.
It’s sounding like I didn’t like this, but I did.  The horror element was superb, just enough information given to keep you interested, just enough peril to keep you rooting for the players.  The girl, Sailor, suffers from intense anxiety and panic attacks, even taking the time to explain exactly what that feels like when her father insists that she just “get over it.”  It was a great way to show a real mental issue, and the fact that there were real terrors in Sailor’s life just made her all the more admirable when she worked past them.  She’s resourceful, almost to the point of not asking for help when she needs it, because she believes that all of her issues come from within and should be solved the same way.  Obviously that’s not how life works, and she pays the price for it.
The art was amazing.  I kept thinking that Charlie was (at least physically) based on the dad from King of the Hill, but besides that, the range of expression and the diversity of the cast was very real, very much something I could believe.  There was an odd splatter effect on all the pages that had to do with the weird occult stuff, I think having to do with whatever flavor of magic was being used t the time, and while that did make for panels a bit hard to see, it was interesting and not something I’ve seen often.  Really, it gave the impression of blood or water on the “camera” as you sometimes see in movies that break the fourth wall, but in the end, it added more than it took away.

Read it if you liked: 30 Days of Night by Steve Niles, Squidderby Ben Templesmith,  Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin, Anotherby Yukito Ayatsuji

Short version: Compilation of online comic by the same name (read it here!) starring Superhero Girl, local hero for a small Canadian town.  SHG faces entirely too much adversity for one person to handle, ranging from criticism of bystanders to having her job interviews hijacked by ninjas.  Throughout it all, she maintains her positive attitude and sense of justice, even if it means working without thanks, recognition, or ability to pay rent.

What I thought: I really didn’t know where this was going at first.  I Thought it was just a cute slice-of-life perspective on the superhero genre, and while it is that, it’s not exclusively mundane activity.  Sure it’s hilarious to see our heroine upset that her cape shrank in the wash or that she now had a hard-to-explain suntan where he mask covers her face, but there’s also a lot of very real and relatable trouble she carries with her.  Mostly this comes in the form of her brother Kevin, who is also a superhero (similar to Superman) but according to everyone, including their mother, “he’s better at it.”  In some ways that’s true, he does have a broader range of powers and also the charisma to win the hearts of the people, but in no way does that make him a better person.  Whenever SHG tries to point this out, her opinion gets slapped down and diminished on the basis that she must be jealous.  She’s endlessly compared to him, always with the phrase “why can’t you be more like him?” thrown in her face, totally discounting all the work that she has done to get so far.
You really do begin to feel her rage after a few strips, the unfairness of it boiling steadily throughout the whole volume.  Even without her brother in the picture, she’s expelled from university because of the liability she represents (”Our insurance just doesn’t cover ninja attacks”).  Once, while she’s fighting a city-destroying alien, she’s stopped by a random skeptic who refuses to acknowledge her as a superhero because, and I’m quoting here, “You just don’t look like one.”  She was literally throwing a giant monster into orbit as he spoke.  He waited for her to get back to street level so he could tell this to her face.  When it was revealed that she was a hero purely out of a sense of justice and not because of some tragic backstory that made her swear revenge against evil, he walks away entirely because she “broke the rules.”
Never mind that the city was saved.  Or that this was the third time this month she saved it.  Skeptical Guy (as she called him) is just as bad as those asshats who accuse women of being “fake geek girls” because they don’t know Mark Hamill’s birthday by heart, or any other stupid and arbitrary standard.
Yet her attitude stays strong.  At one point she meets her future self, is horrified to discover that the wear on her ego eventually drives her into becoming a villain, and hardens her resolve even further.  I’d call this an incredible Girl Power book, suitable for all ages and enjoyable for everyone who has ever been told that their best isn’t good enough.

Read it if you liked: Lumberjanesby Noelle Stevenson, Astro City by Kurt Busiek, Nimonaalso by Noelle Stevenson, IRL (In Real Life) by Cory Doctrow

Short version: After he is given an accidental overdose of monster mutagen, Aurelian finds his life changed forever in two ways: first, he is now a permanent employee of Zombillenium, a “monster” theme park that functions as a cover for actual monsters; second, he transforms into a giant winged demon whenever he’s angry.  Trouble begins when his wife’s lover enters the park.

What I thought:  I love it when things are goofy and cute on the outside and incredibly dark when you scratch the surface.  Zombilleniumis no different, and my only complaint was that it was too short.  Fortunately, volume two exists, with prospects open for a third.
There’s really something for everyone here.  One of my favorite tropes is the suddenly-transformed person trying to make sense of their new body, their fear, their confusion, the opportunity for sight gags when they employ trial/error procedures.  It’s wonderfully endearing, and poor Aurelian works it.  Next we have the sullen and mysterious witch, Gretchen, his grudging friend and parole officer, who has enormous power and scant control over it.  I liked that she’s given a blobby nose; it makes her distinctive, normal.
The zombies were just adorable.  Their act in the park is to put on a replica of the Thrillermusic video dance, but the fact that they’re unionized and completely incompetent at the game of revenge (Aurelian stole their thunder with his arrival) made for some great comic relief.
I mentioned darkness?  It’s there.  While the park may seem like a less-sexualized version of Monster High (thank god) or a more French version of Hotel Transylvania, it comes out that every member of the park staff is there because the Devil owns their soul.  Apparently monsters aren’t born, they’re made, and one cannot become a monster if the soul is anything other than hell-bound already.  We even get to see what happens when a member of the staff is “fired”–suffice to say, the word is more literal than we use it normally.
The art was wonderful, no lines at all, just color blocks and shading for a tablet-drawn look that really brought home the modern perspective of the story.  Color and mood mesh pretty well, and the expressions are so perfect it broke my heart to see Aurelian struggle, it was that relatable.

Read if you liked: Fablesby Bill Willingham, The Unwritten by Mike Carey, Teen Titans by Bob Haney, Chewby John Layman

Short version: Two college kids drive around in the snow.  He’s about to join the army.  They fail to see the national landmark, Thunderhead Underground falls.

What I thought:  That’s all.  That’s it.  There is nothing that happens in this story.  At first I thought the nowhere conversations and the little stops they make in their snowy drive were Tarantinoing, that is to say, small conversations and focuses that make the action all the more jarring by contrast.  Turns out, no, this is what looks like a word-for-word account of real life, which if you’ve ever listened to how real life is, you understand how bored I was.
Also annoying is that the cover art is so much more interesting than the art inside.  I picked it up because it reminded me of Edward Gorey or Richard Sala, all full of sinister foreboding and close detail.  When it turned out to be quite the opposite, sloppy line drawing and all-white backgrounds (snow, remember), by then I had to finish the damn thing just to get some validation.  It never came.
The pacing jumped around a lot as well, sometimes flashing forward to the boy lying on his bunk in boot camp, but it might also have been a cancer ward because the only details we get are that he and his bunkmate are bald and weepy.
For a mediocre time and dull art, go to a public restroom.  If that doesn’t last long enough, read Thunderhead Underground Falls.

Ugh, what a waste of time.  You want something that actually looks like it belongs inside of that cover?  I’ll save you, baby birds.

Read instead: Delphineby Richard Sala, The Motherless Oven by Rob Davis, House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, Dodgerby Terry Pratchett.

Short version: Anda is invited to join an all-girls guild in an MMORPG very like World of Warcraft.  While there she and another member of the guild take it upon themselves to “clean out” the gold farmers– players who do nothing but sell game resources for real world cash.  Anda accidentally befriends one of the gold farmers she had meant to kill, only to discover that the player behind the avatar is a teen like herself, working the gold farm in China under harsh conditions.  She is left with the ethical decision to help him and the others in his “office,” which risks alienating herself and losing him his job.

What I thought:  I have quite a positive opinion here, but a few details nipped at me.  In the very beginning of the story, the guild recruiter calls herself “one of the first girl gamers”–I strongly doubt that.  The stereotype of the male gamer who has nothing but contempt for female gamers is there for a reason, but women and girls have been defying that stigma ever since there have been games, of any sort, not just online.  Now that’s out of the way, I can gush.
What a great story!  I loved that the plot really addresses the global aspect of online gaming, how it puts players in touch who would otherwise never have met, makes friends across continental borders, and opens eyes to other ways of living.  Anda has sympathy for her Chinese friend’s predicament, and unthinkingly gives him the advice that she would give to an American in the same position, unaware that things are very different in China, with very different consequences for failure.  In addition to that, she slowly comes to grasp the notion that bullying is not always obvious, and that it’s possible to take part in it without knowing.
What I liked most had to do with Doctrow taking the absolute best part of online game philosophy and running with it, namely the fact that the person you play in the game is a perfect version of yourself.  On the surface that means Anda’s avatar has a beautiful body and dresses well, she’s agile and skilled, she is good at her job and is under nobody’s control.  In the real world, she lives by her mother’s rules, she wears the same frumpy sweater every day, she’s shy and doesn’t have the courage to stand up for others.
But then something wonderful happens: her avatar starts doing the right thing, she helps the Chinese players and accepts the blame when it goes badly, then fixes what she messed up even though it means going to a lot of trouble.  Slowly, her avatar becomes a better version of Anda herself, and the two start to blend, first with Anda dying her hair to match her avatar’s, then with an attitude adjustment that makes her a better person in real life.
So this is a great story for girls, especially the ones who spend a lot of time online or could be classified as “millennials” by people who use the word distastefully.  It’s a good one for anyone who games online, male or female, as a how-to guide on the right way to behave towards your fellow humans, even if you never see their face.

Read if you liked: Lumberjanesby Noelle Stevenson, Fangirlby Rainbow Rowell, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, .hack (Dot Hack) by Koichi Mashimo

The short version: Semi-historical account of the events leading up to the revolution of Fiume, a city lost from Italy just after WWI. Four stories intertwine: rival gang members fighting over stolen goods, the poet-politician D’Annunzio’s rise to power, a cabaret singer finding love in a war-torn world, and an ex-soldier reeling from the trauma of his experience in the trenches.

What I thought: A bit of research has told me that the revolution in the story really did happen, more or less in the way this graphic portrayed it.  Some pretty ridiculous measures and philosophies were put in place by people who should have known better, rioting was a common occurrence, and it all happened to take place during the rise of the Dadaist movement, which used elements of art and symbolism to protest against political ideals.  Ok.
I didn’t feel any real attachment to any of the characters, though I came close to it with the soldier.  I still feel like his story was forced and rushed, painting him as this mysterious neutral force in his own world, but then doing a hard 180 and declaring that he is constantly hallucinating horrifying visions from the war.  Maybe it’s part of the absurdist tone the graphic takes, but the soldier doesn’t seem all that bothered by seeing his dead friends and having flashbacks.  He just sort of accepts it and goes about his business writing for an art newspaper.
The singer didn’t need to be there at all.  Her part in this was pretty much to be a sexy lamp, as she doesn’t do anything and doesn’t affect the plot in any way, and even in the epilogue when she breaks off her relationship with the soldier, both of them are nonplussed and don’t particularly care that she did.
The gang member story didn’t really need to be there either, as they mostly represented a series of faces and names that appeared and were killed off too quickly to keep track of, let alone care too deeply about.
The political story was interesting, but like anything that has to do with WWI, even distantly, it’s incredibly complicated and there’s no good way to tell if the person speaking is telling the truth, or is even loyal to his apparent team.  It’s a mess, just like life, but not in the way that regular life is a mess.  It’s a mess like only an anarchist, sort-of Italian government who is literally taking advice from madmen can be.  (This is true, actually.  They recruited extremely delusional people from local mental institutions for their “original thinking and lack of inhibition.”)
All in all, read it if you like extra-chunky art style and historical fiction.  If you’re turned off by overly-complicated political stories, maybe skip it and read some of the philosophical “if you liked” suggestions instead.

Read it if you liked: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Equusby Peter Shaffer.

The short version: Thissal is sent to be ambassador (I think) to an alien planet where the society and one’s place in it is determined by one’s musical skill (everyday conversation accompanied by a variety of etiquette-relevant instruments) and their mask, worn at all times.  Thissal tries to solve a murder, made more difficult by the masks and their interchangeability, all the while making one faux pas after another.

What I thought: Two points of context before we get into my opinion.  First, this was based on a short story.  Second, that story was published in 1961.
With that in mind, it certainly had the feel of a short story.  graphics usually don’t skip through months at a time without some intention of showing a change, but short stories do it all the time, and the pacing was similar.  I don’t know whether I would have liked the text version better or not; the number of musical instruments that every citizen carries with them just for communication is pretty intimidating, but in the graphic version, each speech was also given a beautiful illustration to show which instrument was in use, and a handy guide as to what those meant.  It did mean I had to keep flipping back to the guide, but at the same time, I quite liked the translation of sound into graphic.  Harsh clacks with two bricks for speaking to slaves made a dark red, triangular sound, while the formal lute-like instrument for addressing a superior had intricate, lacy curls and webs.  This all made for a complicated reading, but it was pretty useful as there was no way to get the emotion from looking at any speaker’s face due to the masks.
It was all very high sci-fi and a clever way to communicate sound and intention. 
But.
I have to forgive Vance for creating a story from a 1960′s American viewpoint.  I know this, but I still didn’t like that the aliens looked exactly like humans, the slave class looked like dark-skinned humans, and there were exactly two women in the story, one of whom is molested and the other who screams when she sees a man exposing himself.  Neither women nor slaves have active speaking roles, and that bothers me.  Thissal even mentions that he had a long conversation with a few slaves, offscreen, and it did not have to be that way.  It’s the same classist, racist, sexist bullshit that silver age sci-fi is just lousy with, and there’s no way to pretend it’s otherwise.
But it made me think.  That’s high enough praise to warrant a good look.
This is good for fans of old school science fiction and those who have either experimented with politics or suffered from synesthesia.

Read if you liked: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison, The Lady or the Tiger? by Frank Stockton, I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, anything by Ray Bradbury

The short version: Alexandra discovers a bookmobile in her town that contains everything she has ever read, from childhood books to her own diary to cereal boxes.  She forms a connection with the librarian and becomes a librarian herself, as the bookmobile disappears and randomly appears throughout her life.  She wishes to join the organization that arranged it, but they decline her offer.

What I thought:  I like the concept, and the back assured me that this was the first iteration of a much larger work, but until then, it just seemed kind of pointless.  I got really interested just before the end, and then it was done and there was nothing left for me to do except wonder where the last few minutes went and why.
Alexandra, I think, would be much more interesting of a character if she did anything.  While I’m right there with her in insisting that reading is something, and a worthy activity and an incredible experience, it is not something that’s all that interesting to watch someone else do.  Right as I was about to wonder if she would ever do anything outside of the written word, she slits her wrists and magically joins the bookmobilers, who apparently require that in order to join them the end go home we’re done.
What?  No, that’s–I refuse to believe that the only interesting thing that a human ever did was die.  No.  Decline.  That is the wrong fucking message, and Niffenegger should have known better.
Also, maybe she ought to have considered that she isn’t all that good of an artist.  It was pretty well done for an amateur, and did at least look like the work of someone who had taken an art class and understood perspective and expression.  The quality slipped a lot whenever the focus was on a character that didn’t already look like Niffenegger herself, and even then, slipped further when given a front-face view.  I’ve reviewed plenty of things that had sloppy style or unusual dialogue choices, but this is not like those things.  It’s pretty much a boring picture book that should have been interesting, with not that great art.  Sorry.
I can give you stories of voracious readers that were interesting, though.  Worry not.

Read instead: Matildaby Roald Dahl, Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The Know-It-All by AJ Jacobs.

Short version: Graphic retelling of Franz Kafka’s novella, wherein Gregor Samsa randomly awakens one morning as a giant cockroach.  His family is horrified and repulsed, and as his humanity wanes further and further, the family must decide between accommodating him and balancing their finances, as he had been the primary breadwinner.  It goes poorly for everyone.

What I thought: Because this is an abridged version of an otherwise jaw-dropping tale, the storytelling is perhaps not what it could be.  That is not Kafka’s fault.  You should go and read the original immediately.  The problem is that the original was already trimmed down to its absolute skeleton, and the graphic version cuts away even further until we’re left with just the events, and very little of the commentary.
I loved the original story.  It’s body horror at its best, something to chill even the most hardened of skeptics; sure you could be afraid of the unexplained nature of Gregor’s transformation, because bugs are gross and they do gross things.  But how much more complicated it is!  I always felt it was a metaphor, maybe for the difficulties that surround a sick family member, or one who has suffered some disfiguring injury.  Gregor’s family can barely remember that he is still their Gregor, disgusted as they are with his body, and eventually assume that he can’t even understand them because he cannot speak.
Does anyone here fear getting old?  You should.  I first read this story while my ailing grandmother was spending her last weeks at our house, and it kept me wide awake for days.
Regarding the art, I thought Kuper’s illustrations fit the story perfectly.  The harsh black and white, the thick outlines that are a lot like a 1960′s political cartoon (actually, they are exactly that–Kuper is the artist behind Spy Vs. Spy), the sharp crosshatching, all of it is exactly as nasty and grotesque as the story itself.  It’s hard to look at in all the best ways, taking the style right into the surreal tone of the thing.  I may not love the paring down of the text, but the art makes up for it.

Read if you liked: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez, Salem Brownstone by John Dunning, Black Hole by Charles Burns, The Crow by J. O’Barr

Short version: Zora, princess of her mountain tribe, seeks to make peace with the neighboring tribe.  Upon her arrival, she discovers no tribe, but the only survivor: a twelve-year-old boy named Broxo.  Alone but for his pet beast and the witch of the mountain, he battles for his survival against the undead hordes of his slaughtered tribe.  Together with Zora, Broxo must solve the mystery as to why the dead will not stay down, and what all this has to do with the witch.

What I thought: This had a lot of elements from other stories that were incredible.  You had the slight vulgarity of Elfquest, the multi-generational magic of Bone, the one-boy-against-incredible-powers stacked odds of Legend of Zelda, and the dark worldbuilding of Dragon Age.  All of those things were there, in exactly the way you’re picturing them.
By that I mean, exactlythe way.  So much of this story seems stitched together from more famous stories that I felt almost cheated when it turned out to be so short, complete in one volume what it took the other stories years to tell.  Broxo is Giallongo’s first work, and it shows; not in any real bad points, mind, just has a lot of components in it that I think would have gone away with more experience in storytelling.  I did like that he wasn’t afraid to let his characters die occasionally, when the story called for it.  I did not like that he brought them all back in a happy ending where (almost) nobody dies except the bad guys.  I think leaving them dead would have made for a much more powerful story, given some idea of gravitas to the whole thing that it otherwise lacked.
And because a feminist perspective is how I roll, let’s talk about Zora for a minute.  She’s all set up to be this badass barbarian when we first meet her, capable of using both sword and bow, can make her own fires and hunt her own food.  So why, given those factors, does she spend the majority of her screen time falling into “damsel in distress” tropes?  She gets rescued multiple times by Broxo, secretly enjoys getting caught bathing, and her sole contribution to a battle with a hyena-creature is nipping its tail off while Broxo does all the work.  She picks up again later in the final battle, but it comes at the expense of using a cliched phrase I really can’t stand (”With my brains and your muscle, we can do this!”) (seriously) (what brains we have seen no brains there are no brains here there’s barely sense let alone brains).
In conclusion, this is a good fantasy for those who are afraid of commitment or possibly who just liked all those other works I mentioned above and would like to see them reflected in something that is not quite as good as any of them but still pretty decent.  Or if you’re still a kid and want fantasy to be less dark than I personally like it.

Read if you liked: Elfquestby Wendy and Richard Pini, Boneby Jeff Smith, Amuletby Kazu Kibuishi, Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

Short version: Scott reels from a bad breakup and moves to Japan to become a sumo wrestler.  At the dojo, they change everything about him from his hair color to his name, and in the process he changes himself.

What I thought: This was a sweet story, one of those “find your inner strength” sort of inspirational tales, but the fact that Scott is such a gentle giant really makes it genuine.  Sumo is an ancient sport, full of masculinity and raw power, neither of which is really part of Scott’s personality.  He’s the sort of person who gently lets fish go when he hooks them, and accepts punishments without even considering complaining.  Still, he finds a way to balance everything in a wonderfully Zen way, and finds real peace through taking control of his life.
I can’t say much after that, because this thing was really short, practically a pamphlet.  I loved the art, very simple stuff that only used color as a means of showing which setting Scott was in, blue for America, orange for the dojo, green for the fishing spot.  Still, the artist manages to show the reader exactly what the appeal of sumo is, which to an American eye can be hard to grasp.  It’s not just fat guys being near-naked, people.  These guys are athletes, and they command your respect.  So does all the pageantry of the rest of the sport.
I’d call this a good one for anyone considering a change in cultures.

Read if you liked: 47 Ronin by Sean Michael Wilson, The Lady or the Tiger? by Frank Stockton, Slothby Gilbert Hernandez, The Arrival Shaun Tan