Review - The Books of Magic

The Books of Magic
Written by Neil Gaiman; Art by John Bolton, Scott Hampton, Charles Vess, and Paul Johnson
1992 Eisner Winner for Best Writer

Due to the way that the Eisners work every so often you get a real oddity in the list. There are several categories that are for a person instead of a specific work which means that while someone may win for their work on a particular project (like Sandman to use an arbitrary example) and other lesser things they did that year get to come along for the ride (such as The Books of Magic to use another completely arbitrary example). Despite some terrific painted art by four exceptional artists The Books of Magic is not Gaiman's best work. He's limited by his format and while flashes of his skill occasionally shine through it just isn't enough to justify it.

The nominal plot is that Harry Potter... er... Timothy Hunter is a boy with potential to be the greatest wizard in the world. In an attempt to channel his abilities for good four wizards confront him and lead Tim on a hero's journey of a guided tour of all magic. What that tour ammounts to, and what the vast majority of the book comes down to, are quick introductions to the supernatural characters and concepts in DC comics.

(The similarities between Tim Hunter and Harry Potter has caused some people to claim that J.K. Rowling "stole" the idea from Gaiman but I think it's clear to most people that they both were inspired by the similar things.)

There are four chapters to The Books of Magic each featuring a different facet of magic: it's history, the current practitioners, the supernatural realms, and it's future. Each chapter is painted by a different artist which is a striking visual effect. Unfortunately these explorations are comprised of one or two page executive summaries of the concept. Here's a page on Egyptian magic. There's a page about the Dreaming. Or a quick flash of 64th century techno-magic. It's glimpses of bigger concepts and Gaiman doesn't do justice to any of them by flickering past them.

When The Books of Magic follows the story of people trying to take advantage of Tim then it is a decent read. It's still a bit simplistic since Gaiman is firmly attached to the traditional hero's journey arc and he doesn't apply it with a lot of style. But Tim is a likable enough character who keeps a lighter tone going in the more serious moments. That makes the dryer parts of the book much more bearable.

The most coherent portions of the plot are the middle. The second chapter is built around a chase as some wizards seek to kill Tim before he can make a difference and they seek sanctuary. It is also the only chapter where the introductions to the concept fit into a narrative framework.

The artists really add a lot to the book. Each of them render beautiful magical landscapes. In particular Charles Vess and Paul Johnson do some exceptional work. Vess is given the task of illustrating the fairy realms which is something that he's well suited to. Johnson's illustrations are a chaotic jumble that dramatically depicts the entropy at the end of time. None of the art is less than terrific though.

The Books of Magic is a vacation slide show of one comic book company's view of magic. And much like a vacation slide show actually going on the adventures you see would be a lot more fun than seeing the snap shots afterward. I'd still say it's worth checking out for the artwork since Gaiman's story isn't actually bad, just don't expect the same quality of storytelling that Gaiman was doing elsewhere at this same time.

Review - Safe Area Gorazde

Safe Area Gorazde
by Joe Sacco
2001 Eisner Winner for Best New Graphic Album

When I was reading Fax From Sarajevo I couldn't think of another comic that dealt with the Bosnian war. Somehow I had overlooked Safe Area Gorazde that dealt with a lesser known aspect of the war. At the height of the conflict there were three large enclaves of Bosnians were completely cut off in Serbian territory. The largest of these was Gorazde and while the other two eventually fell Gorazde remained a besieged outpost for the entire length of the conflict.

So what I anticipated going into Safe Area Gorazde were the human stories of a trapped people. And I got that. Eventually and in tiny doses. What Safe Area Gorazde is actually about is Joe Sacco himself and that left a bad taste in my mouth. Sacco spends about the same amount of time in the book on himself and his experiences in Gorazde as he does on everyone else there put together. The early parts of the book are especially heavy in this and even when it gets to a few pages detailing the harshness of a supply run or the harrowing escape from one of the other collapsing enclaves it's a few pages of that and then back to how the story affected Sacco.

I understand that Sacco it attempting to work himself in as the view point character; as the guy outsiders are supposed to identify and view the story through. This is completely unnecessary though. There is a saying that the reporter should not be the story and that is what Sacco has done in Safe Area Gorazde. He's the center of attention instead of the people who the story should be about.

In addition Sacco is not a compelling storyteller. He has a tendency to throw out these dry blocks of text. Most of these are put in quotes which makes me suspect that they're translated from the original stories and if that's the case then the translator is a poor one. (There's no credit or thanks given to them and given the story context I am assuming it's Sacco himself.) The character's voices are all the same and do not change as the characters do. It makes defending their homes against former neighbors who have turned against them as interesting as a walk to the store for a loaf of bread.

In addition the narrative is the book is badly fragmented. If you don't like what's happening in those two pages give it another page since it will jump topics by then. Sacco can't keep focus on anything for more than a few pages at a time and I got whiplash from the way topics would suddenly swerve.

There was one aspect to the art that I found disturbing. Sacco portrays all of the Bosnians with cat like slit pupils. Since a major aspect of the war was the attempted genocide the decision to portray the victims of that campaign with inhuman features is a bad idea. In complete fairness he seems to do this to everyone but there's very few characters in the book other than Bosnians and himself (and he is always drawn with featureless glasses covering his eyes). It rubbed me the wrong way to have people whose murders were justified through dehumanization being dehumanized.

For all the faults in Safe Area Gorazde there is one thing it does: it gives the story of a little known aspect of a war that was forgotten by most of the world almost as soon as it was over. Just having a unique subject is not enough to make me recommend it. This was not a compelling way of telling the stories.

Review - Absolute Promethea

Absolute Promethea Volume 1
Written by Alan Moore; Art by J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray
2000, 2001 Eisner Winner for Best Writer
2001 Eisner Winner for Best Single Issue (#10)

I've rarely been as conflicted about a series as much as I am about Promethea. There's a fine line between using beliefs in a story and proselytizing. Moore not only falls on the wrong of it often, he's completely off the deep end. He'll tell an engrossing story for several issues worth of material and then slam it to a halt with thirty pages of psuedo-philosophical babel. It goes from interesting to frustrating in the a blink of an eye.

Promethea is a goddess of imagination who manifests through a woman associated with those inspired by her. She's different in each incarnation and her most recent ones have been superheroes. Sophie is a college student researching the chain of fictional Promethea and the real-world sightings when she becomes the newest incarnation. Evil magic is set against her and she is determined to learn magic to fight back.

When Moore sticks to an actual narrative thread then Promethea is brilliant. Moore uses the same larger-than-life world he used in Tom Strong and Top 10 which is at the end of the twenty century, but it's an end of the twentieth century as envisioned in the science fiction of the 1930's. While Tom Strong gets lost in that setting and Top 10 uses it to play with homages Promethea has it as a contrast to its mysticism and history. The story jumps back and forth between previous incarnations of Promethea and each of them inevitably has a tragic story that needs to be told.

A lot of time is spent in this volume trying to define who the new Promethea is. As a superhero she's ambiguous and does whatever is necessary to move the story along. On the other hand this is used as part of being tied directly to the imagination. So instead of focusing on a character who can do anything and lacks a solid personality Moore plays up the human part and explores what Promethea could be. That made me interested in what she would become.

The problems start when the lectures begin. Moore is a devotee of a new age belief system and he often uses Promethea as a platform for his beliefs. Initially these are awkwardly bolted onto the story but later he spends whole issues on just preaching at the reader. It's not simply a lesson in what the characters believe; that's something that could be summed up in a few word balloons with having no impact on the story. This is a full assault by a new age guru. As someone who can easily spot the logical fallacies and arbitrary nature of the statements it was incredibly unpleasant to read.

Issue ten was one of those issues that I hated. Beside my annoyance with the magic lessons Moore brings in one of my least favorite concept in SF: sexual liberation resulting in hot women throwing themselves at dumpy men. In this case it's a full issue of sex between Promethea and a magician who is roughly Alan Moore's age. And while they're having sex they're explaining the metaphysical implications of screwing while the visuals are taking an LSD trip. It's a throw back to the worst parts of SF from the 70's. Instead of just getting a full issue of new age magick lessons (you've got to spell it with a "k" or you're not being obnoxious enough) you also get Moore's sexual fantasies.

In my complaints about Promethea J. H. Williams III is faultless. He was given the task of illustrating hallucinogenic playgrounds of the mind and tackles with gusto. This is a visually lush book with some of the most exotic visuals I can recall and Williams does a terrific job with it.

While I'm interested in where the story in Promethea goes from this point my tolerance for new age babel was worn away a long time ago. So I have no intention of going any further with the series. On the other hand if you have a higher tolerance for that kind of thing then there is a lot to like in Promethea.

Review - Marvels

Marvels
Written by Kurt Busiek; Art by Alex Ross
1994 Eisner Winner for Best Limited Series
1994 Eisner Winner for Best Painter
1994 Eisner Winner for Best Production Design

When you have fifty years of near continuously published comics things can get a bit awkward. Current events become ancient history and what was in style twenty years before becomes embarrassing. So when Busiek and Ross created Marvels as an everyman's view of the Marvel comics golden and silver age I was expecting them to quietly gloss over the fact that they were depicting stories that were written thirty years before their story. Instead of taking that route they make a point of maintaining the look of the era. It emphasizes nostalgia for that period which is the entire point of Marvels.

Phil Sheldon is just starting as a news photographer in 1939 when he goes to a press conference held by a Professor Horton. The professor has created an artificial man with the minor defect that it bursts into flames. Witnessing the debut of the Human Torch kicks off a career of pursuing superheroes for Sheldon. He chases the big stories irregardless of the personal cost to his family who cringe every time that he chases after them.

It's obvious that Marvels is a direct precursor to Busiek's Astro City (which Ross provided covers for). They're all about seeing a superhero universe from the perspective of the civilians. While Astro City has the room to explore the concept more deeply Marvels sticks strictly to the shifting perspective people of the Marvel universe have regarding super powers. It opens with horrified reactions to the first superhero which transform to cheers as that hero takes the fight to Germany in World War 2. Later sections have the division in reactions between mutants and other superheroes and how the people respond to heroes failing.

I found that Phil Sheldon as a character wasn't that interesting. He seems to react to many aspects of the Marvel universe more as a comic book fan than someone actually living in it. I think that's from trying to push together a "realistic reaction" with silver age comics and trying to justify the predetermined reaction. Sheldon has to wind up admiring the heroes and cheering for them in order for comic readers to identify with him and it winds up feeling like his arc is constructed backward. It makes a kind of cognitive dissonance that bothered me as I read the story.

On the other hand one of the fun things about Marvels is that it is a smash up of so many old Marvel comics. Busiek peppers the book with references to stories and events from the silver age which make the book an indulgence of nostalgia. It seems that every page something gets interrupted by a supervillain attack or a hero stumbling through on their way to a story that could have been purchased from a drug store spinner rack..

There's a bit of synchronicity in talking about Alex Ross on Norman Rockwell's birthday. Ross's paintings owe a lot to Rockwell's style; the lighting and texture of the images are very similar. In a way that brings the art in the book back to the nostalgic tone. I do find that Ross's snap shots of action tend to look a bit stiff so that while the image looks nice they feel natural.

If you're familiar with Marvel comics from before 1972 then Marvels is a fun romp down memory lane. If you're not it's a decent attempt to look at the insanity of the Marvel universe through normal eyes. The end result is entertaining but something that I think won't be interesting to anyone other than fans of the old comics.

Review - Batman Year 100

Batman: Year 100
by Paul Pope
2007 Eisner Winner for Best Limited Series
2007 Eisner Winner for Best Writer/Artist

I'm snow bound at the moment and I took the opportunity to read some lighter material than what I had been going through lately. I had been reading a lot of dreary independent comics that were the exact kind of material that I don't like. Between stuff with no narrative or point and works where I wound up hating the autobiographical main character (or in a few cases both) I have had my fill of "serious and important" books for a while. So I went to their polar opposite and picked up Batman: Year 100 expecting something less pretentious and more action driven. And I got just that; Batman: Year 100 is solidly in the camp of "pretty but dumb" superhero comics. It's a pleasure to look at but not to think about.

In the year 2039 a Federal police officer has been murdered and the hunt is on for a man in a bat costume who appears to have done it. There's scraps of information that indicate that this Bat-man has been around a hundred years but no one knows any details which make the feds pressure the Gotham City police for any information. Batman meanwhile investigates the murder on his own and finds a conspiracy tied to the same people who are hunting him.

This comic is a black hole of plot. I finished it without gaining any significant knowledge about the characters or story that I didn't know going in. There's a whole lot of vague hinting at multiple possibilities for things that never get resolved one way or the other. Is Batman over a hundred years old or have multiple persons been wearing the outfit? Depending on which scene you're reading it could be either. The scheme itself at the heart of the story is so needlessly complex that I had to go over it several times to make sure I wasn't missing anything. The plot literally occurred so that the plot would occur in a kind of recursive loop that goes beyond the idiot plot. The setting has vague allusions to things like intrusive government surveillance but nothing ever comes out of them. It's a generic dark future where generic characters do generic villainous things because they have to provide a plot for a comic book.

On the other hand Pope does a lot of the details well. He crafts some terrific action sequences that exciting to read. I liked the style of his Batman which is recognizably based on the version we're familiar with while also being more horrific. He still won't kill the villains but he'll terrify them in ways that I don't recall ever seeing before. It's Batman as a monster in all senses of the word whether he's putting on a face that will give someone nightmares or taking actions that should give everyone in the world nightmares.

The art in Batman: Year 100 is spectacular. Pope has a cinematic style but instead of blowing up the pages for that he shrinks them down. This makes most pages incredibly dense visually where he usually places eight panels a page in a double column format. He uses this canvas to give a movie style flow while avoiding the natural breaks that would occur while turning pages. He has enough panels that he can use silent reactions without it slowing the pace of the comic too much. He crams detail into each panel that makes me wish I had the book in a larger format so I could have appreciated that artwork better.

With all of that in consideration I found Batman: Year 100 to be a decent but not brilliant superhero comic. If you're just looking for an exciting comic where Batman freaks out a bunch of guys and then punches them then Pope delivers. It wasn't something that I particularly enjoyed but if you liked Frank Miller's Batman work then there's no reason to skip over this. Especially since it is so nice to look at.

Review - American Born Chinese

American Born Chinese
by Gene Luen Yang
2007 Eisner Winner for Best New Graphic Album

For about eighty percent of the way through American Born Chinese I wasn't very impressed. The story about being true to yourself was trite, simplistic, and pounded over and over again. Between the three story lines there was one that I thought was pretty good, one that left me bored, and one that just left me baffled. It wasn't adding up to a great experience. Then Yang through something in that made me reevaluate the entire book and added a bit of texture to the message he was telling. So in the end I was left feeling pretty good about American Born Chinese even if I wasn't completely enamored with it.

There are three stories in American Born Chinese and each chapter rotates to a different one. The first is a retelling of the legend of the Monkey King. The version of that story here has the Monkey King attempting to be accepted by the gods by being human instead of a monkey. When this fails he lashes out against the heavens. The second story is one of Jin, a Chinese boy who finds himself isolated at school after his parents move. He seeks acceptance from the Caucasian students but his only friends are the two other Asian students at the school. As he reaches adolescence he complicates his life by pursuing a popular girl. The final story is about an all-American teen whose life is thrown into chaos by visits from a Chinese cousin. This cousin is the most horrific racist stereotypes that I've encountered in decades.

I found myself enjoying the story of the Monkey King quite a bit and not because it had monkeys punching gods (as a rule that doesn't hurt but if your book isn't about monkeys punching gods don't expect to get points for it). The Monkey King was a more interesting character than anyone else in the book. He was the one who got to be dynamic. He was the character who set a goal and worked toward it. He was the character who had a personality beyond sullen teenager or racist caricature. He might not have been introspective and wore his character flaws on his sleeve but that just made it more interesting to watch him react. I've read a lot of comic book adaptations of the Monkey King story (almost all of them manga) but this is the one that I enjoyed the most mainly because Yang infused him with a purpose beyond belligerent monkey.

In comparison the realistic chapters bored me to tears. These teenagers fumbling through relationships just weren't interesting characters. Jin treats everyone poorly throughout the book which made him hard to sympathize with. Jin has a tendency to sit around and mope rather than taking action. When he receives abuse from his fellow students he doesn't do anything more than pass it along to those he considers friends. This may be a realistic reaction but it isn't presented in a way that's interesting to read about. Jin lacks a personality and his attempt to fit in (I almost wrote "attempts" there before it occurred to me that there was only one real attempt in the book which speaks to how thin this story is) is superficial.

The parallels between these two stories is obvious but the different when reading is that the Monkey King takes action while Jin tends to sit around and lump abuse on his "friends". Even in his actions Jin is a passive character and wanting the popular girl isn't as sympathetic of goal as wanting to be accepted in general. Jin's view treats the girl as a prize to be won rather than a person to reach and while the Monkey King may be hitting them with sticks he's still trying to reach the other gods as people.

The third story was just strange. I couldn't connect the American teen with the Chinese stereotype beyond some kind of metaphor for assimilation. The conclusion of the book brings this last chapter into focus and does it in a way that ties the entire book together.

Artistically I wasn't impressed with American Born Chinese. There's nothing really wrong with it though I did find it to be a bit flat. It's just there isn't anything that made me enthusiastic. Yang uses simple designs that aren't distinct enough to call stylized and he layouts are as straightforward as they come. Basically the art didn't put me off the book but I'd never recommend it for the art either.

If I could divide up American Born Chinese smoothly I wound up disliking more than I enjoyed. On the other hand the conclusion marries the parts I disliked with those I did so smoothly that they become inseparable. This means that taken as a whole I liked it. If you have a higher tolerance for coming of age stories about author stand-in protagonists then you'll probably enjoy it a lot more than I did.

Review - Blankets

Blankets
by Craig Thompson
2004 Eisner Winner for Best New Graphic Album
2004 Eisner Winner for Best Writer/Artist

It seems like every other darling of independent comics is exactly the same: a coming-of-age story that's about a guy who's almost identical to the author. They have a slightly off-beat worldview and the normal people around them treat the main character with derision. Eventually they find a lover who helps end their isolation and they have some kind epiphany about their lives but not without some tragedy on the way.

I despise this formula. It tends to come across as work by people with overblown egos as a showcase for how great they are. The life changing epiphany which accompanies the climax of the story typically is a shallow one. I wind up hating the protagonist and since there's no plot beyond the minutiae of their empty lives I wind up hating the book.

In Blankets Craig is the autobiographical protagonist is a poor boy raised in a Christian fundamentalist family (I'm using his first name for the character and the last name for the creator just to keep them a bit separate). As he approaches graduation from high school he is looking into going into the seminary. Eventually he meets a free spirited girl at Bible camp and falls in love. He travels to spend two weeks with her and her troubled family where he experiences self-discovery.

I should hate Blankets like I have the dozens of other times I've run across this exact formula. Instead I found it to be very effective and I think that's due to Thompson not holding onto any romantic notions about his adolescence. His clumsy, emotionally immature actions drive the story and there's an actual emotional arc involved. Craig not only has the appearance of change over the course of the book but goes through three distinct stages of development (perhaps even four or five I include the flashbacks and epilogues). And none of these stages are perfect; at the end of the book he just isn't as lost as he once was.

Other characters are not as dynamic. They tend to be trapped in some way but don't get to push at their boundaries. I wasn't bothered by this since Blankets is completely Craig's story and a self-centered worldview is part of that. Also the characters seemed to exist as patterns for what the future could be if Craig didn't find a way.

The rose colored glasses that Thompson avoids using on himself do look back on his relationship. Blankets is the story of a gentle first love that starts sweet and grows passionate. And yet this also comes across as part of the character arc; the idealized memories give way to the adolescent reactions. So early on it's puppy love and later it's teenagers finding their way and then it still has to change for the conclusion.

Artistically I enjoyed Blankets quite a bit. Thompson has a very fluid style that creates lively characters which are necessary to support his story. He can shift those characters from loose cartoons to idealized forms and make it feel natural. In addition Thompson has a flare for spectacular layouts which he peppers through the book. If every page had the characters fitting into the panels of a quilt, for example, it would have become annoying but Thompson uses them to play up just the right moments.

In that group of semi-autobiographical coming of age stories from independent comic creators I can safely say that Blankets is the best one I have ever read. If they were all presented this honestly then I might not be as hostile toward the genre as I am. There are other similar books that I have also enjoyed (see Stuck Rubber Baby and I think I'll follow this up with another one) but this is easily the best of them due entirely to how well Thompson can tell his story.