Comic Book Resources

Everyone's A Critic: A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces

• David Welsh asks the people who know what sort of scary manga they'd recommend for Halloween reading. As expected, his panel comes up with a lot of good picks.

• Meanwhile, Ten-Cent Plague author David Hajdu reviews Robert Crumb's adaptation of Genesis for the New York Times:

Crumb's The Book of Genesis

For all its narrative potency and raw beauty, Crumb’s “Book of Genesis” is missing something that just does not interest its illustrator: a sense of the sacred. What Genesis demonstrates in dramatic terms are beliefs in an orderly universe and the godlike nature of man. Crumb, a fearless anarchist and proud cynic, clearly believes in other things, and to hold those beliefs — they are kinds of beliefs, too — is his prerogative. Crumb, brilliantly, shows us the man in God, but not the God in man.

Over at Comics Comics, Dan Nadel calls BS on Hajdu's review: "One wonders why an author would persist in writing about a subject he clearly disdains and isn't interested in actually learning about, but I guess that's between Hajdu and his own idea of the sacred."

Go read the whole takedown; it's fun.

Continue Reading »

Robot reviews: A.D. New Orleans

A.D. New Orleans

A.D. New Orleans: After the Deluge
by Josh Neufeld
Pantheon, 208 pages, $24.95

Given its subject matter, and the talent of its author, I'd love nothing more than to declare that A.D. New Orleans is an excellent book, but I can't. While it's far from a failure and there are compelling moments, there are also too many flaws and awkward sequences to call the book anything more than a grudgingly qualified success.

Continue Reading »

Everyone's A Critic: A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces

Asterios Polyp

• The great and all-powerful Ng Suat Tong provides one of the most comprehensive and detailed critiques of Asterios Polyp I've seen online yet. Seriously, Tong's one of the finest critics comics have ever had. The fact that he's writing again, even if it's just a one-time thing, is cause for joy.

• Frank Santoro reviews issues #1-4 of Richard Sala's Ignatz series, Delphine: "The story surrounded me and carried me away to a very real world. It's a cartooned, exaggerated world, but a real world nonetheless."

• Johanna Draper Carlson reads a whole lotta vampire manga.

• Graeme McMillan offers 25 thoughts on Wednesday Comics. He also admits to liking X-Men Forever. That's very brave of you Graeme.

• Similar to our Collect This Now feature is David Welsh's License Request Day, where he picks manga that haven't been translated yet, but should. This week he recommends something called Paros No Ken.

• It's been up for a few days now, but I have to point an arrow towards Katherine Dac's review of Children of the Sea, which is one of the best takes on the book yet.

Continue Reading »

Robot reviews: Asterios Polyp

Asterios Polyp

Asterios Polyp
by David Mazzucchelli
Pantheon, 344 pages, $29.95.

Asterios Polyp is the type of graphic novel that causes critics like me to rub our hands together frantically and salivate. It's full of all the juicy metaphors, re-occuring motifs and classical allusions that academics and reviewers alike go koo-koo for. Best of all, they're all right up front and not hidden in the text, so you don't have to do a lot of hunting around.

At its center, however, Polyp is a familiar and heartfelt tale of a man, who, halfway through his life, is faced with the realization that he is far from the wonderful person he thought he was and sets about trying to make things right.

Continue Reading »

What are you reading?

Prince Valiant Vol. 1

Welcome to another round of What Are You Reading. Our guest this week is blogger, critic, Comics Comics editor and expectant dad Tim Hodler. To find out what Mr. Hodler and the rest of us are reading this week, click on the link below. And be sure to let us know what you're currently reading in the comments section.

Continue Reading »

What Are You Reading?

Asterios Polyp

Welcome to What Are You Reading, where we don't let a little thing like national holidays and fireworks prevent us from talking about our current reading exploits. Our guest this week is cartoonist (you can see his work in the new anthology Syncopated) and editor Paul Karasik, whose latest book is the highly accclaimed You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! the second collection of comics by the late Golden Age artist Fletcher Hanks.

To discover what Paul and the rest of us are reading, simply click on the link below ...

Continue Reading »

Everyone's a critic: A round-up of comic book reviews and thinkpieces

Ultimates 3

* If you dare to call something the "worst comic book ever," you better have the ability to back it up. J. Caleb Mozzocco does just that in his ongoing takedown of Ultimates 3.

* Sean Collins dubs the latest League of Extraordinary Gentlemen book "a funny, creepy, nasty piece of work that encapsulates and articulates many of Alan Moore's most heartfelt themes as explicitly and entertainingly as any book he's ever done."

* Shaenon Garrity runs through the top five cartoonists/children's book illustrators. Is your favorite on the list?

* Doug Wolk praises Carol Tyler's You'll Never Know, calling it "a vivid, affecting, eccentrically stylish frame built around a terrible silence."

* Sean Howe reviews David Mazzuchelli's Asterios Polyp for EW. Apparently the book was the darling of this year's MoCCA show.

* TCJ critic Kent Worcester talks about the burgeoning academic interest in comics, sorry, sequential art.

* The Batman & Robin reviews just keep on comin'

* Johanna Draper Carlson wants to let you know that Kabuki: The Alchemy offers a "mind-bending conclusion."

* Paul Gravett continues to examine the "atom style" in eurocomics.

Send Us Your Shelf Porn!

Hello and welcome once again to Send Us Your Shelf Porn, the only Internet comics column where you, the reader, have the chance to be King (or Queen) Geek for a day! Wouldn't you like to be King (or Queen) Geek for a day? Sure you would! So send me photos of your comics collection, be it large or small, along with any commentary/explanations you see fit to give, to cmautnerATcomcastDOTnet and I'll post them here so everyone can go "Man, I always wanted that book. Howcum he has that book and I don't? Life is so unfair."

This week our special guest is Ryan Kirk of San Antonio, Texas, who has managed to accumulate quite an impressive array of books. Take it away Ryan!

Continue Reading »

Send Us Your Shelf Porn!

Welcome to another edition of Send Us Your Shelf Porn. Our guest this week is Kurt Young, who hails from Ottawa, Ontario, and works for the Canadian federal government.

Thanks by the way to all those who've been sending photos in or just emailing comments and suggstions. Your efforts and thoughts are always much appreciated. As a reward, I'll refrain from my usual pleas for material this week and let Kurt take over ...

Continue Reading »

Getting savage over Black Hole

Black Hole

The all-new, all-improved Savage Critics is off to a great start so far, as new hires Sean T. Collins and Dick Hyacinth offer their own takes on one of the best graphic novels of the past 10 years, Black Hole. Here's Sean:

Needless to say that's just about the most accurate depiction of the emotional life of teenagers I've ever seen. It's how I remember high school. It's not terribly far removed from how I remember college. (And to be perfectly honest, when I think of how I look at the world even now, it's within spitting distance of how I live today, which is probably a big part of why this is one of my favorite comics.) But of course, things do change. Bad things usually get better, which is why it's such a goddamn tragedy any time a teenager commits suicide because of a bad grade or a breakup--or when a group of sick kids feels it necessary to drop out of school, run away from home, and in the case of some characters literally throw their lives away. And unfortunately, good things often get worse; parents do understand, at least some of the time, and it's damn hard to tell someone "I'll love you forever, no matter what" and mean it, and two stoners driving across country probably won't be able to find a cozy apartment where he can make an honest living and she can work on her art and they both live happily ever after. That's a tragedy too.

Continue Reading »

The five most criminally ignored books of 2008: No. 3, I Live Here

I Live Here

"Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him it is just as lucky to die, and I know it."

As with Most Outrageous, it's not too hard to figure out why I Live Here, actress Mia Kirshner's anthology of tales concerning with refugees across the globe, didn't win more acclaim. It's a hell of a depressing book. It's a constant, ugly reminder of just how lucky we fat, beknighted North Americans are; how well-off and satisfying our lives are and how we may complain or think we're suffering, but really, we don't even have the slightest fucking clue what real suffering is like or what it entails.

Continue Reading »