Review - Sardine in Outer Space 5 by Emmanuel Guibert

August 26th, 2008 John

French creator Emmanuel Guibert offers giddy science fiction tomfoolery with the fifth volume of his “Sardine in Outer Space” series, “My Cousin Manga and Other Stories.”

Guibert’s work follows. the adventures of the little witch-like girl Sardine and the cat hiding in her hat as they travel with goofball Captain Yellow Shoulder and the manic Little Louie — together a crew of rather silly space pirates. The regular villains for the crew are Super Muscleman, the so-called “chief executive dictator of the universe” and his partner in crime, Doc Krok, an oogly looking guy with a big orange head.

The collection is packed with 10 delightful stories. In “The Bold and The Bashful,” the space pirates help unite lovebirds from the dark and light sides of the moon. In “The Scamcorder,” Doc Krok discovers “a new way of making children’s lives miserable,” a device that will make kids grow extra pimples, hair and buck teeth.

Guibert’s stories are light-hearted and energetic — oh, and pretty hilarious. They’re perfect for younger readers — reminiscent of something you might find in Nickolodeon Magazine — but older kids will find enjoyment in them too. And adults.

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Review - The Amazing, Remarkable Monsieur Leotard by Eddie Campbell and Dan Best

August 21st, 2008 John

In the delightful “The Amazing, Remarkable Monsieur Leotard,” graphic novel treasure Eddie Campbell and his collaborator Dan Best take a look at old side shows and draw a direct line between those performers and the modern day superhero. This unexpected feat is accomplished by examining the structure of exciting narratives and sweeping adventures as experienced by outsiders.

Leotard is, of course, the famed daring young man on the flying trapeze who inspired the song, the man who created the garment of the same name. This book is not about him, but his nephew, the far less interesting Etienne, who dons his uncle’s fake mustache and accepts his dying gift of a blank book. Etienne takes the book as a challenge to fill it with tales, and assumes the moustache as a key to the adventure. Like a dying wizard passing on his powers to a young orphan, Leotard leaves the world, but leaves a representative of his legend.

What follows is a series of short vignettes that constitute comic book issues in a larger adventure series. The idea here is that Etienne has been pass a mantle and he runs with it, he has been given a blank book and a challenge of sorts — “May nothing occur,” his uncle wishes him on his death bed. A small thinker would look to the sky and hope the same, a life of safety, but Etienne is no small thinker.
Aided by a dwarf named Zany, Etienne immediately sets about filling his book, ballooning past hordes of invading Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War in order to return to his uncles troupe to announce his elevation to fill the legendary Leotard leotards. Etienne also begins to reinvent the troupe in fantastic ways, most notably in the form of Quartette Fantastique, a crew of performers modeled after the Fantastic Four.

Campbell and Best deliver the tale with a breezy and casual structure, allowing the characters to decide the pace with which the stories unfold. Often in vignette form, the pieces add up to something understated and lovely in regard to telling stories and relating your own mythologies. Campbell’s artwork, meanwhile, is beyond beauty — he is one of the most important creators in the field and his color work here, which crosses styles and genres and employs some brilliant panel placement as well, elevates his legend further. You leave the story loving both him and Etienne.

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Mr. Big by Carol and Matt Dembicki

August 21st, 2008 John

A nature tale about wetlands survival and the cycle of life unfolds as a suspense thriller, complete with a murder conspiracy and a plot twist involving just who really is the villain in the tale. Carol and Matt Dembicki’s “Mr. Big” delivers in its revelation of nature as an unsentimental and logical system that still involves passion and drama.

As spring begins, the inhabitants of a certain pond are faced with the regular cycle of life. Much as spring heralds new life, it also is marked by death and in this pond its messenger is often the mysterious and silent Mr. Big, a lumbering but deadly snapping turtle who lurks in a sewer pipe waiting for kills.

A conspiracy between fish and crayfish — followed by frogs and other creatures — begins in order to enlist a rebellion for the assassination of the killer turtle. Matters are complicated further when the crows are brought into the scheme and the existence of another, possibly more dangerous creature is brought to everyone’s attention. As the plot spirals out of control and the result of the creatures’ actions become less sure, the Dembickis bring their tale into a philosophical rumination on the balance of nature, the place of death in life and the real ecological scourge of invasive species on an ecosystem.

“Mr. Big” is a great book for kids and adults, mixing genre excitement with natural science, utilizing human personalities in the animals just enough to draw you in and illustrate the themes fluidly. As a result, “Mr. Big” is a multi-faceted look, also, into the psychology of how human’s perceive nature and what realistic steps we can take to understand the way the world works — and perhaps even apply it to our own human condition.

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Review - The 10 Cent Plague by David Hajdu

July 28th, 2008 John

Why do Americans love censorship so? We fight against fascists and dictators and communists, and yet we revere John Adams and the sedition act as a model for dealing with words and works we find uncomfortable. From Dixieland music to hip hop, popular culture has been at the forefront of the threat against American culture. One of the ugliest — and least documented — movements in American censorship has been in regard to comic books, a recurring effort that resulted in the gutting of an industry populated by Jews, immigrants and women in the 1950s.

In “The Ten Cent Plague,” author David Hajdu documents the dismantling of an American art form, where moral concerns — often misguided ones — bullied a vibrant, street level, populist creative format that eventually blossomed into the biggest selling entertainment in America, read by kids and adults.

Before the 1950s, comic books were not synonymous with superheroes — instead, it was populated by a multitude of genres, as well as pure drama and comedy, and millions were sold each month. Hajou reveals the medium’s contribution to the post-1950s culture of America where, even as aboveground culture continued to maintain a choke hold on creativity, alternative and youth culture wanted something more than the pre-fabricated, canned artistry that was offered to them. Comics helped build that sensibility.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Review - The Dayan Collection by Akiko Ikeda

July 25th, 2008 John

Hidden away in children’s popular culture in Japan is a big-eyed cat named Dayan who inhabits a magical world not far down the street from the works of Beatrix Potter, thanks to its darkness and absurdity. The books are being translated into English for the first time, giving American kids the chance to encounter the cat’s low key adventures.

Akiko Ikeda’s tales walk a path that welcomes mysticism and a subtle folkloric quality, as well as an existentialism that replaces any sort of humdrum exposition. The first book, “Dayan’s Birthday,” opens with the simple idea that Dayan does not know when his birthday is, but wants to so he can throw himself a party. Like something out of an old folk tale, Dayan makes a deal with witches to uncover the mysterious date, but thoughtlessness creates a conflict with the witches that can only be solved through fast-thinking trickery.

There is something positively pagan about the comings and goings of the animal characters — “Thursday Rainy Party” involves a celebration of showers and the creation of a calendar; “White Eurocka” brings animals together for a Winter Solstice style celebration that involves a mystical birth; and “Chibikuro Party” unveils a party of freed shadows who plan never to return to their masters, under the leadership of the nefarious shadow of “The Satan of Death Forest.”

Despite the dark, supernatural tones, these are not scary stories in the slightest — and they all unfold around cute forest animals. The darkness functions as a spice that mixes well with the adorable simplicity of the other half of the tales — there will be, perhaps, a cultural difference in what is considered the norm for children’s books. For a little kid who might be ready for something with unexpected texture — or a parent who might want to expose the child to other cultures in a subtle, less dictatorial manner, that involves exciting strangeness traveling through the aether — the Dayan books are just the thing.

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Review - Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

July 11th, 2008 John

Part science book and part career memoir, Neil Shubin’s “Your Inner Fish” takes an amiable journey through the evidence for evolution and what it really means to us now.

Shubin, a paleontologist and professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago, met renown upon the discovery of Tiktaalik, a landmark example of a transitional species. In this case, it was a creature that existed as an intermediate between fish and land mammals. As Shubin and his colleagues studied their finding, they found that so many parts of the Tiktaalik were traceable directly to the structure of the modern human. It looked like a crocodile, but it was us.

His book is also a look back to his own professional experience, unveiling what it takes to be the sort of person to scuttle around digging up fossils. With good humor, Shubin relates the planning required of his job, as well as the grunt work involved and the strange world a paleontologist enters when the wide world takes note of one of his discoveries.

Most importantly, Shubin traces the way science uncovers our past, the interconnectedness of the disciplines that do so and the specimens they study. To deny evolution is to deny all of science, since the entire umbrella is used to collate the data that proves evolution is a process that all life goes through. As Shubin’s book well-documents, there is a little bit of the same thing in every creature on earth — it’s how scientists are able to do anything.

In doing all this, Shubin walks a remarkable line — demystifying the process and the people who do the research, presenting them as human beings that any of us could know, while still giving the scientific data with the depth it deserves, not dumbing down the presentation in order to make us feel less threatened by its lofty perch.

To link it all together, Shubin evokes a biological “law of everything” that stipulates that every living thing has parents — and that lineage is a chain of simplicity by which we are all linked. It’s an eloquent and amusing journey through the biological family tree of Earth.

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Review - Mouse Guard by David Peterson

July 1st, 2008 John

Plunging confidently into the literary genre of small rodent adventures already populated by works such as “Redwall,” “Stuart Little” and “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH,” “Mouse Guard: Fall 1152” by David Peterson does well in adding of the tradition.

Following the adventures of three guard mice on the trail of a traitor, Peterson’s tale unfolds in a rich fantasy world that plants itself in the trappings of realism. This is not a sword and sorcery kind of fantasy, but a pretty straightforward and non-fanciful tale that of the era — it’s just seen through the eyes of mice who live in little mice cities.

The three guards — Lieam, Kenzie and Saxon — learn of a far wider conspiracy as they race into the woods on a manhunt. At first it is merely a missing merchant, but evidence reveals he is a spy and the trail leads to another city of mice. A terrible conflict looms. At the same time, the story explores some of the lore of the Mouse Guard, bringing it forth into the story and offering a multi-faceted experience that hints at more to come.

The story is deceptively simple and the characters likable, but it all unfolds with a grand form of drama through Peterson’s art. His backgrounds are glorious — meticulous in some places, capturing every crack and flaw in a home or castle, every wisp of life in a forest, and abstract in others,using color and darkness and silhouettes to bring the panels into the same emotional territories as the characters’ souls.

The story is accompanied by further character drawings, explanations, maps and cultural studies of the mouse society. Peterson is heading towards something larger with his work and this debut operates as an engaging entrance to a more complicated world soon to unfold — one that gives a vivid feeling for actual history even as it wraps reality around the charming and the fantastic.

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Kirby: King of Comics by Mark Evanier

June 16th, 2008 John

There is no argument — Jack Kirby is the single most important figure in 20th Century comic books. Whether you like his work or not, whether you appreciate his ideas or not, no single person has had so much of his output spread so vigorously throughout the industry.

And if you think this is something that should only matter to comic book fans, consider this — Jack Kirby had his hand in some of the biggest movie and television blockbusters of recent years. “Iron Man,” for instance — Kirby had a major hand in his creation, doing the initial designs for the character and then taking over the art chores on the book soon after. More importantly, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Captain America and the X-Men, among others, are all Kirby creations. 

Furthermore, his later characters the New Gods — most notably the villain Darkseid — has played a major role in Super Friends and the Justice League cartoons over the last two decades, becoming very familiar to kids everywhere.

He’s also the guy Roy Lichtenstein co-opted for his famous pop art works.

Jack Kirby was the George Lucas of his day, creating fictional universes that would provide plenty of fuel for others to build upon — but he was tons better because he wasn’t derivative. He was even a little mad — how else would you explain someone who did a monthly comic book based on “2001: A Space Odyssey” and actually made it fun?

In Mark Evanier’s new art book and biography, “Kirby: King of Comics,” Kirby’s career is traced from his humble beginnings in the comic book sweat shops of the 1930s to his death — and point of triumphant acknowledgment for contributions to the world of comic books — in 1994. Evanier’s presentation is alternately gushing and honest — he’s not one to gloss over mistakes Kirby might have made in his work — and through one man provides a great history of the way comic books have been published.

Kirby started out in the cartoon studios, where hordes of artists were employed to churn out second tier comic strips at cut rate prices. From there, he moved through several comparable situations, including an agreeable tenure at Will Eisner’s studio, before ending up at Timely Comics, the precursor for Marvel. The situation was not ideal, but did team him up with Joe Kirby, with whom he would create the seminal character Captain America. 

In the 1950s, Simon and Kirby refined the romance comic and ventured into surreal superhero satire with the Fighting American. In the 1960s, Kirby changed comic books forever at Marvel Comics, teaming with Stan Lee to create the tone and style of the modern superhero story. These were superheroes with real personalities and problems — Clark Kents who became Superman, not vice versa — and the stories often touched on themes that were traditionally too lofty for the superhero genre, most notably the idea that power brought responsibility.

Kirby went on to produce as string of insanely clever science fiction comics for DC in the 1970s — most notably “Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth” and “Omac, the One Man Army Corps” — and continued doing so for several companies until his death. His work was prolific, his ideas one of a kind.

Kirby was also the poster boy for creative rights within the comic book industry, the idea that artists deserve more compensation for creating these characters than a standard page rate. Consider this — when Jack Kirby came up with the multitudes of characters for Marvel, he was coming up with models for toys and movies and television shows and clothing and accessories and more. In return, Marvel Comics dismissed him from their employment and refused to give him his original art back. Kirby fought back and, years later, finally won. 

Even with all the historical information, the real star of the show is the artwork. The book is lavish in its illustrations, from full color cover reproductions to plenty of examples of Kirby’s pencil work and character designs. It’s a beautiful and fitting presentation that serves not merely as a tribute this very important comic book creator, but an explanation of why he is important and a revelation for those who don’t know but should.

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Review - Silly Lilly by Agnes Rosenstiehl

May 28th, 2008 John

The second release in Toon Books’ new line of easy reader graphic novels, “Silly Lilly,” is a charming affair by French author/illustrator Agnes Rosenstiehl. In a series of seasonal sketches, a young girl named Lilly is followed through her reactions to the changes.

That’s a funny thing about being a kid — before you are really aware of time, of real change in the sense that an adult is, you are aware of the flow and passing in one very sensual way and that is the shift of seasons. Seasons, like anything else, are relative and will look and feel different according to where you live — at the same time, the basics are generally the same and this is structure we teach children.

Seasons, it seems, are the first formal lesson we give in the cycle of life.

Lilly gets silly in the park in spring, the beach in summer, the apple orchard in fall, the snow in winter and the playground in spring, bringing the year full circle and, more importantly, transcribing a year of change for not only the earth, but the girl as well.

Rosenstiehl crafts a simple sketch of a graphic novel here, presenting the idea of sequential storytelling in its most base form without making it a pantomime. There is a crafty underbelly to the humor, with slight story tension being brought out in delicate ways.

“Silly Lilly” is the cutest tour de force imaginable.

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Review - Little Vampire by Joann Sfar

May 25th, 2008 John

French cartoonist Joann Sfar unleashes his macabre kids comic “Little Vampire,” with three stories that mix dark comedy with sincere sweetness for a collection that will no doubt speak to children as it values not only their intelligence, but empathy and perspective.

Little Vampire himself lives in a haunted mansion with other ghouls — all grown ups. In one way, he finds himself cloistered among his own kind, since everyone else in the mansion is a ghost or a monster or some kind of zombie creature, and each treats Little Vampire with the sort of gentle demeanor one would hope caretakers of a child would employ. But Little Vampire of is of two kinds — ghoul and child — and though he is fulfilled as the former, he is desperate to make some connection as the latter.

Little Vampire demands that he be allowed to go to school — and all the horrors of the mansion work to make sure that he does and that it’s a great experience.

Certain issues involved in the particulars of being a monster disrupt Little Vampire’s attempts to go to school — monsters don’t keep hours agreeable to school boards. In making the best of the situation, though, Little Vampire manages to make a connection with a boy named Michael and it’s this friendship that fuels the book.

In the other stories in the book, Little Vampire uses supernatural solutions to help Michael contend with a bully and the entire ghoul gang takes up the cause of some dogs escaping an animal testing laboratory.

In each story, Sfar’s artwork — so beautiful in “The Rabbi’s Cat” books — works toward comedy, unfolding some very funny, very rollicking little adventures. It’s all undeniably European, however — I can’t imagine an American creator would use some of the dark and mature subject matter that he does so casually, but in Sfar’s hands, I barely batted an eye at any of it. Sfar is such a master at his craft — without a doubt, one of the best cartoonists in the world today — and any kid’s library will be elevated by the inclusion of “Little Vampire.”

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