Category: Reviews

Review: ‘A People’s History of American Empire’ by Howard Zinn

With the recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s no surprise that Howard Zinn has something to say. The author of A People’s History of the United States, Zinn retold America’s story through the eyes of all those who were beaten down in the country’s expansion.

Now he’s back with an updated account, albeit in a strange form. A People’s History of American Empire (Henry Holt, $30) is an illustrated version of the previous People’s History with notes on the current imperialistic efforts of the United States, as seen by Zinn. No graphic novel, it’s more of a slideshow of Zinn’s lectures. Here’s a sample put together by the publisher and narrated by Viggo Mortensen:

 

For those long familiar with Zinn’s writing, there’s nothing especially new here, though he does effectively tie in his past lessons to the current mess in the Middle East. And while Mike Konopacki’s art is impressive if sheerly for the quantity (a dense 250-plus pages), it’s not worth seeking out the book just for that.

The purpose of this book, more than anything, is to take Zinn’s message to new readers in a new way. In comics form, that message becomes easily digestible, though without losing any of its intellectual punch.

The story of the dark side of American history remains an important ones for the country’s youth. Now that story comes in a book they’re more likely to enjoy.

Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #1 – New Companions, Old Feelings

The hit BBC series Doctor Who kicked off its fourth season on the Sci-Fi Channel this weekend, so there’s no better time than the present to kick off an episode-by-episode analysis of the reinvigorated science-fiction classic here on ComicMix.

Every week, we’ll have our best Who-philes go through the most recent episode with a fine-tooth comb (or whatever the "sonic screwdriver" equivalent might be) and call out all of the continuity checks, names dropped and storyline hints we can find to keep in mind for future episodes. We’ll post our analysis the following Monday, so you have ample time to check out the episode when it airs each Saturday at 9 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel.

Keep in mind, we’re going to assume readers have already watched the episode when we put fingers to keyboard and come up with our roundup of important plot points. In other words, SPOILER ALERT!

Let’s begin now, shall we?

Season Four, Episode #1: "Partners in Crime" (more…)

Review: Chris Ware’s ‘ACME Novelty Library, Vol. 18’

acme1-7237097ACME Novelty Library, Vol. 18
By Chris Ware
Drawn & Quarterly, 2007, $18.95

My friend and former colleague James Nicoll once said “Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts.” For me, Chris Ware fills the same function – Ware’s work is almost terminally depressing, but executed with such craft and skill that it’s impossible to look away.

This edition of [[[ACME Novelty Library]]] continues Ware’s current graphic novel, “Building Stories” – at least, that’s what this has been called before; there’s no page with that or any other title in this book – with a series of interconnected short stories about an unnamed woman who lives on the top floor of that apartment building. (Parts of this volume also appeared in The New York Times Magazine in 2007 as part of their cruelly-misnamed “Funny Papers” feature – Ware might have been the most bleak thing in that comics space so far, but all of it has been serious, most of it has been dour and none of it has been funny.)

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Review: ‘Fantasy Classics’ edited by Tom Pomplun

fantasy3-7944618Fantasy Classics: Graphic Classics Vol. 15
Edited by Tom Pomplun
Eureka Productions, 2008, $11.95

The “[[[Graphic Classics]]]” series most of the time sticks to a single author per volume, but not always – they’ve had [[[Horror Classics]]], [[[Adventure Classics]]], and [[[Gothic Classics]]] already, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see more along those lines. (There’s no one chomping at the bit for a full volume of Sax Rohmer or Anne Radcliffe, for example, and it’s also a way to do more Poe or Lovecraft without doing a full-fledged “volume two.”) 

[[[Fantasy Classics]]] has two long adaptations – of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and of H.P. Lovecraft’s “[[[The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath]]]” – that each take up about a third of the book, and some shorter pieces that fill up the rest. They’re all fantasy, as advertised, but they’re very different kids of fantasy from each other – many, in fact, consider [[[Frankenstein]]] to be science fiction, indeed the ur-SF novel – and none of them are much like what’s mostly found in the “Fantasy” section of a bookstore. There are no Tolkienesque elves or post-[[[Buffy]]] vampire lover/killers here.

The book leads off with a single-page adaptation of Lord Dunsany’s “After the Fire” by Rachel Masilamani; it’s fine for what it is, but basically a vignette.

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UPDATE: Doctor Who Review: Season Four, Episode #1 – New Companions, Old Feelings

Holy time-wimey, wibbly-wobbily bits, Doctor! It looks like the BBC/Sci-Fi Channel schedules got the best of us here at ComicMix, so  in the interest of preventing any  more spoilers, we’re pulling this article off the site and re-posting it on Monday , April 28.

Thanks to ComicMix reader David and our own John Ostrander for catching the time-traveling mistake!

Be sure to check out the Season Four premiere (here in the U.S., that is) of Doctor Who on Friday, April 25, at 9 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel, then return here the following Monday for our analysis of the episode!

 

Review: ‘The Un-Men’ and ‘Faker’

In a bit of a strange coincidence, Vertigo has two new collections out this week that both prominently feature futuristic science and genetic manipulation. The books couldn’t be more different, though, with The Un-Men ($9.99) shining a freaky spotlight on some minor Swamp Thing characters and Faker ($14.99) taking a more serious look at the intersection of intelligence of the natural and artificial varieties.

Let’s look at [[[The Un-Men]]] first, if for no other reason than it being the better of the two books. Writer John Whalen takes the largely forgotten mutated monsters and carves a perfect little niche for them – Aberrance, a town of genetic weirdos.

Without ever becoming self-serious, the story explores the rift that’s formed between those in charge of Aberrance and the lower class of freaks. When one of the protesters turns up dead, a federal agent (an albino, which makes him the normal guy) steps in to investigate. Wackiness ensues.

While the murder mystery never takes on any import, the book sludges along with constant splashes of the bizarre and disgusting, each chapter managing to out-freak the last. It’s spiced with some catchy dialogue, such as, “Rome wasn’t sacked in a day.”

The big conclusion doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and the art is a bit too ordinary for the subject matter, but The Un-Men is still one of the most entertaining and creative new series from last year.

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Review: Three More Books for Kids

Here are three more graphic novels for readers of varied ages, gathered together for no better reason than because I read them all recently:

Gumby Collected #1
By Bob Burden, Rick Geary, & Steve Oliff
Wildcard Ink, 2007, $12.95

Bob Burden’s connection with Gumby goes back twenty years, to the great [[[Summer Fun Special of 1988]]] (illustrated by Art Adams), and he’s pretty much the dream writer for a modern Gumby comic. (Although Steve Purcell, writer of the equally-great Gumby Winter Fun Special, did a damn good job as well.)

But the idea that a big media creation – even an old and quirky one like Gumby – would actually end up being written by an oddball outsider like Burden, instead of some safe writer of corporate comics, is…well, it’s as unlikely as any Bob Burden story, which I guess makes it doubly appropriate.

This trade paperback – which has an ISBN and price only on the inside front cover, tucked away like an afterthought, so it may be difficult to track down – collects the first three issues of what is supposed to be an ongoing Gumby series. (It’s been late regularly, though, so it’s anybody’s guess how long it will continue. But this book came out, and that’s more 21st century Gumby comics than I ever would have expected to begin with.)

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Review: Three Pieces of Middle

These three books have almost nothing in common – they’re from three different publishers, in entirely different genres, and by very different creators. But they all are middle chapters in long-running series, so they raise similar questions about maintaining interest in a serialized story – when the beginning was years ago, and there’s no real end in sight, either, what makes this piece of the story special? (Besides the fact that it’s printed on nice paper and shoved between cardboard covers.)

exmachina-621-7885143Ex Machina, Vol. 6: Power Down
By Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris, Jim Clark, and JD Mettler
DC Comics/Wildstorm, 2008, $12.99

Ex Machina gets to go first, since it’s the shortest and it’s also the closest to the beginning of the series. (Both in that it’s volume 6 and because all of the [[[Ex Machina]]] collections are so short – this one collects issues 26 to 29 of the series, so we’re only into the third year of publication.) The premise is still the same – an unknown artifact/item gave then-civil engineer Mitchell Hundred the power to hear and command all kinds of machines, which he used to first become a costumed superhero (stopping the second plane on 9-11, among other things) and then successfully ran for mayor in the delayed election of 2001-2002.

This storyline begins in the summer of 2003, and provides a secret-historical reason for the blackout of that year. (This is too cute a touch for my taste – Hundred’s world is different enough from our own that this “explanation” couldn’t be true in our real world, and so the fact that both worlds had identical-seeming massive blackouts, on the same day, from different causes, stretches suspension of disbelief much too far.)

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Review: ‘Tônoharu, Part One’ by Lars Martinson

tonoharu-1867736

Tonoharu: Part One
By Lars Martinson
Pliant Press/Top Shelf, 2008, $19.95

This is another one of those books where it would be dangerous to assume too much, but it’s so tempting to do so. Martinson is a young American cartoonist who “lived and worked in southern Japan as an English teacher for three years.” The main character of this book, Dan, is a new English teacher in the Japanese town ofTônoharu. To make it even more complicated, [[[Tônoharu]]] has a prologue from the point of view of another English teacher in Tônoharu, Dan’s successor, who may or may not be Martinson. From the prologue, we already know than Dan will only last a year in Tônoharu, and that he’ll go home with “that ever-present look of defeat on his face.”

We also know that Dan’s unnamed successor isn’t particularly happy with his life in Tônoharu – the prologue sees him wrestling with the choice of staying for a second year, or bailing out – and the beginning of Dan’s story shows his unnamed predecessor leaving Japan after only a year, along with the predecessor’s only friend, another American teacher. So what is it about Tônoharu – or about Japan in general – that burns out and drives away Americans?

The main part of the story shows Dan feeling isolated and cut off from Japanese society, but he also doesn’t seem to be making much of an effort to connect to it. He has long periods of idleness at the school, which he’s supposed to use to prepare for class, but his language skills don’t get any better, and he’s always badly prepared. He doesn’t have much of a life in Tônoharu, but it’s hard to tell why that is – he says, at one point, that his hobbies are watching TV and sleeping, and he’s apparently honest about that. Honestly, he doesn’t seem to do anything, or to want to do anything in particular – he just wants not to be doing whatever he is doing.

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Review: ‘Paul Goes Fishing’ by Michel Rabagliati

paul-5922310

Paul Goes Fishing
By Michel Ragabliati
Drawn & Quarterly, 2008, $19.95

[[[Paul Goes Fishing]]] is the fourth in a series of semi-autobiographical graphic novels by an illustrator-turned-cartoonist from Montreal named Michel, about an illustrator-turned-cartoonist from Montreal named Paul.

Nosy Parkers, such as myself, will immediately start wondering just how “semi” this autobiography is. Paul and Michel are about the same age, in the same line of work, from the same city, and have the same family details (a wife and one daughter). On the other hand, these semi-autobiographical cartoonists are sneaky – and someone like Ragabliati could also easily have just done a pure autobio comic (there’s no shortage of those). So I’ll refrain from assuming that anything about “Paul” is also true of Rabagliati.

Like the other “[[[Paul]]]” books, Goes Fishing wanders through Paul’s past, with some scenes set when Paul was young (mostly when he’s fifteen and so frustrated with his life that he tries to run away) and some when he’s an adult (mostly in the mid-90s). There’s some narration, in the voice of a contemporary Paul, to organize it all, and explain when each scene is taking place, but the structure is quite fluid, with scenes flowing according to memory or other connections than along purely chronological lines.

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