Category: Reviews

Just Act Normal by John McNamee

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Three years ago, when I saw the first collection of John McNamee’s Pie Comics – it’s called Goldilocks and the Infinite Bears ; it’s funny; you should read it – I thought the strip might have ended, and was mildly sad that only the first of the strip’s three collections were available in my library’s app.

Well, sometime over those three years, a second Pie Comics collection popped up there – yclept Just Act Normal  – and I just noticed and read it. In possibly even better news, McNamee has started posting to Tumblr again, with a half-dozen new cartoons this year after a six-year silence.

So the TL;DR for those of you with short attention spans: McNamee is quirky and funny, he’s got a great semi-stick-figure style – a little in the Tom Gauld vein, which is high praise – and there’s the promise of more stuff from him, too. This book is good; the first book is good. (I can’t figure out what the third book’s title is, and suspect it may be a mirage – on the other hand, the book I read, which clearly has Just Act Normal on its pages, has Book Learnin’ as a header/title in the Hoopla app, so maybe that‘s the title of his third book?)

McNamee has the kind of art that’s instantly readable and is much harder to do than it looks. (The fewer the lines, the tougher it is.) And his jokes are wry, sarcastic, modern, and true – he got his start at The Onion, which gives you a sense of the comic sensibility and tradition he mostly works in.

There are no continuing characters; it’s mostly four-panel bits, different every time. You can jump in anywhere. So you might as well.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Daisy Goes to the Moon by Matthew Klickstein & Rick Geary

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Daisy Ashford was real. She was born in 1881, and wrote a cluster of stories in her youth: weird, oddball things with eccentric spelling and an often-shaky grasp on how people actually lived and talked to each other, all bathed in the sunny happiness of a coddled girl of the Victorian age. After she grew up, she rediscovered those stories, and some of them were published around 1919 with the help of J.M. Barrie. There have been periodic revivals and rediscoveries since then; a movie of her most famous “novel,” The Young Visiters, was made by the BBC about twenty years ago. (I know I saw it, but it must have been before the life of this blog.)

Daisy Goes to the Moon  is about Daisy, but not by Daisy. Matthew Klickstein wrote a short novel in Daisy’s style – which seems to me to be the opposite of the point of juvenilia, frankly – and it was published in 2009, full of 1950s imagery and ideas. And now Rick Geary, master of both whimsy and Victoriana, has turned Klickstein’s story into a short graphic novel, full of authentically Daisy-esque spelling and moderately appropriate Daisy-esque situations and comments.

(Daisy herself died in 1972 at the age of 90, so she’s no more going to complain about what people have done to her memory than Shakespeare is.)

This begins with Daisy about the age of nine, when she wrote her most famous works, and dressed up in the usual Victorian-girl look, down to the big bow in her hair. She’s sitting under a tree, Alice-like, when a “rokit” lands nearby. It’s piloted by Mr. Zogolbythm (Mr. Z), a tall, skinny man all in black who comes from the moon, to which he proceeds to whisk Daisy for an adventure.

The story continues somewhat episodically, somewhat along the lines of the usual tour-of-the-future style for utopian works. Daisy experiences the high-tech of the moon – including a “so-you-can-hear-and-read-too” device implanted in her brain to allow her to understand moon language – flees Moon Monsters and creatures from other planets, shops for shoes and goes to an automat, and so on.

Soon, though, another character pops up: Mr. Blahdel (Mr. B) an American time-traveler from the 1950s, lugging a TV that’s missing an important part. B and Z have some mostly minor disagreements, which lead to further adventures when they dispute over the navigation of a spaceship. We also descend into metafiction when Daisy finds a book written by her sister Angie, which retells the first half of the story badly – the bratty Angie has followed Daisy (somehow; this isn’t clear) to the Moon.

And, of course, in the end Daisy gets back home safe and sound, and declares that to the best place to be.

Geary’s art is as detailed and energetic as always; quirkiness and whimsy typically brings out some of his best work, and that’s the case here. I might think that was an odd project, but it’s done as authentically and honestly as it could be, and this is a fun, amusing story.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Imerpail War One-Shots Feature Black Panther, She-Hulk

New York, NY— May 15, 2025 — Next month, IMPERIAL, a four-issue event series by visionary writer Jonathan Hickman and superstar artists Iban Coello and Federico Vicentini, kicks off a galaxy-spanning conflict, boldly transforming the cosmic landscape of the Marvel Universe. The highly anticipated series sets the stage for a new line of intergalactic storytelling, starting with five IMPERIAL WAR one-shots that spotlight individual characters and groups as they navigate the startling developments and explosive conflicts sweeping the stars.

These key chapters of the overarching IMPERIAL narrative will each be co-written by Hickman with the first two hitting stands in August: IMPERIAL WAR: BLACK PANTHER #1 by award-winning writer Victor LaValle (Wolverine: Sabretooth War) and acclaimed artist CAFU (Venom) and IMPERIAL WAR: PLANET SHE-HULK #1 by rising superstar Stephanie Phillips (Phoenix) and extraordinary artist Emilio Laiso (Godzilla Vs. X-Men).

The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda is under fire from all sides in IMPERIAL WAR: BLACK PANTHER! Blamed for the assassinations that have started an all-out galactic war, T’Challa will first need to survive a brutal assault from the World-Breaker Hulk and Amadeus Cho before he can even think about hunting down the true culprit! And all while his spacecraft spirals towards certain doom! Sounds like another day at the office for the Black Panther!

“Working with Jonathan Hickman on an interstellar epic—who wouldn’t be thrilled by that idea? I’m excited to start working on the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda because there’s not enough stories about Black folks in outer space. There could always be more. By the time I’m done, T’Challa and Shuri will have constellations named after them, in some distant galaxy,” LaValle said.

Then, a brutal war of succession ignites in IMPERIAL WAR: PLANET SHE-HULK! Left behind on New Sakaar to keep the peace, Jen Walters discovers that in this savage realm, what’s needed isn’t a litigator, it’s a liquidator! Fortunately, She-Hulk is accomplished at being both!

“She-Hulk’s voice just came naturally to me from the first line—she’s so sharp, funny, and confident,” Phillips shared. “It’s been incredible getting to bring her story to life as part of IMPERIAL and see what this talented lineup of creators is building together.”

IMPERIAL WAR: BLACK PANTHER #1
Written by VICTOR LAVALLE & JONATHAN HICKMAN
Art by CAFU
Cover by FRANCESCO MORTARINO
On Sale 8/20

IMPERIAL WAR: PLANET SHE-HULK #1
Written by STEPHANIE PHILLIPS AND JONATHAN HICKMAN
Art by EMILIO LAISO
Cover by FRANCESCO MORTARINO
On Sale 8/27

William of Newbury by Michael Avon Oeming

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The publisher calls this book “Hellboy meets Redwall,” which hits the major touchpoints, as far as that goes. Yes, fighting supernatural monsters. Yes, medieval times. Yes, anthropomorphic characters. But it’s much more authentically medieval than a reader would expect, in quirky and unusual ways, much more inspired and growing out of actual research than it is a story stuck into that world for vague coolness reasons.

First and most important is that William of Newburgh – “Newbury” is a variation creator Michael Avon Oeming decided to use here – is an actual 12th century monk, and this collection of ghost-fighting stories about a raccoon and his rabbit brother is actually based on the writings of the real person.

Now, Oeming clearly fictionalized some things to turn the historical record The History of English Affairs – an actual book written by the real William covering the period known as The Anarchy when King Stephen and Empress Matilda battled for control of the country (and Normandy) after the unexpected death of Henry I and his heir – into William of Newbury , the collection of the first four comic-book issues of the anthropomorphic William’s adventures. But the bones of the story seem to be much closer to the original than I would have expected.

(For one change, I’m pretty sure the historical human William didn’t have a semi-reformed thief sidekick, Winnie, whom he was teaching to read.)

The four issues tell a continuous story, but each issue is basically one event – each works as an individual issue or story. There’s an encounter with the supernatural each time, plus complications and larger issues.

The supernatural elements are explicitly based in the medieval worldview. The dead do rise, because they are tormented by devils of Satan. The land of faerie exists, and is made up of fiends who want to torment and tempt Christians. 

William, despite the Hellboy comparison and Oeming’s moody Mignola-esque art, is not going to punch any of these creatures. He is going to talk at them, to call on the angels and saints, to use the power of God to force the devils and faeries to leave and the dead to lie still. He has a staff with a cross on it, which he brandishes at the arisen dead – who are nasty and violent and murderous and tossing hellfire at times, too – but what will stop them is not anything violent, but the power of God, possibly channeled or empowered by William’s faith.

(It does work consistently, as we see. Punching would not. This is not a world in which punching evil has any effect.)

The other major theological point, which is an important undertone throughout and becomes central in the fourth issue, is that William and his brother Edward were almost kidnapped by the faeries as children, and that means their souls were stolen and they are doomed to oblivion after death. (Not even hell, as they understand it: their souls are gone, so they will just die.) There’s a hint at the end that this may not be entirely true, and it may be theologically suspect as well – can an immortal soul be stolen? do these pagan spirits have the power to destroy something made by God? – but that, as they say, is probably for the next volume of William of Newbury stories.

William himself is a fascinating, quirky character: devout, scholarly but muscular in his faith, devoted to doing good as he sees it and using his abilities to help those around him. But also scattered and often cheated in everyday things, not necessarily that good at the rough-and-tumble of life – which is understandable for a monk. I think there will be more of these stories, and I hope so: I don’t know how much more of William’s writings Oeming still has to work from, but there’s enough material here for at least another couple of stories of this length.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

REVIEW: Dune: Prophecy

Frank Herbert didn’t necessarily intend to create a large, enduring legacy like Dune became. But once the novel finally arrived in the mid-1960s, it was immediately embraced and spawned several sequels until Herbert’s death. His son Brian, in concert with Kevin J. Anderson, has been keeping the flames burning bright with a series of prequels and sequels that further the ideas first presented sixty years ago.

Herbert thought on a grand scale, his history spanning tens of thousands of years, so HBO Max’s Dune: Prophecy is set 10,000 years before events found in Dune (and therefore, the first two Denis Villeneuve film adaptations). While drawing material from Herbert and Anderson’s Sisterhood of Dune, it charts its course, focusing on the evolution of the female-centric Bene Gesserit.

Legendary Entertainment is used to thinking in grandiose terms given their work with Godzilla and King Kong, and here, plans for the TV tie-in began in 2019, well before the first feature film was released. The six-episode first season aired last winter and is now available on 4K Ultra HD from Warner Home Entertainment.

There are timeframes running in parallel, tracing the relationship between two sisters: Valya Harkonnen (Jessica Barden) and Tula Harkonnen (Emma Canning) as they leave home for training in the mystic order. As adults, the two (Emily Watson and Olivia Williams respectively) contend with changes within the order, including a threat in the form of Desmond Hart (Travis Frimmel), who is the fly in the Sisterhood’s ointment, immune to Vialya’s Voice, a power that compels people to do her bidding. The emperor has no use for the Bene Gesserit and wants them eradicated.

As one would expect, the two timelines are populated with friends, kin, and enemies, sometimes making it hard to track who is who and who is out to get whom. Still, there are many familiar terms and images, notably the Sandworm of Arrakis. Despite the ten-thousand-year difference, it still looks and feels like Villeneuve’s Dune. There are enough intriguing details and character moments to make each episode interesting and keep you coming back.

In the hands of showrunner Alison Schapker, the stories have some pleasant, compelling moments and fun characters. The series boasts an attractive and talented cast, which connected with the audience, leading to a second season being commissioned before the first season was completed airing last December.

The series is available as either 4K or Blu-ray without a combo pack or digital code. The HVEC/H.265 encoded 2160p transfers in 2.00:1 is rich in visual detail, nicely capturing the color palette, and looks fabulous on a home screen. It pairs quite well with the immersive Dolby Atmos audio track.

Alas, being a repackaging of the series, the Special Features are drawn mainly from the Inside the Episode packages that accompany most Max productions. Disc One also offers up Entering the Dune Universe (2:58) and Houses Divided (2:47). Disc Two provides us with Truth or Lie (5:38) and Expanding the Universe (2:32) while Disc Three has Behind the Veil (34:45) and Building Worlds – Home Entertainment Exclusive (HD; 13:04) is another production design focused featurette. One wishes the features were as rich in detail as the episodes themselves.

Dune: Prophecy

REVIEW: Iron Man: Something Strange!

Iron Man: Something Strange!
By Dean Hale and Douglas Holgate
Abrams Fanfare/96 pages/12.99

After three team-up books featuring Spider-Man, the young reader line shines the spotlight on Iron Man and Doctor Strange, and it’s a fun time. Aimed at 5-9-year-old readers, the book ostensibly is about an alien infestation that comes to shellhead’s attention when the Avengers’ communication system fails. It turns out the ten little creatures are the offspring of an interdimensional creature who is none-too-happy to be on Iron Man’s plane of existence.

When the Golden Avenger runs out of science-based options, he takes Thor’s advice and seeks supernatural help from the Master of the Mystic Arts. Here’s where the real theme emerges: science versus magic becomes a running gag between the two heroes. With just an hour to collect the children of Great Gargantos, Scourge of the Outer Planes, Tonty Stark challenges Stephen Strange to see who can corral the most children.

Dean Hale is no stranger to writing young superhero stories, and here, he does a fine job simplifying all the heroes into child-sized personalities without losing Stark’s egocentrism. He finely weaves in humorous cameos from the Avengers and Spidey. It’s interesting that the most wisdom comes not from the armored Avenger or Sorcerer Supreme but from Ms. Marvel, in another cameo. The only sour note is his bad explanation for why the armor’s AI is named Friday.

Douglas Holgate’s art is well-suited to the characters and the story, keeping things easy to follow and filled with nice little touches throughout. Ian Herring’s colors keep up with the frenetic pace.

This is a solid addition to the Mighty Marvel Yea-Ups from Abrams Fanfare.

An Embarrassment of Witches by Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan

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This is not a sequel to Darwin Carmichael Is Going to Hell . It is, though, the only other project I know of by the team behind that webcomic, and it’s set in a world very similar to Darwin Carmichael‘s. It may even be the same world, though not necessarily so.

Darwin Carmichael ran from 2009 through 2013 and then was collected into a book. Sophie Goldstein drew about 90% of it and co-wrote it all, as far as I can tell, and Jenn Jordan drew a few bits and did the other half of the writing.

An Embarrassment of Witches  was a 2020 original graphic novel. This time out, it looks like Goldstein (the professional comics-maker and teacher) did all of the art, but the book is still vague about their roles, so I continue to assume they write it together, in whatever way. (Probably not Marvel Method. My guess would be some variety of co-plotting, with Goldstein maybe doing page breakdowns and then coming back together for dialogue.)

Darwin was set in a modern NYC where everything in myth was true – there were minotaurs on the subway and stoner angels were important to the plot. In Witches, we only see humans, but it’s a world with industrialized, systematized magic – our milieu is the academic world around magic, focused on two young women and their post-graduate lives.

As required in a story about two people, they’re quite different: Rory is impulsive, unsure, flitting from one idea to the next. Angela is driven, focused, serious. And the story is thus mostly about Rory, since she’s more interesting and active.

They’ve both just graduated. Angela is about to start an internship with Rory’s Type A mother, Dr. Audrey Rosenberg. Rory is heading off to work at a dragon sanctuary in Australia with her boyfriend Holden…who, just before getting on the plane, tells her that he wants to open up their relationship to other people. (We get the sense that this sort of thing happens to Rory all the time – she misreads signals, dives into everything headfirst, and gets hurt all the time by everything before bouncing off into something totally different after a big emotional scene.)

So Rory impulsively doesn’t go to Australia, begs Angela to let her stay in the walk-in closet of their apartment – they’ve sublet her room to a guy named Guy for the summer – sells off most of her stuff, and then falls for Guy and decides to follow him into his new Interdisciplinary Magick program. (Every time Rory does something, you can assume the word “impulsively” is there. The narrative doesn’t say she always does this about a boy, but the two cases we see here both fit that pattern.)

Meanwhile, Angela, in a somewhat more low-key manner, is one of six interns working for Dr. Rosenberg (Rory’s mother, again), who is demanding and exacting and apparently has not one iota of human feeling for her employees or family.

They both crash, of course. Angela because she’s been doing the boiling-frog thing, with pressure building up bit by bit probably since she was five, and she just cracks. Rory because that’s what she always does: throws herself into something but only half-asses it, misunderstands other people and doesn’t say what she wants or needs, and then collapses into an emotional wreck when it inevitably breaks apart. 

They yell at each other, they break their friendship…but only briefly, because it’s that kind of story. They also have familiars – I think everyone in this world does, but the familiars are pretty independent and seem to wander off for weeks at a time – who kibitz on their relationship, squabble with each other, and help to mend everything in the end.

It’s a story I’ve seen many times before – you probably have, too. One part quarter-life crisis, one part best friends assuming too much of their relationship. Goldstein and Jordan tell it well, and their quirky, specific world adds a lot of depth and intertest to what could otherwise be a pretty general and bland story. Rory would be deeply annoying in most stories; she’s the kind of person who goes out of her way to step on every damn rake on the ground, over and over again.

In the end, they both move on to things that we think are good for them – at least, we hope so, and it is the end, so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s a solid ending, open and forward-looking. I don’t know if we’ll get another story by Goldstein and Jordan set in a world of industrialized magic, but…if we got two, surely there’s no reason there couldn’t be three?

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Fortune & Glory: The Musical by Brian Michael Bendis & Bill Walko

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Brian Michael Bendis’s Hollywood memoir-in-comics Fortune & Glory  was republished about two years ago, for no obvious anniversary- or thematically-related reason. At the time, I thought it was just a random new edition, but now it’s clear that it was setting up for what we might as well call a sequel.

Fortune & Glory: The Musical was published at the end of January – I don’t think it was serialized first, which is a little unusual for a book written by a guy like Bendis and published by an outfit like Dark Horse – and it tells a different story of a younger Bendis getting pulled into writing stuff for other creative media. While the first F&G centered on trying to turn his creator-owned early noir GNs into movies – Spoiler alert! it didn’t quite happen, though Bendis got contacts and contracts and some income for a few years and other things eventually did get made – this second one is about one project that we readers might not have known Bendis was ever part of.

The famously…um, troubled Broadway musical of the early Teens, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark [1], had a book attributed to director Julie Taymor, playwright Glenn Berger, and (after a hasty rewrite during previews) playwright and comics scripter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. But it was no secret that other writers, including several comics writers, had been part of the project earlier. And Bendis was one of them, having been pulled in by Marvel head Avi Arad in 2004 to meet with Taymor and, everyone hoped, write the book of this musical.

(The music and lyrics were always going to be by Bono and The Edge of U2, and they were.)

The Musical is written by Bendis and features him as the main character, with roughly the same character design as the Bendis-drawn original F&G. But this time the art is by Bill Walko, with colors by Wes Dzioba and letters by Joshua Reed. It is the story of his involvement with Turn Off the Dark – which is actually pretty short and minor – as well as loosely-related material about his youth and the usual how-I-got-into-comics stuff.

Bluntly, Bendis took a couple of meetings with Taymor (one by phone, one after being flown down to LA), where he was impressed by her energy and passion but reacted really badly to two major pieces of her vision. First, that the musical should end, like a comic book, with a big “To Be Continued!” message – but he thought he could finesse that. Second, and more seriously, that she wanted to change Spider-Man’s origin from the standard radioactive spider-bite, so that instead Peter Parker got his powers by praying to the Greek goddess Arachne.

(That stayed in the final work, more or less, so it clearly was a deal-breaker for Taymor. I’m more surprised that Marvel allowed it; they could have fired her instead and gone with another director. But I suppose this was post-bankruptcy, pre-Iron Man Marvel, a company more willing to take a crazy chance on someone who was well-known and successful in her area of expertise.)

So Bendis wrote up a treatment, and had another meeting to pitch it. He did not include the Arachne origin, and got only about that far into the pitch before Taymor blew up, and Bendis’s involvement in the project quietly ended. (Bendis thought the project ended, and was surprised when the musical popped back up a few years later.)

That, as I hinted above, is only one small thread in The Musical – maybe 15% of the pages at most. It’s not a long story, and not a lot happens. Most of the book is flashbacks to Young Bendis, dewy-eyed and obsessed with comics, bugging people like Walt Simonson and making crappy comics as a teenager and, eventually, forging an indy self-published crime-comics career in his twenties.

I don’t know if anyone will come to The Musical for that story, but, if you’re a Bendis fan, you’ll probably enjoy it. It’s the standard story of a lot of fans-turned-pro, and Bendis tells it with a lot of self-awareness and humor. Walko brings a slightly cartoony, caricatured line that adds energy and big facial expressions to pages with lots of captions and dialogue.

The Musical does not provide much background on Turn Off the Dark; Bendis was only involved briefly and inconclusively several years before it actually happened. But it’s an amusing “creative people are obsessive weirdoes with quick tempers” story, and the rest of the material in the book is at least loosely and vaguely connected to that story.

[1] I actually saw Turn Off the Dark on Broadway with my two kids. Sadly, I saw it after the retool, when it was just kooky and not full-on insane. I  didn’t write about it at the time, and that was fifteen years ago, so all I have are vague memories. It was very technically impressive and full of excellent on-stage talent doing impressive things, but the story was…well, I don’t want to say “a confused mess,” since that would be insulting, but it wasn’t the most clear and understandable thing I’ve ever seen.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Sharky Malarkey: A Sketchshark Collection by Megan Nicole Dong

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As far as I can tell, this 2018 book is the only collection of the “Sketchshark” comic – more than that, it’s creator Megan Nicole Dong’s only book to date, and “Sketchshark” was the title of her (long-abandoned) Blogspot site and maybe the original title of the (only mildly abandoned) related Tumblr , which now uses the book’s title.

On the other hand, she’s got a day-job in animation as a director and storyboard artist (including what looks like three shows this decade, one upcoming for 2027), which probably takes most of her artistic energy and drawing time the last bunch of years.

Sharky Malarkey  feels like one of those “throw in everything to fill up a book” collections, divided into chapters with somewhat different kinds of cartoons. There’s a twenty-page introduction, which I think was new for the book, in which the creator is picked up for a rideshare by her shark character (Bruce), incorporating what may have been a few separate individual strips about Dong’s life and cat. That’s the only major autobio material; Dong doesn’t seem to be the kind of creator who wants to talk about herself.

The first chapter, Malarky, has a bunch of general cartoons  – people on phones, anxiety issues, other life issues and relatable content, and a bunch of comics about butts. (Millennial cartoonists cartoon as much about butts as Boomer-era cartoonists did about tits – though the millennials are more gender-balanced, both the cartoonists and the butts they draw.)

Then we get the Bruce-centric chapter, There’s a Shark in Los Angeles. Bruce is shallow, self-obsessed, and a minor celebrity (at least in his own head). The fact that he is in Los Angeles is definitely not random, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Dong started doing this character when she began looking for work in Hollywood. (The book includes some pieces – older, I assume – in which the main character is still in art school, too.)

Next up is Ladythings, which somewhat heads back to the general humor of the first chapter – but focused on physical or cultural issues that are female-coded. (Often in weird ways, because Dong is a cartoonist and they have goofy ideas; there’s a short sequence about prehensile boobs, for example.)

Then comes The Animal + Plants Channel, which is pretty random. For most cartoonists, a chapter about animals would imply pets – dogs and/or cats, depending – but Dong’s work is wilder than that, with a lot of squirrels and horses, plus whales and a few returns of Bruce. And, yes, there are strips about plants as well.

Fifth is A Toad Makes New Friends in the Forest, which starts out as a picture-book-style story and morphs over into more traditional comics as it goes. It’s also an unsubtle racial allegory, and runs into the final section, Some Sort of End, in which Bruce returns for one last time to lead the big kids-movie all-singing, all-dancing ending. (Dong spent most of the first decade of her career making animation for kids – I’m not sure she’s entirely moved beyond that now – and is deeply familiar with the story beats and particular bits of laziness of that genre.)

Dong has an organic, appealing style, with bright colors enclosed by confident black lines all basically the same weight. And her humor is quirky and specific – the jokes and ideas and setups in Sharky Malarkey aren’t derivative, or ever obvious. It would be nice if she had time and energy and enthusiasm to make more comics like this, since her work is so distinctive, but it looks like animation has been taking her creative energy since the book came out – and probably paying much better. But time is long and Hollywood is fickle; who knows what will happen next? Maybe she’ll make more cartoons and be a massive success at something unexpected. 

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

REVIEW: Song of the Lioness Book One: Alanna

Song of the Lioness Book One: Alanna
By Tamora Pierce, Vita Ayala, and Sam Beck
Abrams Fanfare/256 pages/Hardcover (($26.99), Softcover ($17.99)

Tamora Pierce crafted Song of the Lioness, a four-part story tracing the making of a hero in the form of twins Alanna and Thom. Across the young adult novels, she dealt with gender and bullying, set in a fantasy realm where the forces of good and evil and politics play out. It was an acclaimed series, earning plaudits and awards.

Now, Vita Ayala and Sam Beck begin adapting the story in a set of graphic novels, beginning in mid-May with this first volume. Having never read the novels (or any Pierce to be honest), I find that this requires the adaptation to stand on its own.

The twins possess magical talents, something their father frowns on, and they contrive to defy him, with Alanna going to court to train to be worthy of becoming the first female knight while Thom goes off to learn the ways of sorcery. To fight stereotypes, Alanna disguises her prepubescent self as Alan.

Smaller and slighter than the other would-be squires and knights, Alan is bullied by many other boys. Slowly, she earns the admiration of her peers, notably Prince Jonathan, who is also in training. Alan excels in skilled arts such as archery and is clearly the most learned of the trainees.

Slowly, Alan makes friends, sharing her secret with a few. She posts letters to Thom so we get the merest glimpses of what he’s up, hinting that I suspect his story for subsequent volumes.

In time, events bring Jonathan and Alan to Persopolis, the one major desert city, but it was said to keep an eye on the Black City. Determined to learn the secrets of this storied metropolis, the pair sneak in and discover evil magic.

Ayala does a fine job moving things along, although besides Alan and a few others, most characters remain static and uninteresting. Alan is made to be The One, so special and earnest that all come to admire (or envy) the trainee. It’s a bit much, but it is tempered by the internal fight she waged to be taken as she is.

Beck’s art is presented only in black and white in the ARC sent for review, with just a hint of the full color to come in the final form. The color will help a lot since Beck too often ignores backgrounds and details. More than a few panels make you wonder what’s going on while some spreads are poorly constructed, so figures are lost in the perfectly bound gutter.

Aimed at the 12-16-year-old market, this stands fine on its own, but the prose version is probably a far richer read.

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