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Review: ‘Janes in Love’ by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg

  • Uncategorized
  • May 28, 2008

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a series of reviews of the five books coming out from DC’s Minx imprint this year. Previously, Van Jensen reviewed Rebecca Donner’s Burnout. -RM]

There’s a touch of classic teen lit like The Babysitters Club to Minx’s Plain Janes series of books, as it features the not-so-original plot of a disparate group of teenaged girls bonding together for a cause and surviving adolescence.

That the series, with the second installment Janes in Love ($9.99) out in September, transcends its genre owes to writer Cecil Castellucci, who takes the conventional setup and spins it in unconventional ways.

The group of friends – all named Jane – in this case unite for the cause of art, seeking to beautify their small town through subversive means. Picking up from the first installment, the main Jane is caught up at Valentine’s Day with affection for two boys and a lack of funds to continue her art.

While those seem simple enough problems, the true center of the book are the unresolved tensions from the terrorist attack in the first volume, which sends main Jane’s mother into a near-coma. Subtly, all the plot threads take a similar tone as the characters, teenagers and otherwise, struggle with fears and insecurities.

The subtle complexities of the characters are captured with reserved perfection by Castellucci and rendered with great skill by artist Jim Rugg, who wields a masterful command of expressions in each panel.

The two [[[Plain Janes]]] books not only have been the best of the books Minx has published thus far, but also among the very best of young adult fiction. Sure, the cover’s pink and has flowers on it, but this is a comic for just about everybody.

Van Jensen is a former crime reporter turned comic book journalist. Every Wednesday, he braves Atlanta traffic to visit Oxford Comics, where he reads a whole mess of books for his weekly reviews. Van’s blog can be found at graphicfiction.wordpress.com.

Publishers who would like their books to be reviewed at ComicMix should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Van Jensen directly at van (dot) jensen (at) gmail (dot) com.

EZ Street: Crash!

In today’s brand new episode of EZ Street, by Mark Wheatley and Robert Tinnell, things go bump in the night.  It’s enough to make a man question his entire career, assuming he makes it out of the crash in one piece.

Credits: Mark Wheatley (Artist), Mark Wheatley (Colorist), Mark Wheatley (Letterer), Mark Wheatley (Writer), Mike Gold (Editor), Robert Tinnell (Writer)

More: EZ Street

 

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Neil Gaiman to Write ‘Doctor Who’ in 2010?

Rich Johnston ignited a flurry of discussion among both comics fans and Doctor Who fans this week by reporting a rumor in his weekly "Lying in the Gutters" column that author Neil Gaiman had been approached to write an episode of the popular BBC series in 2010.

According to Johnston:

Such as the rumour running around my BBC sources that Neil Gaiman being approached to write an episode for 2010. That would be this Neil Gaiman, comic author, fantasy novelist, screenwriter, poet and writer of the Duran Duran Biography 1985. With possibly the most non-committal non-confirmation I’ve ever read. And I’ve read the responses of current Labour ministers.

In fact when I asked Neil if he’d care to comment, he pleaded the Francis saying, "You may very well think that, but I could not possibly comment."

I do very well think that. I do.

Of course, nothing will actually have been commissioned by the BBC at this stage, and there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and prosthetic lip, but it’s looking good.

For more on the rumor, including other "potential facts" regarding the future of Doctor Who, check out this week’s "Lying in the Gutters."

And remember to check back here on ComicMix every week after a new episode of Doctor Who airs in the U.S. for our weekly Doctor Who in Review analysis of all the Easter Eggs, hints and continuity checks from the current series.

Joe Quesada on ‘When I Grow Up’

Any kid worth his Harry Potter books knows who Scholastic is; the multimedia publisher that educates and entertains school children.

As part of their When I Grow Up series of web articles, the publisher recruits adults to tell kids what their jobs are like. The latest grown-up to provide career advice is Joe Quesada, Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics.

Here are some of the highlights:

I  play with Spider-Man for a living!

When I was a kid, I wanted to be: A baseball player for the New York Mets.

My father bought me my first comic in 1968 because he had seen in the news that Stan Lee and Marvel were introducing a new comic book that preached against the evils of drug abuse, and he thought it would be a great way to get the message across.

It’s a cute article, aAnd let’s face it, we all want to grow up to be the guy who runs a comic book company, right?

Happy Birthday: Lynn Johnston

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  • May 28, 2008

fbofwfamily-1628044Born in Collingwood, Ontario in 1947, Lynn Ridgway was raised in North Vancouver and attended the Vancouver School of Art. She worked at an animation studio after college but married in 1969 and moved back to Ontario, where she worked as a medical artist for several years.

She drew her first book, David We’re Pregnant while expecting her first child in the early 1970s—it was published in 1973. She divorced a short while later and quit her job to do freelance commercial and medical art—her second book, Hi Mom! Hi Dad! came out in 1975, just before she met and married dental student Rod Johnston.

In 1978, the Johnstons moved to Lynn Lake, Manitoba and Universal Press Syndicate asked if she would do a regular comic strip for them. Six months later, For Better or For Worse appeared. It now appears in over 2000 papers and more than 20 countries. Johnston has won many awards, including The Reuben in 1985—the first woman, first Canadian, and youngest artist ever to win it—as well as the Gemini in 1987, and the National Cartoonist Society award for Newspaper Comic Strip in 1991.

In 1993, she was nominated for a Pulitzer and in 2007 she received the Order of Manitoba. Johnston is still producing For Better or For Worse, but she announced in January that starting no later than September the strip would become a hybrid of earlier strips and new material—or reworked older material—about the younger versions of her beloved characters.

‘Hobbit’ Film Details Emerge During Jackson/Del Toro Q&A

The Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson Q&A I told you about last week seems to have been fairly interesting and full of information for eager Hobbit fans.

Over at The Frodo Franchise, Kristin Thompson has a nice roundup of some of the highlights, including this bit:

Peter hints that Gandalf the Grey will be important in both The Hobbit and what’s currently just called Film 2. That seems to hint that Ian McKellen is willing to act in both, since later on Peter says that only characters whose actors will return for the second film will be written into its script.

There’s also a transcript of the full Q&A available at the Weta website.

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Review: ‘How to Love’ from Actus Comics

  • Uncategorized
  • May 28, 2008

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How to Love
By Batia Kolton, David Polonsky, Mira Friedmann, Itzik Rennert, Rutu Modan, and Yirmi Pinkus; translated by Ishai Mishory
Actus/distributed by Top Shelf, August 2008, $29.95

Actus is an Israeli comics collective that publishes one joint project annually; their members are the six contributors to this book. This book was published in Israel by Actus, but is being distributed on this side of the Atlantic by Top Shelf Comics. (And was translated by Ishai Mishory, implying that there was a prior edition in Hebrew.) It’s officially publishing in August, but I can’t find it on any of the US online booksellers, and I got my copy several months ago – so it’s anyone’s guess when it will show up in your local comics shop (if ever). Top Shelf is selling it directly, so there’s at least that way to get it.

[[[How to Love]]] has six stories, one by each of the contributors, each about twenty pages long. (The subtitle calls them “graphic novellas,” which stretches a bit too far for my taste – is there anything wrong with short stories?)

It opens with Batia Kolton’s “Summer Story,” in which pre-teen Dorit watches her nameless older neighbor kissing a boyfriend on the street, then has the neighbor accompany her family on a trip to the beach. It’s a very slice-of-life story; Dorit is clearly learning about relationships through the neighbor, but the story doesn’t get inside her head; we see everything from outside, so we don’t know what Dorit thinks about any of it. The art is a clean-line style, very reminiscent of Actus’s most famous member, Rutu Modan.

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Roundup: Reuben Awards, Lulu Awards, Canadian Awards, Erlangen Festival

Apparently, everyone decided to give out awards and/or nominations in the past week, as my email is filled with messages about the various winners and nominees. Here’s a quick rundown of what was awarded, who won it (or in some cases, was nominated for it) and where to find a more comprehensive report on the whole affair:

The Beat has a roundup of the 2008 Reuben Award winners, including the least surprising recipient of them all, legendary MAD Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee (pictured here). Here are a few others:

COMIC BOOKS: Shaun Tan, (The Arrival)

NEWSPAPER STRIPS: Jim Meddick, (Monty)

MILTON CANIFF LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: Sandra Boynton

Tom Spurgeon provides some additional context for the Reuben Awards over at The Comics Reporter, including the following note:

I do know that the Reuben and the NCS division awards have a reputation for 1) rewarding creators that have been around a while or that are seen as having properly paid their dues maybe more than first-time nominees or those early in their careers, and 2) rewarding creators in non-popular categories according to their better-known work. To be honest, I couldn’t tell you if those two characterizations are deserved or not.

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ComicMix Six: Biggest Tease in Comics (Male)

[EDITOR’S NOTE: In previous editions of ComicMix Six, our contributors have given you their lists of comics’ top political campaigns, the best and worst movies based on comics, and even a few reasons why a Skrull invasion isn’t anything to worry about.

This week, ComicMix Media Goddess Martha Thomases ranks some of comics’ most desirable — but unattainable — men, and the reasons why they always remain just out of reach. -RM]

Some of us yearn for a man’s touch. Sometimes, that man refuses. The very beauty that drew us to him now taunts us.

Here are the worst offenders, in no particular order, for my ComicMix Six list of The Biggest Tease in Comics (Male):

6. MORPHEUS: The Sandman only comes to you when you’re already asleep. This limits how much fun you can have, and more important, how much fun you can remember.

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Touchstones, by Elayne Riggs

Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby
Can you tell me where he’s gone
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin and John.

Well, last time I did an actual comic book review, and as expected it received almost no comments. So I don’t want to hear from anyone about how this column isn’t about comics!

I could probably make it about comics. After all, I’m going to be discussing the ’60s, which were about many things. Many people my age cut their fanboy and fangirl teeth on Marvel comics of the ’60s. (Me, I didn’t start reading until the mid-’80s or so, even though my late best friend Bill Marcinko tried pretty hard to get me interested in the Marvels of the late ’70s.) But, despite my trepidation about the kind of Google ads this column will attract, today I want to write about something else that happened in the ’60s, and about the persistence of memory.

Last week on the campaign trail, in an interview given to South Dakota’s Argus Leader, a frustrated Hillary Clinton reiterated her response to the "why won’t that bitch just quit?" crowd of media pundits that she’d initially articulated in a Time magazine interview back in March. Her original words: "I think people have short memories. Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual."

This time around the phrasing was only slightly different: "My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June. We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just don’t understand it," the "it" in question being the pundits’ incessant and unprecedented calls for a leading candidate to step aside (as if the media were orchestrating the process rather than the voters of each state). In March, nobody seemed to notice; this time, with the anti-Clinton hysteria ratcheted up as high as it’s been since the Whitewater nonsense, suddenly all sorts of folks were up in arms. (more…)

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