Let me start by making sure I do not lead people to confuse my blog entries about kid-friendly comics and this week's post.
None of the titles that follow are for youngsters unless you wish to offer up sex, violence, horror, and profanity to your young ones. My children have delighted in reading
Bone, the work of Shaun Tan, and books like
The Invention of Hugo Cabret. They
have not read any of the titles below and will have to find their way to them behind my back at the library or at friends' houses at least until they get to high school.
I am currently following five ongoing series of comics.
The Unwritten,
Saga,
Revival,
The Manhattan Projects, and
The Walking Dead.
The Unwritten:
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| Lizzy Hexam is made of words. |
The Unwritten is an American comic book ongoing series written by Mike Carey[1] with art by Peter Gross[2] and published by the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics.[3][4][5][6]The book follows Tom Taylor, who was the inspiration for a series of hugely successful children's fantasy novels in the vein of Harry Potter. The series deals with themes related to fame, celebrity, and the relationship between fiction and human consciousness. (Wikipedia)
The Unwritten was a gift from a co-worker who bought it thinking it was a Harry Potter-esque comic for a young niece. He quickly discovered that it was not age-appropriate and not connected to Rowling's fiction. Although it riffs a Harry Potter theme early on, this is just a device to access a much more complex story about popular fiction, and offers content that is not for young children.
The story of Tommy Taylor seemed at first to be hugely derivative of J.K. Rowling's work. I was distracted by the parallels as I read, wondering how Mike Carey's work was not copy-write infringement. But by the end of Volume 1, I realized that the story of Tom Taylor was much larger than its initial appearances. All popular fiction became fair game for Mike Carey's story of symbol and fantasy.
The basic theme in
The Unwritten is that there is a conflict over who (and why) controls reality. Power lies in the control of "story". Literature is the battleground, and the movement between works of fiction is the mystery that unfolds. Although the reader of
The Unwritten does not need to know the plots of
Moby Dick, The world of Harry Potter, C.S. Lewis' works, fables and fairytales,
Canterbury Tales, etc. It
does help to be well read in order to understand the subtlety that Mike Carey employs under a not-so-subtle main plot line.
Saga:
My Wife knew I was enjoying
The Unwritten and searched Amazon for what other people who were reading it were purchasing. There were several titles she tried that did not grab my attention, but two seemed interesting enough for me to buy subsequent volumes,
Saga, and
The Manhattan projects.
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| Bounty Hunter "The Will" and his sidekick Lying Cat |
Saga is an epic space opera/fantasy comic book series written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Fiona Staples, published monthly by Image Comics. The series is heavily influenced by Star Wars and is based on ideas Vaughan conceived both as a child and as a parent. It depicts a husband and wife from long-warring extraterrestrial races, Alana and Marko, fleeing authorities from both sides of a galactic war as they struggle to care for their newborn daughter, Hazel, who occasionally narrates the series.
The comic was described in solicitations as "
Star Wars meets
Game of Thrones," and by critics as evocative of both science fiction and fantasy epics such as
The Lord of the Rings and classic works like
Romeo & Juliet.
[1][2][3] It is Vaughan's first creator-owned work to be published through Image Comics, and represents the first time he employs narration in his comics writing.
The first issue of
Saga was published on March 14, 2012, to positive reviews and a sold-out first printing. The first six-issue story arc was widely acclaimed, and was published in
trade paperback form in October 2012. The series won a number of
Eisner Awards in 2013 and 2014, and the first trade paperback collection won the 2013
Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. (Wikipedia)
Saga is a fun forbidden love story. Young passionate lovers are chased across the galaxy by those who want to impose their constraints on what they see as threatening, true love. The art of Fiona Staples is crisp and colorful, the story soap-operateic, and content naughty, very naughty. There are ample does of sex and violence, sometimes at the same time. Ordinarily my slightly bashful side clashes with my ability to awkwardly deal with moments of others' intimacy in visual stories (watching
Game of Thrones pushes me to the edge sometimes). But the almost constant "mature" content of Saga does not bother me as much as I would have guessed. Somehow, it seems whimsical—perhaps due to the fantastic, outer-space, multi-species components of this comic. Nonetheless, this comic is rated "mature" by Image. I do not hang on the arrival of each new volume, but I seem to get re-sucked in to this title every time it arrives.
Note: I struggled to find pages to show that were "safe" for my blog entry. This may pique your interest, but bear in mind... I warned you. :)
The Manhattan Projects:
The Manhattan Projects is also naughty, but mostly as it allows extreme violence in a context of hidden government projects in an alternate, parallel universe to our Cold War history. The characters are real people; historical allusions are real as well; the rest is pure fantasy, and absurd fantasy at that.
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| The Manhattan Projects |
The Manhattan Projects: The Manhattan Projects is a comic book series co-created by writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Nick Pitarra published by Image Comics. It is a story about an alternate history of the end of World War II in which the Manhattan Project was a front for other more esoteric science fiction ideas. The series is a monthly ongoing and began in March 2012 to much critical acclaim.
Manhattan Projects will be relaunching as Manhattan Projects: The Sun Beyond The Stars on March 11, 2015.
[2] (Wikipedia)
How can you play with a cast of characters who are genius, whose history is known, whose achievements are documents, and twist it all into something perverse? With science fiction, parallel universe and conspiracy theory: The Manhattan Projects offers just that.
I am not entirely sure why I keep reading this title. I find it interesting as a distraction, but do not look forward to the next issue as I do
The Unwritten and my next title,
Revival.
The Manhattan Projects doesn't offend as much as it seems to lack a plot that moves forward. There is a theme that drives the story forward, but the elements have yet to link up in a way that would make me feel smart for reading it.
Revival:
I stumbled across the cover art for the first volume of
Revival and bought it on a lark. I am liking the story quite a bit so far and look forward to finding out what comes next. It is not complex; it is not terribly deep; it
is a page-turner, who-done-it, rural-noir that is just fun reading.
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| Haunting 1st Cover of Revival |
Revival: For one day in rural central Wisconsin, the dead came back to life. Now it's up to Officer Dana Cypress to deal with the media scrutiny, religious zealots, and government quarantine that has come with them. In a town where the living have to learn to deal with those who are supposed to be dead, Officer Cypress must solve a brutal murder, and everyone, alive or undead, is a suspect. (Amazon Summary)
I found a review on "goodreads" by
Tanja Berg that sums up my experience quite a bit:
"
Between the age of about 12 and until I turned 35, I did not read comics. I certainly never read comics for grown-ups. Then came "the Walking Dead" - the tv series. Quite soon after I had seen everything there was to see, I ordered the comic volumes and devoured them whole-heartedly. I'm still not an avid fan of comics, but I have begun to see the charm and have rediscovered some of the joy I had with comics as a kid.
"Revival" was recommended to me, for which I am grateful as I do not seek out graphic novels. I was shocked at the fact that it is in color and beautifully illustrated. That added a whole new dimension to the experience."
There are a number of "goodreads" reviews that feel
Revival is too derivative of other "zombie" stories that are in vogue these days, but I must disagree. This is a different take entirely of the undead. These are people who come back to life, with their memories and feelings, and personalities. They do not come back the same, though.
Revival is more akin to
Pet Cemetery by Steven King, than to more traditional brains-eating zombie tales.
The Walking Dead:
Whereas I wait and purchase each new volume of the above titles, I was a little late to The Walking Dead, and so rely on the library and bookstores for this read. The recommendation for this title came to me through a breakdown of pre-formed stereotypes I had. be it resolved that "Parents of my students are supposed to be 'normal' by whatever definition that might mean"... "Parents who are well read are supposed to shun graphic novels"... "Small, sweet, mild-mannered women are supposed to be freaked out by zombie gore"... right? Oops! Well, I stand corrected. A few years ago I feel prey to my preconceived notion that
The Walking Dead was for the stereotypical single young man who needs to get off the couch and stop playing his xbox. It seems that well read, sweet, parents of my students can appreciate a good and incredibly well told graphic story. Thank you Mrs. S. for opening my eyes to the world of Robert Kirkman and bringing a love of things zombie into my household.
The walking dead is not a label of the undead, but of the survivors who struggle to deal with the real enemy (other desperate survivors) amidst a backdrop of ever hungry zombies. Desperation, distrust, back-stabbing, always on-the-run survival is what Kirkman has had to offer for twelve years of comic so far.
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| Issue 50 cover: 10th Anniversary of Walking Dead's Premire |
The Walking Dead is an ongoing black-and-white American comic book series created by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore. It chronicles the travels of Rick Grimes, his family and other survivors of a zombie apocalypse.
First issued in
2003 by publisher
Image Comics, the comic is written by Kirkman
[1] with art by Moore (issues No. 1 - #6) and
Charlie Adlard (issue No. 7 onward).
[2] Moore continued to do the covers through issue No. 24.
[3]
Kirkman is currently working on volume 23. Early on he wrote that he had more plot outlines than he would probably ever get into print. But since then the series (both as comic and as TV show) has taken off, and the comic keeps rolling out. Few characters have remained through the whole story and Kirkman says that no one is safe. At times he makes almost complete sweeps of his human survivors, opting for the shock of character decimation over continuity of a single story line. So far, the protagonist Rick Grimes and his son seem to be the only complete constants, but even they are fair game in the zombie apocalypse. Although the plots of TV and comic often crisscross, there are substantial reshuffles and twists to keep fans of the comic still guessing as the show unfolds. There is nothing deep or clever about this series. It is just pure serialized zombie mayhem... and a great distraction from reality...
Well, this is the end of my four part series on Graphic Novels. Any recommendations people have are sincerely wanted and appreciated.
Helen Hunt, Flying Cows, Tornadoes: In 1996 a mediocre film came out that brought delight to my world: Twister.
Last year the newspeople of Wether.com, CNN, Fox, and the myriad of local forecasters taught us a new term that conjured up epic columns of cold, Polar Vortices: As much as I grew to resent how often I heard the word by the end of the winter, and began to sarcastically use it for any chilly moment of the year, I never grew tired of saying the words "vortex" and "vortices" myself.
