Review and Giveaway: BASS REEVES (Tales of the Talented Tenth #1) by Joel Christian Gill

Obligatory disclaimer: I was provided with a complimentary copy of Tales of the Talented Tenth: Bass Reeves for the purposes of this review. All opinions are my own.

In this graphic novel, Joel Christian Gill tells the story of Bass Reeves, the first black US Marshal west of the Mississippi and, some believe, the inspiration for the Lone Ranger.

I'd heard of Bass Reeves before, on Drunk History, and probably elsewhere. I'm all for books about awesome historical peeps, and for the most part I enjoyed reading Gill's graphic biography of Reeves. The story was fast-paced, with a lot of tension, and I thought the artwork served the story well. I particularly liked how Gill represented the language of the Seminole Indians before Reeves learned how to speak it, and I thought the use of Jim Crow as a character was effective, if a little confusing at first.

That said, I did have a few niggling areas of concern:

• First of all, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of humor. Reeves was known to be sharp-witted and funny. You'd never get that from this book, where he came across as either bummed out or angry, because racism. The character really had no personality, and it constantly seemed like things were happening to him rather than vice versa. Granted, I don't know much about Reeves, but from what I do know I'd think he'd be more of a force of nature than that.
• Secondly, the "language," if one might call it that, deserves a mild trigger warning. The characters use the n-word (a lot), but instead of using the n-word Gill represents it with a picture of a black man's face. I can just imagine being a parent and having to explain what that's supposed to mean.
• Somewhat related: Gill also uses a face with a feathered warbonnet to represent the word Indian. With the n-word, I can get why he'd want to represent the word pictographically; but Indian is NOT a racial slur, and it bothered me that Gill drew that parallel. Most American Indians prefer the term Indian.

I think for a younger audience, this will be a good intro to the story of Bass Reeves, and I'm definitely looking forward to more stories in this series. But this book is certainly not without a few issues.

To find out more about Tales of the Talented Tenth: Bass Reeves, visit its Indiebound and publisher pages, and check out Gill's website and Twitter account.

Thanks to Fulcrum Publishing, I have one copy of Tales of the Talented Tenth: Bass Reeves to give away. To enter, simply provide your name and an email address where you can be reached in this form. I will select one winner using random.org on March 5th, 2016. If applicable, international entries will be shipped at my own expense.





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Review: THE SCULPTOR by Scott McCloud

David Smith is having the weirdest, worstest birthday ever. He just got fired, he's about to be kicked out of his apartment, he's flat broke, and it looks like his dreams of becoming a successful sculptor are about to die a cruel death. Then he runs into his Uncle Harry. Problem: Uncle Harry's dead. Instead, David's talking to the Grim Reaper, who offers him a deal he can't refuse. David will receive the ability to magically manipulate any material with his bare hands, a dream for the down-on-his-luck artist. The catch is, if he accepts the offer, he'll die in 200 days. David agrees eagerly, only to find out that success and ability don't necessarily go hand-in-hand, and 200 days isn't nearly long enough when you're in love.

Scott McCloud is undoubtedly considered an expert on the subject of comics–his book, Understanding Comics, is the go-to comic book about comics, or so I've heard–but The Sculptor is his first graphic novel. I have to agree with Neil Gaiman that it's the best graphic novel I've read in years. But it's also cynical as shit and gives Hamlet a run for its money in depressing endings.

It would be a little too much to call The Sculptor masterful, but it is REALLY well-done, and it's definitely something you should read, especially if you're a fan of Bryan Lee O'Malley. McCloud and O'Malley share a gift for telling a visual story in a very clear, yet expressive way. There are no wasted lines or panels in The Sculptor: everything on the page is drawn economically and is well-composed, with an understanding of how to use negative space for visual impact. As someone who tends to gets headaches reading graphic novels that are visually cluttered, I absolutely loved McCloud's drawing style.

David discovers his new powers.

The story is very well-told, too, and it's meaty. McCloud takes the typical art historical tale of the hero-genius and turns it on its head, questioning why we create art, why we buy it, why we lionize it, and what the definition of success should be. I loved that David's sculpture develops over the course of the novel. I have to admit, when I saw his first sculptures, I thought they were borderline terrible. But by the end of the book he's actually doing things that are very original and interesting.

That said, I'm not sure The Sculptor is really about art per se. It's more about ego and legacy and forming connections. As in some of the greatest heroic journeys, David has to be stripped of absolutely everything, even his promises to himself, before he can recreate himself and change his life.

I also loved the main female character, Meg. Talk about a fully-realized female character. Even though her role in the book is basically as David's love interest, she has her own things going on and a complex backstory with a believable, unidealized personality that McCloud does a fantastic job of expressing both visually and through dialog.

David checks out his competition for an important art prize.

I would absolutely give The Sculptor five stars and list it as one of my favorite books... if it wasn't for the ending. Look, The Sculptor's obviously going to be a tragedy, that's clear very early in the novel. But the cynicism of the conclusion and the way it played out completely blindsided me. Life has no meaning and we all die and there's no afterlife. Oh, and no one gives a fuck about art and nothing matters. I've felt more cheerful after watching Romeo & Juliet. I'm not saying McCloud should have changed the ending–it made sense with the story–just that I can't fully get behind something that unrelentingly cynical.

I still think The Sculptor is very much worth reading, though. And you've been warned about the ending, so you can prep with some whiskey to brace yourself.



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Review: SECONDS by Bryan Lee O'Malley

It's probably not totally obvious, but I am a huge Bryan Lee O'Malley fan. I loved his first graphic novel stand-alone, Lost At Sea, and I think Scott Pilgrim might have ruined me for all other graphic novel series. It was that amazeballs. So to say I was looking forward to Seconds would be putting it mildly—I've been wound up like a spring waiting for O'Malley's next project for YEARS.

Was it worth the wait? Well...

The start of the comic is actually pretty strong. The main character, Katie, is the head chef at a hip restaurant named Seconds. She's the queen bee of the place, but she wants more. To that end, she's opening another restaurant across the river, creatively named Katie's. However, the old building is a money pit and renovations are dragging on and on and on, so in the meantime Katie's stuck at Seconds.

Katie isn't the best person. She's selfish, oblivious to the people around her and their feelings, and like many people who work in top kitchens (I'm guessing, based on all the reality TV chef shows I watch), she's a ball buster. But O'Malley manages to make her sympathetic, especially when she uses the mushroom a house elf gives her to rewind time and save a shy waitress from a serious kitchen accident.

Of course, once Katie finds the elf's stash of mushrooms, she uses them to rewind time and erase really stupid stuff like staying up all night watching Breaking Bad on Netflix. Would any of us do any different? Probably, because I'm assuming y'all aren't assholes. But I think we can all understand the temptation, despite the fact that Katie's constant rewinding is obviously going to fuck up the space-time continuum.

Here's the thing with Seconds: it's good, because it's by Bryan Lee O'Malley. But it's not as good as either Scott Pilgrim or Lost At Sea. O'Malley's strength—aside from his visual style, which is slightly muted here but still evident—lies in creating characters that are at once really quirky and yet totally identifiable. As I said in my review of Lost at Sea, I KNOW these people. That's not the case in Seconds. Katie's well-drawn(ish), but the secondary characters? Not so much. I was particularly annoyed with the whole love triangle between Max, Katie's cool ex, and Andrew, the chef she trained to take over for her at Seconds. What either of these bozos see in Katie, or vice versa, I have noooo idea. Their personalities, if one could call them that, were interchangeable, and Katie didn't seem to think of either of them as more than convenient bed partners. I didn't care which guy she wound up with because it didn't really matter, and I was kind of irritated she did settle with one of them by the end of the book.

The story also starts getting really boring and repetitive about 2/3rds of the way through the comic, especially since the solution to the whole problem seems really obvious. Everything is fixed too easily, with too little consequences, and as a result the themes of Seconds—responsibility, patience, growing up—aren't effectively fleshed out.

There's also nothing original in Seconds like there was in Lost at Sea and Scott Pilgrim. It's very self-referential, which COULD be amusing, but turned out to be annoying instead. Just because a joke worked—and brilliantly—in Scott Pilgrim doesn't mean it will work here. There's not enough distance between the two comics that fans of O'Malley will pat themselves on the back for remembering the reference, which is really the only reason to insert jokes like this:

You should be sorry, O'Malley.

Keep in mind that I'm being hyper-critical here because I expect a lot out of O'Malley, and for good reason. Seconds is by no means a terrible comic. But does it stand up to O'Malley's previous works? In my opinion, no. If you're starting out with O'Malley, I wouldn't recommend Seconds; and if you're already a fan, you probably already bought it anyway. I just hope O'Malley can shake off whatever malaise he's got himself mired in and give us something with more energy and a more developed storyline for his next project.




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A More Diverse Universe: THE ARRIVAL by Shaun Tan

To escape dragon creatures, a young father leaves his family and travels across the ocean to a fabulous city, full of helpful animals and exotic food. There he makes many friends, all of whom also came to the city looking for better lives, free from oppression and war. After some false starts the man settles himself in his new life, but will he ever see his family again?

It seems like I've been wanting to read The Arrival by Shaun Tan forever, ever since I first heard about it on You've GOTTA Read This, but my library didn't have it at the time, and then I forgot about it. Fortunately, thanks to A More Diverse Universe, I remembered!

The Arrival is unusual in that it doesn't contain any words. Instead, everything is conveyed through pictures. Personally, I didn't miss the words at all--I didn't even realize there weren't any until after I'd finished! The book has a very cinematic feel, almost like a storyboard, and is a great mix of the familiar and the fantastic. Although The Arrival is a secondary world fantasy, that's not immediately apparent, and the story itself is one that's easily relatable to any immigrant or descendant of immigrants.



Even though the basis of the story is firmly planted in a familiar story, the fantasy elements don't feel out of place or gimmicky. Tan uses them to great effect to convey elements and emotions that, if The Arrival was told "realistically," would be too complex for this format. Instead, the fun animals, exotic setting, and shadowy monsters efficiently tell us very important things about this world and the characters' journey.

As for the art, I LOVED it. It was very surrealism-meets-Dark City. Tan's drawings remind me of one of my favorite artists, Remedios Varo, in that I could see the influence of artists like Hieronymus Bosch and Odillon Redon, along with a quirky sense humor.

Aside from all that, though, The Arrival is a super-sweet story. I adore stories about people who travel and make friends. Basically there is nothing not to like in this book, aside from maybe the fact that it was so short!

I highly recommend this, especially if you also happen to like The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (review here). It's really lovely.



Check out the other stops on the A More Diverse Universe Blog Tour and celebrate POC authors in science fiction and fantasy!

Graphic Novel Review: LOST AT SEA, by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Raleigh is on a road trip back to Canada from California with a car full of people she barely knows who attend the same high school. To them she's just "the quiet girl" or a weirdo--depending on your viewpoint. What they don't know is that Raleigh believes she's lost her soul.

It's in a cat. And the cats are following her.

This is the first graphic novel by Bryan Lee O'Malley, of Scott Pilgrim fame. It's not as hip as Scott Pilgrim and, being only one volume, the story has a much narrower scope. But here's what I love about this book: I know these people. Seriously, Raleigh? I honest-to-god know someone who is exactly like her, even down to the hair. O'Malley's characters are so familiar, but not in a oh-I-recognize-that-trope sort of way; in a oh!-these-are-totally-people-I-know-IRL way. Which is good, because the plots tend to be bizarro.



I also loved the story and the way it was told, which was very non-linear but perfect for the subject. It's a quieter story than Scott Pilgrim, with a gentler humor, but there are still some scenes that made me laugh, and I have to confess I got teary-eyed at the end. There were some loose ends left hanging, but overall the book was very touching without feeling manipulative or sappy in the slightest.*

As for the art, I love it. LOVE. Even more than Scott Pilgrim, the art in this book was totally delicious and contributed to the story so, so much. If my heart had a shelf I would this book on it.

If you like graphic novels or manga at all, you have to give Bryan Lee O'Malley a try. He is awesome and I'm officially fangrling him now.


*Note: I loaned this to my brother and he said he hated it because Raleigh was whiny. I guess you can't win them all!

Graphic Novel Review: THE PROFESSOR'S DAUGHTER by Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert

While the cat's away, the mice will play, and while Lillian Bowell's famous archaeologist father is gone, she decides to take one of his Egyptian mummies with her on a tour through London. Little does she know how troublesome this particular mummy is (actually, it turns out all mummies are troublesome). After touring Kensington and listening to Mozart, Imhotep IV quickly becomes drunk--on tea, mind you--starts a brawl, and passes out. Having dragged the comatose mummy home, the police show up, Lillian adds sedative to their tea, and only later finds out the sedative was actually poison.

Oooooooooooooooops.

And that's all in first twenty pages! This short graphic novel is absolutely delightful, with plenty of twists and lines that made me laugh--and I don't often laugh out loud with books. It plays out like one of those mad-cap olde timey romcoms, with the authors poking fun at Victorian manners and British reserve every step of the way; yet at the same time the emotions, especially for Imhotep IV, are very authentic.



Naturally, Imhotep and Lillian are in love, even though, as Imhotep puts it, "I'm dead and it's just not done." They both feel like kept objects--Imhotep because he literally is an object, and Lillian because she's a woman and no one takes her seriously. Even the title of this novel is indicative of her objectification. She's the professor's daughter, not her own woman. In order for both of them to assert the right to govern themselves, they have to subvert all the laws of Victorian society, both social and legal. Fortunately for Lillian, dead pharaohs are not terribly interested in following rules.

This graphic novel was a fun little romp through Victorian Britain, and I definitely recommend it if you're at all interested.

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Tags: graphic novel, review, joann sfar, emmanuel guibert, historical, mummy, romance

THE SALON by Nick Bertozzi

Georges Braque is a typical starving artist in Paris, hoping to invent a new style of painting. After courting the favor of important avant-garde art collectors Gertrude and Leo Stein, he becomes embroiled in the salon--a group of the Stein's friends (including Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, Erik Satie, and Alice B. Toklas) who drink a special blue absinthe that allows them to enter paintings. Unfortunately, Gauguin's former mistress, Anna, has figured out a way to live in the paintings permanently, which has given her super-human strength; and now she's taking bloody revenge on the artists for being objectified, by ripping their heads off. Leo and Gertrude are certain they'll be next.



A part of me really loved this graphic novel--and yes, it was the art historian part. As soon as I saw Memory's review of it on Stella Matutina, I knew I had to read it. A good portion of my master's thesis involved the avant-garde in early twentieth-century Paris, including Apollinaire and Picasso, so it was soooo totally up my alley. That being said, the part of me that reads for pure entertainment value was disappointed. The only character with any personality in this novel was Picasso, and his motivations were pretty basic: food and sex. Everyone else seemed fairly interchangeable. The book feels edited down to the point of near-incomprehensibility, but at the same time it takes a looong time to read. The ending was kind of lame, and I didn't feel like I learned much of anything about this time period or the avant-garde.

But like I said, as a person who knows way too much about this shit, I did enjoy it. My favorite part of the novel was, surprisingly, Picasso. As some of you may know, I'm not a fan of Picasso. I think he's an overrated hack, in all honesty, so any book that presents Picasso as a lewd and unoriginal "little man" who fucks chickens (all true--okay, maybe the chicken part isn't) gets my vote. I actually warmed up to Picasso a bit while reading The Salon, just because he was so stupid. I also loved clever Apollinaire, even though he didn't get a lot of scenes, as a dashing bi-sexual playa playa.

Leo and Gertrude's storyline, on the other hand, seemed to go nowhere; nor was Georges Braque very interesting. This is unfortunate, since Braque's the hero of the story and the Steins are the main connection to Anna, the murderous blue woman.


Paul Gauguin. Spirit of the Dead Watching, 1892.

Anna, meanwhile, was very interesting. In the graphic novel, Anna is the girl seen in paintings such Spirit of the Dead Watching--in real life, Gauguin's fourteen-year-old Tahitian wife, Tehura. In The Salon, he takes her to Paris, where they both become addicted to the blue absinthe that allows them to enter paintings. Anna starts to whore herself out for money to buy more of it. She becomes ill with a European disease (let's face it, probably syphilis) and dies, but Gauguin paints new bodies for them and they both become blue people living inside a paradise he painted. Only, Anna now hunts the streets of Paris, tearing the heads off of Gauguin's artist friends and collectors of his work.

This is why I say Anna is taking revenge for her objectification--Gauguin has taken away her humanity, literally regulated her to the status of a painted, sexual object forever. But not powerless--she takes control of Gauguin's blue image, trapping him inside his own painting, and kills those who would presume to possess her (interesting side note: the "spirit of the dead" that Gauguin referred to in the painting of Tehura was occasionally described as a blue spirit with sharp fangs). In that context, I found the conclusion of this sub-plot and how the salon winds up putting an end to Anna particularly interesting.

How does this all tie into Braque and Picasso and the invention of Cubism? It's not made explicit in the novel, but I think the move to non-representational art in the story is connected to Anna, in that little pieces of inanimate objects cannot come out of their paintings to attack you, as apparently Tahitian women can. Cubism is hailed in the novel as a new way of seeing whole objects in two-dimensional space, but it's also a safer representational method for the characters in the book--and crueler for their subjects. Picasso takes Gauguin's objectification of Anna to a new level and fucks her into oblivion until she's nothing more than disorganized facial features, an object unable to bite back, finally and truly relegated to two-dimensional space.

As for the art of the graphic novel itself, the panels mostly have two colors, and the change in them are used to signal different storylines. The colors are kind of garish, but it fits into the style of painting that was going on at the time (as you can see in Spirit of the Dead Watching, above). There are also some very elegant and well-done visual quotations from other famous paintings that made me smile, but didn't really play any significant role in the plot. If I were to be honest, I found myself missing the manga style of illustration, but c'est la vie.

The Salon has a lot of great ideas and is definitely worth checking out if you're interested in this time period. I do wish, however, that the characters were more fully realized and that the narrative flowed more smoothly. It has the feeling of an artistic vision that was restrained; I don't know if that's true or not, but I do have affection for this graphic novel and definitely appreciate what Nick Bertozzi was trying to create.

Musical Notes: Kathleen Edwards, "I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory"

Twilight: The Completely Unnecessary Graphic Novel Edition

In her campaign to be the richest woman in America after Oprah, Stephenie Meyer now has a $20, hardcover, multi-volume, graphic novel of her famous book out.  The bad news is, it's not an improvement on the actual novel and feels kind of self-indulgent.  The good news is, the art is fab and Edward doesn't look or act like RPatt--he looks and acts like Edward.  Huzzah!

You probably know the premise of the story by now:  shy teen girl falls in love with brooding vamp.  Proposed alternate title:  Love Among the Tree Monkeys (ha! I kid because I love).

I did like this adaptation better than the movie version, but it stayed very close to the book--too close, actually.  It tended to get a little jumpy, and if I hadn't been familiar with the story already, I would have been lost in certain places.  But really, is anyone not familiar with the original novel going to pick this up?  Not likely. 



The art for the most part is gorgeous and makes this book actually kind of a joy to read.  The only thing I didn't like is where the artist, Young Kim, mixes photography with drawings--you can kind of see that in the example above, in the hospital corridor.  For some reason that made me really nauseous, especially the food in the restaurant scene.  Blech.

The best part of the whole book, though, is Young Kim's dedication at the back.  Here's my favorite part:  "When the story started out, neither Bella nor Edward believed they could find happiness because they were different from others.  But now, we are learning to see glimpses that they may indeed be able to find happiness together.  To the reader, I sincerely hope that your own unique nature is loved, particularly by yourself."  Aw!  That gets me all teary-eyed.

Overall I would say the book is not worth the list price, but if you're a Twi-hard you'll want to read it.  So get it from the library or buy it used online.

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Cairo by G. Willow Wilson

Cairo by G. Willow Wilson, illustrated by M. K. Perker*

This graphic novel is an odd but fun mixture of humor, action, politics, religion, and magic. Although I don't think it quite came together, it was still a refreshing read for me.

I first heard about Cairo on Book Blather, and I was immediately attracted to its promise of mixing Egyptian folk tales with modern-day Cairo. Ashraf is a drug smuggler who gets into a bit of trouble when he takes a hookah from a warehouse. Unbeknownst to him, the hookah belongs to the wizard, Har, and he really wants it back. So he kidnaps Ali, Ashraf's childhood friend and almost-brother-in-law, plus some random American chick named Kate, and ransoms them for the hookah. Shaheed, a "Lebanese-American," also gets involved when Ashraf sells him the hookah for twenty dollars.

This graphic novel starts off with a surprising amount of humor, which luckily balances out the fact that it's also quickly obvious which folk tale the book is ripping off of (psst, it's Aladdin). There's a lot more than that going on in novel--some Ancient Egyptian legends are brought into it, which at first seems really cool but winds up being kind of awkward; there's talk about cultures coming together peacefully and forgiveness; and there's some pro-religion stuff, as well--only featuring the Qur'an. I have to confess that caught me a bit off guard--one isn't often confronted with Muslim evangelicalism in the US. I'm not sure it serves much of a purpose, but it's very brief.

As for the art, to tell the truth I was disappointed. The cover is absolutely gorgeous and elegant, but the illustrations inside don't live up to that. There were a few moments of true artistry that caught my eye, especially towards the end of the novel, but most of the panels were busy and scribbly, and quite literal.

Story-wise, the beginning was very promising and there were parts that I thought were really cool. It just didn't all come together in the second half. And even though I think the author's heart is in the right place, from an ideological standpoint I have to say the conclusion to the tale undermines all the talk about how being a suicide bomber is, like, really not a cool idea, and violence doesn't solve problems. But like I said, overall I was entertained. And I actually did appreciate the change of pace reading a graphic novel with a lot of action, like this one, gave me.


*knil setaicossa nozama na s'ti

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