YALSA top ten GNs 2011: Saturn Apartments Volume 1

Saturn Apartments Volume 1
Written and illustrated by Hisae Iwaoka.
Published by Viz (2011)

Mitsu has just completed school and is going to continue in his father's footsteps and start working at the window washers guild. Seems fairly normal, except for the fact that his dad was a window washer on a space station that houses all of humanity. Oh yeah, and his dad died while washing windows a few years ago.

The world that Iwaoka has created in Saturn Apartments is pretty interesting. The idea that Earth has been abandoned and that all of humanity now lives in orbit isn't necessarily new, but it's not one that I've seen frequently in comics. There is, however, one pretty gaping plot hole: why does there need to be a window washing guild in the first place. Couldn't robots do it better? Despite this I'm curious as to why people left the Earth, and how the space station itself functions economically and socially, but not enough to read a second volume.

The major problem I had is that Mitsu is basically a non-entity. He's incredibly passive, doesn't seem particularly bright, and doesn't really seem to have any interests or characteristics. If Saturn Apartments was an anthology about various people in the space station (the couple getting married, the scientist trying to breed Earth animals, the other window washers) it seems as though it would be more interesting. Now, admittedly Mitsu is fairly young and is still figuring out who he is, and for some people the story of him discovering himself would be enough, but I didn't feel there was enough of a character there to do the discovering.

Iwaoka's artwork is fairly standard manga-style for the backgrounds, and is generally pretty competent in those regards. The technology she draws, when it shows up, is well rendered and enjoyable. However, most of the indoors scenes look as though they could have happened in the present day. Given how much living space that each person (even the poor people) appears to have, I wonder exactly how huge this space station is (or, perhaps, the better question to ask is how many humans are still alive?). My major complaint in regards to the art is with the way that Iwaoka draws faces. I found the lack of detail she uses weirdly off-putting, as well as making it difficult to judge how old a character was and making me think that the characters were all about to fall asleep.

Years ago I read the series Planetes by Makoto Yukimura, which is about a similarly mundane space job (in that case they're garbage collectors). I really loved it, and was excited when I heard people mention a couple of other manga series were said to be similar. Those two being Twin Spica and Saturn Apartments. I found both of them to be huge disappointments when I originally read them, and rereading Saturn Apartments years later doesn't change my opinions about it in any way. However, if you want a less technical, more character focused science fiction story you might enjoy it.

2015 Reading

In 2015 I read 500 graphic novels. Yes that is insane. I read some good stuff, and I also read a lot of crap.

What did I count as a graphic novel? Well, I was kind of haphazard to be honest.

Things that counted:

• Gen13 Bootleg: Grunge: the Movie - It only collects three issues.
• Tell Me Something by Jason - It's only like 48 pages long.
• The Viz 2015 sampler
• Image Firsts Compendium Vol. 1 - A bunch of #1s. I think these are literally just the $1 issues with the staples cut off and bound together.
• Costume Quest: Invasion of the Candy Snatchers - The digital version I have is 59 pages, which includes a bunch of pages which aren't comics.
• Things I had read in previous years and reread in 2015.
• Station 16 - Only 54 pages long.
• Books I read digitally (on Hoopla or otherwise).
• Collections of comic strips. - Just Cul de Sac I think.

Things that didn't count:

• Single issues that made up a storyline that have been collected. - Mostly lots of old X-Men comics.
• Island - The anthology that Brandon Graham puts out. It's a magazine?
• Other single issues that were pretty big. - Marvel Super-Hereos #2 Summer Special from 1991 claims to be 80 pages long on the cover. (It is terrible by the way.)
• Prestige format things that were 40-60 pages or so long. - JLA/WildCATs, some Sabertooth thing, some other stuff.
• Webcomics I read online.
• Team Cul de Sac: Cartoonists Draw the Line at Parkinson's - A bunch of this is comic strips, but I decided not enough was.
• The volume of the Authority I read because it had an annual and a story that weren't collected in The Authority by Warren Ellis/Mark Millar collections.

Things I read that collected other things but only counted as one thing:

• Essential Marvel and DC Showcase Presents volumes. Collect various Masterworks/Archives, but only count as one each.
• BPRD: Plague of Frogs Omnibus collect three smaller volumes, but I only counted once.
• etc.

The 500 does include both manga and non-manga , and here's the breakdown.

As you can see I read far more non-manga (441) than manga (59). If you look at the monthly stats you'll see that while I started fairly strong in regards to manga (11 read in January), I soon dropped off (5 read October-December, none read in June!).

The overwhelmingly amount of manga that I read (37!) were published by Viz. Second place was Tokyopop, who haven't published anything new since 2011!

Manga I read were very heavily series based. Of the 37 published by Viz that I read, 24 of them were 20th Century Boys. All six of the Tokyopop titles were King of Thorn.

For non-manga I read far too many Marvel comics.

The publishers from whom I read ten or more titles were

Marvel: 175

Dark Horse: 45

Image: 38

Boom: 21

DC: 20

Wildstorm*: 15

Vertigo: 13

IDW: 12

Valiant: 10

"Other" consists of every publisher from whom I read only one book. 

17 of Boom's titles were Irredeemable/Incorruptible (and I read all of those in January/February. Boom and Marvel were almost on par for the first two months).

If you include Wildstorm and Vertigo with DC they would have 48 books and be the second largest publisher.

* Wildstorm is kind of a special case, since I counted things that had been published under other imprints for them. Two volumes of Gen:13 Bootleg were published by Wildstorm when they were at Image. The volumes of Stormwatch and The Authority I read (that reprinted work originally published by Wildstorm) I counted as Wildstorm, even though they were printed by DC. The New 52 Stormwatch was set in the mainstream DC universe, so they were included in DC's number.

Here's a chart (with some terrible colours, thanks Google...) showing how much of each publisher I read each month. This combines the manga and non-manga lists, so Dark Horse gains 3 books, while Fantagraphics, DC, and NBM (not on this list) gain 1 each. Viz moves into 4th place, and DC is now tied with Boom. Fantagraphics also joins the "10 books" club.

I read the most graphic novels in September (61), when my goal was two a day, and the fewest (13) in July when I read a bunch of non-comic books I guess.

YALSA top ten GNs 2015: 47 Ronin

47 Ronin
Written by Mike Richardson. Illustrated by Stan Sakai.

Published by Dark Horse (2014).

Hey! Now I've read all of the 2015 top ten GNs! Of course I've only reviewed half of them, but that's because I'd read the other five before the YALSA list was announced.

I started this project (long ago) because I was looking at a list of YALSA top ten graphic novels (for 2013 I think) and realized I hadn't read any of them. As someone who reads a lot of comics, and who intends to work in libraries, that kind of bothered me. Shouldn't I have read these? Or at least know what the are?

So my initial goal was just to read all of the YALSA top ten graphic novels (or at least all of the ones I could find), and I read a bunch! But then I realized it might be a better project if I also reviewed them. That would help me figure out what made a good graphic novel for these lists (and for library collections).

Of course, it really shouldn't have taken this long (I think I've average 1.5 reviews a month since I started), but I guess I'm a huge slacker. Still, it's nice to have something to force me to write stuff other than Two Fisted Librarians.

The story of the forty-seven ronin is one that is well known in Japan. It's based on a real event that happened in the 18th century (here's the Wikipedia page) that has been adapted into various media multiple times, and shows the complete and utter insanity and stupidity of codes of honour.

Lord Asano is summoned to the shogun's court in the capital. He journeys there, but before he can begin his duties he has to learn proper court etiquette. He's taught by Kira, a court official, who while a good teacher, is also pretty corrupt. He demands a bribe from Asano, but Asano refuses to pay. Kira then begins to act in ways so as to lead to Asano appearing foolish in front of others. He doesn't tell him that meeting places have been changed, he claims to have given different instructions than he actually gave, and he finally just insults him in front of other people. Asano manages to keep his cool for a while, but eventually  is driven too far and freaks out, attacking Kira with his sword.

Now, the attacking might have been justified, but apparently drawing your sword in the shogun's palace for any reason is punishable by death. There is a overly quick investigation into the incident, Asano commits ritual suicide, and his holdings are seized by the government. The samurai who worked for Asano want revenge, but are convinced by Oshi (who had been Asano's right-hand man) to wait until the right moment to strike.

[Spoilers follow.]

After a couple of years they accomplish their goal after some misdirection (pretending to be drunken idiots, etc.) and kill Kira. Then all 47 of them surrender, and they are given the option to die an honorable death and commit ritual suicide. As interesting a historical story this may be, it really just indicates to me how completely and utterly insane Japanese culture was (and is?).

The idea that because of committing a "shameful" act you should kill yourself is stupid. But I can't say "these characters act like idiots so this is a bad book" because these are events that actually happened. The story is well told, and all of the relevant details appear to be included (though I'm not sure how much people with absolutely no knowledge of 18th century Japanese culture would have trouble understanding).

The real important part of this comic is the artwork, by Stan Sakai. Sakai is best known for his creation Usagi Yojimbo, a samurai rabbit character that he's been creating adventures for since 1984(!). He's written and drawn more than 200 issues of Usagi Yojimbo, but 47 Ronin is (by far) the longest project he's ever drawn that he didn't also write. If you're familiar with Usagi Yojimbo you'll know that Sakai is really good at drawing cartoon animals having samurai adventures. In fact, it's kind of weird seeing him drawn humans in this story, but it doesn't take away from the quality of the artwork.

Sakai's art is never going to be mistaken for being incredibly realistic, but even with the lack of detail (people generally just have dots for eyes) what is there is capable of showing a lot of range. The facial expressions and body language in his characters is capable of conveying a lot of information, and their actions seem natural and not posed. Sakai has also clearly done a lot of research into the buildings, clothing, and events from this time period, and while I can't say it's all accurate, it definitely at least feels accurate to me.

The historical event this comic is based on is incredibly stupid, but this version of the story was clearly created with a lot of care, craftsmanship, and attention to detail. If you want to read a samurai comic that's not excessively bloody, this one is worth reading. Though really, I think I'd rather just read more Usagi Yojimbo.

YALSA top ten GNs 2015: Bad Machinery vol. 3: The Case of the Simple Soul

Bad Machinery Vol. 3: The Case of the Simple Soul
Written and illustrated by John Allison.
Published by Oni Press (2014)

Bad Machinery is, as the subtitle may hint at, a sort of mystery comic featuring children in the fictional English town of Tackleford. The kids who primarily feature are two groups of three: one made up of girls, and one made up of boys. They're all around 11 or 12 (I think) so there's a fair amount of fighting/arguing/will you be my boy/girlfriending going on as well as whatever's going on in the background (which, in this case, is a series of fires and a weird troll thing that lives under a bridge).

And that "weird troll thing" is the kind of thing that makes Allison's comics great (though not in this particular instance*). This is not your average small English town. There is a robot who goes to the school, there are magic spells and curses at the soccer/football pitch, weird goblin creatures in the woods, a time hole in a school cupboard, and lots more weird and wonderful stuff happening in Tackleford all the time (kind of as though it were a nicer version of Sunnydale).

The human characters themselves are more normal, but that doesn't mean they act (or, as this review mentions, speak) naturally. But that's generally part of the charm. Another large part of the appeal for me is Allison's art, which I really love. Characters have distinctive styles and fashions (with individual items of clothing changing), his expressions and body language are great, the story flows (which is impressive considering this was original published one page a day), and the flat colouring works remarkably well with the cartoonish art style.

Allison has been making webcomics since the late 1990s (e.g. forever in internet terms), and while he's had several titles, they're all interconnected and characters from one may show up in another. I started reading his stuff in the early 2000s when he was working on his second title, Scary-Go-Round. I liked it enough to read all of the archives and buy several books from him.

However, at some point after Bad Machinery started I apparently stopped reading. This seems kind of strange, as I'm still excited by him as a creator. I've read all three volumes of the Bad Machinery collected editions (admittedly mostly from the library), and I was buying his print Scary Go Round spin-off series Giant Days until it got extended to 12 issues and I couldn't find issue 4 (I still intend to get the collections), but I stopped reading his free comic on the internet.

So what turned me off a comic by a creator I still at least think I like? Well, part of it is possibly the format of the collection. Its size (more than 30 cm/12 inches wide) shows off the artwork in a lovely fashion, but is kind of too big to fit on my shelf and is even somewhat unwieldy to read. But that doesn't say why I stopped reading the webcomic, and I think the reason behind that is that I found the children that this story focused on considerably less interesting than the adults in the other comics. If the recent Giant Days series had been about these (children) characters I probably wouldn't have been interested, but since it was about the characters in university I was. I would say that I'm not that interested in stories about children, but while that may be true in a broad sense I'm still happy to read certain ones I consider good (Yotsuba&!). I guess I'm just not that interested in reading stories about these children. Though looking through the artwork in this volume again, I'm kind of tempted to catchup on the webcomic, so maybe that will change.

Since this was a webcomic you can read it all online for free. Here's where The Case of the Simple Soul begins.

* Allison frequently includes completely fictional creatures (such as Desmond Fishman) in his comics. However the "troll" in this one kind of bothered me. His appearance seems far too much like a human, and combined with the way he speaks and acts I think it could be taken as making fun of people with developmental disabilities. I don't think this was Allison's intention, and I hope I'm the only person that even considered this, but the problem could have been avoided by making the troll red or something.

YALSA top ten GNs 2010: I Kill Giants

I Kill Giants
Written by Joe Kelly. Illustrated by J.M. Ken Niimura.

Published by Image Comics (2009).

I've heard people talking about I Kill Giants since it came out, and I've looked at it, but I'd never read it until now. And even then, I'm only reading it because I've run out of renewals from the library and its overdue. What is it about this comic that has made me totally uninterested in reading it for years? The art.

This isn't to say that Niimura is a bad artist. His page and panel layouts work, his panel to panel storytelling is (generally) easy to follow and effective, his use of grey tones is impressive. It's just that I absolutely hate his style of art. In the afterward notes Joe Kelly says that even though Niimura's style is "loose", it shouldn't be judged as such because everything on the page is where its intended to be and a lot of work was put into the pages. That may well be (Niimura mentions creating thousands of thumbnails and sketches trying to get the pages and characters to look right), but it doesn't mean that I have to like it.

It's not as though I'm even opposed to "loose" styles of art in comics, as I can think of a few artists who work in such styles that I enjoy, but there's just something in this book that does not work for me. I wonder if part of it is the grey tones that are used. There's a small version of a page in the back before the grey tones are added, and I think I like it better (but it's so hard to tell). I think the book would have worked better with, if not full colour than at least partial colours (though the partial colours on the covers don't do much for me either...), but again, that's just a personal preference.

Okay, so what is this comic actually about? What's the story? Barbara is a girl in fifth grade who spends a lot, and I mean a lot, of time living in a fantasy world. She tells people she kills giants, she talks about casting magic spells, she claims to be carrying around a giant hammer as a weapon, and she sees fairies and other magical creatures around. At first its not totally clear how much of this is real, how much she's imagining, and how much she thinks is real, but isn't.

Barbara also plays D&D, doesn't have many friends, is being bullied at school (but keeps fighting back), and keeps ending up talking to the school psychologist. Already this is well on its way to being a perfect YALSA book! There's also something weird going on with her home life. She lives with her brother and older sister (who seems to spend a lot of time looking after them), but where are the parents? The reveal doesn't come until the later part of the book, so I'm not going to spoil it, but it really makes the rest of the book a lot more effective as a story.

It's kind of weird to think about things like that. Sometimes the end of a story can ruin (or redeem!) the entire thing, which I think is really interesting. Does a bad ending automatically make the rest of a story worse? People seem to think so, but there are authors who are fairly well known for being terrible at endings (an example message board posting is called "Does Neal Stephenson know how to write endings yet?"), and yet people still manage to read and enjoy their work. At what point on the "badness" scale does an ending ruin a thing? Can a "good" ending redeem an otherwise dull or uninteresting story? I have no idea.

For I Kill Giants the story (or the art) didn't really appeal to me that much at the beginning, and if I'd been reading this in single issues I really doubt I would have picked up the later ones. However, knowing that people think that it's good (and it being on this YALSA list) means that I persevered and read the whole thing, and it works quite well. Kelly has crafted a story that touches on the difficulties of being a kid and having limited control over your own life. There are so many things that you cannot change (or even explain!), but you have to learn to deal with them somehow.

Its kind of too bad that this book is published by Image, because it doesn't seem to fit in that well with the other types of things that they publish and I feel that people who would enjoy this story might not check it out because of who the publisher is. But for those who do persevere, and are looking for a story about the difficulties of growing up instead of superheros punching each other, than I Kill Giants could be a rewarding experience.

YALSA top ten GNs 2011: The Zabime Sisters

The Zabime Sisters
Written and illustrated by Aristophane

Published by First Second (2010)

If I were to pick three things that help make a book more likely to be selected as one of the YALSA top ten graphic novels for teens they would be:

1. Is about teenagers
2. Features females in prominent roles
3. Features minority characters in prominent roles

(A fourth might be "isn't a superhero comic".)

This might make me seem a little jaded about reading these comics, but one of the reasons I started reviewing all of these books was to find out why they ended up on these lists. I think the importance of the YALSA lists are not that they are a "best comics" list, but that the are a "for teens" list. They usually include characters in that age group, and frequently feature characters from groups generally under represented in fiction. This helps provides teenagers both with characters they can more strongly identify with and helps expose them to lifestyles and viewpoints they might not be familiar with.

From the cover of The Zabime Sisters you can see that it fulfills all the "rules" I mentioned above (including the fourth one!), and seems like an obvious candidate for inclusion on a YALSA list. However, I found it incredibly boring.

This is not to say it's bad, just that the subject matter didn't appeal to me at all. The story takes place over a couple of hours in the morning on the first day of summer vacation (which is another recurring theme in these stories...) on the island of Guadalupe (a small island in the Caribbean that is part of France). Now, just to clarify, the reason this didn't appeal to me is not because it was set in the morning, a place I rarely tread by choice, but rather because I thought it was really dull. So dull that it took me a couple of days to read this (quite short) book, and so boring I avoided even writing this review until it was either do this or do homework.

So yeah, a bunch of kids walk around and talk about stuff. Some of them have a picnic thing (and then get drunk off panel), some of them steal mangoes, and a couple of them get into a fight. To me "nothing" happens, and I think that's bad. But other people clearly feel that a book that manages to create a sense of place can be a success, and I assume that is one of the reasons that people enjoyed this story.

Artwise I think the style that Aristophane uses is different from what many people may expect from comics as it's all strong, thick, black lines, with no shading or colouring. Reading some other reviews online indicates that some people didn't like it. I had no problems with the art, and looking at some of it again I feel that Aristophane seems to be capturing the feel of both the characters and the setting welll. The lettering, on the other hand, really, really bugged me.

It's rare that lettering is really discussed in comics. It's kind of the invisible art, only noticeable when someone think's it's bad. And dang, I think it looked really terrible in this comic. Somehow, despite it being hand lettered, it appears to capture every element of terrible computer lettering that I dislike: weird placing of text within speech balloons and caption boxes, text that changes sizes just so that it can fit inside those boxes, the letter i is dotted even though every letter is a capital. It just seemed like a perfect storm of ugly. I assume some of this happened because this book was originally published in French, and so the letterer is stuck with the original spaces and has to make the text fit inside them, but dang, I think they did a really awful job of it.

Next up: Superhero comics. I'm sure I'll like those more.

YALSA top ten GNs 2014: Rust Volume 2

 
Rust Vol. 2: Secrets of the Cell
Written and illustrated by Royden Lepp.
Published by Archaia (2012).

It's strange for just the second volume of a series to make it onto the YALSA top ten GNs list. In fact, the only two other examples of non-first volumes making it onto the list are Bad Machinery Vol. 3, from this year's list, and Runaways Vols. 4-6 in 2007 (and if volume 4 of Runaways was released today it would probably have been called Volume 1, as it collected issues 1-6 of volume 2 of Runaways. Yes, comics numbering is stupidly confusing).

Rust is about two things, one is a thing I love, and one is a thing I really don't care about at all. The thing that I love is robots! Yeah! Robots! Apparently there was some big war in the past and the armies used various types of robots (big robots, little robots, lots of robots) to fight each other. They also used humans, and a bunch of them (including parents of characters in this book) died. Since then things have gone back to normal (or somewhat normal), though there are still robots around and you can reprogram them to work on your farm.

And that is the thing I don't really care about: farms. There is a lot of farming and talking about farms in this comic. However, even when it's a robot fixing trucks or doing stuff with hay I find it boring and uninteresting. Unfortunately (for me) there's quite a lot of that stuff. And by "quite a lot", I mean like seventy pages. Lepp is from the prairies somewhere so he probably has nostalgia for that sort of thing, but it's not something that appeals to me on any level.

However, there is a pretty awesome robot fight that takes up a third of the book. And while I'm not opposed to sixty page robot fights (in fact, they sound great), it seems like it might be more useful to move the plot forward a bit more.

Artwise it's kind of a mixed bag. First if you take a look inside you'll notice that everything is coloured in sepia tones, various shades of yellow and brown. While I thought this worked really well for flashback scenes it seemed a little weird for the rest of the comic unless it's trying to indicate that the area the story is set in is suffering from some sort of drought. Though, considering how much the characters talk about the farm, I'm pretty sure they'd mention that.

As for the actual drawings, the backgrounds are fine, the robots are pretty cool, and Lepp is even good at drawing children (something a lot of artists are bad at). Instead he's bad at drawing adults. The two main adult characters look incredibly weird to me in a "why is your head shaped that way" sort of way. (For the record, they both have weirdly shaped heads, but they are shaped weird in different ways.) To be honest, I don't really think these characters even add that much to the story, and you could probably drop them out entirely, or at least reduce the number of pages they show up on.

It seems strange for me to describe a comic that has robot fights, secret government agencies, and war scenes as boring, but it kind of is. This comic is sloowwww. There are quite a few pages of pictures of wheat or people just standing there or similar things. I totally understand that this is a choice that Lepp has made, but it becomes really hard to recommend a $25 graphic novel when you can read it less than half an hour and not much happens plot wise. I'm used to this sort of pacing from some manga, but they're frequently pumping out five or so books this size a year at much cheaper prices.

A third (and final?) volume of Rust came out last year, but I don't think I'll bother reading it. While I do find some of the underlying concepts in Rust interesting, they way they're told just doesn't appeal to me very much. I think other creators could have taken the same story and told it more effectively in just one volume (or even less!). Still, I can sort of see why this is on a YALSA list, as it shows people that live in a rural area and people who have lost parents (to a war), which are concepts to which you might want to expose young people.

YALSA top ten GNs 2015: Through the Woods

Through the Woods
Written and illustrated by Emily Carroll.
Printed by Margaret K. McElderry Books (2014).

If you asked me I'd say that I don't like horror. I don't read horror books. I don't watch horror movies. I think being scared is...scary and not fun. And yet, if I gave you that response I'd be lying to both of us.

Sure, I don't like horror movies, unless you set it on a space station and put an alien in it. I don't read horror books, except for all of that HP Lovecraft stuff I've read to play Call of Cthulhu. I'll play horror video games (I stopped playing Dead Space because my partner said the sounds freaked them out). I'll apparently spend hours reading about unsolved mysteries on the internet and terrifying myself until I'm scared to move or look behind me. And then, of course, there are the horror comics.

I'll _still_ say that I don't like horror, but if you ask for my list of favourite comics ever you'll find Uzumaki by Junji Ito on that list (review coming to this site some day!). I've read and enjoyed numerous other horror manga (by Ito and other creators), I own reprints of old horror comics, and I know there's at least one other horror comic on my shelf (and possibly more than that).

By reading the above you can probably guess that Through the Woods is a horror comic. Just by knowing that you know more than I did when I started reading this comic, because I figured it was going to be fairy tales or something. It's, uh, not. Or rather, I suppose it is scary and terrifying like some fairy tale stories can be.

Carroll is best known, perhaps, for Face All Red, a short horror comic that she put online several years ago. I remember reading it then, and thought that while pretty creepy, it wasn't as big a deal as other people seemed to think. That story is included in this volume, and I feel pretty much the same way about it now as I did then.

However, I feel differently about the other stories in this volume. Some of them are incredibly creepy, spooky, or scary, and one even had me scream out loud a little on a page turn reveal that was kind of body horror. (And fuck, that stuff really freaks me out sometimes. Or pretty much all times.)

The stories are set in various periods of "ye olden days", with the most recent being set at some point after cars become fairly common place (it really doesn't matter when). (And something I didn't realize until I was flicking through the book again just now, is that the vast majority of these stories all have female characters in the lead role.)

Carroll's art is pretty great. Though I'm apparently incapable of saying much beyond that. Her use of page design (very few panels have straight, defined borders),  and colour is really great, and show how much effort went into creating the mood in these comics.

Overall the production of the book is really quite nice, with the thick glossy paper used allowing the colours to pop off the page. Similarly, much of the art is full bleed, which means it's printed right up to the end of the page (and I was reading a comic from the '90s recently where this was presented as a big deal). Because of these factors, plus the styles used for the art and lettering (the whole comic is hand lettered and the words can really feel like part of the artwork), Through the Woods sometimes reminded me more of children's picture books than of any other comics.

I'm not going to explain the plot of any of the stories in here, as I feel they're almost of second importance to that of creating creepy atmosphere. But even if not, it seems almost unfair to tell you what's happening in these stories, as it could ruin the surprise for you if you choose to read this comic.

This is a beautiful comic, and parts of it are going to haunt my memory (in a terrified way) for a while. Still, I'm glad it's on this list because I hadn't heard of it before, and despite the fear, the scary imagery that will not leave my brain, and the possibility of trouble sleeping in the future, I'm happy to have read it.

YALSA top ten GNs 2012: Wandering Son

Wandering Son (Volume 1)
Written and illustrated by Takako Shimura.
Published by Fantagraphics (2011).

As a guy that owns...5 dresses, I can understand some of the uncertainty and fear of social stigma that Shuichi Nitori, the main character in Wandering Son, faces. However, if I'm wearing a dress it's at least partially because I'm trying to undermine gender stereotypes (and, yes, because a lot of boy clothing is really boring). Shuichi on the other hand actively wants to be a girl, which is a very different scenario, especially when you're ten years old.

This first volume of Wandering Son features Shuichi very slowly coming to terms with this idea. So slowly in fact that I don't think it's even explicitly mentioned until the second chapter. At the beginning he's kind of terrified by the idea, scared and embarrassed that other people might find out, and just really not sure what to do. Thankfully, he encounters other students who are either supportive, of a similar mindset, or both, and gradually begins to experiment with wearing dresses and other things.

The first volume also features an interesting comparison, as we meet one of Shuichi's friends, Yoshino Takatasuki, a girl who wants to be a boy. At one point while they've both dressed up and gone out, she starts her period (for the first time), which while it seems like it should be a horrible, awkward nightmare, somehow doesn't turn out that way. Either way, it does support the back of the book where it states that the characters are on the "threshold to puberty". I think the kids in this book are at the age where they start developing their own sense of identity, and I'm curious as to how they grow over the rest of the series. There are 14 more volumes, in which he characters age until they graduate from high school and head off to university, however, only about half of them have been translated into English.

Shimura says in the bonus manga in the back that her "characters are hard to tell apart, [her] backgrounds are too empty, and [she] has a million other flaws to overcome", but I think she's being overly self critical. Yes, there are a fair number of panels that lack backgrounds, but it never really bothered me, and sometimes the use of screentones or solid black or white as backgrounds actually manages to add to the scene by complimenting the emotions of the characters. As for the characters, they are fine, good even! It's a comic about 10 year old kids, and for the most part they seem to look like 10 year olds (I think... I don't really have much experience with them...). I'm not going to proclaim that this is my favourite art ever, but I've read many comics (this year) that have worse art than this, and apart from an awkward scene change or two, the art here generally works.

One aspect of the art that I did enjoy is the use of screentones. I guess part of this is that they are pretty common in Japanese comics, but decidedly less so in Western ones, and since I don't read as much manga I'm not as used to seeing them. However, their use on clothing is effective, giving the illusion of texture and colour.

I was just reading about the controversy surrounding the book When Everything Feels Like the Movies, a book about a young trans character, and the fact that there is controversy at all, let alone the situation surrounding the tragic events it was inspired by, kind of show why stories like that, and like Wandering Son, should exist. There are, unfortunately, still quite a few people who are homophobic or transphobic (amongst other things), and these people can make the lives of young people miserable.

There's a reason why suicide amongst LGBTQ youth is high, and thankfully there are groups who strive to improve the lives of those people and educate both them and the future. One thing that can help is providing youth, both those identifying as LGBTQ and those that don't, with material that shows queer lifestyles as normal. The last decade has seen a fairly major increase in LGBTQ characters in comics, and also an improvement from how they used to be portrayed. However, they're still underrepresented, and it never hurts to have a few more. So yes, I can see why Wandering Son was on YALSA's lists of top GNs, and I support it being there.

YALSA top ten GNs 2009: Pitch Black

 
Pitch Black 
Written and illustrated by Youme Landowne and Anthony Horton.
Published by Cinco Puntos Press (2008).

If most people were approached by a large, black, homeless man on the New York subway they'd probably attempt to avoid any sort of conversation and possible even just get off the train entirely. But for whatever reason Youme Landowne didn't. Instead she met Anthony Horton, and spent a lot of time talking to him about art, life, and homelessness.

Vancouver (where I live) is like many cities in that it has a large homeless population. And while the Downtown Eastside might seem pretty terrible, it really can't compare to some of the places around the world. However, even when I see and am aware of homeless people in the city, it can be really easy to ignore them, or forget that they are humans with feelings, emotions, and pasts. (Though to be fair, I can forget about that for pretty much any human, homeless or not.)

Compared to many Horton seems to have had a pretty terrible life in a lot of ways, and the cards were clearly stacked against him from the start. He bounced around foster homes after his parents gave him up, and never learned to read or write or any other real skills.  He spent some time living in shelters, but found them worse than living outside. Eventually he found his way down to the subway tunnels, where he encountered other people, and made various homes for himself over the years.

In Pitch Black he shows Landowne where he lived, talks about his rules for survival ("Remember, anything you need can be found in the garbage"), and tells her about his friends who had helped him survive. In it's attempt to humanize Horton it manages to be sad, terrifying, and touching in equal parts.

The art by Landowne is not something that would work with a lot of stories. It seems to be lacking a lot of the detail and consistency that I associate with "good" comic book art. But somehow the thick, wavy panel borders and lines, the grey smudgy colour, and the art that sometimes feels as though it were cut off by the edge of the page does a good job of capturing what the underground tunnel system is like: grimy, claustrophobic, and dangerous. It doesn't look clean and it doesn't look safe, and thankfully due to this Landowne manages to avoid making living in subway tunnels seem appealing. (I mean, doesn't everyone want to do that?)

At about 60 pages this book is not that long, and the art is not the best by most standards, but as a whole the comic does manage to capture some of what it feels like to be homeless. Reading Pitch Black can help you understand how difficult life can be for some people, but also that no matter who they are people are still people and still have wants, needs, and rights.

After reading this comic I'd hoped that Horton had managed to improve his life to some extent, but  it seems as though up until his death in a fire in 2012 he continued to be homeless. Not exactly the uplifting note you want a story like this to end on, but sadly, real life doesn't work that way.

YALSA top ten GNs 2009: Cairo

Cairo
Written by G. Willow Wilson. Illuastrated by M. K. Perker.
Published by DC/Vertigo (2008)

It's kind of interesting to go back and read someone's first published work after they become super famous (well... relatively super famous). Wilson is now (by far) best known for her work on Ms. Marvel (which was on this year's YALSA top ten GN list), but back in 2007 she was writing for Vertigo.

I owned the first volume Air (the series Wilson did at Vertigo after Cairo), and while I even talked to Wilson at a con I don't believe I ever actually read it. I had actually read this book before, which seems kind of strange to be honest. Air lasted 24 issues, which by the records of Vertigo series from the last decade or so is actually pretty good.

As for Cairo, well, it reminds me of an action movie. Not a "shoot them until everyone is dead" movie, but a "lots of disparate characters running around doing different things while other people shoot at them" movie. There are six main characters in the book, who get thrown into random pairs as they circle events about a hookah that has a djinn/jinn/genie inside it. A male drug smuggler who's trying to get the hookah back ends up with a female Israeli soldier who just wants to go back to Israel without getting killed. A young, white American girl on holiday and an Egyptian journalist get kidnapped as hostages and have to escape. And there's the young, male Lebanese-American who was going to be a suicide bomber until his flight got cancelled and he ended up trying to help a jinn.

They run around Egypt trying to find each other, escaping bad guys (wait, an Israeli soldier, a potential suicide bomber, and a drug smuggler count as good guys?), encountering magic stuff and entities, and fighting goons and/or monsters. The difference between this and other stories is that it was made by Muslim creators, and thus their knowledge of and experience with other countries/cultures can create a different world (though considering that Wilson converted to Islam like five years before this book came out you might want to question the accuracy of everything).

As for the art by M. K. Perker (who also drew Wilson's series Air), it didn't really grab me. The layout is fine, the panel to panel story telling works, and there are even a couple of pretty fun fourth-wall breaking bits. However, I think that at the time this comic came out Perker was a lot more used to editorial cartooning (at least that's what I can surmise from his Wikipedia page), and I suspect drawing a full 150 page graphic novel was quite a different experience for him.

Looking through Cairo again I think my major problem is with the faces of the characters. They look kind of awkward? Maybe that's not the right word, but it seems as though their features, while expressive, don't always fit on their faces right, as though they were the wrong size. Now, just to clarify, this isn't always the case, and their are times when the characters are supposed to look kind of weird, however it does happen just enough for it to be noticeable by me. Looking at his work since then, Perker doesn't seem to have this problem anymore (his stuff for The Unwritten looks really nice), so I think it was just inexperience.

Looking at the YALSA lists you have to remember one thing: these are not the "best" books of the year, these are "great graphic novels for teens". I think that means that there's a greater emphasis on teenage characters, but also on non-white characters, LGBTQ characters, and other people who are generally underrepresented in our media as a whole. Librarians are far more likely to think about those sorts of things than the Eisner judges (who, while they generally pick very good books, have also only ever chosen comics about white people or animals to win their "Best Publication for Teens" award). For librarians it's important to help people find books that appeal to them and feature characters like them, but also provide books that represent different viewpoints than library users have experienced before. On that level, I think Cairo probably succeeds, at least in an "action movie" kind of way.

YALSA top ten GNs 2011: Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty

Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty
Written by G. Neri. Illustrated by Randy Duburke.
Published by Lee & Low Books Inc. (2010)

So before I read this I had never heard of Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, an eleven year old kid who was involved with gangs and shot a girl in Chicago in 1994. Honestly, it's kind of hard for me to understand that sort of thing. I was born in the same year as Sandifer, so I was also 11 when the events in this comic were happening. But instead of stealing cars and running from the cops I was playing Super Nintendo. (It was not until 1997 when Grand Theft Auto came out that I would begin stealing cars and running from cops.)

It's pretty evident that the entire situation surrounding Sandifer was tragic: his parents were in jail (and abusive when out of it), he had no real support system, and, to be honest, no hope. Near the end of this comic one of the characters says that Sandifer is going to be the only person from that neighbourhood that ever makes it to the cover of Time magazine, and they are more than likely right. I've talked with friends about class systems, and how the USA and Canada differ from the UK, but we do have to accept that there are places in our countries where you are pretty much fucked from birth. Sandifer grew up in one, and his chances from day one weren't that good.

Poverty can be incredibly hard to escape from, and this comic acts as a pretty good reminder of that. However, judging it as a comic is kind of weird. Does it have amazing art or tell the story in an interesting way? Not really, no. The art tells the story ("and it's perfectly fine!" he said, damning it with faint praise that is unfair to the artist), and the story tells the story. There really isn't that much more to it. Would I put it on a "best of" list for 2011? No. Would I put it on a top graphic novels for teens list? Yeah, because I think it's important for teenagers to learn about things like this. Maybe some people even read it and had their lives changed for the better. I can only hope.

YALSA top ten GNs 2014: War Brothers the Graphic Novel

War Brothers: the Graphic Novel
Written by Sharon McKay and Daniel Lafrance. Illustrated by Daniel Lafrance.
Published by Annick Press (2013)

So you'll see that I've credited Daniel Lafrance as one of the writers of the work, and it seems that not every website does this. Presumably this is because this book was originally a young adult novel written by Sharon McKay, and some people have assumed that she also wrote this. But from what I can tell she didn't actually have any connection to the production of this book (other than approval maybe?).

This does bring up the idea of how much of a comic's "writing" and story are down to the artist. We assume that the words in the speech balloons are the writing, but most of the time there is much more, with a writer creating a script, breaking the story down into pages and panels and describing what's happening. Of course, there are examples of artists creating comics from much less than full script, with Marvel style probably being the best known example. If an artist creates the layout of a page, or even a character's outfit, should that be considered "writing"?

Anyway....

War Brothers is depressing. It's about children kidnapped to be soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. (That's the group that Joseph Kony of Kony2012 runs.) So yes, this book about children being kidnapped at gun point, being forced to march through the jungle, starving, attacking and killing each other out of fear for their lives, having their ears cut off, and much more is based on real life. Hurray!

I haven't read the original novel, but Lafrance has done a good job in adapting prose into comic form. By this I mean that nothing seems to be missing from the original (it's entirely possible that there is, but nothing _seems_ to be missing), and that a complete story is told.

Throughout the comic the characters are well illustrated. Children tend to look like children (which is something some artists really struggle with), the use of colours is effective (especially in many of the night scenes), and Lafrance is effective in communicating emotions through facial expressions and body language.

For much of the story Lafrance doesn't use panel borders like many comics do. Instead the panels are bordered by gutters that are either fully white or fully black depending on the setting. While most panels use straight, rectangular borders, scenes of violence tend to feature much less regular panels with the black gutters at times seeping out onto the art itself.

There were a few times where I felt the computer lettering was not as strong as it could be. When you have panel borders changing depending on the scene it doesn't seem nearly as good when those scenes are lettered with fonts featuring identical looking computer fonts. Sometimes computer fonts are fine, but other times I really appreciate hand lettered sound effects and other text in comics.

Overall I think this comic is successful. It effectively tells a story where (I think) the real point is to educate people about something that is happening in another part of the world. And while it is depressing, it isn't as hopeless as some media about Africa can be. (This opinion piece from Fuse ODG about the portrayal of Africa in western media is kind of interesting.) If you're completely unaware of the situation regarding the LRA it might be more useful to read the Wikipedia article I linked to above, but this is worth reading too.

YALSA top ten GNs 2014: March

 

March (Volume 1)
Written by by  John Lewis and Andrew Aydin. Illustrated by and Nate Powell.
Published by Top Shelf (2013)

While he's now best known for his comic work like Swallow Me Whole, I first learned of Nate Powell through Soophie Nun Squad, a rather bizarre band slotted into the punk movement at least partially because of the content of their lyrics and who they hung out rather than anything else (Powell was roommates with a member of Defiance, Ohio for a while). Their live shows frequently featured puppets and costumes and it's too bad they don't perform any more as I'd like to see them. The CD I have by them features a cover and other artwork by Powell (who is also credited for "voice, claps, hit a button, puppets"), and it's great to see him working on book such as this.

March is a book chronicling the civil rights movement in the United States through the eyes of John Lewis, a US congressman and an "American icon" that I've never heard of... Of course, I am a Canadian, and so I presumably know less about this than Americans do, but I felt that there could have been a little bit more context for what segregation and the civil rights movement where. I guess that while American kids are taught about all this stuff, I can imagine a kid in Canada (and remember this is a book aimed at kids and young adults) or elsewhere being confused by what's going on. (Though without access or experience with them it''s impossible for me to really know.)

The book starts telling Lewis' life starting in the 1940s rural America and continuing up to the lunch counter protests in 1960. Throughout we're given Lewis' thoughts on the movement, and the emphasis many people put on non-violent protests. Reading about the institutionalized racism portrayed in this comic is pretty upsetting. I mean, my birth is closer to those events than to the present day, but I can't even imagine restaurants here refusing to serve people because of the colour of their skin. It really makes me wonder what groups we're discriminating against today that, thirty years from now, will make us feel appalled by our own actions.

While the information given in this comic is solid, I found the book as a whole is a little frustrating. The story is effectively told, but as it's just "part one" the story isn't complete in any real way. Secondly, there's a kind of weird almost present day (2009) framing sequence of Lewis talking about his life to kids and other people. It  crops up at various points of the book, and based on the dates I guess the final book is going to end with the inauguration of Barack Obama. While I understand why that is important, and would be a fitting conclusion, I also felt that it just ate up pages that could have been better used to give more historical details. Finally, and this is fairly minor, there's a term used that I consider a racial slur about Irish people, which is a little off putting.

Powell's art is good, but I'm apparently worse at describing artwork than I am at actual stories, so it's probably best if you just look at a preview.

YALSA top ten GNs 2009: Skim

Skim
Written by Mariko Tamaki. Illustrated by Jillian Tamaki.
Published by Groundwood Books (2008)

When I originally read Skim months ago I really didn't think it was very good. It definitely got better near the end, but overall I didn't really get why people liked it so much (or rather, even if I did, it didn't appeal to me personally). Reading it a second time, and feeling much more depressed overall (school...), I definitely found it more appealing, though I felt it did have a lot of the same problems I found my first time through.

But first, Skim is a book about some kind-of-outcast kids in an all-girls high school in Ontario in the early '90s. They read about Wicca, are kind of goth, and when a boy who was dating someone in the school kills themselves everyone gets worried about them (because of course the kind of depressed goths are going to kill themselves). We follow Skim, the main character, as she interacts with her teachers, family, and classmates, and grows further away from some people and towards others.

My biggest problem is the creepy relationship that happens between a student and a teacher. Yeah, it's fiction, yeah not everything has to be spelled out, but I still think this is a super creepy thing and other than one of the characters moping a bunch it's not really dealt with. People write about stuff that doesn't happen I know, and being overly preachy can be pretty terrible, but still, it made me kind of uncomfortable.

Anyway, once that's out of the way the story becomes a lot more appealing to me. A popular girl who fell off her roof and broke both her arms (while attempting suicide?) is constantly surrounded by other girls who try to make a thing out of it by having clubs and dances and stuff that are supposed to be about how great life is. The girl seems to become more and more distressed and Skim manages to create some sort of connection between them. This was the best part of the book, as the other character, who'd been dismissed previously, is shown to have a personality. I kind of wish that the entire book had been about them coming to terms with themselves and who their friends actually are, as despite these scenes we didn't really get a full picture of them. Oh well.

So yeah, a lot of people loved this, I thought it was okay. But really, it's about emotions and family and teenagers and there's not a single robot and nobody travels through time, so  I'm not even surprised it didn't do that much for me. (Also the art, which many people enjoyed a lot, evidently wasn't my thing as I don't really remember it, but that doesn't mean it was bad!)

YALSA top ten GNs 2010: Ōoku: The Inner Chambers

Ōoku: The Inner Chambers (Volume 1)
Written and illustrated by Fumi Yoshinaga
Published by Viz (2009)

I complained in my review of A Bride's Story that I found it incredibly boring when it would spend pages just showing characters doing everyday menial tasks. So when I started reading this and saw drawings of people dusting and doing other chores I really wasn't convinced that I'd find it interesting.

But the world that Yoshinaga has created is fascinating. A disease has ravaged feudal Japan, killing 75% of all males. Females take over basically every role that men used to take, and men are reduced to little more than sex objects in order that the population might continue to survive. The main character of the first book, Mizuno, is a man who refuses to be married off by his parents, but instead enters the service of the shogun, joining what is basically a male harem.

And like a harem, there's very little sex going on (in part because the current shogun is a seven year old girl), but lots of politics, intrigue, menial tasks, and dressing in fancy clothes (and, okay, there's some gay sex). Only men are allowed into the inner chambers, and so they have to take care of everything: cooking, cleaning, sewing, and so forth. When men are such a sought after commodity the hundreds of men the shogun has in her service doing basically nothing is an indication of her power.

A lot of the content of this comic is based around ideas of elaborate social structures, prestige, status, and old cultural traditions. I'm not sure how aware Japanese readers would have been of this, but my reaction is generally "this is stupid" when I hear that there are people who do not have enough status to be seen by the shogun. Bah! Aristocrats! Still, you don't have to be knowledgeable of Japanese culture to understand this section, it's all fairly well explained in the comic itself.

Thankfully, part way through the volume a new character is introduced who seems to share at least some of my opinions regarding that sort of thing. Then an incredibly interesting plot line comes to light when some characters from Europe are briefly featured. The reader immediately has to wonder if this plague that killed so many Japanese males was isolated to the island and the rest of the world has carried on as if nothing unusual has happened (since the story happens during the sakoku period, this seems at least possible).

I'm really not sure where this series is heading (or even what characters will be featured), and while I wasn't totally on board with the fist volume I am willing to check out the next couple in order to see what happens. I hope that the mysteries that the first volume eventually raised become the focal point, as that's where my interest really lies.

YALSA top ten GNs 2014: Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong
Written by Prudence Shen. Illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks.
Published by First Second (2013)

Sometimes I think that cheerleaders must be the most maligned group in fiction. I mean, I'm no expert in cheerleaders in fiction, but they generally seem to be portrayed as stuck up, exclusionary people that only care about looks and money.

But I guess I should explain what this comic is actually about. It begins with the high school robot club and the cheerleaders both wanting school money (the robot club wants new uniforms and the cheerleaders want to go to a robot competition, no wait...). However, there is only enough money for one of the groups (lets ignore that the cheerleaders want $4000 and the robot club only wants $1500), so the school decides that student council will decide who gets the money.

One of the robot club members decides to run for president, while his...friend (?) who is on the basketball team and used to go out with the head cheerleader gets signed up to run against him. Various dastardly election tricks are played by each side until the school decides that nobody gets the money. This part of the book was okay, but reading about high school politics didn't interest me that much.

The robot club decides to enter a robot fighting championship in order to get the money and go to their competition. However in order to do this they have to make their normal robot into a fighting robot, so they have to borrow $1500 from the cheerleaders with the promise that they'll pay for the uniforms with some of the prize money. (And if the cheerleaders have access to that much money why can't they just buy their own uniforms?) I found I enjoyed the comic considerably more after this point as, well, robot fights, but also because the characters' back stories and personalities were better fleshed out through various scenes and dialogue.

Perhaps surprisingly my favourite part of the comic came not from the robot fights, which were all pretty great, but from when the cheerleaders actually showed some compassion towards the only girl in the robot club. While "oh, they were nice all along" is _also_ a stereotype, it did make the characters seem slightly more believable and less one dimensional.

Actually, no, my favourite part of the comic was the art. Faith Erin Hicks seems to be everywhere these days (I mean, she had two books on the YALSA list in 2014!), and it has become obvious what a good artist she has become. Her ability to draw motion is really good (and thankfully so in a comic about robot fights), but I think where she really shines is in the expressions and body language of the characters she draws. She's great at allowing the reader to know how a character feels without them having to say anything at all.

Overall this was pretty okay, though that's clearly damning this book with faint praise. There were definitely parts that I enjoyed, but I also feel that you could cut out about a third of the book and made something that was more interesting (at least to me). Still, I'll gladly read more comics that Hicks drew, and I might check out another graphic novel written by Shen if the subject matter appealed to me more.

YALSA top ten GNs 2012: A Bride’s Story

A Bride’s Story (Volumes 1-3)
Written and illustrated by Kaoru Mori
Published by Yen Press (volumes 1-2, 2011; volume 3, 2012)

Only the first volume of this series was on the YALSA list, but I happened to see the first three in the library, so I picked them all up. To be honest because I didn't look at what this book was about I mistook it for Ooku: The Inner Chambers, which was on the 2010 YALSA list, and I kind of can't believe that I read about six hundred pages of this stuff.

A Bride's Story is set somewhere in central Asia in the late 19th century. At the time when women were married off to other families for money or political connections or any number of other reasons. As the comic begins Amir has been married off to another family, and she is positively ancient by bride standards (she's twenty), while her husband is only 12. The comic basically just follows the day to day activities of Amir as she becomes used to living with a new family.

It is incredibly boring.

Now, I find this kind of shocking as (spoilers ahead) Amir's old family comes and attacks the village she's living in, and in a later volume someone gets thrown into jail. Yet despite this it is just the dullest comic I have read in quite some time. Pages will be devoted to a character, who is never named, carving wood. Or there can be page after page of characters doing embroidery. Or, even worse, page after page of characters just _looking_ at embroidery.

But none of that is my real problem with this comic, my major problem is with the character of Amir. I realized somewhere in here that Amir is not actually a human being. Amir is a robot. Now you might be thinking "What? You said this book was set in the late 19th century, how is she a robot?", but I don't mean that she is a robot made out of mechanical parts (because really, nobody that knows me would ever think that I'd find that a problem). No, Amir is a robot in that she does not have human emotions or react to events like a human would. Instead she is absurdly innocent, verges on being an idiot savant in regards to her capabilities (she's an amazing archer!), who is amazed by _everything_. OH MY GOSH YOU CAN BAKE BREAD! Or you can sew, or there's a horse, or any other incredibly mundane thing astounds her utterly as though she has never seen it before. Amir reacts to events as though she has no prior history of doing or experiencing anything. She also becomes overwhelmingly devoted to her husband for no apparent reason whatsoever, which reminds me of robots who are devoted to their creator because, well, why not? It's kind of creepy.

Now this title has a lot of positive reviews online, and Kaoru Mori also had a title (Emma) on the 2008 YALSA list, so clearly she has many people who enjoy her work a lot, but I pretty clearly don't see the appeal of this comic. I will say that A Bride's Story is considerably better than Emma for two reasons. First, while the main character in both series is incredibly docile and passive, Amir is at least capable of doing _something_ (shooting arrows at things), while I don't think the main character in Emma did anything other than be embarrassed and polite, and second the art is really nice. I just wish it was being used on a comic I actually cared about.

YALSA top ten GNs 2008: King of Thorn

King of Thorn (Volumes 1-2)

Written and illustrated by Yuji Iwahara.

Published by Tokyopop (2007)

Sometimes a book can deliver everything you want, despite what the author's original intents were. But more on that later. I'm trying to get into the habit of reading books and comics without knowing anything about them. I don't read the blurb on the back (spoilers!), and it's often so long since I added the book to my "to read" list that I don't even remember why I wanted to read it in the first place. So I go in with no knowledge of what's going to happen at all except for whatever's on the cover. This means that early twists and surprises actually surprise me!

The cover of King of Thorn doesn't really reveal anything about the story at all (there are humans and monsters?), but I remember years ago thinking about reading this book because I really enjoyed the way the cover was designed. The use of blank white space within the "thorns" seeming to "eat" into the rest of the image, while the soft purple-y colour of the cover made it stand out to me for some reason. Maybe it's just that the colour purple being used on the cover is supposed to sell more comics.

Inside the story starts by revealing that a terrible disease, the Medusa virus, is turning people into stone and killing them and...hold on, isn't this the plot at the beginning of Eden: It's an Endless World? Kasumi is one of a pair of twins who have contracted the virus, but she alone has been chosen as one of 160 people to be placed into suspended animation in hopes that a cure will be uncovered. There's plenty of angst about leaving her sister behind as she's placed into the capsule and put to sleep.

And then...dinosaur attack! Okay, the dinosaur attack doesn't happen _yet_. First we jump forward some unknown amount of time into the future. The lab which holds the cryo-capsules has been completely overgrown with huge vines covered in thorns. Some of the capsules seem to be completely destroyed, but a number are still intact and people start to wake up and wonder what on Earth is going on. Then the dinosaur, or at least a giant lizard creature, attacks. In the ensuing fear, panic, and stampedes most of the survivors end up dead, leaving only seven people alive. The rest of the book follows their attempt to escape from the building, but floating over their heads is the dark realization that the virus which caused them to be placed into cryogenic sleep in the first place hasn't been cured, and the longest any of them has to live is six weeks. Gripping stuff!

So what was the thing I disliked about this book? The main character. The girl on the cover with huge glasses and who, as you can probably guess if you've ever read any manga, is a shy and awkward teenage schoolgirl who is also nice and kind and maybe brave. She has seemingly no characteristics beyond that, practically sleepwalks through the plot, getting rescued multiple times, and could, in my opinion, just not have been included at all. I feel like I've seen this character in numerous manga before (though, I could not actually tell you which ones), and they're not a character type that I really care for. A character can have self doubt over their actions, but Kasumi's self doubt (at least in this volume) is whether she should even bother continuing to live. It's survivor's guilt that starts before she even enters the capsule. I'm assuming that Iwahara wants us to identify with, or at least care about, Kasumi, but it wouldn't bother me if she died in volume two. Actually, that'd be pretty gutsy so I'd be impressed, but I'm doubting that'll happen.

The other characters aren't that much better: there's a kid, a woman (who of course ends up looking after the kid), an older rich business man guy, another guy (who apparently has less of a personality than Kasumi), a black guy (who is of course big and strong), and a super 1337 hacker criminal (the big muscley guy with the tattoos on the cover). The hacker is, at least so far, the real protagonist insofar as he has driven pretty much every element of the plot: leading the characters, suggesting plans, coming up with ideas, saving people, thinking about what's going on. He's a stereotype too, but one I'm more interested in reading about.

Still the entire plot and situation of the comic really grabbed me, even if the characters themselves didn't seem like anything particularly special. I'm totally ready to read more of this series (especially since, as it's only six volumes long, it will actually end), but unfortunately the VPL only has volume 1 and every volume is out of print since Tokyopop, its original publisher, has basically not existed as a company in several years. Thankfully it doesn't look like prices on the secondary market are that high, so hopefully I can pick them up somewhere. I'm also interested in checking out some of Iwahara's other series, two of which, I've just discovered, have been translated into English.

YALSA 2014 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens

Every year since 2007 the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) section of the American Library Association (ALA) has created both a long list and a top ten list of "great graphic novels for teens". You can see all the lists here. Previously they had included some graphic novels on their "best books for young adults" lists.

Last year I was invited to give a guest lecture on the history of comics and graphic novels for children and young adults, and upon looking at these lists realized that I had read less than half of the book on the top ten lists (and hadn't even heard of others!). As a so called "expert" on graphic novels in libraries I didn't really think that this was appropriate, and decided to read as many of the volumes that I hadn't read as possible.

I'll be reviewing them as I read (or reread) them, and this page will eventually contain links to all the books from 2014. Here's the full list of nominations from 2014, and the top ten list. This year I've read fewer of these books than ever (approximately 1.5)! I blame being in grad school.

Will & Whit by Laura Lee Gulledge.

The Adventures of Superhero Girl by Faith Erin Hicks.

Dogs of War by Sheila Keenan and Nathan Fox.

MIND MGMT (Volume 1) by Matt Kindt.

Rust (Volume 2) by Royden Lepp.

March (Volume 1) by  John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell.

War Brothers: The Graphic Novel by Sharon McKay and Daniel Lafrance.

Strobe Edge (Volumes 1-6) by Io Sakisaka.

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong by Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks.

Boxers & Saints by Gene Luen Yang.