YALSA top ten GNs 2012: My Friend Dahmer

My Friend Dahmer
Written and illustrated by Derf Backderf.

Published by Abrams Comic Arts (2012)

To be totally honest, I had absolutely no interest in reading this graphic novel about Backderf's experiences growing up with the murderer Jeffrey Dahmer. While I'm aware that there's a lot of interest in true crime and serial killers, it's really not an area in which I find myself particularly interested. Despite this lack of interest, and the unsettling content, I found myself enjoying My Friend Dahmer far more than I had expected. However, be forewarned, this is an incredibly depressing look at someone's real life spiral into a nightmare.

Backderf went to school with Dahmer throughout junior high and high school, and interacting with him on a peer level gave Backderf a different take on Dahmer than many of the adults in his life. However, while the title of the book implies that they were friends, the reality is far more complicated. Backderf (and his actual friends) may have found Dahmer to be at times entertaining, and encouraged him to act out in public, but while they used him as a sort of mascot they weren't people who really interacted much outside of school.

Throughout the book Backderf makes sure to repeatedly say that he does not not want to make Dahmer into a sympathetic character, and that while Dahmer's home life had many problems, it in no way excused his later actions. The Dahmer that Backderf knew was an incredibly troubled youth, who seemingly isolated himself in a way to deal with the terrifying thoughts that were constantly filling his mind. Dahmer spent much of high school drunk (in class!) and yet apparently not only did no teacher ever notice, but Dahmer managed to graduate (and briefly went to university). In some ways this book can be seen as a criticism of Dahmer's teachers and parents for not noticing that something was horribly wrong with him.

Backderf's art style is in no ways realistic, but he manages to capture the characters in a way that shows off who they are. The almost cartoony/caricatureish art gives characters the opportunity to express the emotions that they're feeling (and contrasts with Dahmer's frequently emotionless face), but is also effective at creating a sinister atmosphere during the more unsettling parts of the book.

In addition to his own personal recollections, Backderf interviewed dozens of his former classmates and teachers, and extensively used interviews, news articles, and other sources to create as accurate a timeline of events as possible. Despite his copious research a problem I had with this book (and, it seems, many of the nonfiction books I've read that have been on the YALSA lists) is a lack of context. While the text frequently alludes to what Dahmer ended up doing, it is only in the footnotes in the back, and the blurb on the inner front of the dust jacket (which I missed) that it actually says what he did (Dahmer killed 17 people). And sure, how many people are going to pick up this book and read it (and not read the blurb) without knowing anything about Dahmer? Probably not many other than me. Still, I think it would have been valuable to include in the introduction.

YALSA Top Ten GNs 2012: Zahra's Paradise

Zahra's Paradise
Written by Amir. Illustrated by Khalil.
Published by First Second (2011)

As of this moment I have read 482 graphic novels this year. Yes, that is a completely absurd number. Yes, I am insane.

The perhaps more interesting number is "1". That is the number of graphic novels I have failed to finish this year. Considering the quality of some of the stuff I have finished, that there was only one graphic novel I didn't finish seems to indicate that it was truly terrible. Except it wasn't. The book in question was fine, I just couldn't face reading any more gothic literature after it being chosen as that month's genre for my book club.

However, if I wasn't reading it because it was on a YALSA top ten graphic novels for teens list (and for some reason I'm trying to read them all) I never would have finished Zahra's Paradise.

The plot at first claims to be about a mother finding her son after the the political protests which happened in Iran in 2009, and there are places where the book seems to be from her point of view, but for the most part it seems to be about her other son. Of course, it doesn't help that both characters are complete ciphers and that we learn basically nothing about them, their feelings (beyond "this situation is not good" in regards to the arrests after the protest), or their interests. The missing brother is better developed, but at the same time the book takes a strangely long amount of time telling us about how much he loves ice water. I'm also really not fond of the main young female character, who seems both politically active (helping to uncover government secrets), and weirdly naive.

Of course, this book tends to take a long time to tell you anything. It is densely written, and almost every page is filled to bursting with words. In some comics this is fine, but here it really seemed like I was slogging through dialogue and character's thoughts that didn't add very much to the story. I think this demonstrates Amir's background as a journalist, since overwriting comics can definitely be an issue for those coming to the medium from more prose heavy ones. (Show don't tell!) Despite the general wordiness of this comic, it also seems to leave out a lot of background information that would help people (especially young people) make sense of what's going on (and why).

Another problem I had concerning the writing was the number of foreign words used in this book. That's a pretty common thing to see, and it's normally not that big of a deal, but despite having footnotes translating some of the words and _two_ glossaries there were still words and cultural references the meaning of which I had no idea. (Though admittedly, reading the glossaries probably gives you the best context for Iran's political system.)

In comparison to the writing, the art by Khalil is actually pretty good. I don't think I ever had problems following what was going on, and I appreciated the hand lettering (which I assume he also did, nobody else is credited). The combination of the art and lettering styles reminded me of old Mad Magazines, which is a little disconcerting when you consider the content of Zahra's Paradise. There are also some pages that I think look really great (see below), but more in the way that political cartoons do, making me wonder where most of the artist's experiences lie.

I can understand why this graphic novel made it onto the YALSA list: it was fairly topical at the time, it exposes people to other cultures and ways of life, and its plot is centred around a young person. But, I don't think it manages to provide enough context for people to understand the whys of the story, and fails at making the characters seem human enough to care about. If you want to read a graphic novel dealing with Iran's political climate you should read Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and if you want to find out more about the 2009 political unrest in Iran, well, there's always the Wikipedia article.

YALSA top ten GNs 2012: Thor: The Mighty Avenger

Thor: The Mighty Avenger (Volumes 1-2) 
Written by Roger Langridge. Illustrated by Chris Samnee
Published by Marvel (Volume 1, 2010; Volume 2, 2011)

So first, a confession. I didn't actually reading the two volumes that were placed on the YALSA list from this year. Instead I read Thor: The Mighty Avenger: The Complete Collection published in 2013. It has all 8 issues of Thor: The Mighty Avenger (plus the Free Comic Book Day story), but doesn't include the old Journey into Mystery issues (#83-86) that are included in the original collections. I'm pretty sure their inclusion didn't affect these books making it onto this list, but feel free to say otherwise.

Despite all the positive things I'd heard about this book, I went in with low expectations (though why I felt that way I couldn't really tell you). Maybe I'd just read too many YALSA top ten books that I didn't really care for (it looks like I've disliked, the last five I reviewed for this site). However, I was pleasantly surprised. This book is really cute and fun! It is, to my surprise, much more romantic than I would have thought a Thor comic would be. Jane Foster (that's her on the cover up above) works in a museum, and ends up helping Thor when she thinks he's a hobo (with a heart of gold). Soon he's sleeping on her couch and there's an amount of crushes and flirting and stuff that is sweet without it making me completely uninterested.

That's not to say it's not a superhero comic. While it's not set in any version of the Marvel Universe that exists anywhere else (that I know of) characters like Iron Man, Namor, and Captain Britain show up, and Thor fights robots and super villains and giant sea monsters. So it's pretty typical in that regard, but I also found it more enjoyable than a lot of the superhero comics I read.

Chris Samnee is an artist a lot of people really like (he won an Eisner award for his work on this series), but the limited stuff by him that I've read hasn't really clicked for me. In this book I can definitely see why people enjoy his work, as a lot of the art is great! But then the next panel will just be unappealing to me for some reason I can't put my finger on (the inking style? The width of the lines?). I wonder if it might be something to do with the way the line work interacts with the colours. The colours (by Matthew Wilson) are generally really good, though as with pretty much all modern books the colours are far more than just flat colours, but are used to give depth, hightlight physical features, and more. I wish I could see some of the original black and white line work and compare the two to see where my problem comes from. Regardless of my feelings, you do at least get to see Thor wearing an apron after cooking a meal.

The most frustrating thing about this series is the fact that it doesn't actually end. Apparently it was intended to be a 12 issues series, but it was cancelled after issue eight, leaving readers to wonder who the mysterious Mr. K was, why Thor got banished to Earth, and other questions. The only thing we do know (based on the sketches in the back) is that Hulk was going to show up. The series was successful enough in collected form that it got reprinted, so it's too bad Marvel didn't put out a four issue miniseries to wrap things up.

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 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 2012: Scarlet

Scarlet
Written by Brian Michael Bendis. Illustrated by Alex Maleev.
Published by Icon/Marvel (2011)

Brian Michael Bendis is probably one of the biggest creators in the "mainstream" (ie. superhero) comic book industry. He's been one of the most successful writers at Marvel for over a decade, writing major books like Avengers and X-Men and leading overarching storylines and events. His "David Mamet-like" dialogue has influenced pretty much all of superhero comics, and for the most part I really don't care for his work.

Actually, that's not really fair. Bendis is nothing if not prolific. He's written hundreds of comics, and when he first started in the industry he was also drawing his own stuff. I enjoyed his early crime books like Jinx and Torso, I didn't get really into Powers, his cops in a superhero world comic, but I'd probably read more of it if you gave it to me, I remember really enjoying Fortune and Glory, his comic about his experiences in Hollywood, and I've read a bunch of his (massive) run on Ultimate Spider-Man (and will read more at some point).

But at the same time, I've hated (or at least not cared for) a lot of his comics. I'm not the biggest Avengers fan, but I pretty much avoided that entire corner of the Marvel Universe for the entire time that Bendis was writing those titles. (When I did read some I found them boring and blah.) He recently became the main writer of the various X-Men related titles, and I was kind of disappointed, as I'd actually been getting back into those books and was reading and enjoying both Kieron Gillen and Jason Aaron's books.

So all of this is to say that I generally don't go out of my way to read Bendis' comics, and if this book hadn't appeared on this list I'd never have bothered seeking it out.

Scarlet is the story is of an early 20s girl who lives in Portland and has her boyfriend killed by a corrupt cop. He gets away with it, and so she vows that she'll get revenge. Does she try to expose corrupt cops? Perhaps try to get them fired or whatever? No, she just kills them. And everyone loves her!

There are definitely some parallels between what the characters in this comic say and what happened with the Occupy protests (ie. having to take stuff into their own hands, because the existing system is broken/corrupt and set up to perpetuate itself), and it's kind of surprising that this series predated all of those events. But I think that's what really frustrated me about this book: it's about dealing with problems that exist in the real world, and instead of the character realistically trying to make a difference they just kill people. Killing people isn't the answer!

I mean, I agree with much of what the characters in this book (and the people involved with the Occupy movement) are saying: a lot of police officers are corrupt assholes (I still feel a little sick whenever I hear about cases like this), the government is horrible, corporations have far too much power, etc. But you know what? I really don't think that in our society killing people is the answer. Especially in the ridiculous vigilante style that is demonstrated in this comic. Scarlet kills these cops, and says that they're corrupt, but never seems to present any evidence about this. Yet people love her anyway. I mean, I know it's set in Portland, but even then...

So yeah, I feel as though this comic takes a real, important event, and reduces it to something that should be ignored. That by making it into a ridiculous revenge fantasy it takes away from the legitimacy of real events that have happened. Yeah, I guess the Occupy movements have proved that nothing will change yet, but I still don't want to start putting people up against the wall when the revolution comes.

As for the art, Maleev's style is not going to be to everyone's liking. His artwork is distinct and recognizable: it's heavily photo referenced, but also grimy and dark. Personally, I like the art quite a bit, though I have two major complaints. The first is that reading the script at the back of the book revealed a few instances of things that I did not think were conveyed particularly clearly through the artwork. Looking at the art after reading the script I could say "oh sure, that's what's happening I guess", but I feel that a fair number of people might miss what was happening their first time through.

The other thing is something I've found in several Bendis comics (though it's possible they're comics Bendis did _with_ Maleev, so it could be either of their faults): pages that don't read like you would expect them to. This isn't even a case of weird panel layout, instead you get (for example) two side by side pages each with six equally sized panels on them. The panels are entirely contained within their own pages, so it's not immediately obvious that you have to read the entire top row of panels and then the bottom row. That's now how comic pages are supposed to work!

Also, the script mentions that a bunch of people in the comic should look like "punks", since nobody actually looks like that either this was an early version of the script that they moved away from, Bendis is referring to all young people as punks (ie. Bendis is old), or Maleev has never seen an actual punk in his life. Also also, the cover sexualizes Scarlet in a kind of creepy way that isn't actually in the comics themselves. I'm not sure if that's good or bad or somewhere in between.

Even ignoring all of that (the good and the bad), it becomes incredibly hard to recommend the first volume of a series when there is no conclusion, and the end doesn't seem to be coming any time soon. In the two and a half years since this book was published a grand total of two more issues have come out.  It's not as though Bendis doesn't write many comics, he regularly has five or six out in a single month, and he's still a big star with Marvel so it's not like he couldn't do this series if he wanted to. Maybe that's the thing though, perhaps he knows that Marvel won't always be willing to give him this much work so he should just go with it for as long as possible. I mean, he's got his whole life ahead of him to write stuff like this, so why not spend a few years/decades earning six figures writing X-Men comics? (Of course I'm sure it didn't help that Bendis and Maleev did 12 issues of Moon Knight from 2011-2012.)

YALSA 2012 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens

Every year since 2007 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.

I was recently 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 2012. Here's the full list of nominations from 2012, and the top ten list. They occasionally have weird formatting or credits.

Zahra’s Paradise by Amir and Khalil.

Scarlet by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev.

Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgal.

The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media by Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld.

Thor: The Mighty Avenger (Volumes 1-2) by Roger Langridge, Chris Samnee, and others.

Infinite Kung Fu by Kagan McLeod.

A Bride’s Story (Volume 1) by Kaoru Mori.

Axe Cop (Volume 1) by Malachai Nicolle and Ethan Nicolle.

Daybreak by Brian Ralph.

Wandering Son (Volume 1) by Takako Shimura.