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 2013: The Silence of Our Friends

The Silence of Our Friends
Written by Mark Long and Jim Demonakos. Illustrated by Nate Powell.
Published by First Second (2012)

I actually kind of hate comics like this. Not because they're bad, but just because they remind me of how horrible people are. And yeah, sure, sometimes it's good to be reminded, but I guess I already think people are horrible so much of the time.

The Silence of Our Friends is set in 1960s Texas which, if you were unaware, is super racist. The story focuses on two families: one white and one black and...I don't know if it's even worth explaining. People are racist, the white family tries to become friends with the black family, people are racist, there's a civil rights protest where the police shoot at people a bunch, people are racist, there's a trial where black people are accused of shooting at the cops, people are racist, etc. People were horrible, though not everyone was horrible. Also, people were horrible in different ways. Maybe some hope. The end.

I dunno. Nate Powell's art was pretty nice I guess, but while I can appreciate his art and understand that other people really like it, I've never found it that appealing. I understand why this is on an American list for best graphic novels for teens, because it is important that people (especially young people) learn about what happened in the past (or they are doomed to repeat it, etc.), but I guess I'd rather just read comics about giant robots beating each other up. I guess that is the way in which I am horrible.

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 2015: In Real Life

In Real Life

Writing and illustration by Jen Wang. Original story written by Cory Doctorow.

Published by First Second (2014).

This is only Jen Wang's second graphic novel, but based upon the quality of her illustrations, I really hope it's not her last. Her characters are deeply expressive, and Wang is capable of showing how they're feeling through their facial expressions and their body language. Even without dialogue you're able to know exactly how the various characters feel just by looking at how they're acting in the art. She's also able to show action in clear and exciting ways, both through what the characters are actually doing, the panel-to-panel storytelling, and the general layout of the page. Wang breaks panel borders (at times doing away with them entirely) and uses white space incredibly effectively to help create an atmosphere that captures the feelings of the characters and the world(s) in which they live.

But the thing that truly stands out is the colouring. In Real Life alternates between the real world, and the world of an online MMORPG called Coarsegold. Wang has chosen to colour each of these sections with distinctive colour palettes. The real world sections feature a more sedate style of colouring, with lots of browns and oranges. The online sections feature considerably more colours: pinks, greens, blues, purples, reds. The comparison between the drab "real world" and the more exciting and beautiful game world really help to show that to Anda, the main character, the game is considerably more exciting than real life. It's kind of interesting that seemingly the only time that blue, one of the "game colours", is used in the real world, it's used on the shoes of the person that introduces Anda to Coarsegold in the first place.

However, while I really enjoyed the art, the story pretty much left me cold. It's view of gold farming, labour abuses, online bullying, and other aspects of MMORPG culture are fine, it's just the way in which they're communicated to the audience that I had a problem with. I guess I should say I'm not really a fan of Cory Doctorow's fiction. I like that he's a major proponent of the Creative Commons and digital rights, and that he regularly talks about other important aspects of the digital culture and economy. He's also pretty great at telling people about other things (politics, culture, etc.) through BoingBoing, which I used to read pretty regularly (and still look at occasionally). But I think the only thing he's written that I've read all the way through (apart from blog posts) is Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (his first book), which was fine I guess (though I'm still puzzled as to why anyone would care about Disney World that much). I've tried reading at least one of his other books, but there's something about his his style of writing that I find unappealing. That continues with In Real Life, which he didn't even write! (Instead Jen Wang adapted a short story that Doctorow wrote over a decade ago.)

I can see why you would choose this book for a YALSA list: it has teenage characters doing things that they care about (playing video games!), it has females doing computer stuff, it exposes people to other people from other cultures, it teaches them about aspects of games, online society, and economics that they don't otherwise know, and the characters have realistic body types. But at the same time, it seems incredibly simplistic, kind of promotes slacktivism at its worse, and the end is a little too "happily ever after" for the types of stuff (Chinese people working 16 hours a day so rich people can buy things in video games) the story talks about. As a 13 year old I probably would have found this book to be really cool, and taught me a lot about things I didn't realize were happening online. As a 31 year old...well, it has really nice art.

If you want to take a look at the comic, here's a preview and here's an original story set after the events of the book (I think). It's probably kind of gibberish if you're not familiar with MMORPGs, and (at least part of) the moral seems to be "if your bicycle is stolen it's okay to buy a stolen bicycle", but the art's nice at least.

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.