Graphic Novels

After reading four of the classic graphic novels back in January (see last Recently Read post), I decide to go on a reading spree of several others in this genre.

I mostly followed the suggestions given in the comments to that previous post (thank you), but I also checked out Graphic Novels: Everything You Need To Know from the local library. As the Amazon review from the School Library Journal states "This is a wonderful primer for someone new to the genre or who is starting a graphic-novel collection." The author gives thirty of his favorite titles, with a couple pages from each one, then goes on to give four other similar titles if you liked this one. I just made a list of each of those recommendations (the follow-on ones are indented).

So what did I read? (Minor spoilers ahead). I haven't given any star ratings. Taken individually, I would put them all between 4 and 5 stars. Taken together (like an overdose), the ratings start to go down.

Three individual books:

• Pride of Baghdad
  Based on true events, about a pride of lions that escaped from the Baghdad Zoo, when the bombing started in 2003. Wonderful artwork.

• V For Vendetta
  I can see why a lot of people thought the film was hard to follow. There is a lot of background information that would have been hard to impart.

• Top 10 (Book 1) This is part of a short series. Hill Street Blues with super-heroes. Probably one of my favorites (so far) that I've read in this genre.

And then several books from several series:

• Preacher 1 2 3 5 6 9
  An Amazon one star reviewer called them "Blasphemy in Print". You could take it that way, or better to just consider it a work of fiction that contained some very dark humor. But after a while they started to get rather repetitive. Perhaps the secret is not to read four in a row and space them out over the months. But what I never did understand was if Jesse has The Word, why did he need to keep fighting people "manually"? Why not just tell them to kill each other? And there's only so many ways you can slice'n'dice an Irish vampire before it gets boring. In the end I skipped to the last one just to see how it all turned out.

• Y: The Last Man 1 2 3 5 6 8
  Great premise, but it also got repetitive. And what a dysfunctional extended family! I'm going to have to just find the last one and see how it turns out. Could be a while. I think this series might be still on-going.

• Ex Machina 1 2 3 4
  Excellent rendering of politics against an alternate New York after 9/11 where the major is a super-hero.

• Fables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
  This was overall my favorite series. Old fables and their characters set against a contemporary background. But it's much more than that. I'll be looking to read the rest of them.

• Transmetropolitan 1 2 3 4
  I started off really enjoying these. A different premise. Interesting stories. Then it got to be more and more of the same. After eight pages of Spider beating the crap out of Fred in volume #4, I'd decided I'd had enough. I'm just going to look for the last one to find out what (eventually) happens.

But that's it for now. I'm sated. I'm going back to reading novels without pictures for a while.

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( Feb 11 2008, 01:19:43 PM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]