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juushikaA trio of graphic novels! All actually pretty great; isn't that refreshing. I'm back and forth on my unusually intimate relationship ruling for The Smell of Starving Boys which means, hey, might as well add it.
Title: All Princesses Die Before Dawn (Toutes les princesses meurent après minuit)
Author: Quentin Zuttion
Published: Europe Comics, 2022
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 541,190
Text Number: 2002
Read Because: title and cover obvs., hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A French family's domestic life pivots on the day of Princess Diana's death. The rough-edged colors and the flimsy brightness of summer, childhood imagination set against world events, and the small and crucial scale of life changes and social awakening: this has a measured scale and atmosphere, and keeps within its constraints to great effect. A very readable, tender work.
Title: Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting
Author: Kindra Neely
Published: Little, Brown Ink, 2022
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 305
Total Page Count: 541,495
Text Number: 2003
Read Because: spotted this at my local comics shop and then borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A graphic memoir of a survivor of the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting and her post-traumatic stress in the years following. As a memoir, this roots itself in the sincere, limited, and often petty aspects of the author's experience. I appreciate that honesty; it also fails to center or even characterize other victims, including the dead, or to offer a conclusion beyond that private scale. But what could she say?
Near the end of the book, the author mentions the 2018 Thousand Oaks shooting in passing: "But shootings just kept happening. Thousand Oaks was every survivor's worst nightmare, because a survivor from the Las Vegas shooting was killed in another." Survivors of gun violence are also victims, and retraumatizing events continue to be ubiquitous; so ubiquitous that this coincidence can occur but also so that they become relevant only in passing, divorced from detail, statistics and sound bites even here. The author can't solve that crisis, least of all in a debut graphic novel. I wish this could do more, regret its raw edges (panels feel pretty samey), but find it easy to extend grace to memoirs and feel that the blend of a readable format, small scale, and devastating content works to make the topic accessible.
Title: The Smell of Starving Boys (L'Odeur des garçons affamés)
Author: Loo Hui Phang
Illustrator: Frederik Peeters
Translator: Edward Gauvin
Published: SelfMadeHero, 2017 (2016)
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 110
Total Page Count: 544,455
Text Number: 2023
Read Because: title grabbed me when browsing the graphic novels, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A disgraced photographer and unusual farm boy meet on an American West survey expedition. This is racially and politically aware with mixed success, making Statements while still landing face-first in magical Native American tropes; so, caveats on the statement: I freaking loved it. This is my catnip, atmosphere-rich, surreal, evocative, and character-/relationship-focused in a way that echoes fanfic, the speculative taking second seat to an amorphously queer, horny little story about social control and defiant desire. The font choice is super distracting; the art, phenomenal. This is going right onto my reread list.
Title: All Princesses Die Before Dawn (Toutes les princesses meurent après minuit)
Author: Quentin Zuttion
Published: Europe Comics, 2022
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 541,190
Text Number: 2002
Read Because: title and cover obvs., hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A French family's domestic life pivots on the day of Princess Diana's death. The rough-edged colors and the flimsy brightness of summer, childhood imagination set against world events, and the small and crucial scale of life changes and social awakening: this has a measured scale and atmosphere, and keeps within its constraints to great effect. A very readable, tender work.
Title: Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting
Author: Kindra Neely
Published: Little, Brown Ink, 2022
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 305
Total Page Count: 541,495
Text Number: 2003
Read Because: spotted this at my local comics shop and then borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A graphic memoir of a survivor of the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting and her post-traumatic stress in the years following. As a memoir, this roots itself in the sincere, limited, and often petty aspects of the author's experience. I appreciate that honesty; it also fails to center or even characterize other victims, including the dead, or to offer a conclusion beyond that private scale. But what could she say?
Near the end of the book, the author mentions the 2018 Thousand Oaks shooting in passing: "But shootings just kept happening. Thousand Oaks was every survivor's worst nightmare, because a survivor from the Las Vegas shooting was killed in another." Survivors of gun violence are also victims, and retraumatizing events continue to be ubiquitous; so ubiquitous that this coincidence can occur but also so that they become relevant only in passing, divorced from detail, statistics and sound bites even here. The author can't solve that crisis, least of all in a debut graphic novel. I wish this could do more, regret its raw edges (panels feel pretty samey), but find it easy to extend grace to memoirs and feel that the blend of a readable format, small scale, and devastating content works to make the topic accessible.
Title: The Smell of Starving Boys (L'Odeur des garçons affamés)
Author: Loo Hui Phang
Illustrator: Frederik Peeters
Translator: Edward Gauvin
Published: SelfMadeHero, 2017 (2016)
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 110
Total Page Count: 544,455
Text Number: 2023
Read Because: title grabbed me when browsing the graphic novels, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A disgraced photographer and unusual farm boy meet on an American West survey expedition. This is racially and politically aware with mixed success, making Statements while still landing face-first in magical Native American tropes; so, caveats on the statement: I freaking loved it. This is my catnip, atmosphere-rich, surreal, evocative, and character-/relationship-focused in a way that echoes fanfic, the speculative taking second seat to an amorphously queer, horny little story about social control and defiant desire. The font choice is super distracting; the art, phenomenal. This is going right onto my reread list.
