Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul

On our trip this past summer, we ended up buying two Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. This one was purchased at the Eslite main store (open 24 hours!) in Taipei, Taiwan.

Title: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul
Publisher: Puffin Books (a division of Penguin; series website at wimpykid.com)
Date: 2016
Writer: Jeff Kinney
Artist: Jeff Kinney

This is the British edition, featuring terms like "petrol" in the otherwise American setting.

Family road trip! Greg Heffley's mom, inspired by a family activities magazine, packs up the whole family in the minivan, with the (barely held together by duct tape) boat in tow, and they are off to seek out adventures, complete with packed "Mom Meals" so they can

There are some cute touches: funny parodies of Captain Underpants and Choose-Your-Own adventure books, and an appearance by Flat Stanley, and author/artist puts together some genuinely funny sequences of cascading chains of small events that lead to complete disasters.

That being said, an awful lot of the humor is just based on members of the family being jerks to each other, and occasionally to strangers. The story also really does a thorough job of sucking the joy out of travel, which was disappointing to someone like me, who always enjoys a good road trip.
avoid having any, um fun really, but Mom is actually trying to avoid fast food.

I get it. It's easier to make up misfortune to laugh at, but the continuous bad attitudes and bad decisions, in spite of the funny moments made this a chore to get through.

The Kiddo (age 11, and grade 5) liked this a lot better than I did, but fortunately, the Kiddo also enjoys family travel a lot more than Greg Heffley does.

Rating: 4/10

Archie #600

From the Random Stack of Unread Comics.

Title: Archie
Issue: 600
Date: October, 2009
Publisher: Archie Comics
Writer: Michael Uslan
Penciler: Stan Goldberg
Inker: Bob Smith
Letterer: Jack Morelli
Colorist: Glenn Whitmore
Editor: Victor Gorelick

This milestone-number issue is also the first installment of the "Archie Marries Veronica" storyline. This is basically a "What If?". Archie, about to graduate from high school, with no idea of where his future is heading, goes for a walk in Riverdale, and finds himself on Memory Lane. But this time, instead of walking backwards in time, he tries out the other direction. The lane becomes a path in the woods, that splits, in a little bit of a Robert Frost reference, setting up this series along with the parallel "Archie Marries Betty story.

From there we leap into the future, where Archie and his friends are now college grads, finally going their separate ways (including one to Bayonne NJ! Yay Bayonne!) after four years at State U.

With Veronica about to depart on a round-the-world cruise, Archie makes the biggest decision of his life.

The scenes with Archie and Jughead had some good dialogue, and I enjoyed the general vibe of good friends having to part ways, and looking forward to different futures.

The stuff with Veronica and her caricature-level rich father were the usual silliness, and some of the sentiment around Betty "losing" in her rivalry felt forced. The story implied that Archie and Veronica had been dating steadily through college, and I was left wondering why Betty hadn't moved on.

Like a lot of the relatively recent Archie books I've read, this was pretty heavily playing up the nostalgia, with mixed, but generally positive results for me.

Rating: 7/10

Shanghai Red #1

I believe this is the last of a stack of comics bought at Double Midnight in Manchester NH over Christmas break last December.

Title: Shanghai Red
Issue: 1
Date: June 2018
Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Christopher Sebela
Artist: Joshua Hixson
Colorist: Joshua Hixson
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Editor: Andrea Shockling

A ship crewed by "Shanghaied" conscripts suffers a bloody mutiny, carried out by Red, a woman who had been living disguised among the rats in the bilges as she plotted her revenge. Now, she has set sail for the Pacific Northwest, where the trail of retribution will continue.

Red is a great character, and the plot twists and bits of background are intriguing.

I will admit that I bought this solely because of "Shanghai" in the title (and the ship arrives just off the coast of Shanghai and doesn't actually ever arrive there), but it exceeded expectations as a story.

This was a good start and I'd be interested in reading more.

Rating: 8/10

Ghosts

The last graphic novel from the four-book boxed set we bought at the Eslite main store in Taipei, Taiwan.

Title: Ghosts
Publisher: Scholastic / Graphix
Date: 2016
Writer: Raina Telgemeier
Artist: Raina Telgemeier
Colorist: Braden Lamb
Letterer: Jenny Staley
Editor: Cassandra Pelham

Of the four Raina Telgemeier graphic novels in the boxed set we got, this was the only one that involved supernatural elements. Catrina's family has moved from southern California to the foggy northern coastal town of Bahia de la Luna, where they hope the air quality will be better for Catrina's sister Maya, who has cystic fibrosis.

They soon meet a boy who runs the local ghost tour, followed by an encounter with real ghosts. Fearing for her sister's safety, Catrina tries to shut the supernatural nature of the town out of her life any way she can, but as Dia de los Muertos approaches, Catrina must find understanding with both the visiting spirits and her sister.

There are some moments of atmospheric creepiness to this story, but the ghosts are portrayed primarily as joyful beings, and their joy permeates the story, bringing light to the worries that Catrina has about her sister's future and her own place in their new home.

This had the strongest  plot of the four Telgemeier books, and her interpretation of the ghosts themselves was clever and fun. There were great touches of humor, beautiful landscapes, and some powerful emotional scenes.

Rating: 9/10

Sisters

The third book in a four-book boxed set we bought at the Eslite main store in Taipei, Taiwan.

Title: Sisters
Publisher: Scholastic / Graphix
Date: 2014
Writer: Raina Telgemeier
Artist: Raina Telgemeier
Colorist: Braden Lamb
Letterer: John Green
Editor: Cassandra Pelham

Raina Telgemeier returns to autobiographical material with this story of her relationship with her younger sister. She embarks on a road trip with her mom and her younger brother and sister: a week of driving and camping from San Francisco to Colorado, then a week of family reunion with cousins, followed by another week of driving and camping on the way home.

All of this takes place during the timeframe around the end of the companion book, Smile (my review is here), but the two books stand alone nicely, and there is not much overlap aside from the characters themselves.

Interspersed with the road trip adventures and family drama are flashbacks that reveal the sometimes contentious relationship between the Raina and her sister Amara over the years. There is also a fair amount of other family drama, lots of terrible luck with pets, some 80s and 90s nostalgia, and plenty of humor.

The story encapsulates a lot of Raina's frustrations as a teenager, and does a nice job of showing how the road trip brings conflicts to a boil, but also brings a bit of understanding. I thought that Smile had a tighter narrative, but this book provided a lot of good backstory.

Rating: 7/10

Drama

The second book in a boxed set we bought at the Eslite main store in Taipei, Taiwan.

Title: Drama
Publisher: Scholastic / Graphix
Date: 2012
Writer: Raina Telgemeier
Artist: Raina Telgemeier
Colorist: Gurihiru
Letterer: John Green
Editor: Cassandra Pelham

The story follows the planning and staging of a middle school's musical production through the eyes of Callie, who is in charge of set design on the stage crew. Callie finds herself in the midst of a bunch of romantic issues and relationship dramas even as she works to overcome the obstacles that the production is encountering along the way.

She also makes new friends, learns a lot about the friends she has, and shares her love for musical theater with everyone.

And this book shares the author's love for musical theater with the audience beautifully. There is also plenty of detail on how things work backstage at a school theater production. Much as I learned a lot about dentistry reading Smile (see the previous review), I felt like I learned quite a bit about the workings of the stage crew reading this.

The characters were entertaining, and the representation of gay characters in the story was great. The romantic elements felt realistic, and there was plenty of humor.

Rating: 8/10