Feast of Fields

Bought at my school's Spring book fair.

Title: Feast of Fields
Date: 2018
Publisher: Conundrum Press
Writer: Sean Karemaker
Artist: Sean Karemaker

Autobiographical comic telling the story of the author's mother and her time living in an orphanage in Denmark. This story does follows the natural jumping-around pattern of memories, with bits of different parts of the author's life and the stories that his mother told him about her own. The result is a flow that feels comfortable in spite of all the jumping around.

All of this is reinforced by the surreal quality of the artwork, in which dream elements are mixed with the realities of life.

This is a simple story of family connections and memories, and a very real one, but the art makes the mundane turn magical.

Rating: 8.5/10

Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey

Bought at Boocup, Kerry Parkside Mall, Pudong, Shanghai, China

Title: Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey
Date: 2019
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Scott Beatty, Scott Young, Greg Rucka, Anderson Gabrych
Artist: Yvel Guichet, Aaron Sowd, Phil Winslade, Rick Burchett, Pablo Raimondi, Walden Wong, Brian Stelfreeze, Al Barrionuevo, Bit
Colorist: Tom McCraw, Hi-Fi, Brad Anderson
Editor:Alewx Galer

This is a collection of reprints, featuring characters associated with the Birds of Prey (and in particular, characters featured in the movie version of Birds of Prey) in solo action.

Harley (from Detective Comics #831, published in 2007) takes on the new version of the Ventriloquist and Scarface, and more importantly takes on the Arkham Asylum parole board (with Bruce Wayne as one of the members deciding her fate).

Black Canary, guided by Oracle, teams up with Lois Lane to break up an illegal sweatshop and it's psionic-powered foreman (From Showcase '96 #3, published in 1996).

Huntress teams up with Nightwing to investigate the mafia murder of an undercover cop (from Nightwing/Huntress #2, published in 1998).

Renee Montoya deals with harassment from a previous case where the perpetrator walked (from Gotham Central #6, published in 2003).

Cassandra Cain faces off against her father, assassin David Cain, during the epic No Man's Land event (from  Batman #567, published in 1999).

Last up, Catwoman takes on Black Mask and Sylvia Sinclair, who have taken Selina's friend Holly and Selina's sister Maggie hostage (From Catwoman #16, published in 2003.

The opening Harley Quinn story and the Lance/Lane team-up were both good, especially the interaction between Lois and Dinah, which was loads of fun in spite of a pretty generic plot.

From there, the book seemed to run out of one-shot stories and just gave us pieces of longer storylines that felt unsatisfying, and in some cases, didn't even focus enough on the featured character. There was a lot more Nightwing than Huntress in the segment from their team-up, and the Gotham Central storyline had a lot of subplots going on, and not much in the way of develop or resolution for Renee Montoya.

In spite me not being a big fan of Cassandta Cain, her origin story from No Man's Land had visually powerful moments. But again, it's a piece of a massive long-term storyline.

The Catwoman story with Black Mask felt more complete than it really had the right to thanks to a lot of recapping in the narration.

Overall, the result of this collection of fragments is a collection that has some great individual moments and some beautiful artwork, but feels thrown together, and is not as effective as it could be at introducing readers to the lineup of characters for the Birds of Prey film.

Rating: 5/10

The Dialogues

Borrowed from a friend here in Shanghai.

Title: The Dialogues
Date: 2017
Publisher: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press
Writer: Clifford V. Johnson
Artist: Clifford V. Johnson

This is an overview of important current ideas in physics, with emphasis on cosmology, as well as a lot of material on the nature and practice of science, and some of the philosophy behind science.

All of it is presented in a series of conversations between a variety of characters, some professional scientists and some not. The conversations have the occasional awkward moment for the sake of moving the discussion along, but in general I was impressed with how naturally the conversations went, especially considering the subject matter. These were enjoyable intellectual discussions, always respectful, and full of insights and ideas. Some of the information presented gets technical, but it always quickly circles back to plain language.

There is a lot of emphasis on the idea of the multiverse, but the conversations touch on many aspects of relativity, theories-of-everything, spacetime, the relationship between science and mathematics, and even a chapter on the traditional scientific method.

The book has a diverse cast of characters, with many of them appearing in more than one dialogue. I was left wanting to learn more about several of them, past the brief glimpses we get of their lives.

Also included is a foreword by physicist Frank Wilczek, as well as extensive notes after each dialogue with recommended reading on the topics discussed.

This is a great look at science and a fascinating use of the graphic novel format.

Rating: 7.5/10