The Arrival

Here's a graphic novel that I bought quite a while ago when Borders went out of business. I finally got a chance to read it tonight.

Title: The Arrival
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books / Scholastic
Date: 2006
Writer: Shaun Tan
Artist: Shaun Tan

In Shaun Tan's graphic novel about immigration, the reader experiences the strangeness of the immigrant's experience by way of a bizarre and alien world, and a wordless story.

The effect is perfect. While there are clear parallels with the historical experiences of the immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in New Jersey in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Tan makes the destination into a strange and wondrous city that is filled with steampunk-influenced designs and surreal details that fill every page.

The story actually contains the stories of several immigrants who meet up with the main character as he tried to find his way in the alien city. He has left his wife and daughter behind while he goes to look for work, and he meets other migrants who are fleeing war and disaster and poverty in their homes.

Telling the story with no narration or dialogue, Tan takes the time to let the tale breathe. He fills a page with small panels of cloud formations to mark the passage of time on an ocean voyage. He allows his main character to explore his new quarters, and to struggle to be understood in a land where his language is not spoken.

The artwork is breathtaking, and I loved all of the odd details. There is a lot going on here, but the overall story is straightforward and effective.

This was one of the best graphic novels I've read in quite a while.

Rating: 9.5/10

With The Light Volume 2

This comes by way of the going-out-of-business sales at Borders. I've been reading it over the course of the last two weeks or so.

Title: With The Light: Raising An Autistic Child
Issue: Volume 2
Date: 2008
Publisher: Yen Press
Writer: Keiko Tobe
Artist: Keiko Tobe

There's a lot that I love about manga, but I think that first and foremost I am amazed by the breadth of story types. American mainstream comics seem narrowly limited by comparison, and while American independent comics do better, they often don't get the kind of distribution that manga receives.

One excellent example is Keiko Tobe's family drama, With The Light, centered on Hikaru Azuma, a young boy with autism. Writer Tobe has clearly done her homework, presenting a very balanced portrayal of Hikaru that mostly avoids the stereotypes of autism that are often seen in the media. She has also meticulously researched educational techniques and presents a wealth of ideas as Hikaru engages with his family and his teachers.

This is the second volume, and it covers Hikaru's later elementary school years. The main plotline is the impending transfer of beloved teacher Aoki-sensei, who has worked very hard to find innovative ways of teaching Hikaru. Along the way, Hikaru helps plant a garden, gets into conflict with the local shopkeepers, and ends up on a train ride with an emotionally distraught fellow student. There is a fair amount of melodrama, but Tobe's characters are always multifaceted. Even the teacher who takes over for Aoki-sensei, and is originally presented as a villain, ends up being revealed as complex and ultimately sympathetic.

The art is beautiful, especially in the depiction of Hikaru himself.

What I love most about With the Light is that it is not just a book about a condition. It's a book about parenting. A really great book about parenting, and about how Hikaru's parents must fight for their child's place in the world. This is a story that's well worth reading.

Rating: 9/10

XXXHolic Volume 2

In preparation for Anime Boston this week, here's a recent manga purchase. This was picked up at the recent Borders going-out-of-business sale.

Title: XXXHolic
Issue: Volume 2
Date: 2004
Publisher: Del Rey Manga
Writer: Clamp
Artist: Clamp

For those not familiar, Clamp is the collective name of the writing/art team behind Cardcaptor Sakura, Tsubasa, and other manga titles. The title of this series is a bit deceptive, as it has little to do with alcohol and nothing to do with X-rated entertainment.

XXXHolic is the story of a high school student with the ability (or curse) to see spirits. He has become the indentured servant of a sorceress and he hopes that she will eventually free him of his spirit-sight. But in the meantime, he must do the cooking and help with the errands while strange events unfold around him.

This volume got off to a shaky start for me because XXXHolic crosses over with another Clamp series, Tsubasa, which I have not read any of. The first chapter of this volume was heavily involved in the crossover and I didn't feel like I got much out of it.

The book got better as it went on, however, with an extended discussion about fortune telling that was fascinating. In the end, student/servant Kimihiro Watanuki must participate in a "Hundred Ghost Story Night" along with sorceress Yuko Ichihara, and the girl he has a crush on at school, plus his biggest school rival. The night quickly turns into a dangerous encounter with the spirit world.

Clamp's art is beautiful, and the second and third story segments were very strong and more than made up for the beginning, in which a working knowledge of the Tsubasa series is necessary for a full understanding.

Rating: 7/10

Irredeemable Volume 4

Here's another find from the going-out-of-business sale at my local Borders.

Title: Irredeemable
Issue: Volume 4
Date: September 2010
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Diego Barreto, Paul Azaceta, Emma Rios, Howard Chaykin
Colorist: Andrew Dalhouse, Matthew Wilson, Alfred Rockefeller
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Cover: Chriscross

This is a trade paperback collection that includes issues 13-15 of the comic series, plus the Irredeemable Special. The basic premise is that Superman (represented here by a character called the Plutonian, who is for all intents and purposes Superman) has "snapped" and gone very very bad. Bad as in entire cities destroyed, populations wiped out, and brutal murders of his fellow superbeings (who were never really in the Plutonian's league power-wise).

Alan Moore did this same story much better in Miracleman.

There. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I did find Irredeemable to be fairly entertaining. There are some likable characters, and not all of them are used as cannon fodder (some are, though). There is a pretty complex set of subplots, which serve to add a nice level of suspense to the storyline, even though they also mire the story in the cliches of the genre that it is attempting to rise above.

Thanks to the presence of the Irredeemable Special in this volume, I got a nice recap of the story, as well as some background on characters that appear in the regular issues, which helped make it easier to jump right in with Volume 4.

The artwork is generally quite good. There are a few moments of unnecessary gore (well, I'm sure they were seen as necessary to remind the reader that this is a superhero story for grownups), and there were some fight scenes where it was a bit hard to tell what was going on, but the artistic handling of a very tricky climactic sequence involving a bullet and a teleportation effect was brilliant work.

I wasn't too impressed when I first heard the premise of this, so I would have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the degree to which I found it entertaining.

Rating: 6.5/10

XKCD Volume 0

While I'm making my way through recent convention purchases, the other big ongoing geeky event is the going-out-of-business sales at two local Borders locations. We're in the last week, and this was a pretty sweet find.

Title: XKCD
Issue: Volume 0
Date: 2009
Publisher: Breadpig (based on the webcomic at xkcd.com)
Writer: Randal Munroe
Artist: Randal Munroe

This trade paperback edition collects early installments of the xkcd webcomic by Randal Munroe, a stickfigure buffet of math, programming, love, angst, and internet geekery. Some of my favorite xkcd installments are featured here including the graph of human intelligence vs. proximity to a cat, the apartment filled with playpen balls, fields of study arranged by purity, the guide to understanding flowcharts (in flowchart form), and helium-balloon sharks.

This is brilliant stuff that isn't afraid to involve high-powered math and physics or to tackle issues that might hit some geeks a bit close to home.

The "mouse-over" text from the webcomic is included in fine print and there are new notes, observations, and sketches to accompany many of the cartoons.

It's a great collection for an xkcd fan, and if you're not there's a good chance it will make you one.

Rating: 8.5/10

Detective Comics Annual #11

Another break from the SPACE reviews, this time for a comic I picked up at a going-out-of-business Borders recently.

Title: Detective Comics Annual
Issue: #11
Date: 2009
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Fabian Nicieza, Derek Fridolfs, Dustin Nguyen, Mandy McMurray
Art: Tom Mandrake, Dustin Nguyen, Kelley Jones
Colorist: Nathan Eyring, Michelle Madsen
Letterer: John J. Hill
Editor: Mike Marts, Janelle Siegel, Harvey Richards, Michael Siglain

This is the second part of a fairly convoluted two-part story involving a cult of Seven-Deadly-Sins-based metahuman baddies who are kidnapping a bunch of boys for what appears to be a fairly generic ritual sacrifice gimmick.

We start out with The Question (Montoya, not Sage) trying to fight her way through a horde of zombies (actually mind-controlled bystanders, but zombies for all intents and purposes). The numbers nearly win out, but the Batman (Grayson, not Wayne) arrives to make the save.

Rather blunt recapping and infodump follows. We learn that Robin (Damian, not Tim or Jason or Dick; are you feeling like you need a scorecard with these characters?) has gone undercover as one of the kidnap victims.

He's in the lair of the bad guys, drugged up, but still managing to do a pretty classic "Ransom of Red Chief" routine.

Since there are plenty of bad guys to go round, the party gets split up. Azrael (Michael Lane, not Jean-Paul Valley; okay, now this is getting ridiculous) goes to help out Robin. These two actually have the makings of a great team of villains. Heroes, not so much.

Question and Batman fail to stop another kidnapping. Well, actually, they stop it just a bit after the actual kidnapping occurs. This then leads to the one really great scene in this story, a reunion between Detective Bullock and Renee Montoya with both characters handled really well.

The bad guys are trounced pretty thoroughly when all is said and done, which is fine because in spite of having some powers they're basically nobodies and they're up against some fairly formidable heroes. Well, okay, they're up against Dick Grayson. And some at-least-competent heroes. That is still pretty formidable.

Speaking of the end, we're not done. There are backup stories. Lil Gotham: Question & Answer is a cute rhyming bit with the Riddler. Fun riddle, but the final punch line didn't amount to much.

This is followed by an Oracle team-up with Looker. A vampire called the Stygian is doing the creepy stalker routine on Barbara Gordon, and Looker gets called in because (I guess) if you want to catch a vampire, you call in Buffy! But when she's not available, another vampire is an acceptable option.

Writer Mandy McMurray tries to throw in some bits to make Looker and Oracle seem competent, but neither of them is able to accomplish much of anything against Stygian, who is a pretty generic villain. This seems to be trying to set the Stygian up as a recurring villain for Gordon, I wasn't left with much interest in seeing further chapters of this conflict.

While there were some good moments (Bullock/Montoya, some of Damian's dialogue, the riddle), this annual mostly served to remind me of just how silly DC continuity is these days, even in the Bat-books, which can usually be counted on for at lease some level of quality.

Rating: 5.5/10