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

Wolverine: Origin of an X-Man #1: Free Comic Book Day 2009

Back to the unread comics stack! This is from Free Comic Book Day 2009.

Title: Wolverine: Origin of an X-Man: Free Comic Book Day 2009
Issue: 1
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: May 2009
Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Gurihiru
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
Editor: Nathan Cosby

This is an all-ages Wolverine book, featuring a story that is a direct prequel to Wolverine's first Marvel Comics appearance (in The Incredible Hulk #181-182).

The story has Logan on his first mission for the Canadian government, being dropped into a remote fishing village that has come under the sway of some powerful unknown entity. The situation is a complete mystery, and the military has lost contact with a commando team previously sent in to investigate.

The story does a nice job of slowly unraveling the mystery as Logan encounters an escalating series of threats in the village. The actual explanation turns out to be pretty clever, and writer Fred Van Lente does a nice job of crafting a good one-and-done story that wraps up its own loose ends in a satisfying way.

The character of Logan is definitely toned down for the all-ages audience, but Logan's snarky personality and his headstrong confidence are definitely on display.

This was a decent introduction to the character of Wolverine, and a good complete story for those already familiar with him.

Rating: 7.5/10

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise Part One

Title: Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise
Issue: Part One
Date: January, 2012
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer: Gene Luen Yang
Artist: Gurihiru
Letterer: Michael Heisler

This is a direct sequel to the Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series, and it takes place after the conclusion of that series. Writer Gene Luen Yang (I gave him an 8.5 for his graphic novel American Born Chinese) has a great feel for the flavor and characters of the show while loading this story with political themes and elements of classic tragedy.

The story focuses on the deadly promise that Ang has made to Zuko, and Zuko's own struggles with the burden of leadership of the Fire Nation. Starting out with the best of intentions to return captured territory to the Earth Nation, Zuko finds himself mired in political problems far more complex than he had anticipated, all while struggling with the creeping paranoia that comes with absolute power.

Meanwhile Ang and Kitara take on the role of peacemakers, but the conflicts that are brewing threaten to turn friend against friend.

The story is accessible, fast-paced, and fun. And the political dilemmas that it presents echo the situations in Israel/Palestine and in post-colonial nations around the world. And Zuko's experiences as ruler are classic Shakespearean tragedy.

This book is a worthy sequel and stands alone quite well. I could take or leave the comic relief portions, but they are in keeping with the flavor of the series and they never get in the way of the more serious elements of the story.

Rating: 8.5/10

Avatar: The Last Airbender / Star Wars: The Clone Wars

This is one of 2011's crop of Free Comic Book Day giveaways.

Title: Avatar: The Last Airbender / Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Date: May, 2011
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer: Ryder Windham, J. Torres
Artist: Ben Dewey, Gurihiru
Inker: Dan Parsons
Letterer: Michael Heisler, Comicraft
Colorist: Mae Hao
Editor: Samantha Robertson, Dave Roman
Cover: Brian Konietzko, Hye Jung Kim, Bryan Evans, Lucasfilm

Wait for it... Flip book!

The bad news first. The Star Wars: The Clone Wars story serves to introduce Savage Opress, a new villain (You can tell he's a villain by his name! Isn't that clever? Also by the fact that he looks like a yellow version of Darth Maul). Opress shows up at the lair of Noggox the Hutt. He has been captured without a fight by Noggox's (clearly incompentent) guards. It's all just a plot so he can get inside and kill everyone in sight. This actually pretty violent considering that the introduction proudly proclaims that comic to be suitable for all ages. I guess decapitations are okay if the victim is a hutt. Anyway, that's about all we get. The heroes make a brief appearance at the end to survey the carnage. I'm not entirely sure what the point of that was, but as far as I was concerned, Opress definitely failed to impress.

Flipping the book over, we have Avatar: The Last Airbender. This was my first exposure to this series, and wow. This was good storytelling. It did take a little bit to hook me in, but considering that the beginning of the story was pretty light in tone, it really built to a pretty intense ending. I thought that Avatar worked better when it was being serious than when it was trying to be a comedy, but the comedic stuff was still at least as good as most of the comic relief you see in comic books these days. This was an effective introductory story that had a complete plot. There was also a four-page backup story that was all comedy, but gave a chance to introduce another character. The art is a good mix of cartoony and realistic and the characters are very expressive. The action in this one really did seem all-ages suitable. If I was rating this story alone it would probably get an 8.5. Instead, the opposite side of the flip book drags that whole thing down a bit.

Rating: 7/10