Brave

From my school's library.

Title: Brave
Date: 2017
Publisher: Yen Press
Writer: Svetlana Chmakova
Artist: Svetlana Chmakova
Colorist: Svetlana Chmakova, Melissa McCommon
Letterer: JuYoun Lee

Constant Daydreamer (and future astronaut hero) Jensen struggles to navigate middle school, figuring out his place as he finds his chance to help the school newspaper and begins to drift apart from his art club friends. 

This is a sequel to Awkward (reviewed here), with a new focus character, and an examination of bullying, particularly the idea that the victim of bullying may not always understand that that is what is happening to them. The addressing of the topic is realistic without anything being taken too extreme. There is some justice in the end, but it is realistically incomplete, and the author does a good job of showing that there are not easy solutions to complex problems.

The characters are diverse and nuanced (even the most of the teachers who get screen time), and it was fun to see the same setting from Awkward from a completely different set of eyes.

Rating: 7/10

Awkward

Also read on the flight back to Shanghai. I bought this over Christmas Break at Target in Bedford NH USA.

Title: Awkward
Date: July, 2015
Publisher: Yen Press
Writer: Svetlana Chmakova
Artist: Svetlana Chmakova
Colorist: Svetlana Chmakova, Ru Xu, Melissa McCommon
Letterer: JuYoun Lee

"There are bad people who hurt others for fun. And there are good people who do it by accident."

When Penelope shoves the "school nerder" on the first day of school, she regrets it immediately. But telling him that she is sorry just seems too... awkward. Besides, Penelope has found friends in the art club, and the boy she pushed, Jaime, is in the arch-rival science club.

But they keep finding each other as the school year goes on, and their friendship begins to slowly grow, even as hostilities between the clubs reach a boiling point.

This was an enjoyable story of friendship that featured a wonderfully diverse cast of characters. While the club rivalry felt very over-the-top in a manga sort of way, most of the characters and plot developments in the story felt honest and real.

This was a school story with heart, and Chmakova's artwork, which I enjoyed in Dramacon, was even better here, with a wider range of characters to work with.

Rating: 8.5/10

Yen Press 2011 Manga Sampler

Manga freebie featuring the writing of mega-bestselling prose author James Patterson. I picked this one up at the New York Comic Con.

Title: Yen Press 2011 Manga Sampler
Date: 2011
Publisher: Yen Press
Writer: James Patterson, Gabrielle Charbonnet, Michael Ledwidge
Artist: NaRae Lee, Svetlana Chmakova, SeungHui Kye

This digest-sized book features three previews, all authored or co-authored by mega-bestselling author James Patterson, one of the few really successful writers who seems to work comfortably in a wide variety of genres.

First up is Maximum Ride, which proved to be my favorite of the three. The story features a family of teenaged winged people who are living in an isolated house away from the forces of civilization who would imprison them or worse for their differences. Nice job of introducing the cast up front, followed by an attack by (mutated, apparently) agents of the government, who lay a pretty brutal beatdown on the heroes. NaRae Lee's artwork is gorgeous, especially once the wings are in play, and the fight scene is well handled. I felt like I came to care about this group of characters very quickly and the cliffhanger ending left me eager to find out what happens next.

The second story was Witch & Wizard, and featured the (awesome) artwork of Svetlana Chmakova, who wrote and drew one of my all-time favorite manga titles, Dramacon. Unfortunately, I was not as impressed with the story here. A brother and sister living in a pretty generic near-future dystopian dictatorship are imprisoned for the crime of witchcraft. They have no idea why they are being accused of such a thing, until their (generic) magical powers manifest right on schedule. This is a very black-and-white world. The dictator is almost a parody of evil dictators, and the political statement about how the rights of the people were basically stripped away because no one was really paying attention is heavyhanded and not terribly interesting. Chmakova does a nice job on the artwork, especially with the villains, but there just isn't enough of a hook in the preview story to make it interesting.

The third story has more of a shonen flavor than the first two. It's Daniel X, the story of a young hunter charged with killing dangerous extraterrestrials who have taken up residence on Earth. Daniel has the power to conjure up objects from subatomic particles. Daniel creates constructs to replace his dead parents while he spends his time hunting down the fugitive aliens. Daniel is an interesting character who shows a good amount of complexity even in this short preview. The quest to defeat the list of aliens is a bit of a video game style plot, but it accomplishes the objective of keeping the plot moving.

This was free, and I would say it was definitely worth taking the time to read. Patterson has done his homework. The pacing and timing of the stories matches that of Japanese manga, and I was interested enough to want to follow two out of the three books.

Rating: 6.5/10