An autobiographical narrative about a young girl growing up in the last decade of Communist Poland - very vivid on the intersection of politics, religion, family, friends and school, and perhaps an honest preservation of a world that has now disappeared, changed mainly (but not entirely) for the better. ...more
I got this having hugely enjoyed Culbard's graphic novel version of At the Mountains of Madness a few years ago. I'm sorry to say that this didn't work for me so well; it's not as visual a story, and the central characters (Charles Dexter Ward, the narrator Willett and the ancient necromancer Curwen) are not especially interesting characters. It's interesting that Lovecraft himself thought this was not one of his best efforts, and the original story remained unpublished until 1941, several years after he had died. ...more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2315554.html[return][return]Once again we have lush illustrations of a completely alien world, with humans clinging to ihttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2315554.html[return][return]Once again we have lush illustrations of a completely alien world, with humans clinging to its rim and feuding with each other. This time round, a colonisation effort has collapsed, leaving the survivors divided into two armed camps over, among other issues, whether or not the indigenous aliens are sentient.[return][return]Unlike the previous series, this volume is divided pretty firmly into two different viewpoints. For the first half, the young Mai Lin (whose parents are clearly of Vietnamese descent) escapes from the two sets of humans and reveals her own ability to communicate with the aliens. In the second half, Kim from the Ald�baran sequence arrives in the Betelgeuse system to start finding out what has happened. Neither story line is resolved, so I'll just have to get the next one....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2310092.html[return][return]I read the first volume of this last year, when it was nominated for a Hugo, and didn't quithttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2310092.html[return][return]I read the first volume of this last year, when it was nominated for a Hugo, and didn't quite buy it. I thought this second volume, also Hugo-nominated, was much improved; a fairly straightforward story arc about families and conflict, with a little bit of magic and interplanetary skullduggery. I still found the plot a bit unsurprising (one element in particular reminded me of the old saying about the pistol on the mantelpiece), but it is lifted immensely by Staples' superb art....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2308499.html[return][return]A nominee for this year's Hugo for Best Graphic Story, adapted and illustrated by Golden frohttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2308499.html[return][return]A nominee for this year's Hugo for Best Graphic Story, adapted and illustrated by Golden from a story first published by GRRM in 1976. I have to say that the story itself didn't hugely appeal to me - Martin's early work was very dark indeed, and the theme of animated corpses serving people's industrial, entertainment and sexual needs is pretty grim. I was also struck by a lack of physical variation among the women characters, as illustrated, compared to the men. Not quite my cup of tea....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2283674.html[return][return]Final volume in the first sequence of bande dessin�es by Leo, in which Marc and Kim encountehttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2283674.html[return][return]Final volume in the first sequence of bande dessin�es by Leo, in which Marc and Kim encounter both the mysterious creature, the gigantic mantrisse. which has been lurking behind their adventures so far, and have a showdown with the authoritarian government which has been dogging their footsteps since Book 3; also contact with Earth is resumed after a gap of centuries. Perhaps because I'd left it longer than planned to read, it didn't have quite the punch I expected - though there are some really mindblowing scenes when they walk into the belly of the beast - but I will now look for and start on the second series, Betelgeuse. I am also glad to say that I'm not having much problem with the French; it's pitched just about right for my reading level....more
Conz (full name Constantijn van Cauwenberge) is one of the up and coming Flemish comics writers, so far untranslated into English as far as I can tell (you can get it in French as Quelque Part Les Étoiles, "Somewhere the Stars" rather than "The Second Kiss"). I first encountered him as author of one of the better shorts in Brussel in Beeldekes. Some smart Anglophone publisher should snap him up; this trilogy is a very nice Bildungsroman, set in Belgium and ten years later in Australia; viewpoint character Ringo (real name Maurice, but his two best friends are John and Paul) loves and loses Hanne over the summer that they finish high school in 1993, and in 2003 he finds her again in Sydney. But he has a long journey to get there, both physically and emotionally, and so does Hanne as it turns out; Ringo's mother, the titular Martha of the middle book of the trilogy, leads the pack of internal demons that he must overcome. Conz uses all the graphic novelist's techniques to convey the story, in paricular catching the very different atmospheres of Leuven (which I know well) and Sydney (where I've never been), most memorably conveying a road trip from Darwin across the interior of Australia. Well worth looking out for, if it appears in a language you can read. ...more
One of the 50th anniversary publications that I had missed, this is a great romp of a plot line across the timestreams of the first eleven Doctors, with due homage to the characterisations and in particular bringing back a slightly forgotten but entirely appropriate character to ask what the role of the Doctor's companions actually is. These multi-Doctor adventures (of which there are now quite a number in different media) are always a bit dangerous to do, but the format of giving each Doctor an adventure for their own voice to be heard before bringing them together at the end works very well. The Tiptons obviously get it.
Rather bravely IDW have used different artists for each episode (full list: Simon Fraser, Lee Sullivan, Mike Collins, Gary Erskine, Philip Bond, John Ridgway, Kev Hopgood, Roger Langridge, David Messina, Elena Casagrande, Matthew Dow Smith and Kelly Yates). Even more remarkably - I thought he had completely disappeared - several of the covers were drawn by Dave Sim, of Cerebus fame; and they are good pieces too, including the cover for the book as a whole. (I see Sim is reviving Cerebus for a short run; one shudders in anticipation.) I wan't completely convinced by Philip Bond's art for the Fifth Doctor (and especially Adric), and several of the others struggled with the companions. But I particularly liked the Sarah Jane Smith / Liz Shaw matchup by Mike Collins above, and Matthew Dow Smith is great drawing his near namesake. Generally very good fun. ...more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2358150.html[return][return]It may well be thirty years since I last read an Asterix book, which means I completely misshttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2358150.html[return][return]It may well be thirty years since I last read an Asterix book, which means I completely missed this one, published in 1996 and translated into English as Asterix and Obelix All at Sea. the sixth of the eight books written by Uderzo alone after Goscinny's death. [return][return]I slightly wish I hadn't. A substantial whack of the humour relies on pretty offensive stereotypes - sub-Saharan Africans depicted as leopard-skin wearing savages. (Cleopatra, noticeably darker-skinned than Caesar, does make an appearance as the only significant female character, but is nothing like the memorable co-protagonist of one of the earlier books.) Sure, the Europeans are targeted too - the Spanish and Portuguese feuding over incomprehensible differences, the Brits being posh etc. But there's too much punching down.[return][return]The major theme of the book is an apparent choice between reversion to childhood, or being transformed into stone - both of these happen to the unfortunate Obelix before he is restored to his usual self; the chief baddy becomes a statue and the nice rebel slaves are returned to eternal boyhood on the island of Atlantis. I must say that I might have been better to rely on my youthful memories of Asterix rather than return to him now....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2206408.html[return][return]The Black Island is a bit of a step backwards for Tintin; he is shot and wounded ion the firhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2206408.html[return][return]The Black Island is a bit of a step backwards for Tintin; he is shot and wounded ion the first page, and then chases a group of forgers to Scotland by a series of improbable incidents involving various means of transport and defeats a gorilla in a ruined castle, all the while hindered by the bungling detectives Thomson and Thompson (who in fairness get some good lines here). One wonders why anyone would go to the trouble of forging Belgian francs in Scotland (or indeed anywhere at all); the basic plot, of a criminal conspiracy being unmasked, is awfully similar to Cigars of the Pharaoh and Tintin in America, though the story is on safer ground by mocking the British rather than Arabs, Indians or native Americans. Not really one of the classics....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2194952.html[return][return]The Blue Lotus really is the first proper Tintin book - a huge step up from Cigars of the Phhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2194952.html[return][return]The Blue Lotus really is the first proper Tintin book - a huge step up from Cigars of the Pharaoh. Herg� takes Tintin to the real 1931 Japanese invasion of China, and is firmly and passionately on the side of the Chinese, both versus the Japanese and the Europeans in the Shanghai concession (one of whom in real life would have bee a very young J.G. Ballard). Apparently this came about because a priest who worked with Chinese students at Leuven contacted Herg� out of concern that the promised adventure in China would be as stereotypical as the previous volumes; and through him, Herg� met Zhang Chongren, who was effectively Herg�'s co-artist for the Chinese parts of the book, and is also the basis for the character of Chang here and in Tintin in Tibet. Suddenly the political orientation of Tintin has veered very sharply to the left.[return][return]But there's also a step change in quality of plotting and of art. There's one rather silly scene where Tintin hospitalises three burly guards, and Thomson and Thompson provide some slapstick comic relief, but otherwise this is a book that takes story-telling seriously and uses the right tools to do it in the right way. It's unfortunate in a way that it ties up some dangling plot strands from Cigars of the Pharaoh, because it is so much better.[return][return]I think I actually had not read it before - none of the incidents rang any bells for me, and I see that it was not translated into English until 1983 precisely because it was thought to be too firmly rooted in events of 1931 which would be unknown to today's younger readers. But in fact the themes of military domination and corrupt occupation are, unfortunately, pretty timeless....more
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2167917.html[return][return]Rereading it now, I realise that it's meant to be not only a Bildungsroman/Hero's Journey tyhttp://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2167917.html[return][return]Rereading it now, I realise that it's meant to be not only a Bildungsroman/Hero's Journey type story, but also a tour through the various magical and fantasy characters of the DC comics universe; I am now much more conscious of my own ignorance of that subject than I was twenty years ago. Gorgeously illustrated, with Gaiman's typical style, but I also noticed the lack of women characters this time round - not that they are absent, but the five central figures are all male....more
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