Crenshaw's Books & Decks

I wasn't sure whether to buy this volume due to the many non-enthusiastic reviews I've seen around, but I'm glad I did. I found some of the events and characters in the previous two volumes a bit unpolished, not well profiled, superficial, a bit silly, but once I read this volume, they all make sense. This is a flashback in time for each of the main characters, in separate chapters, and also a multi-time flashback for each of them, so we get to see and know from where they are coming from. To me that's was the right thing to do to give the story soul and psychological depth. Even the annoying Driller the Killer makes sense once we read the chapter devoted to it in this book.  As a stand-alone volume might not be worth buying, but if you are reading  or intend to read the whole series, this is a must.

 I am always mesmerised by Nguyen masterly drawing and water-colouring. It is a total delight to see each of his vignettes, no matter what he's painting, faces, landscapes, outaspaces, details, anything.  I resented, though, some of the imagery, which was too familiar and associable with characters I've seen in the old Star Wars and Totall Recall movies.

I love the lettering used in this series. Very creative and audible, if that can be said.

The Kindle rendering of the book is excellent, with awesome quality details. Double tapping individuate vignettes and allows us to swipe between them effortlessly; however, some of them do not automatically seize to the preferable reading size when there are vignettes with small lettering, but pitching out each vignette solves the problem.
 
Overall, very enjoyable, and I loved the story between Effie and Andy.   Also, very short and a bit pricey. 

HTBH is an anthology of comic strips and stories published by Davis in different publications, drawn both in colour and black and white.  

How to be Happy sounds like the title of a motivational or self-help book but. as the author herself reveals in the foreword, this book is not a book on how to be happy. The cover certainly helps to convey the same idea.  Despite the stories being quite different in style an tone, the book has a few main themes. Most of the stories are very introspective, and revolve about people looking inside to get their suppressed emotions out, people struggling to feel, numbed people, depressed people, over-emotional people. One of the stories in the book provides us with what I think would have been a great title for the book: "No tears, no sorry. No sorry no joy". Also "Let the sorry out. Let the joy in". Those titles are way closer to what the stories in this anthology are  about. I think giving the book a title closer to what the vignettes are about would have been more honest, even if less marketable-savy.


Davis is an amazing versatile visual artist. The collection of strips in the book showcases her talent. Her images go from the very simple linear and sketchy, to the very painterly and detailed paintings, from the classic naturalistic drawings to the vectorial compositions, from the ezine-like comic strips to the surreal, from the slice of life to science fiction. Some of her stories transport us to Sendak-ish magic worlds that one would like to explore in long books. She is good with black and white, and even better when she uses colours and  sepias. Her colours are glorious.    

From a narrative point of view, Davis is able to create stories that focus on the inner world of her characters: their feelings, emotions and thoughts, their approach to life, the way they 'see' and 'feel' the world. Her narrative is concise, precise and poignant, introspective, but also expressive and full of humour. Some of the texts in the book are brilliant despite their brevity. I especially like the "Darling, I've realised I don't love you", "I used to be so unhappy" and the statue of the best self, but there are a few brilliant mini-texts in this book, some of them really philosophical and to ponder way after you finish the book.

I hated the story of the skinning of a fox, revolting to me, and the comic strips of the trip from Georgia to Los Angeles  and Mr Strong are  OK. 

This book was included in several lists of best graphic books of the 2015 I've come across. I think the inclusion is well deserved as this book showcases Davis' brilliance as both visual artist and story teller. Among other distinctions, the book has received: NPR's and Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2014; Shortlist, Slate's 2014 Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Print Comic of the Year and 2015 Ignatz Award Winner: Outstanding Anthology or Collection.

I found the price for the Kindle/Comixology edition a bit too much, because this digital edition does not require of the use of paper, ink or manufacture. Besides, these stories were previously published pieces not new for the book. Finally, I have to pay for the downloading of the bulky file to my Internet provider. I love that artists make a living out of their talent, but digital books like this should be sold at a fairer price.    

Waterwise, might be presented as a surreal and apocalyptic story by the editorial house, but that is misleading.The only thing I consider a bit surreal is the cover of the book, and not even that.

Waterwise is the visual narration of the unplanned meeting of two childhood friends, Jimbo and Emily, in their native town. Jimbo is visiting after breaking up with his girlfriend in a crossroads sort of situation in her personal life. Emily is leaving town next day to start a new life and a new job. He is an artist, she is a computer analyst. They couldn't be more different, but they have a strong connection despite not having seen each other since High School. Waterwise is the story of the night these two friends spend together, remembering their childhood, and talking about the past, the present and the future, who they were and what they have become. 

There is no structured plot or ending. The ending left me gasping for closure but some answers can be found in the first pages of the book. The story is more intriguing the more you linger on it.

Waterwise is a book in black and white, with just the cover and the last vignette in colour. I like Orff's chunky drawings and cubist-ish images and the way he depicts water, underwater, and the night. Orff's interiors are enveloping and surround the characters in ways that can be overwhelming and even menacing, but they are also cosy spaces for reflection, places of shared secrets and intimacy, as if the rooms were listening. On the contrary the outdoor images, the night, the water are expansive and joyful areas, they are fluid, they are the ones that show the past and the present lived to the fullest. I love the use of water and fish as a metaphor of life, life is like water in movement, never stopping, never stagnant, always flowing towards the infinite.

Descender is a galactic quest to find the child humanoid robot Tim-21, first; to decode his programming, second;  to use that coding to battle The Harvesters, a race of giant robots with the same coding as Tim, which attacked the planet where the United Galactic Council (UGC) has its see and threaten the whole confederation, third. This is also the quest of Tim-21 to find his former human brother. His quest is the only one that focuses on humanity, love and connecting, not on destruction, battling and use of any means to get what you want.

The main characters in this volume are: the uber-cool mega-cute android child Tim-21, his smiley-talker robot pet Bandit, Doctor Quon (the scruffy shave-needed father of modern cybernetics), Captain Telsa (a grumpy tight-panted carrot-headed healed well-connected young "commandress"), the rough-looking dieting-needed loyal pilot, and the good-hearted simpleton-conscious robot Driller the Killer.

Dustin Nguyen's artwork is stunning, really mesmerising regarding composition, framing, use of colour for narrative purposes, light and shadow work, watercolour and pencil technique, attention to the detail, and mood. His portraits are amazing. Besides, his images are very cinematic and stylish, and, let me tell you, some of the kido's clothing is just fabulous -- The work of the amazing painter he is. Having said this, I was a bit disappointed because some of the landscapes and the imagery of the characters reminded me of others already seen in  science-fiction movies. Nguyen talent as painter is undeniable, so I think the script might have limited him.  
   

Jeff Lemire is the author of one of my fav graphic novels but he is not drawing anything here, he is just the writer. The Universe of Descender is not especially original, with plenty of narrative elements and characters pastiched and amalgamated from well-known science-fiction TV shows and movies: Red Sand+Mass Effect, AI, Star Wars, Prometheus, I, Robot, Terminator, and Asimov's three laws. The script does not reinvent science fiction for sure, but it has cohesion, reads well and is entertaining enough. The story starts to get really interesting at the end of the first volume, when things that seemed lineal are not that lineal after all. Most of the characters, even the "good ones" are not likeable, they seem full of suppressed anger, full of secrets, untrustworthy. In that regard, they serve as a podium to enhance the character of Tim-21, who is innocent and likeable, more human than real humans in his approach to humanity. He dreams a-la-Asimov, not of electric sheep, but of electric rebellious robots inciting him to rebel against humans. I, robot. Tim dreams are painted in pink-ish tones, whatever that might mean :P


One of the things I loved in the book is the typography (funny because Descender is a word related to the world of typography), as different sort of fonts are used depending on who or what is speaking: humans, robots, computer system, inter-phone, plus the ambience and noise sounds. I thought the use of typography enhances the reading and made it clearer and more engaging.
I found two major spelling mistakes in the book. They don't make any favour to the authors, nor to the editor if there was any. Can you spot them?
> "Acadamy "instead of Academy.
> "You're father?" instead of "Your father?"

These could be easily fixed in the digital edition.

Although I greatly enjoyed the reading and will probably purchase the next volume, the book does not thrill me, probably because despite the awesome artwork and entertaining story, the book, overall, feels a bit déjà-vue. Let's hope that the main surprises pop up in the coming chapters and volume.

I read this book it on Comixology and the digital copy is fantastic.It makes you appreciate all the details that I would need a magnifying glass to see on paper.

Stunning artwork, entertaining story, at a great price. 

This is a short silent allegorical graphic novel that touches on the subject of being different, feeling different, wanting to be different and not fitting within the group that is suppose the group you belong You were born with a gender but since your childhood felt that you are the opposite gender. You were born with a specific sexual orientation that is not "straight". You were born within a religious group that you struggle to fit in. You were born within a family of high-end professionals who wanted you to be like them, but you feel that you are a different sort of person. You were born in a family of lefties but you are very conservative. The examples could multiply to the infinite. Fox Bunny Funny depicts all of them masterly. In a way, this is a modern Aesop-sort-of fable, the lack of moral preaching is actually the moral of the story.

I love the cute drawing, which goes from the merely cute children cartoon style, to the not so childish childlike gory, to the tripy and almost psychedelic images at the end of the book. I love the overall humour of the book, and the imagination displayed in the conception of the world of rabbits, the world of foxes, and the mixed world. I found very inventive the shot guns that the foxes use, the church of the rabbits, the somewhat "depraved" and "subverted" mixed world at the end. There are many graphic elements that I considered inventive and humorous, which  put a smile in my face. 

The book is silent. However, the action and the expressiveness of the characters speak loudly. Being able to speak to everybody without words is just something difficult to achieve. On the other hand, there is much more to silent books than the specific explicit message drawn by the author. Silent stories allow the individualisation of the reading, to make the story just yours, to adapt it to what you want the story to be and what what the story tells you, specifically. They are Universal, but also less of a monolith.

I found that the transition from the childhood part story to the adult part was too abrupt. I would have loved some transitional elements and I think the book needed a few more pages at the end and also in between.The book is still good without them.

This is one of those books that can be read by pre-teens under supervision, as it tackles important issues about identity and fitting in Society in a very light and easy way, and it could give way to great discussions in the classroom or at home. The book might be disturbing for very small kids unless they are showing an important identity issue already.

A great graphic book.

Andy Hartzell is  an American interactive graphic designer and cartoonist.  

This was the first graphic books by Canadian renowned cartoonist Bryan Lee O'Malley, the author of the Scott Pilgrim series, who wrote it when he was 24 years of age. 

I have many expectations about this short novel. Firstly, the ratings are over the top on Amazon and Goodreads, and, secondly, I love Scott Pilgrim. Unfortunately, this books falls a bit short, even though there are glimpses of the best O'Malley.

Drawn in a lovely black and white with doll-ish characters, Lost at Sea tells the story of the unplanned road trip, and the musings of Raleigh, a gloomy girl who finds herself in the middle of nowhere in a car with a girl and two guys she barely knows. She is the daughter of divorced parents, not very talkative, and she doesn't feel much either. She thinks that she lost her soul somewhere, and that a cat took it. In fact she sees cats everywhere, even when she sleeps. 

The book is good at capturing how some teens transition into adulthood: how they talk, how they behave, which sort of worries and angst they have, how even the smallest thing is analysed microscopically in their head in search for meaning, to find a connection with the world out there, to fit, to belong. The romantic part also shows the infatuation teens go through, where everything feels so profound and deep, but that is never the case when one looks back. Fortunately for the reader, the book has a sense of humour, which makes the bunch of narrative and character clichés a bit more palatable.

We all have seen and/or read a bunch of coming-of-age movies, books and comics. For any new story to work, it has to go where others have not, to be genuine and authentic but also original and innovative.. Unfortunately, this is not the case of Lost at Sea. In fact, I felt that the novel ended when it had started to get interesting, and the vacuous pseudo-philosophical approach was forgotten and the unknown, the world of  wonder and the unreal appeared: the constant presence of cats, the photos found in the wall of the hotel, are wonderful exploratory narrative element that are just sketched and never developed. Thanks gosh, Scott Pilgrim came out to appease our hunger for something new in the world of teen comics, and came out with a gong. One has also to understand that this is the work of a very young artist, trying to find his voice, so in that regard, reading this book one comes to appreciate how a mediocre first novel can help an artist to clear his vision to produce something as good as Scott Pilgrim. 

I think this might be a very lovely book if you are 13-16 and you haven't read much literature. If you have, well, you might find it a bit irritating.  

I read the book in an electronic edition for Comixology. The rendering is fabulous and uses Comixology versatility at its best. A truly wonderful reading experience.  

This is a short but very intriguing wordless novel. I did not read the summary of what is supposed to be. I saw a few pages of the comic book and found them intriguing enough to buy it. 

I am glad that I didn't read anything because this is one of those books that has many possible readings. I 'read' the book several times and I came with two different stories that fit perfectly the imagery. It could be a criticism, but it is not. Anything that feeds my imagination in this way gets a clear wow from me.

 

The book has a glorious black and white in general, it is very minimalist and stylised, with and a clever use of the white space to create mood. The atmosphere is heavy and ominous, and there is tension in the air from the very cover of the book. All the characters are thin and edgy, not even the shining sun is friendly. Kane, the main character, is a also very intriguing character. He is a mix of modern Quixote, 18th-century Japanese farmer and folk monster. The ominous presence of the black sun, the sun-like aspect of the black eyes at times, makes both things indistinguishable at times, as if they were one and only, and even more intrigue. 

The 'official' story reminds me of the folk story around which the mystery of the Japanese manga series "Monster" revolves. You can see the animated tale in full, in English, here: The Nameless Monster.

I think Black Eyes would make a terrific short film.

Claire Connelly is a young British (?) freelance graphic artist, and this book is a self-edition. Well done. I really love it.