Review by salishianantihero@riseup.net
ALMOST as good as the first few volumes. I felt this lacked a bit of the sense of adventure and ecological- human interactions that the others portrayed so well. Still, the beautiful illustrations and conclusion to the story are not to be missed.
Review by Future Man
Brandon Graham ROCKS! This is my favorite of his comics, great punny humor and the art is just fantastic. I love his color palette and it's great to finally see a book printed with more color pages. The story is kind of ridiculous, but at the same time it's all so charming. There are some older comics with the same characters that are collected here which seem immature by comparison to the newer pieces. It's great to see an artist evolve in their technique and storytelling ability, definitely looking forward to reading more of this stuff.
Review by Future Man
This is a fantastic book that gives insight into the creative processes and artistic inspiration of some of the most notorious living comic artists! There are many photos of early out-of-print books and previously unpublished art from the artist's personal archives. This is really fascinating to read and see how dynamic many of these folks are and hear in their own words about the things that have been most inspiring to them.
The only problem with this book, it doesn't recognize ANY female cartoonists. Even the artists profiled here rarely mention women they've been inspired by. I guess the industry has been mostly dominated by men, but it would have been great to see at least one woman in here to give a female perspective of the medium. With as many great and inspiring women as are doing comics today, I can hope that a later publication will highlight their working methods and perception of comics history.
Review by salishianantihero@riseup.net
Simply a masterpiece!An engaging story and beautiful penned illustrations, by Hayao Miyazaki, bring this post apocalyptic world to life! Set in an age when man's scorching of the world is a long past myth, the remains of civilization fight against each other for scarce resources and live in the shadows of gigantic toxic fungus-forests. I found the interwoven questions of mankind's responsibility for its actions and its relationship to nature, along with interesting characters and nail-biting action to be irresistible! I lost some sleep to this book.
Review by Future Man
Review by Future Man
Review by Future Man
Review by Future Man
Review by Future Man
Review by Future Man
Review by Zach Sylvester
Given its place in the story this may seem like a lazy way to describe my experience of 1Q84 but at the moment I'm still sitting at the top of a playground slide and it's a quiet night and my eyes are in the sky and as threads are gently plucked from the air I am wholeheartedly lost in wonder, magic, and love and for me this is the closest a book has ever come to being on par with the moon
Review by Future Man
Review by Suriel
I dug this book. It has a really intriguing style. The art is awesome, filled with loads of sweet nature scenes as well as action and humor.
Review by Zach Sylvester
This is not a story about the playful, innocent imagination of children. There is not enough balance in your bread to muster this sandwich, it's raw order-upside the head.
Review by Future Man
This is an amazing collection of three earlier children's books from Shaun Tan. The art is astonishingly beautiful and the stories have a consistent veneer of something creepy and mysterious which draws the reader cautiously forward to find out what happens.
These three stories all have strong moral sentiments that read like some of the best Suess, but the art style (still cartoony) rings reminiscent of surrealism or futurism.
Review by Kathleen Cross
Holy shit this book is crazy scary. It's very meta- it's supposed to be the manuscript that some guy finds and starts notating and transcribing, and he writes all of these footnotes and tells his story and goes crazy. Also there are "the editors" who make notes, too. The main story is of this haunted house, and it's so eerie and OH MY GOODNESS THIS BOOK AHHHHH read this oh man.
Review by Future Man
I've been wanting to read a full length Dan Zettwoch story since I first discovered his work (Kramers Ergot, I think?). Birdseye satisfied that itch perfectly. There's everything I love from Zettwoch in here: cutaways and other informative/humorous comic diagrams, great small-town kinds of characters, beautifully designed pages.
The story too has a really unique social perspective. This story takes place in the early 90's when cellphones were just beginning to become of mainstream use. We mainly follow the story of Uncle Birdseye with his niece and nephew. We see this world through a very narrow lense and don't ever even come to know the real name of the central character. We understand through bits and pieces of overheard conversations that on the periphery of the town, there are a few big money businessmen who are making a lot of changes which are changing much of our daily lives.
It doesn't seem like a very deep story at first, but in retrospect, there were a lot of things being said through this book. Good job Dan Z!
Review by Future Man
What a fantastic ending to a story! If you're just getting into this series and are hoping it will be worth it, it completely is. I won't say anything more.
Review by Future Man
The appeal of The Frank Book seems to be more and more effective with each time I've come back to it. Immediately, just from the first look at the cover, it seems to have an unexpected profundity, as in a Taoist happenstance kind of way.
Opening to the endpages, with a starry night sky mapped out with freaky monster-shaped constellations mapped in overlay, it hits you that this book will not be a cartoon anthropomorph adventure like any other, but will be drawing on the potency of myth and legend to speak to something many-layered and abounding with archetypes.
The stories themselves are fantastical and at turns horrifying, with the central character, Frank, in constant struggle to find a peaceful moment of bliss. Meanwhile the other denizens of the mysterious Unifactor where Frank calls home, are caught in struggles for power and control or just blind delusions of beauty and grandeur. WONDERFUL!
Review by Sam Swicord