Some quick comments
Re-scanned Ancient Joe: el bizarron by C. Scott Morse. I love the mythic feel, the bold but simple lines, and the light touch. I find this book fascinating, and it's certainly a different kind of thing, but I wonder if students would be too perplexed. It's apparently intended to be a series, so there isn't complete closure, no answer to the questions posed in this first volume.
It's probably not a contender, but I read Gotham Central: Unresolved Targets (Ed Brubaker & Greg Rucka, et al). It's just ironic to me that as good as the Gotham Central books are, they're still in second place in the "police procedural comics set in worlds with super-heroes" category (behind Powers). Guess it's a little like playing in the AL Central division.
The Left Bank Gang by Jason is just...something completely different. Real-world writers (Hemingway, Pound, Fitzgerald, etc.) in Paris in the 20s are made into anthropomorphized animal versions of themselves who make comics instead of books. They can't make a living this way, so Hemingway suggests they stage a robbery, and the book turns into a plot-twisty thriller. I don't know if I could do something with this or not, but it's a different take on comics and literature, for sure. It might be a good thing to bring into class on a day when we talk about comics re-interperetations of lit, like Kuper's doing The Jungle.
With Alex by Mark Kalesniko, the question is weighing the strong thematic content, excellent craftsmanship, and rich source of discussable stuff against the offense that some students will take. That's not much on the latter side of the scale, but I do need to remember that this is a book with a lot of authentically crude language and behavior, and a protagonist who's very, very hard to like. Part of the issue is that while I admire the skill behind this book, I just don't personally like it very much. Too bleak for my taste, and coming from a worldview that doesn't fit with mine very well.
Don't have any specific comments on Ghost of Hoppers (Jaime Hernandez) except to jot a note reminding me that I have to decide what to do about the brothers Hernandez. Is Love & Rockets 1 still available? If not, can I throw people into the middle of that soap opera somewhere and have them get it? It's not like I can just rattle off the backstory all off the top of my head.
It's probably not a contender, but I read Gotham Central: Unresolved Targets (Ed Brubaker & Greg Rucka, et al). It's just ironic to me that as good as the Gotham Central books are, they're still in second place in the "police procedural comics set in worlds with super-heroes" category (behind Powers). Guess it's a little like playing in the AL Central division.
The Left Bank Gang by Jason is just...something completely different. Real-world writers (Hemingway, Pound, Fitzgerald, etc.) in Paris in the 20s are made into anthropomorphized animal versions of themselves who make comics instead of books. They can't make a living this way, so Hemingway suggests they stage a robbery, and the book turns into a plot-twisty thriller. I don't know if I could do something with this or not, but it's a different take on comics and literature, for sure. It might be a good thing to bring into class on a day when we talk about comics re-interperetations of lit, like Kuper's doing The Jungle.
With Alex by Mark Kalesniko, the question is weighing the strong thematic content, excellent craftsmanship, and rich source of discussable stuff against the offense that some students will take. That's not much on the latter side of the scale, but I do need to remember that this is a book with a lot of authentically crude language and behavior, and a protagonist who's very, very hard to like. Part of the issue is that while I admire the skill behind this book, I just don't personally like it very much. Too bleak for my taste, and coming from a worldview that doesn't fit with mine very well.
Don't have any specific comments on Ghost of Hoppers (Jaime Hernandez) except to jot a note reminding me that I have to decide what to do about the brothers Hernandez. Is Love & Rockets 1 still available? If not, can I throw people into the middle of that soap opera somewhere and have them get it? It's not like I can just rattle off the backstory all off the top of my head.
posted by Carl at 4:28 AM
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