It has finally released! And after having to wait a few days because Diamond conveniently “forgot” to ship any to my local comic shop, I have purchased and read the final volume of Scott Pilgrim.
If you have not read any of the series yet, let me give you this brief overview: it is about a perpetual slacker who has to fight the seven evil ex-boyfriends of the girl he wants to date. This is a fun series. Incredibly fun. And even more than that, it successfully deals with the process of becoming an adult and what it means to make that transition. It is one of the best books I have read dealing with those issues if only because it admits that being an adult isn’t about abandoning your childhood activities and ideals. Now that you know that, go work through the other five volumes before reading this book or review, as it will spoil the previous volumes.
The final volume successfully wraps up the plot and the major themes of the series. It starts off with Scott depressed over Ramona leaving and Sex Bob-omb broken up. Everything in Scott’s life is different and worse. And now he has to recover from all of the changes that fell on him while still being obligated to fight Giddeon Graves, the final ex, even though Ramona is nowhere to be seen.
This volume does exactly what you would expect by bringing all of the characters back to help/ challenge Scott. In doing so, it shows that this series is as much about how Scott deals with his ex’s as how Ramona’s deal with hers. I like the fact that, over the course of the series, we have seen ex’s that both still care about Ramona for good and bad reasons and are apathetic about her. At the same time, this volume brings home the way Scott sees his ex’s and his time with them. The revelation that Scott did not rescue Kim from an evil boy, but rather beat up some kid for the rights to date her was an interesting one. It begins to ground this utterly fantastical story in reality. At the same time, we see the rose colored memories of others and how that has effected their perceptions of the current day with the memory cam panels.
This is what Scott Pilgrim Volume 6 is about, how we deal with our past mistakes and what that means for the future. Scott’s revelations about the past and his decision to move forward is at the forefront of the book and it allows him to finally make the transition to having an adult relationship. This is what gives him the power to finally face Giddeon. At the same time, we see more clearly that Giddeon’s inability to release his past has crippled him. We also see that all of Scott’s friends seem more mature than him because they have embraced their pasts and not because they have abandoned something that has allowed them to enter adulthood. I won’t spoil the changes that each of these characters make, but they are interesting and fit the characters well.
And then there is the stuff that drew everyone to Scott Pilgrim in the first place: the epic fights and the video game references. These are all still there. The fight with Giddeon is the biggest fight in the books, as is fitting. It serves to explore what brought Scott and Ramona to the points they are at in the story as well as being a fun fight unlike any of the others we have seen. The gaming references are still at the forefront of the book. One of my favorite non-spoilery quotes comes from Scott playing a handheld game and telling Wallace “Alright, go away. I have a tiny world to save.”
Brian Lee O’Malley has crafted one of the most fun and interesting series to come out since I have ben reading comics. This volume concludes the saga in a very fitting way and, though I am sad to see it go, I greatly enjoyed the ride and look forward to O’Malley’s future works. And I am looking forward to the movie next month.
Buy this book if you read the previous volumes. Buy the whole series if you haven’t.
Klezmer
Many people will probably overlook this book because of the art. The style that Joann Sfar uses is a very rough ink set of ink lines with water color underneath. His palette also contributes to a sparse look to the art. That all said, it works beautifully with the story. When a scene is being set up or the emotions of the characters demand it, the artwork is detailed with full color. When a character is speaking over multiple panels and is unsure of him/herself, the color tends to be minimal and confined to the character. But the strength of this book lies in the characters themselves.
Klezmer follows two bands of characters that will eventually meet up. One group is composed of a Jewish musician (The Baron of My Backside) whose troop has been killed and a girl from a village he was passing through. These two wander from the village to Odessa with the goal of performing there and then moving on. The other group is made up of two Jewish students and a Gypsy who also go to Odessa as performers. The two Jewish students have very different approaches to religion, one is abandoning it while the other is concerned with adhering to rules. The book is principally about the ways religion impacts each of these outcast characters. Four of the characters are Jewish and the exploration of Judaism through these four forms an interesting set of character dynamics in both groups.
The book is the origin story for this band of musicians. How each of the five characters come together in Odessa is the principle plot of the book and it ends with the five of them begrudgingly joining together for a gig. My major complaint is that there is not more of this to be had. Nor can I find any schedule for the next book’s release. With the plot being what it is, the book feels like it just ends, rather than completing the thoughts that its plot was exploring.
One last thing to note is that this is one of those books where the author’s notes are as interesting as the book itself. Sfar goes over his thinking process in continuing to play Klezmer music, how Jews are perceived, his thoughts on the Jewish religion, and what his thought process was in creating a musical graphic novel. This entire section is well worth reading.
This is another great book published by First Second. I recommend grabbing a copy if you see it.
I bought Children of the Sea , Vol. 1
This book follows Ruka, a young girl who is kicked off the handball team because of her anger issues. As a young girl, she sees a “ghost” in the main tank of the Aquarium where her father works. Fast forward a few years to when she is kicked off the team and she meets two boys who were raised by dugongs and are now living at the aquarium: Umi and Sora. Over the course of the book, we learn that sea creatures are disappearing all over the world and Umi and Sora are investigating these disappearances.
The plot develops slowly in this book, but the slow pace fits it perfectly. The book has the rare quality of being about the sense of wonder that the ocean trigers in people. Because of this, it is filled with lingering shots of the ocean and various sea creatures. Usually these comprise a panel or two on an otherwise plot filled page. However, on a few occasions, there are several pages of full spreads. These are employed at just the perfect time to really convey the characters’ feelings about the situations they are in. The set of pages that immediately comes to mind is when Ruka is in the water watching whale sharks approach. The full majesty of the animals is beautifully represented with a couple of two page spreads, but as Ruka gets caught up in the current when the sharks swim by, the action is broken down into smaller and smaller panels, perfectly capturing the situation she is in.
The thing that really captivated me about this book is the beautiful renderings of the ocean and the creatures that live there. Igarashi lovingly renders the creatures in a more detailed and exacting manner than the humans in the story. These renderings combine with slow moments of listening to the waves on a beach and, more specifically, the sound of the rocks and sand moving in the waves, to really demonstrate a love of the ocean.
But even if you do not pick this up for the art and the quality of Igarashi’s obseravtions of the ocean, the characters and story are truly interesting. The two boys are semi-mysterious characters, but not because they were raised by dugongs (this is the only explanation the reader receives of their odd childhood) but rather because of their odd connection in the disappearances. The only real issue I had with the characters is that Ruka’s handball anger issues seem to just be a plot tool to get her to the aquarium. I assume that these issues will come back in later volumes, but at this point they only serve to label her as an outsider and move her to a different area of the story.
I haven’t liked a book so much that I felt the need to go out and get the next volume immediately in a long time. This book has me doing just that. Not because of a cliffhanger, but because I simply want more of the world and the mystery.
Now that I have gotten official confirmation that my payment has gone through, I wanted to let everyone know I will have a booth at Intervention Con in Washington DC. The convention is from September 10-12. It primarily focuses on webcomics and had such greats as David Willis, Pete Abrams, and Brad Guigar as guests. Plus, they just announced a Molly Crabapple’s Dr. Sketchy class!
Come out and get official Retail Gods merchandise like stuffed penguins, hats, and shirts. I will be previewing some of these soon, though if you follow my Twitter, you have already seen a couple.
I happen to be a little behind on writing reviews of things that I have read of late. In an effort to share my reading experiences with you, I will catch up with short reviews. I’ll probably make this a standard for several of the things that I am reading.
Catching Fire
Catching Fire is the second book in the Hunger Games series. If you liked the first, read this one. It is more political, but Collins manages to make the political intrigue just as interesting as the combat in the first book. At the same time, we get a logical extension of the characters in the last one. Katriss is still mildly oblivious, but brave in her stubbornness. The love triangle is more fully explored and given some interesting twists. And the culture is even more fully fleshed out.
The Kid from Planet Earth (Soulwind, Book 1)
This is an all ages appropriate graphic novel with a beautiful little story. The plot follows a kid who is taken from Earth to help lead a rebellion. The main problem is that he is a little kid who is concerned about getting home for dinner. The story moves more quickly than I was expecting (I thought the Soulwind series was about the kid, but each book is a different short story), but it’s pace works well. I recomend reading it and, though I have not read any of the other volumes, recommend picking up The Complete Soulwind
We Shadows Volume 1
I picked this up at Green Valley a week ago based on the one Amazon review that exists for it. I was disappointed, as the story didn’t feel cohesive and the characters lacked depth. That said, there are some interesting ideas running around in it and I will be interested to see what else the author does.
Samurai 7, Volume 1
Samurai 7 is a science fiction retelling of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (which I, shamefully, have not gotten around to watching yet). It is an enjoyable sci-fi samurai story with all the trappings of action manga that works better than I expected. That’s why it took me several visits to Green Valley before I finally picked it up. Now that I have, I am incredibly interested to read the rest.
Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure
I enjoy Chabon and make a point of buying his books when I find them cheap. In this book, he takes the turn of the (last) century adventure story and adds his usual literary concepts. This is not the Chabon book to start with, but it is a great adventure story set in AD 950 and following two Jewish bandits. Read some of his more well known work first, then grab this one.
Jack and the Box
This is a short children’s graphic novel. It is beautifully done and I am glad that such a well known creator has realized the lack of good early reader comics and is seeking to fill the gap. Buy it for little kids and yourself.
Asterios Polyp
This book is simply beautiful. If you are looking for a comic that explores graphic design in a conceptual way, then this is your book. If you are looking for one that uses art and writing equally, this is your book. It is a slow story of the life of a paper architect whose life collapses and how he deals with that. The beauty of the design perfectly compliments the beauty of the story.
Deogratias, A Tale of Rwanda
This is a depressing book, as one would expect from the subject matter. That said, you should read it. It takes an interesting look at how the Rwandan genocide effects its title character, a boy who was not wrapped up in the differentiation between Tutsi and Hutu. Stassen does an excellent job of humanizing a story that was so often presented in a clinical way. And the introduction does a great job of telling us how Rwanda got to the point that it is (and was) in.
The Verdant Passage: Prism Pentad, Book 1
This book is mostly what I have come to expect from Dungeons and Dragons novels: a mildly entertaining story that gives a nice snapshot of a setting. I read this in anticipation of the upcoming Dark Sun Campaign Setting release and because I have like Denning’s work on Star Wars. Aside from the first hundred pages, I greatly enjoyed the novel. Those hundred pages could have easily been condensed. The interesting thing here is that the adventuring group were not adventurers at the start. We have a politician, a slave, and a handful of gladiators. I liked this slightly different approach to the usual DnD makeup.
American Born Chinese
I should do a larger review of this, but you can find several solid critical reviews of the book. That said, I do have to tell you to read it. Immediately. This should be at your public library, so there is no excuse. THis is the story of the only Chinese kid in a white dominant school, a retelling of the Monkey King, and the story of a kid whose Chinese cousin ruins every school for him. All three of these stories run parallel to each other and link up in an interesting way at the end.
Re-Gifters (Minx Books)
This is a nice little graphic novel by Mike Carey. It is not his usual level of quality, but it is worth reading. It follows a Korean girl who wants to impress a boy. The backdrop is the run up for a Hapkido tournament. It reads like a good romantic comedy.
