#365graphicnovels
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100 Days of Graphic Novels
Subtitle: “Working 70 Hour Weeks and Commuting Means Reading But Not Writing.”
I am trying for more accountability, but, when my idiotic work schedule gets even more idiotic, sometimes it’s just my judgmental calendar of doom that’s keeping me on track. Also my cat. He judges me - harshly.
Look on my missing leg, ye Mighty, and despair!
Ahem. Anyway. So many books:
Day 1: The Umbrella Academy vol 1: The Apocalypse Suite
Day 2: CatStronauts: Mission Mars
Day 3: Apannine War Diary
Day 4: Alex + Ada vol 1
Day 5: Alex + Ada vol 2
Day 6: Visitations
Day 7: Another Day of Life
Day 8: Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller vol 1
Day 9: Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank
Day 10: Scarlet Witch vol 1: Witches’ Road
Day 11: Jessica Jones vol 1: Uncaged
Day 12: Infidel
Day 13: The Deep Blue Good-by
Day 14: City of Illusions
Day 15: Mockingbird vol 1: I Can Explain
Day 16: Ms. Marvel vol 1: Best of the Best
Day 17: X-Men Gold vol 1: Back to the Basics
Day 18: Kaptara vol 1: Fear Not, Tiny Alien
Day 19: Eclipse vol 1
Day 20: Defenders vol 1: Diamonds are Forever
Day 21: Hellcat vol 1: Hooked on a Feline
Day 22: Chosin
Day 23: Elektra vol 1: Bloodlines
Day 24: They’re Not Like Us
Day 25: Multiple Man vol 1: It All Makes Sense in the End
Day 26: Captain America: Sam Wilson: Not My Captain America
Day 27: A Russian Journal
Day 28: Iron Patriot vol 1: Unbreakable
Day 29: Divinity
Day 30: Jessica Jones: Alias vol 1
Day 31: Tales of Suspense: Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier
Day 32: The Fuse vol 1: The Russian Shift
Day 33: Jessica Jones: Alias vol 2
Day 34: Into the Tunnel
Day 34: Jessica Jones: Alias vol 3
Day 35: A-Force vol 1
Day 36: Edge of the Spider-Verse
Day 37: Descender vol 1
Day 38: Descender vol 2
Day 39: Black Panther: World of Wakanda
Day 40: A Farewell to Arms
Day 41: I’m Not Leaving
Day 42: Green Arrow: Year One
Day 43: Daniel’s Story
Day 44: Aurora’s Motive
Day 45: Jessica Jones vol 4
Day 46: Symmetry
Day 47: Afar
Day 48: Morning Glories vol 1
Day 49: One Way Ticket
A math professor at a nearby university related her escape from WWII to England. Interesting not just for the political trials and hoops through which she had to jump to get herself and her family out of Europe, but also for the way that retelling, rather than primary recording, has influenced the main thrust of the story. Also: illustrated. Adorably.
Day 50: The life of Captain Marvel
I’m not saying I hated this book – I’m just saying that I’m opposed to it on a cellular level.
Day 51: Captain Marvel vol 1: In Pursuit of Flight
Did I need a mind-bleach of what I’d read the day before? Yes. Yes, I did.
Day 52: The Boy Who Reversed Himself
True story: William Sleator was my favorite author for about a year in middle school. I read every one of his books that our libraries had, and then I read them all again. Six or seven times each (to the shock of absolutely no one who knows me). This book has forever changed the way I consider catsup. And it wasn’t nearly as racist as I’d expected, flipping back through. Hooray?
Day 53: To Fight Alongside Friends
My best friend roped me into doing an online werewolf game based in WWI. I role-played as Charlie May, the author of this diary, and refused to respond with anything but direct quotes from his book. If nothing else, I entertain myself.
Day 54: Operation: Broken Wings
Day 55: My War Diary
This one is by Dov Yermiya and is about Lebanon from June 5 – July 1, 1982. I have about six books within easy reach called “My War Diary.” This could prove problematic later. (Also, despite writing about Waltz With Bashir in grad school and for my dissertation, I still don’t know enough about this conflict)
Day 56: Descender vol 3
Day 57: Morning Glories vol 2
Day 58: The Drowned and the Saved
Day 59: Jessica Jones: Pulse
Day 60: Zlata’s Diary
I read this when sitting in the jail on a Friday night. There’s nothing quite so jarring as reading a firsthand account of the absolute disruption of life (and childhood, in a lot of ways), while listening to drunk sorority girls sob on their phones to their mothers and then scream about their Uber.
Day 61: Captain Marvel vol 2: Down
Day 62: Avengers: The Enemy Within
Day 63: Captain Marvel: Higher, Further, Faster, More
Day 64: Captain Marvel: Stay Fly
Day 65: Captain Marvel: Alis Volat Propiis
Day 66: Carol Danvers vol 1: The Ms Marvel Years
Day 67: One Week in the Library
Please give me more weeks, Image Comics. Please.
Day 68: The Troop
Noel Clarke, I love you, but this feels like well-trod ground at this point.
Day 69: Bitch Planet
I legitimately squealed, out loud, when Kelly Sue DeConnick was on screen during Captain Marvel. High pitched. And then, because I have no game, I whacked my BFF on the arm and whispered (er, “whispered”?) “THAT WAS KELLY SUE!!” No one else was impressed by my mad comic knowledge, but, eh.
Day 70: Jessica Jones vol 3: Return of the Purple Man
Guess which superstar never read volume 2? That’s right - THIS superstar.
Day 71: Mr. & Mrs. X
Basically, I love Gambit. I’m okay with Rogue, but I’ve lived in the Deep South for too long to be completely okay with the extremes of character. And I also don’t really like Deadpool. At all. Despite all of that, I still enjoyed this.
Day 72: Secret Avengers vol 1: Reverie
Unlike this, which did NOT get better with age. Ooooof.
Day 73: Avengers AI vol 1: Human After All
Did I buy this simply for this picture of Vision holding a kitten? Yes. Do I regret that? No.
Day 74: Tet
Day 75: Iron Fist: Rage
Day 76: Zero vol 1: An Emergency
Day 77: Faster than Light
Day 78: Descender vol 4: Orbital Mechanics
I sent my BFF a copy of Descender because it’s gorgeous. Because she has even worse impulse control than me, she bought all of the other volumes and has already finished the series. I can’t even be mad.
Day 79: Lost Dossiers: Super Spy
AKA: This would have made way more sense had I realized that this was a supplement to another work… which I don’t yet own. Womp womp womp. Maybe tomorrow I’ll read the From Hell companion, just for kicks.
Day 80: Carnet de Voyage
Day 81: Hype
Day 82: Dancer
Day 83-85:
Day 86: Wonderful World of Oz
Day 87: Port of Earth
Know what I love about Zack Kaplan? He creates immersive worlds that aren’t just one thing – there’s not just one neat storyline wrapped up by the end of the trade, and there isn’t just one type of story at work.
Day 88: Material
Day 89: Captain America: the 1940s Newspaper Strip
Day 90: Peter Panzerfaust vol 1: The Great Escape
Day 91: Cowl vol 1
Day 92: Ministry of Space
That ending, though.
Day 93: X-Men Gold vol 2
Day 94: The Winter Soldier vol 1: The Longest Winter
Day 95: The Winter Soldier vol 2: Broken Arrow
Day 96: Graphic Classics vol 22: African American Classics
I yelped when I saw that Afua Richardson, Personal Hero, had worked on this. I have a panel from her illustration of Langston Hughes’ “Rivers” (done for NPR), and it is one of my very favorite things.
Day 97: New York: The Big City
Day 98: A Wexford Childhood
You would think that a memoir covering 1915-1930 might touch on some rumbling of war. You’d be wrong. But, it was an interesting view of the changing world, nonetheless.
Day 99: Winter Soldier vol 3: Black Widow Hunt
Brubaker, why must you hurt me so?
Day 100: X-Men Rarities
There are few things that bring me such joy as the stiff pages of a 90s era Marvel trade – and, when those trades include comics with Chamber? I am so in. Now, someone explain to me how they always smell like cigarettes and wet dog, regardless of origin, and I’ll be all set.
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Day 47: Afar
Hello, and welcome to this month’s meeting of the Leila Del Duca appreciation society, with special guest Kit Seaton Mad Love. Today, we’re going to talk about how Leila Del Duca, with a Seaton Support, has an uncanny ability to create small helpful creatures that I would like to zip into my hoodie and carry around (much the same way that I zip up stray puppies, feral cats, the occasional squirrel, some baby foxes one time, more than three opossums, and once a nest full of barn swallows. My hoodie: it’s a happening place)
Ahem. Anyway. Exhibit A:
Hello, you fabulous little lizard dog you. What’s that? You’ll show me the way with your nose AND you’ll snuggle comfortably into my intentionally oversized comfortable cotton garment? Great!
But wait. Here’s where the witchcraft begins. Lizard puppy and Alarm Cat make sense, because I like all four of those things and you could mix them up and I’d still be happy. But...
I want to snuggle Monkey. I hate monkeys. No, that’s not accurate. I have an absolutely and unwavering fear abject TERROR of monkeys. I can’t even watch NatGeo due to my monkey fear (the only acceptable simians are lemurs: I’m not pro-simian, but I am pro-prosimian. Ba-dum-tsing!)
So, in addition to being gorgeous and complex and ridiculously good with the world building and omg the two-page spread that Seaton created is just dreamy - in addition to all of that, I now like. a. monkey.
I’m having a crisis of faith. I need to go find something small and unhappy and tuck it into my sweatshirt.
#365GraphicNovels#afar#leila del duca#Kit Seaton#My hoodie is basically the TARDIS#For small and pathetic animals#In cases of true emergency#I have been known to hold small animals in my sports bra too#Like a lady
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Day 45: Alias: Jessica Jones vol 4
I said I was going to take a break from Marvel, but I am weak and this is pretty. And, you know, hilarious. And I wholly appreciate Bendis’ comments at the end. And it gave me awkward David Tennant feelings. I’m a complex being, you see.
Also:
Heh.
#365GraphicNovels#Alias#Jessica Jones#My friend Zachy is basically Scott Lang at this point#That doesn't add much to the story#but it's still funny.
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Day 20: The Defenders vol 1: Diamonds Are Forever
It’s possible that I’m still bitter about how awkward the Netflix version of Iron Fist was and, by extension, how weird it made The Defenders. I mean, seriously, there’s no way that Danny is dumb enough to punch that waaaa... okay. Yeah. He did it. He punched it. Wow, Danny. Wow.
Anyway, this was a far more enjoyable version of all of these guys, even if the whole thing did start off with kind of a dick move on the Dudefenders’ side.
Heh. Also, Jessica gets shot twice in the course of this trade and she just keeps bouncing back and looking great. Super power what?
Also, if Luke had watched the Nat Geo special, he probably would have known that making a kid joke is a terrible idea. Whatever. Still funny.
Heh. Gary.
See. That’s all I want from my Iron Fist. Hmph.
#365GraphicNovels#The Defenders#Diamonds are Forever#Apparently my wireless hates wind#And I tend to freak out without it#Good times
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Day 8 - Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller vol 1
Reasons why I like Daredevil: Charlie Cox’s face.
Reasons why I don’t really like Daredevil: a dudebro to end all dudebros once tried to dudebro me into submission about the stupid Daredevil movie and how I shouldn’t be allowed to be excited about it because I didn’t know all of the Daredevil trivia and it was unfair that I was even going to be allowed to see it because my lady pieces kept me from knowing the original publication date of Daredevil’s different haircut, or whatever. It went on for several minutes and, much like the time I tried to manage an entire room full of Deadpool cosplayers, I could feel my rage pushing out any affection I might ever have had for the characters. And, let’s be real - the movie was terrible and I was 98% only there for Jennifer Garner. So there.
ANYWAY.
I read this thing. It is as overblown and flouncy as 80s era comics are. It is so stuffed full of Daredevil backstory. So many recaps. So many new ways to say, “Dude’s blind. Gets around okay, though. Also: lawyer.” So many ways.
Doesn’t spend too terribly much time on the fact that Matt Murdock is kind of a dick. Like. Frequently. Whatever. Hitty-hitty-thwack-thwack-thwack radar radar baton cane (seriously, there are like five diagrams of how his cane works).
But my favorite part?
So, I have taken up as one of my fanfic happy places a fic where Bucky basically uses ever-more-hilarious Russian-y exclamations and if you think I’m not going to willingly conflate the two (both Bucky here and Widow in that fic), well, pfffft.
In sum: Daredevil - acceptable. Dudebros - unacceptable. Deadpool cosplayers - avoid at all cost.
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Day 46: Symmetry
This was unexpectedly pretty and interesting from the start and I want more of all of these characters, please.
But seriously... it’s like this kind of imagery follows me around or something. Every time I see something like this, I get dissertation flashbacks. Not a bad thing. Just an interesting thing. I went on a very long ramble about the rhetorical value of these images to my dog last night. Trust me. It was brilliant.
#365GraphicNovels#Both graphic and novel! Holla!#Symmetry#Matt Hawkins#My dog really likes to listen to my theories#Mostly because I get distracted and fling pretzels when I'm talking#I mean#If I happen to be eating pretzels#Otherwise that'd be a very weird party trick
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Day 44: Aurora’s Motive
I spent the entire day in court. Because I can learn (eventually), I was sure to bring reading material this time. Because I have to look and sound like a trained professional, I had to pay particular attention to my reading material. Nothing “cartoony.” Nothing ultra violent. Nothing that would make people think that I’m anything less than an upstanding, law-abiding authority figure (er... sort of?)
Er. No.
Ooooh, yeah. Probably not.
Annnnnd probably not the best choice (though, true story: one of the most awkward hours of my life was the time I had to teach about the rhetoric of Haymarket with three lovely and wonderful plain clothes police officers in my classroom. Awk. Ward.)
Okay, yeah. This looks safe enough. Something from the time when I kept buying Vintage books because I liked how they looked on the shelf together. Score. Here we go.
Oh no...
Oh nooooo.... you guys. The courtroom was crowded. There was a lawyer sitting right behind me.
I was turning red, yes I was.
Oooooohkay. This is when I closed the book and got very interested in the corner of the room.
#365GraphicNovels#Not graphic but yes novel#Aurora's Motive#In which I burst into a flaming ball of Puritan shame#My awkwardness knows no bounds
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Day 34: Into the Tunnel
Götz Aly, through deep-dive archival work, longshot ads, and an inspiring amount of tenacity, recreates the short life of a person who was previously a name on a very long list. Aly takes Marion Samuel away from being a member of a collective back to being an individual, a person behind the few extant photographs and the names on official documentation.
We were told, ‘Everything can be taken from you; only that which you have in your head is always yours.’
There’s an echoing loss of what’s in her head - the last and most lasting thing to be taken - particularly here. We know as much as possible about the Samuels: about where Marion grew up and how she learned, what she feared and how she died. She is, thanks to Aly, now both history and potential - but there’s no way to know what was in her head, save a haunting quote attributed back to her - that “people go into a tunnel in a mountain, and along the way there is a great hole and they all fall in and disappear.” Thanks to Aly’s archival work, it’s easy to chart the upheaval in Marion’s life, to see how everything she knew was systematically taken away from her, everything she (and her family) had stripped back, until the fear of “they all fall in and disappear” becomes more pressing, more immediate, until it’s no longer a fear and is instead an outcome.
I kept wanting something to make Marion real to me, some anecdote that would bring her forward, fully formed and full of life, to heighten the tragedy of her life (and death) even more. That’s not only unrealistic, but counter to the point. After I finished this, I felt like I knew the Samuels - but, at the same time, didn’t know them at all. I knew where they lived and what they lost, where they worked and what they owed - but little else. They are, as intended, dehumanized to the point of being tallies in a ledger.
Do we lose our dignity when we remember, or do we win back our dignity precisely through the act of remembering?
#365GraphicNovels#Technically this is neither graphic nor novel#Into the Tunnel#Gotz Aly#That time I forgot to hit post#Holocaust
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Day 43: Daniel’s Story
Me, after spending most of the afternoon in the cold and the rain and the mud and the gross: “I just want something uplifting and easy to read tonight.”
Also me: “This is perfect.”
I typically don’t like school-targeted Holocaust stories because, honestly, I find the characters often cloying and inaccessible. Here, though, it feels real - age-appropriate real, of course, but with enough horror to convey the weight of the age. Daniel is an interesting counterpoint to Marion in Into the Tunnel, in that hers was a life recreated though her personality slipped away, and here Daniel is a life created and its his personality that carries the weight of the story.
But why do they think they’ll be punished? After all, don’t they believe that what they are doing is right? They are just eradicating a vile species - like cockroaches. Surely no one would punish them for that. But no, they are terrified. Does that mean they knew all along it was wrong - and they did it anyway, some for the love of killing and for the love of power, some because they were simply following orders, orders with which they agreed?
I am more determined than ever to live. I will live and I will bear witness against them. I will remember.
Also appreciated: that, at times, this pulls absolutely no punches. The set up is a bit contrived and the entry points into each section are clonky, but when it gets rolling, it gets rolling, and there are a lot of points where you’re forced to stop and consider. Some of them aren’t quite as in-your-face as the above, but it made me go, “Ohhhh snaaaaaap” (because I am nothing if not a trained professional), so... I liked it.
What’s most striking to me is the (slightly contrived) setup of this is one of looking through a photo album, or flipping through loose pictures, at each stage of this journey - I mean, obviously that’s striking to me, as that is 100% my area of interest and you basically just have to whisper “atrocity photos” near me and I will be your best friend for life (which has led to many awkward situations, but that’s neither here nor there). But, for all of the reliance on visual memory - Daniel even says that he will bear witness, as he, photographer, photographs things and people and the systematic stripping away of rights and dignity and life - for all of that, there’s not a single photograph in this book. It wasn’t necessary, I don’t think (and probably wasn’t possible, given the desired result of the described images versus what’s extant - and then you get into a mess about recreating or substituting photographs) - but it was something I noticed only about halfway through, funnily enough.
And I realized that people I knew could be in there, that they were not just bodies but each one a murdered human being.
Each person described in this book carries the weight of a murdered human being, could be a murdered human being, allows the reader to start to see people and not shapes in photographs or mental images - and that works. There were a few points that I’d quibble with, a few places where Daniel knew what hindsight only would tell, but it works for the story, and it doesn’t interrupt the value and the weight of the work, so my momentary huffiness faded quickly.
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Day 42: Green Arrow Year 1
I went through a phase while watching Arrow where I decided that I needed to be a real fan and read the comics, too. So, being 100% me, I bought a bunch of books and then realized that I was really just here for Felicity. And then I stopped watching the show altogether and hey, look! Lots of books on my shelf. Fake fan!
Ugh. See, it’s things like this... things like this, people, that make me all bitter and judgy and prone to sending angry texts sans context to my BFF.
I do like this, though. Not Ollie getting kicked in the face (although...). But, hey, how can you convey pre-island Oliver’s absolute dbaggery without (or in addition to) so many words? Cargo shorts and sandals. Heh.
#365GraphicNovels#Green Arrow#Year One#Seriously though#I watched and enjoyed the first four seasons of Arrow#And then decided that I was good#And now live on via fanfic and gifs and YouTube videos#Fandom by proxy!
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Day 41: I’m Not Leaving
Another book on a topic related to, but not overlapping, my area of expertise, so I was both intrigued (atrocity! genocide! first-person account!) and slightly hesitant (what if my lack of knowledge means I don’t *get* it like I should? Also, do I have to feel weird about missionaries?). But, as is often the case when I pick up a book about atrocity and genocide at the used book store, this one came home with me.
When figures involving the loss of life begin to enter into the thousands and hundreds of thousands, they quickly become cold statistics that often blind us more than they inform us. But when we look at individual lives through stories, we find ourselves informed in ways that will stay with us and potentially make us more whole, more human.
And it’s true (I mean, it’s always been true, but it’s doubly true in Wilkens’ book). As is the way of my people, I will now go forth and fill in the knowledge gaps that this book has exposed. While I was reading this, it was too easy to get charmed by the people - not just those about whom Wilkens writes, but also Wilkens himself (I mean, he footnotes himself to wonder if describing a group of looters as a “swarm of locusts” is to dehumanize and otherize them and I kind of love him for that). Made for a compelling read, but also shifted the focus nearly entirely from the danger of the situation - which is partially Wilkens’ stated point, but I think I fell too far on that side. Maybe, when reading something not quite so personalized, I can fall back to the people to whom Wikens introduces use and use that as a personal “in” to this atrocity.
#365GraphicNovels#Technically this is neither graphic nor novel#Carl Wilkens#I'm Not Leaving#Genocide#Rwanda#TheVisualWar
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Days 35-37
This is basically an experiment on reading too many serial comics at once. I read A-Force: Hypertime on Monday with high expectations - I like G. Willow Wilson, I like Kelly Thompson, my love for Captain Marvel can be best summed by this:
But I could just not get into this book. It felt familiar to the point of being ugh-done and it just did not work for me.
So then, on Tuesday, I tried reading another Marvel book and went with the only Spider-Man book I own (which is a lie, but only just) and, again. Too much. At once. Some of the individual stories I was here for, some of them I want to scrub out of my memory with something scratchy, and the end result was just me sitting up too late at night, pining for the Blu Ray release of Into the Spider-Verse and watching clips on YouTube.
Wenesday, and I went for World of Wakanda because I had Afua Richardson, New Personal Hero, sign it when I met her last fall. First off, she’s amazing. Totally amazing. We nerded out and it was the highlight of my day (well, okay, being all teenage-girl over Gambit + Rogue and how we both considered Black Panther to be “Storm’s boyfriend, right?” while growing up - actual highlight. But still. Huge fan). Anyway. I liked what the story was doing and I liked the steps it took, but it just felt like I was missing something. Which means, you know, more reading... but still.
It’s like listening to undergrads whine about reading Dickens, basically. If you sit down and try to read things that are published in pieces, over time, you’re going to get a different effect. I think all three of these books suffered from that in varying degrees. So, I’m on a self-imposed one week timeout from Marvel books. They’re quick and easy and generally fun, but eventually it’s like eating cookies for dinner. Yes, I can, because I’m a grown-ass adult (who hates grocery shopping with the fire of a thousand suns) but should I really? Probably not.
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Days 28-34
Day 28: Iron Patriot: Unbreakable
I have decided that we should all stop doing this, in any of its common forms:
Seriously. Movies, books, comics, whatever - stop destroying national monuments to express how *big* and *terrible* your event is. It’s been done far too many times before and - I’m just going to say it - it’s lazy writing. There are ways to evoke feelings of helplessness and terror without a huge amount of exposition. This isn’t it, though. /rant.
Day 29: Divinity
I had this tucked among a bunch of Image books, and then realized about halfway through that it’s Valiant (because I can read... or something). And I enjoyed the heck out of it. I had basically zero idea who anyone was, but... still enjoyable. Also, I couldn’t find this book this evening and basically tore my apartment apart for 45 minutes looking for it. Funny: my apartment is literally four rooms (one of which is the kitchen, which is not where we store books). Less funny: I have literally thousands of books in here. And a degree in keeping books organized. Ha ha joke’s on me - it was in the kitchen.
Day 30: Jessica Jones: Alias - vol 1
When bored and unable to sleep, I have a bad habit of buying lots of trade paperbacks on eBay. As in, “at some point last night, I bought a lot of 25 Marvel trades and that’s not intimidating, nope!” I bought a lot of the first three Marvel Max Alias trades (why not all four? I will never know) and resigned myself to drudging through the first one and then, you know, forgetting about the other two until I was scraping the barrel, looking for something to read (aka: July).
But, I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I like the repetition of the panel layout and the parallelism in the story - though, reading three volumes in four days maybe is too much, because by volume three, it was getting a little worn, but... really, any excuse to send my BFF Zachy (who is basically Scott Lang to my Clint Barton) images that both feature and mock Ant-Man is a win. Big win.
Day 31: Tales of Suspense: Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier
Basically, I love Clint Barton in a way that isn’t normal. I do like the Fractionization of him, where his absolute doofus-ery has been highlighted and embraced and they just run with it. This edges up on too far, but eh. I’m still not sure I needed to see Hawkeye pick his nose in panels, but here we are. It’s a wonderful world in which we live. Also, I have read so much fanfic about both of these characters that I am wholly unable to get an “authentic” voice/feel for either of them anymore. I am 100% okay with that.
And then we swing back around with the whole “I identify too closely with Hawkeye” thing and that’s fine, comic book - I didn’t need this emotional stability anyway. I seriously went to bed early and sulked after this which, on one hand, yay I actually mustered up an emotion, but on the other hand, damn you, book.
Ahem.
I have thoughts. And feelings. Lots of them.
Day 32: The Fuse vol 1: Russia Shift
Give me more, basically. I liked the world building, the characters, the slow feed of information, the basic concept - basically, everything except I think there was one too many surprising! and! shocking! twists! at the end. I can overlook that, though, because I’m kind of hooked now and, hey, sometimes you just want to go big. I mean. In this book. I obviously didn’t, because I own all of these issues in floppy-copies and never bothered to read them as they came out. I’m basically a hero to the people. Ugh.
Day 33 and 34: Jessica Jones: Alias vols 2 and 3
Yeah, okay, so I actually kind of got hooked and read the other two volumes in the lot. I have finished a lot of books. I am impressed by myself right now but, really, you give me swearing and sarcasm and Carol Danvers and Jessica Drew and, I mean, come on. I’m in.
Also: sex jokes. Who knew that a legit Puritan would be here for the sex jokes? Me. I knew that.
Not going to lie: I squealed. And then giggled madly. It’s a thing.
Still so helpful, Squeep.
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Day 27: A Russian Journal
This is legitimately one of my favorite books of all time. I read it while working on my dissertation, which means that I grad-school-read it, which essentially means fixing my eyes somewhere close to the pages as I scan for something that sounds clever and relevant, which I will then scoop out and plop into my own writing. Seriously. It took about three years of grad school detox before I could start reading normally again - like, reading every word, enjoying the goofy bits in addition to feeling the gravity of the important bits, reading for fun. I mean, the drugs help - but also grad school detox. Seriously a thing.
There are so many moments in here, so many comments and asides about the role of the press and the way that media are consumed - and they all feel relevant still.
For news is no longer news, at least that part of it which draws the most attention. News has become a matter of punditry. A man sitting at a desk in Washington or New York reads the cables and rearranges them to fit his own mental pattern and his by-line. What we often read as news now is not news at all but the opinion of one of half a dozen pundits as to what that news means.
Yeah, that still checks out.
And it seems to us now the most dangerous tendency in the world is the desire to believe a rumor rather than to pin down a fact.
Yep. There, too.
[In] America, and in England, a good writer is the watch-dog of society. His job is to satirize its silliness, to attack its injustices, to stigmatize its faults. And this is the reason that in America neither society nor government is very fond of writers.
Yep, sure. There’s an interesting argument to be made here. But, more pressing, I think, is the overarching argument that:
John Steinbeck is an utter shit to his friends.
And I’m not saying this because I am both a gigantic fan of Robert Capa and because I still haven’t quite forgiven Steinbeck for “The Red Pony” (aka: “How I, Horse Crazed Reader Child, Learned That Not All Stories With PONY in the Title Were Happy.”)
But, the man is absolutely (gloriously, fantastically, so transcendentally) brutal to Capa. Brutal.
Capa, who is a delicate creature, found that he began to bleed after a bath, and he took to wearing shorts in the tub.
It was here that I discovered an unpleasant quality in Capa’s nature, and I think it only right to set it down in case some young woman should ever listen to any suggestion of matrimony from him. He is a bathroom hog, and a vary curious one... I offer this information as a public service. With two bathrooms, Capa is a charming, intelligent, good-tempered companion. With one bathroom, he is a --
Seriously. Capa, who is apparently not a morning person, even took to pen a rebuttal section in the middle of the book, which is written like he’s snuck a page in Steinbeck’s notebook and slipped it into publication, but really I like to imagine these two guys - absolute titans of the arts, shapers of the world in art and literature, and absolute and devastating goobers entertaining themselves wildly when they weren’t stealing books (Capa) or whining about drinking too much vodka (Steinbeck). I love them both, and I want this entire thing made into a movie. Did I say ‘want’? I meant need. I need it.
Capa was brooding again; he had wanted to take industrial pictures, and he had not been able to. He felt that not only was this trip a failure, but that everything was a failure, that he was a failure, that I was a failure. He brooded very deeply.
Need. This. Movie.
NEED IT.
I have many further thoughts about Capa, and Russian, and Steinbeck, and memoirs, and all of that erudite stuff. But Steinbeck calls Capa a whiny, delicate thief about sixty more times, and they make dick jokes with people who are, in some cases quite literally, living in holes in the ground, and everything is a caper - and sometimes you just need that.
(almost as much as I need this movie.)
#365GraphicNovels#Robert Capa#John Steinbeck#A Russian Journal#Capa and Steinbeck#A Buddy comedy for the ages#TheVisualWar
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Day 24-26
The terrifying Paw of Justice as Squeep helps me take pictures. Spoilers: she’s the WORST.
Day 24 was my long/late day (because the weirdos like to come out on Thursday nights, without fail) and I felt like death warmed over - so, They’re Not Like Us was probably far better than I gave it credit for. I liked the idea. I liked how, like Syd, I had to pull together whatever snippets I had to figure out what the hell was going on. That might have been intentional. It might have been the fever. Who knows?! I came home and passed out and had weird dreams. Good times!
Day 25 was the second anniversary of a friend’s death, so I wanted something ridiculous and fun to read while I sat on the couch and made vague emotional eruptions toward her cat.
This was 100% the answer.
I used to steal my brother’s comic books when we were younger (I mean, even after I started getting my own - steal his, and I could read twice as many books). I always liked X-Factor because it was utterly ridiculous. I mean:
Freaking Guido. Strong Guy. The hair! The tiny feet! The fact that his name is STRONG GUY. Omg. Best. Best ever. I mean, sure, I also like Havok (Wolfsbane was my brother’s favorite). And, heck, I even liked Multiple Man. Because, again, high on ridiculous:
Heh. So, basically, this made absolutely no sense (the subtitle is a lie) but it was exactly the right book at exactly the right moment.
Right up until this point, where shit got too weird - because this looks 100% like my brother. And that’s just not okay.
Day 26: Captain America: Sam Wilson, had I read this on something other than my weekend off, would have been fantastic - because, really, who doesn’t like to hear their beliefs echoed in their comics? But, when I read this yesterday, the echo chamber was just too loud. Although... the Cap!Wolf jokes were kind of wonderful. And I still love Redwing.
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Day 22: Chosin
I know embarrassing little about the Korean War - especially given that a good part of my (way too many) years in higher ed was spent dealing with war and conflict and atrocity. It’s a thing. A thing I’m going to work on. Starting now.
This was gorgeous.
I flipped through it earlier to day, and was slightly ehhh about the art style, because it looks a little animated (surprise! there’s a reason for that) and, from that first flip-through, it just seemed like there was going to be a disconnect between the art and the subject, but happily - nope. A few pages in and I was completely hooked as far as story and character and the exaggerated faces made sense for the characters. Particularly with French, or as I kept referring to him, “Shrinky Steve”
Be more Steve, tiny French. Be more Steve.
There’s something so wonderful and so captivating about the juxtaposition between serious, heavy topics and “light” expression, like with comics/graphic narrative.
It’s like - “aw, adorable cartoon children with the big eyes and the floppy hat!”, coupled with a nice dose of, “dear god think of what we did/are doing/will almost certainly do in the future to children and everyone who has seen conflict and war.” Little brother Jae-Sun here is a pair of ears and a catchy solo away from being Fievel here - except for that whole “watched his father die and saw so much more death after.” Sorry about your childhood, kid! It’s a horrifying thought, but comics gives you a reasonable safe distance to examine it. Mostly.
Most excellently, the fantastic French has a short animated film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJDX2_ZISj0
Because one of the few things that I love more than graphic narrative about conflict is narrative about conflict translated to multiple media platforms.
#365GraphicNovels#Chosin#Richard C Meyer#Brian Iglesias#Veterans Expeditionary Media#Korean War#Conflict and Art#I have thoughts about both
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