Book Logging (Comics)
Mar. 10th, 2020 12:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckThis is partial log, titles A-C only. I'm chipping away at these. I go through a lot of comics/graphic novels because they tend to be fast reads and not to strain my wrists and hands as much.
I'm hoping to have more later today or some time tomorrow.
The Adventures of Barry Ween Boy Genius - Barry Ween is an elementary schooler with a mental capacity and general knowledge that make him functionally the most intelligent person on the planet. He's got adult understanding and impulse control and a tendency to distract his parents by encouraging them to have sex (the library catalogued this as an adult graphic novel. I assume it's the sex and the number of times that Barry says 'fuck.' This book has multiple different stories, mostly involving gadgets and mad science.
Alice: From Dream to Dream - I think this is a one-shot, but it also felt like a lot of set up for a not very large payoff. Alice and her older brother share dreams, and there are ghosts and issues of family history/mysteries.
Animus - This is an odd and creepy paranormal story involving a haunted playground with bad things happening to kids. Two friends set out to figure out what's going on. I wasn't 100% sold on the ending in as much as I felt that one character's decisions came out of the blue.
By Night 1 - This volume is all set up and no resolution. In an abandoned industrial complex, two women find a gateway into another world. They go through and get sent back. They go through again. I didn't feel a strong connection to the characters and their motivations, though, and I'm not sure I'd care if I never found out what was actually going on.
Case Closed 51-62 - There are more shards of the Black Organization plot here, but it's mostly stand-alone mysteries with the bizarrely complicated murders. I think that this is a series that a reader could jump into anywhere because there's an explanation of the underlying plot gimmick at the beginning of every volume.
Castle in the Stars 3: The Knights of Mars - The art in this series is very pretty. I would very much like to read the whole series all at once because I had difficulty reorienting myself for this volume. I'm not sure if I've forgotten details of v.1-2 or if certain things happened off page and/or between volumes. This is a steampunk universe with aether and interplanetary travel. The focus is early 20th century Europe with various powers fighting for the secrets of space.
Chasma Knights - I know I read this, and the cover and the blurb in the library catalogue look familiar, but I have zero sense of what I thought about the book. The art's cute. I think there's a find what you're good at and embrace it message along with a let's make friends message.
City of Light, City of Dark - This has a magical quest in an urban setting with an ancient pact that most of the human world has forgotten. The magic creatures that truly own the city set a challenge for the humans who live there. If the challenge isn't met, everyone will abruptly be evicted. There's treachery and selfishness and someone who's convinced that breaking the pact will give him vast amounts of power.
Cleopatra in Space 5: Fallen Empires - It's been months, but I think this volume had a lot of non-Cleopatra backstory. It also had treachery and massive levels of destruction.
Started but not finished:
Akissi - This was a little too much like a sitcom in terms of the humor and story elements. I just wasn't prepared to deal with it.
August Moon - I had issues with the intersection of the art style with the story elements in terms of things I thought were coming.
The Big Book of Losers - I got about two pages in and felt my shoulder muscles tightening, so I bailed. Those two pages were panel after panel of different scenarios in which human beings are assholes to each other. I gave myself three days to consider reading more and decided that it wasn't worthwhile. I'm not even sure why the book was on my list of things to try. Then again, I add a lot of things to the comics/graphic novels list of library stuff because they're not usually a big time investment.
Bloom - I think this does its thing perfectly well; it's just that I didn't want to read something of the sort during the window while I had it from the library. It's a kid, just out of high school, trying to figure out his life and screwing it up and having parts of it just not work. He's got a romance with another guy, but part of the screwing things up is the protagonist being kind of terrible to his love interest. I was trying to read it while life complications were raining down on me, and I wasn't feeling sympathetic to the kid.
The Castafiore Emerald - This is a Tintin book. I stopped in the first dozen pages because the racism was too much for me. I only got that far because I kept hoping that I'd get past that bit and find a section that didn't show off nastiness. I wasn't surprised to find it there, though, so I feel like it's my own fault for venturing in to begin with. Some of the Tintin books are readable as far as overt racism goes simply because they don't include anyone who isn't western European and therefore don't showcase the problems.
Chronin 1 - The idea of this series-- history students traveling back in time and getting stuck in the middle of a changing timeline-- isn't original, but it's something I generally like. That part of this isn't badly executed, and the bit of history is one not much explored in things written in English-- the civil war in Japan that led to the Meiji Restoration. I didn't like the art much. Partly, I had trouble tracking which character was which, and partly, I think I was missing a lot of visual details that might have helped me track setting. There's a waitlist, so I needed to return this without finishing it. I will likely pick up book 2 if the library gets it.
I'm hoping to have more later today or some time tomorrow.
The Adventures of Barry Ween Boy Genius - Barry Ween is an elementary schooler with a mental capacity and general knowledge that make him functionally the most intelligent person on the planet. He's got adult understanding and impulse control and a tendency to distract his parents by encouraging them to have sex (the library catalogued this as an adult graphic novel. I assume it's the sex and the number of times that Barry says 'fuck.' This book has multiple different stories, mostly involving gadgets and mad science.
Alice: From Dream to Dream - I think this is a one-shot, but it also felt like a lot of set up for a not very large payoff. Alice and her older brother share dreams, and there are ghosts and issues of family history/mysteries.
Animus - This is an odd and creepy paranormal story involving a haunted playground with bad things happening to kids. Two friends set out to figure out what's going on. I wasn't 100% sold on the ending in as much as I felt that one character's decisions came out of the blue.
By Night 1 - This volume is all set up and no resolution. In an abandoned industrial complex, two women find a gateway into another world. They go through and get sent back. They go through again. I didn't feel a strong connection to the characters and their motivations, though, and I'm not sure I'd care if I never found out what was actually going on.
Case Closed 51-62 - There are more shards of the Black Organization plot here, but it's mostly stand-alone mysteries with the bizarrely complicated murders. I think that this is a series that a reader could jump into anywhere because there's an explanation of the underlying plot gimmick at the beginning of every volume.
Castle in the Stars 3: The Knights of Mars - The art in this series is very pretty. I would very much like to read the whole series all at once because I had difficulty reorienting myself for this volume. I'm not sure if I've forgotten details of v.1-2 or if certain things happened off page and/or between volumes. This is a steampunk universe with aether and interplanetary travel. The focus is early 20th century Europe with various powers fighting for the secrets of space.
Chasma Knights - I know I read this, and the cover and the blurb in the library catalogue look familiar, but I have zero sense of what I thought about the book. The art's cute. I think there's a find what you're good at and embrace it message along with a let's make friends message.
City of Light, City of Dark - This has a magical quest in an urban setting with an ancient pact that most of the human world has forgotten. The magic creatures that truly own the city set a challenge for the humans who live there. If the challenge isn't met, everyone will abruptly be evicted. There's treachery and selfishness and someone who's convinced that breaking the pact will give him vast amounts of power.
Cleopatra in Space 5: Fallen Empires - It's been months, but I think this volume had a lot of non-Cleopatra backstory. It also had treachery and massive levels of destruction.
Started but not finished:
Akissi - This was a little too much like a sitcom in terms of the humor and story elements. I just wasn't prepared to deal with it.
August Moon - I had issues with the intersection of the art style with the story elements in terms of things I thought were coming.
The Big Book of Losers - I got about two pages in and felt my shoulder muscles tightening, so I bailed. Those two pages were panel after panel of different scenarios in which human beings are assholes to each other. I gave myself three days to consider reading more and decided that it wasn't worthwhile. I'm not even sure why the book was on my list of things to try. Then again, I add a lot of things to the comics/graphic novels list of library stuff because they're not usually a big time investment.
Bloom - I think this does its thing perfectly well; it's just that I didn't want to read something of the sort during the window while I had it from the library. It's a kid, just out of high school, trying to figure out his life and screwing it up and having parts of it just not work. He's got a romance with another guy, but part of the screwing things up is the protagonist being kind of terrible to his love interest. I was trying to read it while life complications were raining down on me, and I wasn't feeling sympathetic to the kid.
The Castafiore Emerald - This is a Tintin book. I stopped in the first dozen pages because the racism was too much for me. I only got that far because I kept hoping that I'd get past that bit and find a section that didn't show off nastiness. I wasn't surprised to find it there, though, so I feel like it's my own fault for venturing in to begin with. Some of the Tintin books are readable as far as overt racism goes simply because they don't include anyone who isn't western European and therefore don't showcase the problems.
Chronin 1 - The idea of this series-- history students traveling back in time and getting stuck in the middle of a changing timeline-- isn't original, but it's something I generally like. That part of this isn't badly executed, and the bit of history is one not much explored in things written in English-- the civil war in Japan that led to the Meiji Restoration. I didn't like the art much. Partly, I had trouble tracking which character was which, and partly, I think I was missing a lot of visual details that might have helped me track setting. There's a waitlist, so I needed to return this without finishing it. I will likely pick up book 2 if the library gets it.
