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Book Logging (Comics)
D-M titles.
Dawn Land - This is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Joseph Bruchac. Bruchac's novel was based on Abenaki creation stories. This has some gory bits because the monsters eat people.There's definitely attempted rape and may be some implied rape that I'm forgetting given that the would-be rapist goes off and helps the monsters.
DC Super Hero Girls: Date with Disaster - I don't remember the plot particularly at this point, but I did enjoy it a lot. The only reason I haven't read more in the series is that there are waitlists. Everything I've seen in the series has been cute and centered on the female characters and their interactions with each other.
DC Super Hero Girls: Out of the Bottle - Magic paint used in a class project makes darker versions of various characters come to life.
DC Super Hero Girls: Search for Atlantis - Brainiac steals the city of Atlantis, and the girls have to figure out how to save it.
Death Wins a Goldfish: Reflections from a Grim Reaper's Yearlong Sabbatical - The art here was a bit scribbly and not really to my taste. The story was kind of picaresque and followed a hooded, skeletal figure forced to use up accumulated vacation time by the bureaucracy that employs them. Death doesn't comprehend human modes of relaxation but tries travel and amusement parks and such. It's a five minute read.
The Deep & Dark Blue - Siblings fleeing after a coup take refuge among an all-women religious order. One of the kids is focused on trying to reclaim their position while the other is finding a place for herself as the girl she always felt herself to be. There's textile based magic here. I thought it was pretty well done.
Edison Beaker, Creature Seeker v.1: The Night Door - This has a reasonably complete story that sets up the potential for more stories. The protagonist and his sister and his uncle end up in a magical underworld. It's part of the uncle's job; the kids aren't supposed to be involved. There's a quest of sorts and monsters that are moderately scary (but would get scarier if a reader thought too deeply about them). Given that the book is aimed at elementary school age kids, that's appropriate.
The ElseWhere Chronicles Book One: The Shadow Door - This is a portal fantasy set up with the secondary world on the edge of complete disaster (but middle grade appropriate). There are at least five books in the series, but the library lacks v.2, so I haven't gone on yet.
Estranged - A coup prompts a fairy-raised human boy to seek out the changeling left in his place. That changeling doesn't want to have his life and family disrupted, but the boys have to work together in order to deal with the threat. This could stand alone or could set up for sequels. I found it satisfying as it stood.
5 Worlds, book 3: The Red Maze - Once again, the worldbuilding gets more complicated, and the characters have internal and external issues to deal with. I'm curious to see how the story ends. At that point, I think I'll want to reread. With volumes coming so infrequently, this is one of those series that I enjoy but lose the thread of plot and character and such thoroughly between volumes.
Flight 1 - This is an anthology of short comics. I liked some and disliked others. There were also several that I couldn't comprehend at all because I couldn't parse the art.
Flight Explorer 1 - This is an anthology of shorts by different authors. I liked some and didn't like others. None of them ran very long, so even the ones I wasn't into didn't become slogs.
Glen Baxter Returns to Normal - Collection of single panel comics. These were a little hit or miss for me in as much as there were some that I just didn't quite get and some that were too surreal for me to appreciate even though I did (I think) get them. Some were funny, and the time investment was small. I can't say that I remembered any of them particularly even ten minutes after I closed the book. YMMV.
Golden Kamuy 1-3 - I got each volume of this out after a long time gap, and each time, I finished the book intrigued by the setting and characters but not wanting to go back because of the graphic violence. Hopefully, I'll remember this time and not bother with v.4 onward. I think that this series wasn't helped by the fact that I just fundamentally don't get going to that much trouble to find gold.
Hasib and the Queen of Serpents - This is an adaptation of stories from 1001 Nights. I'm not 100% sold on the art style (personal taste), but the colors are eye-catching.
Hex Vet: Witches in Training - I'm not clear whether this is meant to be a standalone or the start of a series. I think it works either way. This volume was middle grade appropriate, and the library has it in the children's collection. The main characters are vets in training in a practice that treats magical creatures.
Hilda and the Mountain King - This is the second half of a two-parter. That is, the previous book in the series ended with a cliffhanger, with Hilda having been turned into a troll and taken by a mother troll who wants Hilda's mother to take care of her own child.
Hilo 1: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth; Hilo 2: Saving the Whole Wide World; Hilo 3: The Great Big Boom; Hilo 4: Waking the Monsters; Hilo 5: Then Everything Went Wrong - The title character is an android from another world. In the first book, he crashes to Earth and makes friends with a couple of kids. At that point, he doesn't even know he's an android. From there, the adventures pile on top of each other. The kids from Earth have more POV focus. Volume by volume, the plots work and the arc builds. I'm on the waitlist for v.6 which the library just bought. I'm looking forward to it.
House of Five Leaves 1 - I don't like the way that the artist draws faces or how the heads and necks connect. I didn't manage to let go of that as I read even though I was interested in characters, setting, and story. Since I have to go through interlibrary loan to get the series, I'm not sure it's worth pursuing. The story focuses on a down-on-his-luck former samurai who falls in with a criminal gang. It's not clear in this volume why they'd bother with him. He's reluctant to work with them and mainly drawn by a desperate need for enough food to survive. He doesn't really have useful skills (though he does have a sword and know how to use it).
Jane, the Fox & Me - This is intertwines the protagonist's everyday experiences with her impressions of reading Jane Eyre. The everyday stuff is all in shades of gray and beige. Jane's bits get more color, reds and browns and blues but still sort of subdued. The protagonist is a teen who's being bullied at school by people who attack her by calling her fat. She internalizes that in ways that may bother some readers but that are fairly realistic.
Kakuriyo Bed & Breakfast for Spirits 1-5 - A girl who can see spirits gets kidnapped and informed that she's inherited her grandfather's debts. She can either work them off or marry the powerful being who has abducted her. She's determined to avoid marriage, but she also gets a lot of hostility based on things her grandfather did and on her being human. I felt better about the series when her abductor let her go back to the human world. She's pretty clear that she could simply not go back, but she chooses to because she doesn't have any remaining ties in the human world. But she remains determined to earn money to pay her grandfather's debts. There's a lot of cooking detail here in a way that reminds me of how cooking is integrated into What Did You Eat Yesterday?
Lucy & Andy Neanderthal: Bad to the Bones - This is the third volume in the series. I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the first two. I'm not sure if it's just that I was in migraine hangover while reading or if it wasn't as good as the first two (or as good but just more of the same when I wanted something different). This one did a lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge anachronisms that grated rather than coming across to me as funny.
Lumberjanes: Bonus Tracks; Lumberjanes: The Shape of Friendship; Lumberjanes 10: Parents' Day; Lumberjanes 11: Time After Crime; Lumberjanes 12: Jackalope Springs Eternal; Lumberjanes 13: Indoor Recess - I still really enjoy these. I'm even starting to remember the character names and attach them to the correct people. I don't actually care if there's ever a unified explanation of all the weirdness in and around the camp. No, that's not true. I actively don't want an explanation. Any explanation would undercut the stories.
Mighty Jack and Zita the Spacegirl - This is a crossover set after both series and isn't likely to make sense without having read both. Apart from that, it's pretty much what it says on the tin. Jack knows magical threats; Zita knows space threats. This challenge needs both. I liked it. I enjoyed seeing all of the characters again.
Modesty Blaise: The Black Pearl; Modesty Blaise: The Girl in the Iron Mask; Modesty Blaise: Lady in the Dark; Modesty Blaise: Million Dollar Game; Modesty Blaise: Yellowstone Booty - I'm not sure how these read for newcomers who may wonder about racism, colonialism, homophobia, etc. I still like the stories a lot, but I first met the characters in the early 80s. I'm there to see shenanigans with Modesty and Willie demolishing villains who think they've got the upper hand. I'm also attached to Modesty as a character who did things female characters didn't normally get to do. These collections have series done by several different artists, and sometimes, comparing the art was interesting.
My Hero Academia 11-16 - My difficulty with this series is that I've read long AU fics that do the characters better than what I find here. I keep expecting the series to do better with superhero tropes than it does even though it mostly does okay. v.16 is the most recent that the library currently has, and that's also frustrating because I've read a lot of stuff that refers to later canon. I'd like to see how canon treats those events so that I know what's fanon.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes 2-6 - I'm still enjoying this series which is in the same universe as the title above but written by someone else. It's looking at different characters and from a very different point of view than the main series does. The main characters here have smaller powers and are breaking the law every time they use their powers in public.
Started but not finished:
Durarara 1 - I've now tried this twice. I don't think I'll try again. I simply can't follow what's going on or find it in me to care.
Four Sisters v.1: Enid - I found the art horribly creepy and only made it about three pages in. I just couldn't read it. I'm pretty sure that the characters weren't supposed to make me wonder if they were, say, ghouls or aliens or something.
Lowriders Blast from the Past - I didn't hate this or anything. I just was kind of bored, and I didn't like the art much. The story was aimed pretty young, and I kind of ran aground on the idea of anthropomorphic mosquito as one of the protagonists.
Making Friends - I liked the premise of this, and, when I read the last few pages, I liked how the story wound up. I just couldn't get through the middle parts where the main character made all the mistakes. I may try it again when I'm feeling more like I can handle the emotional work.
Moomins - This volume is overwhelmingly physically heavy. It's the length and width of my laptop and about three inches thick. It collects all of Lars Jansson's comics. I found the sheer quantity too much as well. The humor grated after a couple dozen strips, and there was rather too much Moominpapa for my taste. I read about half of this which was more than 200 pages. There was a waitlist, so I had to return it. I'd much rather have this in smaller/shorter volumes.
Dawn Land - This is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Joseph Bruchac. Bruchac's novel was based on Abenaki creation stories. This has some gory bits because the monsters eat people.There's definitely attempted rape and may be some implied rape that I'm forgetting given that the would-be rapist goes off and helps the monsters.
DC Super Hero Girls: Date with Disaster - I don't remember the plot particularly at this point, but I did enjoy it a lot. The only reason I haven't read more in the series is that there are waitlists. Everything I've seen in the series has been cute and centered on the female characters and their interactions with each other.
DC Super Hero Girls: Out of the Bottle - Magic paint used in a class project makes darker versions of various characters come to life.
DC Super Hero Girls: Search for Atlantis - Brainiac steals the city of Atlantis, and the girls have to figure out how to save it.
Death Wins a Goldfish: Reflections from a Grim Reaper's Yearlong Sabbatical - The art here was a bit scribbly and not really to my taste. The story was kind of picaresque and followed a hooded, skeletal figure forced to use up accumulated vacation time by the bureaucracy that employs them. Death doesn't comprehend human modes of relaxation but tries travel and amusement parks and such. It's a five minute read.
The Deep & Dark Blue - Siblings fleeing after a coup take refuge among an all-women religious order. One of the kids is focused on trying to reclaim their position while the other is finding a place for herself as the girl she always felt herself to be. There's textile based magic here. I thought it was pretty well done.
Edison Beaker, Creature Seeker v.1: The Night Door - This has a reasonably complete story that sets up the potential for more stories. The protagonist and his sister and his uncle end up in a magical underworld. It's part of the uncle's job; the kids aren't supposed to be involved. There's a quest of sorts and monsters that are moderately scary (but would get scarier if a reader thought too deeply about them). Given that the book is aimed at elementary school age kids, that's appropriate.
The ElseWhere Chronicles Book One: The Shadow Door - This is a portal fantasy set up with the secondary world on the edge of complete disaster (but middle grade appropriate). There are at least five books in the series, but the library lacks v.2, so I haven't gone on yet.
Estranged - A coup prompts a fairy-raised human boy to seek out the changeling left in his place. That changeling doesn't want to have his life and family disrupted, but the boys have to work together in order to deal with the threat. This could stand alone or could set up for sequels. I found it satisfying as it stood.
5 Worlds, book 3: The Red Maze - Once again, the worldbuilding gets more complicated, and the characters have internal and external issues to deal with. I'm curious to see how the story ends. At that point, I think I'll want to reread. With volumes coming so infrequently, this is one of those series that I enjoy but lose the thread of plot and character and such thoroughly between volumes.
Flight 1 - This is an anthology of short comics. I liked some and disliked others. There were also several that I couldn't comprehend at all because I couldn't parse the art.
Flight Explorer 1 - This is an anthology of shorts by different authors. I liked some and didn't like others. None of them ran very long, so even the ones I wasn't into didn't become slogs.
Glen Baxter Returns to Normal - Collection of single panel comics. These were a little hit or miss for me in as much as there were some that I just didn't quite get and some that were too surreal for me to appreciate even though I did (I think) get them. Some were funny, and the time investment was small. I can't say that I remembered any of them particularly even ten minutes after I closed the book. YMMV.
Golden Kamuy 1-3 - I got each volume of this out after a long time gap, and each time, I finished the book intrigued by the setting and characters but not wanting to go back because of the graphic violence. Hopefully, I'll remember this time and not bother with v.4 onward. I think that this series wasn't helped by the fact that I just fundamentally don't get going to that much trouble to find gold.
Hasib and the Queen of Serpents - This is an adaptation of stories from 1001 Nights. I'm not 100% sold on the art style (personal taste), but the colors are eye-catching.
Hex Vet: Witches in Training - I'm not clear whether this is meant to be a standalone or the start of a series. I think it works either way. This volume was middle grade appropriate, and the library has it in the children's collection. The main characters are vets in training in a practice that treats magical creatures.
Hilda and the Mountain King - This is the second half of a two-parter. That is, the previous book in the series ended with a cliffhanger, with Hilda having been turned into a troll and taken by a mother troll who wants Hilda's mother to take care of her own child.
Hilo 1: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth; Hilo 2: Saving the Whole Wide World; Hilo 3: The Great Big Boom; Hilo 4: Waking the Monsters; Hilo 5: Then Everything Went Wrong - The title character is an android from another world. In the first book, he crashes to Earth and makes friends with a couple of kids. At that point, he doesn't even know he's an android. From there, the adventures pile on top of each other. The kids from Earth have more POV focus. Volume by volume, the plots work and the arc builds. I'm on the waitlist for v.6 which the library just bought. I'm looking forward to it.
House of Five Leaves 1 - I don't like the way that the artist draws faces or how the heads and necks connect. I didn't manage to let go of that as I read even though I was interested in characters, setting, and story. Since I have to go through interlibrary loan to get the series, I'm not sure it's worth pursuing. The story focuses on a down-on-his-luck former samurai who falls in with a criminal gang. It's not clear in this volume why they'd bother with him. He's reluctant to work with them and mainly drawn by a desperate need for enough food to survive. He doesn't really have useful skills (though he does have a sword and know how to use it).
Jane, the Fox & Me - This is intertwines the protagonist's everyday experiences with her impressions of reading Jane Eyre. The everyday stuff is all in shades of gray and beige. Jane's bits get more color, reds and browns and blues but still sort of subdued. The protagonist is a teen who's being bullied at school by people who attack her by calling her fat. She internalizes that in ways that may bother some readers but that are fairly realistic.
Kakuriyo Bed & Breakfast for Spirits 1-5 - A girl who can see spirits gets kidnapped and informed that she's inherited her grandfather's debts. She can either work them off or marry the powerful being who has abducted her. She's determined to avoid marriage, but she also gets a lot of hostility based on things her grandfather did and on her being human. I felt better about the series when her abductor let her go back to the human world. She's pretty clear that she could simply not go back, but she chooses to because she doesn't have any remaining ties in the human world. But she remains determined to earn money to pay her grandfather's debts. There's a lot of cooking detail here in a way that reminds me of how cooking is integrated into What Did You Eat Yesterday?
Lucy & Andy Neanderthal: Bad to the Bones - This is the third volume in the series. I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the first two. I'm not sure if it's just that I was in migraine hangover while reading or if it wasn't as good as the first two (or as good but just more of the same when I wanted something different). This one did a lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge anachronisms that grated rather than coming across to me as funny.
Lumberjanes: Bonus Tracks; Lumberjanes: The Shape of Friendship; Lumberjanes 10: Parents' Day; Lumberjanes 11: Time After Crime; Lumberjanes 12: Jackalope Springs Eternal; Lumberjanes 13: Indoor Recess - I still really enjoy these. I'm even starting to remember the character names and attach them to the correct people. I don't actually care if there's ever a unified explanation of all the weirdness in and around the camp. No, that's not true. I actively don't want an explanation. Any explanation would undercut the stories.
Mighty Jack and Zita the Spacegirl - This is a crossover set after both series and isn't likely to make sense without having read both. Apart from that, it's pretty much what it says on the tin. Jack knows magical threats; Zita knows space threats. This challenge needs both. I liked it. I enjoyed seeing all of the characters again.
Modesty Blaise: The Black Pearl; Modesty Blaise: The Girl in the Iron Mask; Modesty Blaise: Lady in the Dark; Modesty Blaise: Million Dollar Game; Modesty Blaise: Yellowstone Booty - I'm not sure how these read for newcomers who may wonder about racism, colonialism, homophobia, etc. I still like the stories a lot, but I first met the characters in the early 80s. I'm there to see shenanigans with Modesty and Willie demolishing villains who think they've got the upper hand. I'm also attached to Modesty as a character who did things female characters didn't normally get to do. These collections have series done by several different artists, and sometimes, comparing the art was interesting.
My Hero Academia 11-16 - My difficulty with this series is that I've read long AU fics that do the characters better than what I find here. I keep expecting the series to do better with superhero tropes than it does even though it mostly does okay. v.16 is the most recent that the library currently has, and that's also frustrating because I've read a lot of stuff that refers to later canon. I'd like to see how canon treats those events so that I know what's fanon.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes 2-6 - I'm still enjoying this series which is in the same universe as the title above but written by someone else. It's looking at different characters and from a very different point of view than the main series does. The main characters here have smaller powers and are breaking the law every time they use their powers in public.
Started but not finished:
Durarara 1 - I've now tried this twice. I don't think I'll try again. I simply can't follow what's going on or find it in me to care.
Four Sisters v.1: Enid - I found the art horribly creepy and only made it about three pages in. I just couldn't read it. I'm pretty sure that the characters weren't supposed to make me wonder if they were, say, ghouls or aliens or something.
Lowriders Blast from the Past - I didn't hate this or anything. I just was kind of bored, and I didn't like the art much. The story was aimed pretty young, and I kind of ran aground on the idea of anthropomorphic mosquito as one of the protagonists.
Making Friends - I liked the premise of this, and, when I read the last few pages, I liked how the story wound up. I just couldn't get through the middle parts where the main character made all the mistakes. I may try it again when I'm feeling more like I can handle the emotional work.
Moomins - This volume is overwhelmingly physically heavy. It's the length and width of my laptop and about three inches thick. It collects all of Lars Jansson's comics. I found the sheer quantity too much as well. The humor grated after a couple dozen strips, and there was rather too much Moominpapa for my taste. I read about half of this which was more than 200 pages. There was a waitlist, so I had to return it. I'd much rather have this in smaller/shorter volumes.