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Book Logging (Comics)
Aster and the Accidental Magic - This reminded me a little bit of the Hilda books. It's set in a world that's both like and unexpectedly unlike ours. Aster, unlike Hilda, is a city girl forced into the country. The trouble that Aster gets into is also more potentially apocalyptic than most of Hilda does. First, Aster learns about the risks of wishes granted by malicious or mischievous beings. Later, Aster learns about magical balances and cycles. I would definitely read more about Aster and/or her world.
Bingo Love - This is both sweet and heartbreaking. I love that these two women find each other and still love each other after 50 years apart and that they get to be together at that point. I'm just so heartbroken for them as teenagers (in the 1960s) when they were forced apart and for them during five decades of trying to be happy with men they didn't love. I like that the story didn't make dealing with their children simple. The shorts after the main story were also excellent.
DC Super Hero Girls: Past Times at Super Hero High - Taking these characters on a field trip through time seems like a terrible terrible idea, but the school does it anyway. Not too surprisingly, the world they return to is different from the one they left. They have to make a couple of tries at fixing the timeline.
Drug & Drop 1-2 - I've had these volumes for quite a while, but I hadn't been able to make myself open them. Part of that is me not really being enthusiastic about going on with another (probably permanently) incomplete series. Part of that is me not remembering very much about Legal Drug. These two volumes gave a few slivers more of backstory for the characters.
Elsewhere Chronicles Book Two: The Shadow Spies - I don't know that I'll go on with this series because I need to use interlibrary loan for it. I suspect that we won't have that option for many months. This volume took less than ten minutes to read and didn't move the story forward much. All four of the kids from Earth ended up together as they look for a way home. None of them are good at planning or at listening to the directions they've been given. It's like none of them have ever read a fairy tale.
Hicotea - The art in this is so very pretty, and each picture has enough detail that I kept finding new things. A girl's class goes on a field trip to a wetland, and she falls into a universe inside a turtle's shell. It's not clear how much is real or what sort of real it might be, and I think that made the story work better.
Hilo 6: All The Pieces Fit - All of the pieces set up in previous volumes come together here. Hilo and his friends face the villain. Magic from another dimension plays a part. Izzy is heartbreaking.
Invisible Kingdom v.1: Walking the Path - This is a science fiction story, and given the ending, I'm sure it's meant to be a long serial. The big bads are a secret coalition of big corporations and a powerful religious group that, officially, holds tenets completely in opposition to corporate goals. One main character is a novice in the religious organization who discovers financial information that she shouldn't, and the other main character is a freighter captain who has accidentally discovered that her cargo isn't what it ought to be. The novice ends up on the freighter, and she and the crew do their best to disappear. And the book ends. I'm not sure whether or not I'll read more if/when the library gets it. The setting and the tone of the story aren't really my jam. I suspect that people who like this sort of thing will like this comic.
The Okay Witch - The 'okay' part is in contrast to both 'good' and 'bad' as applied to witches. The adolescent protagonist manifests magic, and her mother admits that it's a family trait but adds that magic is bad and must never be used. The protagonist doesn't understand that. Then the grandmother she's never met before comes to visit to encourage her to explore her powers. The grandmother leads a community of witches that fled to another dimension during the 17th century (they're immortal in that world). She believes that those with magic can't live safely among humans. The protagonist's mother believes that cutting themselves off from all contact with the greater world is a mistake. All three of these women are black. That's never directly referenced not in a way that's explicit enough to be clear to a lot of white readers in the target age group. The grandmother says that certain witches (referencing a couple of white witches by name) could live safely in the human world but that witches like herself, her daughter, and her granddaughter couldn't and can't. I'm pretty sure that any black readers will get it without it being spelled out. Spelling it out would be potentially anvil-like for those readers, so it may be that the author was mostly aiming mostly at that audience. This is not a bad thing; I just think there's important subtext there that my daughter wouldn't have understood when she was in the target age group; white parents might need to point it out to their kids after the book's been read. There's also more to the book-- witch hunters and evil spirits and local politics.
Phoebe and Her Unicorn 11: Camping with Unicorns - I'm still enjoying these comics. Phoebe and Marigold are a delight and very funny together. I'm still reminded of Calvin & Hobbes, but the fact that other characters also interact with non-human creatures changes the dynamic a lot.
Princeless 7: Find Yourself - The plot beyond Adrienne's quest to save her sisters is starting to become clearer. Also, this is a demonstration of why it's a bad idea to yell at your dragon to go away forever when you're in the middle of desert.
Princeless 8: Princesses - This volume collects one-off stories about Adrienne's older sisters, stories that cover some events before she came looking for them and storie that cover some events after.
Sea Sirens: A Trot & Cap'n Bill Adventure - The story here was cute, and I mostly liked the art. Only mostly because I kept staring at the noses and feeling like the color contrast with the rest of the faces was off. Trot and her cat, Cap'n Bill, like to surf while her grandfather fishes off the nearby pier. This is as much about Trot keeping an eye on her grandfather as about him keeping an eye on her; his memory is going, and he's not always sure where he is. Fishing is relatively safe because oceans and piers are constants that don't confuse him. Trot's single mother works long hours and needs both of them to help out. The the girl, the cat, and the grandfather end up in an underwater world, complete with warring species. I have returned the book and can't check, but I think Trot's grandfather sometimes (always?) speaks Vietnamese. I might be misremembering the specific language, though, but I know that it was identified inside the story.
Snow White with the Red Hair 5 - The heroine receives an invitation to a banquet in her home country. She's ordered to attend and spends the intervening time learning etiquette and dancing so that her behavior can reflect well on her new home. This volume runs from her receiving the invitation up to her first day as a guest.
Unshelved: Frequently Asked Questions; Unshelved: Unshelved - Our library has a number of these available online. I had read many of them before, but I still enjoyed the library humor. I only worked public service in a library during my senior year in high school, but some things about libraries (mostly the people) don't change much. I may have read more than just these two books during the time when I couldn't get new library books, but I'm not 100% sure.
Started but not finished:
Fair Voyage - I regret not finishing this, but I had difficulty with both the color palette and the text size. The art is in shades of blue and gray, and I had trouble seeing lines between different parts of each panel. The text looks hand printed and is variable in size, often squeezed down further at the end of a bubble. I didn't even make it halfway through before I gave up due to eyestrain. The story involved a fantasy setting with nearly extinct elven royalty.
Bingo Love - This is both sweet and heartbreaking. I love that these two women find each other and still love each other after 50 years apart and that they get to be together at that point. I'm just so heartbroken for them as teenagers (in the 1960s) when they were forced apart and for them during five decades of trying to be happy with men they didn't love. I like that the story didn't make dealing with their children simple. The shorts after the main story were also excellent.
DC Super Hero Girls: Past Times at Super Hero High - Taking these characters on a field trip through time seems like a terrible terrible idea, but the school does it anyway. Not too surprisingly, the world they return to is different from the one they left. They have to make a couple of tries at fixing the timeline.
Drug & Drop 1-2 - I've had these volumes for quite a while, but I hadn't been able to make myself open them. Part of that is me not really being enthusiastic about going on with another (probably permanently) incomplete series. Part of that is me not remembering very much about Legal Drug. These two volumes gave a few slivers more of backstory for the characters.
Elsewhere Chronicles Book Two: The Shadow Spies - I don't know that I'll go on with this series because I need to use interlibrary loan for it. I suspect that we won't have that option for many months. This volume took less than ten minutes to read and didn't move the story forward much. All four of the kids from Earth ended up together as they look for a way home. None of them are good at planning or at listening to the directions they've been given. It's like none of them have ever read a fairy tale.
Hicotea - The art in this is so very pretty, and each picture has enough detail that I kept finding new things. A girl's class goes on a field trip to a wetland, and she falls into a universe inside a turtle's shell. It's not clear how much is real or what sort of real it might be, and I think that made the story work better.
Hilo 6: All The Pieces Fit - All of the pieces set up in previous volumes come together here. Hilo and his friends face the villain. Magic from another dimension plays a part. Izzy is heartbreaking.
Invisible Kingdom v.1: Walking the Path - This is a science fiction story, and given the ending, I'm sure it's meant to be a long serial. The big bads are a secret coalition of big corporations and a powerful religious group that, officially, holds tenets completely in opposition to corporate goals. One main character is a novice in the religious organization who discovers financial information that she shouldn't, and the other main character is a freighter captain who has accidentally discovered that her cargo isn't what it ought to be. The novice ends up on the freighter, and she and the crew do their best to disappear. And the book ends. I'm not sure whether or not I'll read more if/when the library gets it. The setting and the tone of the story aren't really my jam. I suspect that people who like this sort of thing will like this comic.
The Okay Witch - The 'okay' part is in contrast to both 'good' and 'bad' as applied to witches. The adolescent protagonist manifests magic, and her mother admits that it's a family trait but adds that magic is bad and must never be used. The protagonist doesn't understand that. Then the grandmother she's never met before comes to visit to encourage her to explore her powers. The grandmother leads a community of witches that fled to another dimension during the 17th century (they're immortal in that world). She believes that those with magic can't live safely among humans. The protagonist's mother believes that cutting themselves off from all contact with the greater world is a mistake. All three of these women are black. That's never directly referenced not in a way that's explicit enough to be clear to a lot of white readers in the target age group. The grandmother says that certain witches (referencing a couple of white witches by name) could live safely in the human world but that witches like herself, her daughter, and her granddaughter couldn't and can't. I'm pretty sure that any black readers will get it without it being spelled out. Spelling it out would be potentially anvil-like for those readers, so it may be that the author was mostly aiming mostly at that audience. This is not a bad thing; I just think there's important subtext there that my daughter wouldn't have understood when she was in the target age group; white parents might need to point it out to their kids after the book's been read. There's also more to the book-- witch hunters and evil spirits and local politics.
Phoebe and Her Unicorn 11: Camping with Unicorns - I'm still enjoying these comics. Phoebe and Marigold are a delight and very funny together. I'm still reminded of Calvin & Hobbes, but the fact that other characters also interact with non-human creatures changes the dynamic a lot.
Princeless 7: Find Yourself - The plot beyond Adrienne's quest to save her sisters is starting to become clearer. Also, this is a demonstration of why it's a bad idea to yell at your dragon to go away forever when you're in the middle of desert.
Princeless 8: Princesses - This volume collects one-off stories about Adrienne's older sisters, stories that cover some events before she came looking for them and storie that cover some events after.
Sea Sirens: A Trot & Cap'n Bill Adventure - The story here was cute, and I mostly liked the art. Only mostly because I kept staring at the noses and feeling like the color contrast with the rest of the faces was off. Trot and her cat, Cap'n Bill, like to surf while her grandfather fishes off the nearby pier. This is as much about Trot keeping an eye on her grandfather as about him keeping an eye on her; his memory is going, and he's not always sure where he is. Fishing is relatively safe because oceans and piers are constants that don't confuse him. Trot's single mother works long hours and needs both of them to help out. The the girl, the cat, and the grandfather end up in an underwater world, complete with warring species. I have returned the book and can't check, but I think Trot's grandfather sometimes (always?) speaks Vietnamese. I might be misremembering the specific language, though, but I know that it was identified inside the story.
Snow White with the Red Hair 5 - The heroine receives an invitation to a banquet in her home country. She's ordered to attend and spends the intervening time learning etiquette and dancing so that her behavior can reflect well on her new home. This volume runs from her receiving the invitation up to her first day as a guest.
Unshelved: Frequently Asked Questions; Unshelved: Unshelved - Our library has a number of these available online. I had read many of them before, but I still enjoyed the library humor. I only worked public service in a library during my senior year in high school, but some things about libraries (mostly the people) don't change much. I may have read more than just these two books during the time when I couldn't get new library books, but I'm not 100% sure.
Started but not finished:
Fair Voyage - I regret not finishing this, but I had difficulty with both the color palette and the text size. The art is in shades of blue and gray, and I had trouble seeing lines between different parts of each panel. The text looks hand printed and is variable in size, often squeezed down further at the end of a bubble. I didn't even make it halfway through before I gave up due to eyestrain. The story involved a fantasy setting with nearly extinct elven royalty.