Book Logging (Comics)
Nov. 23rd, 2020 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI'm running into more and more comics that I can't read due to tiny type. I'm mostly logging those as a reminder to myself that that title didn't work for in that format.
Alice in the Country of Hearts 1-2 - Technically, the library has v.3-5, but the only copies are five months overdue, and I rather doubt they'll be coming back. Alice gets pulled into a secondary world full of (mostly) men who are focused entirely on her. There are factions and murders, and Alice makes a lot of assumptions about how the universe works without really questioning anything. There are enough scenes without her to make clear that things are considerably more sinister/fraught than she thinks.
Castle in the Stars 4: A Frenchman on Mars - Most of this is set on Mars which is even more dangerous than the explorers expected. They also find survivors of an ancient civilization. The villains have already exploited pre-existing cultural/political divisions among the Martian communities they've found and intend to take things considerably further in order to exploit the local resources.
The Castoffs 1: Mage Against the Machine - This volume does a decent job of setting up the world and hinting at the underlying conflict. I liked the trio of protagonists. I'm less happy with the prologue (which seems to have been created for this book) because it feels very out of context rather than serving as temptation to read further. I'd recommend reading it after reading the rest of the volume.
The Cloud - This was very pretty, but I had trouble following the details and trouble telling supporting characters apart. I think that some of the opaqueness was intentional on the creators' part-- There was a certain grand, mythic feel to the way the characters blurred around the edges and the way that they-- mostly-- didn't have names.
DC Super Hero Girls: Summer Olympus - This is basically what the characters did on their summer break. Diana spends time with her father on Mt Olympus (hence the title), but the short book also follows three or four other groups of characters, so nobody gets a full story. All plots intersect at the end, though.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer 1-6 - This is just kind of silly and sit-com like. The titular 'devil' is a powerful being from a secondary world who ended up on Earth after losing an epic war. He's now working for a fast food place and trying to build power enough to take over the Earth. The paladin who defeated the Devil also ends up on Earth, doing phone center work (tech support? Sales? I don't remember). There are various incursions/attacks by other beings from the same world.
Dewdrop - I'd call this more a picture book than a comic. The art is beautiful, and the story very simple, just the titular character helping his friends prepare for a fair.
Fantasy Sports no.1 - A fighter and a magic user who don't like each other are assigned to work together on a dungeon crawl. There was a basketball game with a lichlord involved. It could stand alone, and I'm not clear if the 'no. 1' in the title is meant as volume numbering or as a sports victory reference.
Geis 1: A Matter of Life & Death - A dying ruler has contracted with a magic user to test potential heirs against each other to determine which should become the new ruler. The magic user exploits loopholes in the request to make the failed candidates into undead slaves. This volume cover the first challenge and reveals the danger. I hope that the library gets more.
Guardians of the Louvre - A tourist spends several days at the Louvre and has visions of artists and interacts with works of art as if they were real life. It's not clear whether this is magic or hallucination. The art of the comic is beautiful, and the creator obviously loves the Louvre, but I think I missed some things due to my lack of knowledge of the art and artists discussed.
Husbands - This volume collects a series of short comics focused on two guys who're blipping from fictional genre to fictional genre and always ending up together. I was less than invested in the characters because I didn't get a good sense of who they were as themselves as opposed to the roles they played. I think there's a larger body of work about the couple that introduces them and their relationship. Taken as a collection of short stories, the book is fine, pleasant and happy. It's just kind of froth.
Kim Reaper 1: Grim Beginnings - The protagonist has a crush on the titular character who is in her college art class. While she's following Kim, intending on making a declaration, she discovers that Kim's part time job is collecting the souls of dead pets that are hesitating to move on. Kim is a human woman. There's some hint that she has a Destiny that isn't good, but most of this volume focuses on the two women getting to know each other while playing around with Kim's reaper related powers. It's not a smooth path because Kim is kind of an asshole.
Lafcadio Hearn's The Faceless Ghost and Other Macabre Tales from Japan - These were considerably milder than I expected them to be; I had worried that I wouldn't be able to read the book due to creepiness and/or gore. The text of the stories was adapted by Sean Michael Wilson and illustrated by Michiru Morikawa.
Mal and Chad 1: The Biggest, Bestest Time Ever! - This is a comic aimed at kids that relates the adventures of a boy and his (occasionally) talking dog. This includes changing an elevator to become a time machine. I had fun with this and was sorry that the library doesn't have more (I'm not sure if there are more volumes).
Nightlights - So very pretty! The protagonist has vivid dreams. Then, at school, she meets a new girl who is fascinated by the protagonist's creativity. Things go in a predictable horror arc (but middle grade appropriate and ending happily).
Pandora Hearts 1-3 - The library only has these three volumes. I may try interlibrary loan for further volumes, but that will depend on whether or not I remember when ILL is finally available again. This is basically a matter of the protagonist being forced to make a (sort of) demonic pact and then having to work for/with a group that hunts down renegades who have done the same because they are certain to become mass murderers. There are a lot of hints of bigger plots, but nothing is really clear yet.
Princeless 9: Love Yourself - This is not the place to start with the series. The protagonist goes to rescue the last of her sisters and ends up having to fight her father (who more and more seems to be narrow minded and unobservant.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica 1 - This is the only volume the library has, so I likely won't read more. By the time we get interlibrary loan again, I'll have forgotten the details and won't really care. I haven't watched the anime; it's been on my list to try for a while, and I've read spoilers. I just don't go very far out of my way to find things to watch.
Spell on Wheels - This follows three witches on a road trip across the present day US as they try to track down some artifacts that have been stolen from them. I enjoyed it.
The Story of Saiunkoku 1-6 - This is all that the library has, and it didn't catch up to the point where I am in the anime. (I'm watching that slowly because I'm getting it very erratically on DVD from Netflix.) I may request that the library get further volumes.
Three Feathers - I'm pretty sure I'm not the audience for this book. That is not a bad thing; it simply means that I can't really offer an opinion on how well it does the things it does. The book's quite short, only 48 pages, and follows three First Nations young men through a process of restorative justice as ordered by their tribal elders. They live off the land, under supervision by an older couple, for the better part of a year. I think that I completely missed a lot that was implicit in the story that wasn't actually spelled out on the page.
Twin Spica 1-12 - This series follows a group of friends through an astronaut training high school. The age of the series shows in things like cell phones being luxuries that many of them can't afford. The thing that most broke my suspension of disbelief was that the high school didn't do any medical screening of candidates but was otherwise extremely choosy. There are some supernatural elements and soap opera elements, but the protagonist is primarily focused on her training and her dreams of space. I really enjoyed this series.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? 14 - This series continues to be a pleasant slice of life story with small triumphs and losses and a lot of cooking and a lot of dealing with being responsible adults.
Started but not finished:
The Altered History of Willow Sparks - I gave up on this about a third of the way in. I flipped through the remaining pages and looked at just enough to confirm that I was right about the shape of the story. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the book. It's just not a set of tropes that I enjoy.
The Baker Street Four - I stopped about ten pages into this one when I realized that I wasn't in the mood for a mystery.
Check Please 2 - My library only has this as an Overdrive ebook. I couldn't get the book to display in my browser at a size that let me read the text. Overdrive doesn't like resizing images at all. Graphic novels/comics as ebooks have always been difficult for me, and that's getting worse and worse. I'm sad because I was looking forward to reading this.
Dead Weight - This is a murder mystery set at a weight-loss camp for teens. Some of the kids chose to be there; others didn't. Neither group, so far as I could tell, was presented as completely wrong. I had difficulty with the art because I didn't adjust to the facial features very well and was half waiting for a reveal that the characters were all aliens. I read the first dozen pages, a few random pages in the middle, and then about the last 10-20% of the book. As far as I can tell, it's a straight up mystery. It might well work great for someone who's not me.
The Ghost Script - This is apparently the third in a trilogy. I didn't realize that when I put a hold on it. I'm not sure if I'll go back to try the first two (the library does have them; I just missed that they were a trilogy). This volume is set in Hollywood in 1953. It follows several different characters who have been affected by the Blacklist and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. I didn't like the style of the art, and I didn't enjoy spending time with any of the characters.
The Hasty Pastry - I couldn't handle the art on this one. I was also fairly sure that the protagonist's job, as presented, was going to make me angry, especially when combined with her optimism. Someone else might like this better than I did (that is, these are me-reasons for stopping).
I Am a Number - This is a series of shorts. I didn't like the art or the gimmick and didn't want to work at figuring out anything below the most superficial.
Juana and the Dragonewts' Seven Kingdoms 1 - I had trouble following the art and gave up halfway through with a headache.
The Many Deaths of Scott Koblish - Koblish is the artist. There are no words (at least not up to the point where I stopped). He dies repeatedly. Sometimes it's mundane; sometimes it's bizarre. Most deaths only take a page but some get two or three or even four pages. Some of them are funny; others aren't. I didn't feel like going on with the book.
More Notes on a Thesis - This appears to be a long discussion of all the ways that writing a thesis fucks up a person's life and how finishing it only means dealing with searching for work in academia. I didn't want to deal with it as part of my 2020. YMMV.
On a Sunbeam - I will need to come back to this one if I ever find my reading glasses. The text is tiny (maybe 8 point? 10 point at the largest), and I couldn't manage many pages. The story looked fascinating spaceships and building restoration and boarding school flashbacks. I think it's available online; possibly it'll be easier to see there.
Piper - Pied Piper of Hamlin retelling. YA. I bailed when I realized what it was doing because that is a story that I've never liked. The cover was very pretty.
Plutona - I'm not sure I can explain why I gave up on this one. I only got four or five pages in but could already tell that it was going to be violent in ways that would upset me. I just can't explain exactly what gave me that impression.
Wonderland 1 - I didn't get far into this. The horror elements were too clear and not something that I find enjoyable. The protagonist and the people living around her wake up to find they've shrunk to a few inches high, small enough to be targeted by any cat that sees them.
Alice in the Country of Hearts 1-2 - Technically, the library has v.3-5, but the only copies are five months overdue, and I rather doubt they'll be coming back. Alice gets pulled into a secondary world full of (mostly) men who are focused entirely on her. There are factions and murders, and Alice makes a lot of assumptions about how the universe works without really questioning anything. There are enough scenes without her to make clear that things are considerably more sinister/fraught than she thinks.
Castle in the Stars 4: A Frenchman on Mars - Most of this is set on Mars which is even more dangerous than the explorers expected. They also find survivors of an ancient civilization. The villains have already exploited pre-existing cultural/political divisions among the Martian communities they've found and intend to take things considerably further in order to exploit the local resources.
The Castoffs 1: Mage Against the Machine - This volume does a decent job of setting up the world and hinting at the underlying conflict. I liked the trio of protagonists. I'm less happy with the prologue (which seems to have been created for this book) because it feels very out of context rather than serving as temptation to read further. I'd recommend reading it after reading the rest of the volume.
The Cloud - This was very pretty, but I had trouble following the details and trouble telling supporting characters apart. I think that some of the opaqueness was intentional on the creators' part-- There was a certain grand, mythic feel to the way the characters blurred around the edges and the way that they-- mostly-- didn't have names.
DC Super Hero Girls: Summer Olympus - This is basically what the characters did on their summer break. Diana spends time with her father on Mt Olympus (hence the title), but the short book also follows three or four other groups of characters, so nobody gets a full story. All plots intersect at the end, though.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer 1-6 - This is just kind of silly and sit-com like. The titular 'devil' is a powerful being from a secondary world who ended up on Earth after losing an epic war. He's now working for a fast food place and trying to build power enough to take over the Earth. The paladin who defeated the Devil also ends up on Earth, doing phone center work (tech support? Sales? I don't remember). There are various incursions/attacks by other beings from the same world.
Dewdrop - I'd call this more a picture book than a comic. The art is beautiful, and the story very simple, just the titular character helping his friends prepare for a fair.
Fantasy Sports no.1 - A fighter and a magic user who don't like each other are assigned to work together on a dungeon crawl. There was a basketball game with a lichlord involved. It could stand alone, and I'm not clear if the 'no. 1' in the title is meant as volume numbering or as a sports victory reference.
Geis 1: A Matter of Life & Death - A dying ruler has contracted with a magic user to test potential heirs against each other to determine which should become the new ruler. The magic user exploits loopholes in the request to make the failed candidates into undead slaves. This volume cover the first challenge and reveals the danger. I hope that the library gets more.
Guardians of the Louvre - A tourist spends several days at the Louvre and has visions of artists and interacts with works of art as if they were real life. It's not clear whether this is magic or hallucination. The art of the comic is beautiful, and the creator obviously loves the Louvre, but I think I missed some things due to my lack of knowledge of the art and artists discussed.
Husbands - This volume collects a series of short comics focused on two guys who're blipping from fictional genre to fictional genre and always ending up together. I was less than invested in the characters because I didn't get a good sense of who they were as themselves as opposed to the roles they played. I think there's a larger body of work about the couple that introduces them and their relationship. Taken as a collection of short stories, the book is fine, pleasant and happy. It's just kind of froth.
Kim Reaper 1: Grim Beginnings - The protagonist has a crush on the titular character who is in her college art class. While she's following Kim, intending on making a declaration, she discovers that Kim's part time job is collecting the souls of dead pets that are hesitating to move on. Kim is a human woman. There's some hint that she has a Destiny that isn't good, but most of this volume focuses on the two women getting to know each other while playing around with Kim's reaper related powers. It's not a smooth path because Kim is kind of an asshole.
Lafcadio Hearn's The Faceless Ghost and Other Macabre Tales from Japan - These were considerably milder than I expected them to be; I had worried that I wouldn't be able to read the book due to creepiness and/or gore. The text of the stories was adapted by Sean Michael Wilson and illustrated by Michiru Morikawa.
Mal and Chad 1: The Biggest, Bestest Time Ever! - This is a comic aimed at kids that relates the adventures of a boy and his (occasionally) talking dog. This includes changing an elevator to become a time machine. I had fun with this and was sorry that the library doesn't have more (I'm not sure if there are more volumes).
Nightlights - So very pretty! The protagonist has vivid dreams. Then, at school, she meets a new girl who is fascinated by the protagonist's creativity. Things go in a predictable horror arc (but middle grade appropriate and ending happily).
Pandora Hearts 1-3 - The library only has these three volumes. I may try interlibrary loan for further volumes, but that will depend on whether or not I remember when ILL is finally available again. This is basically a matter of the protagonist being forced to make a (sort of) demonic pact and then having to work for/with a group that hunts down renegades who have done the same because they are certain to become mass murderers. There are a lot of hints of bigger plots, but nothing is really clear yet.
Princeless 9: Love Yourself - This is not the place to start with the series. The protagonist goes to rescue the last of her sisters and ends up having to fight her father (who more and more seems to be narrow minded and unobservant.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica 1 - This is the only volume the library has, so I likely won't read more. By the time we get interlibrary loan again, I'll have forgotten the details and won't really care. I haven't watched the anime; it's been on my list to try for a while, and I've read spoilers. I just don't go very far out of my way to find things to watch.
Spell on Wheels - This follows three witches on a road trip across the present day US as they try to track down some artifacts that have been stolen from them. I enjoyed it.
The Story of Saiunkoku 1-6 - This is all that the library has, and it didn't catch up to the point where I am in the anime. (I'm watching that slowly because I'm getting it very erratically on DVD from Netflix.) I may request that the library get further volumes.
Three Feathers - I'm pretty sure I'm not the audience for this book. That is not a bad thing; it simply means that I can't really offer an opinion on how well it does the things it does. The book's quite short, only 48 pages, and follows three First Nations young men through a process of restorative justice as ordered by their tribal elders. They live off the land, under supervision by an older couple, for the better part of a year. I think that I completely missed a lot that was implicit in the story that wasn't actually spelled out on the page.
Twin Spica 1-12 - This series follows a group of friends through an astronaut training high school. The age of the series shows in things like cell phones being luxuries that many of them can't afford. The thing that most broke my suspension of disbelief was that the high school didn't do any medical screening of candidates but was otherwise extremely choosy. There are some supernatural elements and soap opera elements, but the protagonist is primarily focused on her training and her dreams of space. I really enjoyed this series.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? 14 - This series continues to be a pleasant slice of life story with small triumphs and losses and a lot of cooking and a lot of dealing with being responsible adults.
Started but not finished:
The Altered History of Willow Sparks - I gave up on this about a third of the way in. I flipped through the remaining pages and looked at just enough to confirm that I was right about the shape of the story. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the book. It's just not a set of tropes that I enjoy.
The Baker Street Four - I stopped about ten pages into this one when I realized that I wasn't in the mood for a mystery.
Check Please 2 - My library only has this as an Overdrive ebook. I couldn't get the book to display in my browser at a size that let me read the text. Overdrive doesn't like resizing images at all. Graphic novels/comics as ebooks have always been difficult for me, and that's getting worse and worse. I'm sad because I was looking forward to reading this.
Dead Weight - This is a murder mystery set at a weight-loss camp for teens. Some of the kids chose to be there; others didn't. Neither group, so far as I could tell, was presented as completely wrong. I had difficulty with the art because I didn't adjust to the facial features very well and was half waiting for a reveal that the characters were all aliens. I read the first dozen pages, a few random pages in the middle, and then about the last 10-20% of the book. As far as I can tell, it's a straight up mystery. It might well work great for someone who's not me.
The Ghost Script - This is apparently the third in a trilogy. I didn't realize that when I put a hold on it. I'm not sure if I'll go back to try the first two (the library does have them; I just missed that they were a trilogy). This volume is set in Hollywood in 1953. It follows several different characters who have been affected by the Blacklist and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. I didn't like the style of the art, and I didn't enjoy spending time with any of the characters.
The Hasty Pastry - I couldn't handle the art on this one. I was also fairly sure that the protagonist's job, as presented, was going to make me angry, especially when combined with her optimism. Someone else might like this better than I did (that is, these are me-reasons for stopping).
I Am a Number - This is a series of shorts. I didn't like the art or the gimmick and didn't want to work at figuring out anything below the most superficial.
Juana and the Dragonewts' Seven Kingdoms 1 - I had trouble following the art and gave up halfway through with a headache.
The Many Deaths of Scott Koblish - Koblish is the artist. There are no words (at least not up to the point where I stopped). He dies repeatedly. Sometimes it's mundane; sometimes it's bizarre. Most deaths only take a page but some get two or three or even four pages. Some of them are funny; others aren't. I didn't feel like going on with the book.
More Notes on a Thesis - This appears to be a long discussion of all the ways that writing a thesis fucks up a person's life and how finishing it only means dealing with searching for work in academia. I didn't want to deal with it as part of my 2020. YMMV.
On a Sunbeam - I will need to come back to this one if I ever find my reading glasses. The text is tiny (maybe 8 point? 10 point at the largest), and I couldn't manage many pages. The story looked fascinating spaceships and building restoration and boarding school flashbacks. I think it's available online; possibly it'll be easier to see there.
Piper - Pied Piper of Hamlin retelling. YA. I bailed when I realized what it was doing because that is a story that I've never liked. The cover was very pretty.
Plutona - I'm not sure I can explain why I gave up on this one. I only got four or five pages in but could already tell that it was going to be violent in ways that would upset me. I just can't explain exactly what gave me that impression.
Wonderland 1 - I didn't get far into this. The horror elements were too clear and not something that I find enjoyable. The protagonist and the people living around her wake up to find they've shrunk to a few inches high, small enough to be targeted by any cat that sees them.
