Tag: review

  • 2025 Media Year in Review

    Time again to sum up some of the media I’ve consumed over the course of the year. I did keep track of a lot of media this year, and if there’s anything I can say about the trends for this year, it’d be “…huh.”

    Yes, I felt confused about a lot of this year’s works. Sometimes, you come out of a book, movie, or comic feeling baffled. Often, you can pin it down to poor writing, pacing, or storytelling, but there were more than a few works that were technically solid and somehow emotionally unsatisfying. Hopefully I’ll be able to clarify that statement as we move on the micro-reviews!

    As always, this is “the year’s review of media” rather than “a review of 2025 media,” and the list is by no means exhaustive.

    Books

    The Reincarnationist Papers, by D. Eric Maikranz (Barbary Press, 2008; Blackstone Publishing, 2021). The premise of this novel is an idea that we’ve all probably entertained at least once in our lives: what if reincarnation turns out to be real, and what if you had access to every memory of your past selves? Narrator Evan Michaels discovers this about himself and nearly goes insane when he realizes that no one else he knows can recall their past lives. That changes when he meets Poppy, a fellow “Reincarnationist” who leads him into a society of his peers. The premise is exciting, yet the book is considerably more introspective than the cover’s “Now a Major Motion Picture!” blurb suggests. This is due to a combination of the novel’s framing as translated text from three journals, and Evan’s admission that death is not much of a deterrent for him and his society. It doesn’t help that Evan himself is not a very interesting character. Despite being a career criminal, his recollection of his current life is noticeably dull and dry, and he spends much of the novel as an observer rather than a player. I wonder if this is a choice, as author Maikranz occasionally interrupts Evan’s narration with that of other Reincarnationists, who have much more interesting stories and a more colorful writing style. Evan himself comes into this style towards the end of the book, but there were times when I wondered how long I could put up with his matter-of-fact narration. Overall, I’m interested in seeing where the story goes in the sequel, but I’m not in too much of a rush to read it.

    Dwellings, by Jay Stephens (2024, Oni Press). Described as “six twisted tales of adorable horror,” this book collects the six-issue series into a satisfyingly chunky omnibus. The entire project looks and feels like a 1950s Harvey Comics offering (right down to the toy ads and slightly misregistered process color printing) but the images go places that Richie Rich and Casper wouldn’t dare. Stephens is an exemplary comicker: the speech bubbles are just long enough, the storytelling just suggestive enough, and the action paced at just the right tempo. I don’t even usually go for the horror genre but the cartoony gore of the art is just tolerable enough for me. And it doesn’t hurt that there’s some fun and competent graphic design sprinkled throughout the book.

    Alison, by Lizzy Stewart (Fantagraphics, 2022). This book left me torn. On one hand, it’s an easily readable story of an artist’s self-discovery, told with an intriguingly effective mix of prose, faux-scrapbooking, and comic art. On the other, the main character feels like she’s bounced around feeling perennially short of achieving any life-changing introspection, and the art is parked at the intersection of “My kid could do that” and “Much harder than it looks.” I was driven to find out how the book ended, but I wasn’t happy with the ending. I thought the format was unique, but the story was not. One of those titles that I find hard to fault, but can’t really recommend, either.

    Halina Filipina, by Arnold Arre (Tuttle Publishing, 2022). A boy-meets-girl story, taking place in the Philippines. While titular character Halina is a visitor from New York, the story focuses more on native Cris, who is convinced that all Filipinos secretly want to leave the country. The book is strong, with attractive art and effective visual storytelling. Its bilingual text won’t leave English speakers in the cold, but I’m sure I’m missing something in the roughly 35% of the dialogue that’s in Filipino. My biggest problem with the book is the uneven writing and plotting. The romantic aspect is fine and even fun to watch, but the plot is a little too frequently fueled by coincidence, and some non-romantic character developments feel hollow due to being “told” rather than “shown.” I would still recommend giving it a read, as the pages will fly by quickly.

    Girl Town, by Casey Nowak (Top Shelf Productions, 2018). It’s like not getting to finish a really good meal. Nowak sets up these really interesting stories but even though there is a climax for each there’s no denouement for nearly any of them. It’s almost as if there’s a page missing between chapters. But given the frequency of it, it’s possibly intentional? Otherwise, definitely worth a look, especially if you like open-ended stories about repressed feelings.

    Sonic the Hedgehog: The IDW Collection (IDW, 2018-2025; ongoing). Honorable mention goes to this series for being as unexpectedly good as it is. IDW’s self-titled “Collection” series are omnibus versions of their licensed comics, which includes the main monthly title and its various limited-run spinoff series reordered in a way that makes narrative sense. The great part about IDW’s Sonic is that contrary to its video game source material, it’s thorough in its tight plot and worldbuilding. Characters have lives outside of “helping Sonic defeat Eggman,” and seeing entire issues dedicated to showing why X isn’t at Y solving Z really makes it feel like an actual place rather than a character playground.

    Films & Television

    The Residence (2025, Netflix). A fast-paced, quick-witted, and winding murder mystery series set within the high-stress world of the White House. While the standout performance is Uzo Aduba’s eccentric detective Cordelia Cupp, the rest of the characters are fleshed out so well that it really does feel like a family of co-workers struggling to keep things together. While the performances and writing keeps the show lively and moving, the visual effects also deserve mention, as scenes sometimes flow so seamlessly between camera shots and cross-section “model” views of the White House that it’s easy not to notice. My one nit to pick is that the show makes use of quickly-cut flashbacks to underscore a point; fine when you only watch one episode a week, but a little grating if you plan to binge the series.

    Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuux (2025, Sunrise). In this revision of the original Mobile Suit Gundam timeline, one change makes all the difference: in this world, the space colonies of Zeon won their war for independence. Mopey colony-born teenage girl Machu (real name Amate Yuzuriha) has no career prospects, but one fateful day, the Gundam GQuuuuuux crash-lands in her neighborhood. Machu’s theft of the GQuuuuuux leads to her joining an underground fighting ring, where she falls into a conflict much bigger than she could have possibly imagined.

    This 12-episode series isn’t very good. The premises of the show demand familiarity with the original series and its timeline – which means that newcomers will likely be even more lost than normal, as much of the original lore was fleshed out in supplementary material rather than the show itself. Meanwhile, the main cast of Machu, Nyaan, and Shuji aren’t a very compelling trio, with the main conflict essentially being a romantic rivalry fueled by addiction. I found their story’s conclusion to be hastily resolved and unsatisfying.

    The series sports some new designs for classic mobile suits by Ikuto Yamashita, who succeeds in making the original RX-78-2 look like something out of a nightmare. This effort is sadly undermined by the show’s final episodes due to the writers losing the plot. The show ends raising more questions than it answers, which just shouldn’t happen.

    Superman (2025), directed by James Gunn. I was a little skeptical when I heard that Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn would be taking control of DC’s live-action movie franchise, as I really didn’t want another series of quippy Marvel MCU films. Thankfully my concerns were unfounded, as Superman quickly establishes its plot and continues to run a well-paced two hours of action entertainment. Despite being from the same director, it manages not to feel at all like Guardians of the Galaxy, though there are similar-feeling scenes here and there. Gunn also chose the right supporting characters, as the Justice Gang’s action brawler Hawkgirl, no-nonsense Mr. Terrific, and overconfident Guy Gardner provide good foils to the idealistic Superman. I’d watch it again!

    Starchaser: The Legend of Orin (1985), directed by Steven Hahn. I’d only read about this animated film through clickbait articles that condemn the film for ripping off Star Wars and not knowing who it wants its audience to be. Does it rip off Star Wars? Sure does, to the point of reusing the same sound effects library. Is it unsure about who its audience is? A bit; it’s mostly acceptable for kids, except for the – hold on, I’m checking my notes – ah yes, the strangulation death of a lead character? The reprogramming of a gynoid by accessing her emotion circuits, which are located in her buttocks? The whore house with a three-breasted woman? People getting crushed to death, whipped with lasers, tortured with lasers, shot by lasers, and bisected by lasers? Somehow, none of these (except the strangulation) are as bad in the movie as it is on paper, but this particular brand of sanitized perversion is somehow intense for young children while being too clean for anyone older than 14. And still, it manages to be kind of a solid film, as it’s mostly internally consistent. But the plot relies too much on convenience: the romantic plot is totally out of nowhere, and the day is saved more than once by a supernatural power that probably could have prevented all this in the first place. It’s a curious piece that clearly has the budget and quality animation for a blockbuster, yet never seems to find a relatable heart.

    The Colors Within (2024, directed by Naoko Yamada). A girl who can see others’ auras inadvertently starts a band with the two people whose auras she finds prettiest. There’s nothing wrong with this film; in fact, I’d say it’s an extremely competent film. The performances are fine, the original songs are pretty catchy, the animation style is light and relaxing, and the film direction respects your intelligence. My only complaint (and it’s not even a complaint) is that I’m not the right audience for it. I get the impression that it’s aimed more at the parents of teenagers rather than actual teenagers. Either way, since I’m neither of those it just feels weird watching a movie I consider “good,” but doesn’t scratch any particular itch of mine. I imagine it’s like watching Jurassic Park while lacking any interest in dinosaurs.

    Fast Takes

    The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Would you believe that this is the only piece of Lord of the Rings media I’ve ever consumed? It’s a nice fairy tale adventure, but it slows down a lot midway before picking up again. I probably would have finished it faster if I wasn’t turned off by the middle section.

    KPop Demon Hunters (2025), directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans. Yes, I saw the year’s runaway hit animated film about a three pop stars who are also ruthless demon hunters. I wouldn’t call it “groundbreaking” but I enjoyed the expressive animation and the music, which is enough for me.

    Healer Girl (2022, Studio 3Hz). Like KPop Demon Hunters except the trio are magical girls who use the power of singing to literally heal the sick and wounded. It’s what one might call a “cozy” series, with low stakes and a lighthearted optimism. It probably would have worked better as a musical movie like KDH, though, as most of the series is forgettable. Not great, but not terrible either. I admit to loving the theme song.

    Lost Falls, by Curt Pires (Dark Horse, 2023). A multi-part comics series about some missing children, a time loop, an alternate dimension, and a Black detective faced up against some small-town white racists. It somehow did not hit any nerve with me, which is saying something considering the amount of interesting premises I just listed.

    So that wraps up another year of thrills, chills, and “huhs” from me. Best wishes for 2026!

  • 2024 Media in Review

    2024 Media in Review

    Man, I hope the years don’t continue to slip by faster and faster the way that 2024 did. The year did seem to drag on here in the U.S. until roughly November 5 *ahem* for reasons I couldn’t possibly know, *ahem* but aside from that looming cloud, things moved pretty quickly.

    The theme of this year’s media seemed to be “confusion.” Maybe it was the year itself, but there was a lot of media that I couldn’t easily classify as “good” or “bad.” It was incredibly unsatisfying to see so many films and books struggle to find balance.

    As a reminder, much of what I consume is from a massive backlog that I’ve been chipping away at. Most of the items I’ve chosen to highlight aren’t from calendar year 2024, but things that I’ve finally gotten around to reading/watching/playing. With that in mind, prepare yourself for the 2024 micro-reviews!

    Books

    Rosario + Vampire, by Akihisa Ikeda (Viz Media, 2004). A teenage boy, Tsukune, inadvertently ends up at a high school for mythological monsters. He must keep his humanity a secret from the students and staff, or else face immediate death. Problem is, his best friend is Moka, the most popular vampire girl in school… and she already knows Tsukune’s secret. I’ve been putting this one off for a bit, but I’d heard that as far as “harem” stories go, this one is pretty good. I agree, as it isn’t nearly as fanservice-y as you might think, and manages to hide a darker plotline–that actually goes somewhere–under the main “will they or won’t they?” one.

    How to Read Nancy, by Paul Kerasik (Fantagraphics, 2017). This book pulls double duty as a light biography of Ernie Bushmiller (author of the Nancy newspaper comic) and an analysis of comics as an art form. The main draw (heh!) is Kerasik’s exhaustive breakdown of a single Nancy strip, wherein he highlights Bushmiller’s storytelling abilities through economy of text, line, and form. This is a resource perhaps even more accessible than Scott McCloud’s legendary Understanding Comics, which is also well overdue on my list for a re-read. Some of the aspects of cartooning that Kerasik highlights in How to Read Nancy may seem excessive, but as a whole it’s a good deconstruction of an artist in his prime.

    From This Flame, by Oumi Konomi (Glacier Bay Books, 2022). I was excited to read this collection of mini comics by indie artist Konomi, as their art style seemed at once carefree and considered. The stories themselves, however, didn’t make much sense; indeed, some of them were worse than simply “nonsensical”: it seemed clear that they might only become comprehensible to someone who’s dealt with terrible loss, nihilism, and/or crippling depression. With that in mind, I think it’s safe to say that there is a fairly good chance that this book will become relevant to you at some point in your life; strangely, I don’t think I’ve gotten there yet. Something about that scares me, so I’m holding on to the book until then.

    If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino (Mariner Books Classics, 2012; originally published 1979). I heard about this one through a brief mention in the excellent Philosophize This! podcast. The premise is simple: the book is about you, trying to read the book. There are dozens of hang-ups that prevent you from enjoying the book, all of which take place inside the book, but are frustrating to you as a reader in real life. Is it confusing? Maybe a little bit. It’s also kind of sarcastic, with a short attention span, and somehow also long-winded. However, while the book is clearly about you, it’s also definitely not about you, and so it gets intriguing the more you get into it. Do you finish the book at the end? You’ll have to finish the book to find out.

    The Puma Years, by Laura Coleman (Little A, 2021). For a long while I’ve been reading Coleman’s based-on-true-events-but-names-have-been-changed-to-protect-the-innocent memoir of her time spent at a Bolivian wildlife refuge. Coleman, who admits to previously having a more vain and aimless existence in modern first-world society, somehow decided to get herself to Bolivia and volunteer at a remote animal sanctuary for two weeks. Of course, if you’ve figured anything out from the title, these weeks get expanded to months and then years. While it’s hard, perhaps even wrong to subject someone’s life to the critical standards of fiction, the book could use some editing. The book is structured into three large parts rather than chapters, each of which is comprised of perhaps dozens of vignettes, and each of those can cover hours, days, weeks, or months. It’s a shame, because there are some interesting stories that get dampened by the formatting. (Also, the editor seems to love sentence fragments and using periods in place of colons, semicolons, and commas. I find that annoying.)

    Films & Television

    Transformers One (2024), directed by Josh Cooley. I have a soft spot for Transformers fandom. On one hand, we’re always trying to get non-fans to take the characters a little more seriously, and on the other hand we’re perfectly aware that it’s a franchise that exists to sell toys. This can lead to strange expectations in the fiction: Optimus Prime, for example, must be a noble leader who believes in the sanctity of all life, but he also has to have a bitchin’ truck mode. Thankfully, Transformers One manages to hit both marks by being enjoyable and confident of its portrayal of the titular robots as actual characters with emotion, as well as, uh, cars. Despite the high bar of “let’s make a subtle political commentary about tyranny, subjugation, friendship, and righteousness” being mixed with the low bar of “hey, this robot is also a tank,” the movie doesn’t insult a viewer’s intelligence, and it all somehow works as a movie.

    The Wild Robot (2024), directed by Chris Sanders. If you’re reading this and you enjoyed The Wild Robot, you probably won’t want to have a conversation with me about it. When that first trailer for the movie came out, it was the first time in a while that I’ve been excited for an A-list animation studio’s film. I decided to ignore subsequent trailers so as not to spoil my expectations. Well, if I hadn’t ignored the later trailers, I might have skipped the film entirely. I thought we were going to get a largely silent, contemplative film about a robot experiencing nature. Instead, we got a tedious, predictable film that seems to play exclusively to multiple test audiences of young parents. I could go on for a while about everything I didn’t like about this movie: the reliance on shock dialogue; the inconsistent thematic lessons that don’t pay off in the end; the confusing state of “proper, emotionless robots” that are intentionally programmed to experience emotion and who also tell you directly that they don’t; the unnecessary worldbuilding teases that are never acknowledged by either the cast or the crew; the overblown soundtrack that punctuates everything; the song in the middle of the film that seems to run its course before starting up again a minute later. I’m all for a straightforward approach to storytelling, but this film whacks you on the head to remind you when to laugh, cry, or be angry. Its heavy-handedness is so extensive that even the credits sequence annoys me. It’s truly incredible how much this movie sucked, and now that I’ve vented, I’ll bury my memory of this movie with something more pleasant: anything else on this list.

    Flow (2024), directed by Gints Zibalodis. Similarly to The Wild Robot, I had practically no exposure to this film before I saw it. Similar to The Wild Robot, it’s a film about wildlife surviving in a post-apocalyptic Earth. Unlike The Wild Robot, Flow is actually worth watching. It’s everything I was expecting The Wild Robot to be: an essentially silent film about a cat surviving with other animals in an unpredictable and unexplained world. The whole thing is more of an experience than an actual story, but compared to The Wild Robot‘s total lack of subtlety, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a reveal about ten or fifteen minutes in that got me a lot more invested in what little plot there is, and that small bit of worldbuilding is referenced later in the film, allowing the story to go places it couldn’t in its introduction. The film also doesn’t feel American (which is no surprise given the seemingly endless logos of French and Latvian organizations in the opening sequence) in that it seems to reflect an older culture that accepts the tides of joy and loss that the “forever young” culture of the U.S. tries to ignore. While I like Flow and its ambition, I do have my hangups: the animation has a posterization effect that I find distracting; the physics simulation on the water is distractingly basic; the animals are sometimes too anthropomorphized; and the whole thing feels like a student project that’s feature-length. Still, I’d definitely watch it again with people who haven’t seen it.

    Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance (2024), directed by Erasmus Brosdau. This web video series, brought to Netflix in 2024, tells a story set during the original Mobile Suit Gundam‘s One Year War. Unlike many Gundam series set in the same timeline, Requiem for Vengeance focuses on Neo Zeon, the “bad guys” of the war who are traditionally associated with being “Space Nazi Germany.” Also unlike many Gundam series, RfV is extremely accessible to newcomers. While there will still be questions (the who’s and why’s will probably confuse some non-fans) overall the show doesn’t get too lost in its own mythology and delivers Gundam’s anti-war message while simultaneously showcasing big robot battles. All that keeps it from being a sold recommendation is its weak ending. Oh, and maybe the animation; it’s created within a video game engine, which makes the entire thing look like a PlayStation 3 (OK, PS4) cutscene rather than a fully-rendered series. This development will undoubtedly be good for games and animation projects in the future, but for RfV it’s something of a detriment.

    Super-Micro Reviews

    Shin Ultraman (2022), directed by Shinji Higuchi. I like Higuchi as an action sequence director. I respect the style of making the battle scenes look like the 1960s Ultraman shows. I didn’t like that it was essentially three TV episodes weakly cobbled together.

    Little Kitty, Big City (2024), Double Dagger Studio. This is a cute, open-world game wherein you play a housecat who accidentally falls from their apartment window napping spot and must find a way to climb back up. A fun, short, low-stakes cozy game wherein you can do all the cute cat things like stretch, nap, and knock potted plants off the shelf.

    Funny Creek, by Raphael Albuquerque, Rafael Scavone, et. al. (Dark Horse Books, 2023). Human girl escapes real-world trauma when she falls into her favorite cartoon show. Cute art! Dark story! And then it gets darker! Dang.

    Sony’s greater Spider-Man film series: Morbius (2022) dir. Daniel Espinosa; Madame Web (2024) dir. S.J. Clarkson; and Kraven the Hunter (2024) dir. J.C. Chandor. I didn’t have high hopes for any of these films, but at least Kraven was a fun kind of dumb. Morbius was a “do something else while you half-watch it” movie. Madame Web was, sad to say, frustratingly bad.

    And there it is. See you in the new year!

  • AnimeNYC 2024 Wrap-Up

    AnimeNYC 2024 Wrap-Up

    It’s August 27th, two days since AnimeNYC 2024 finished up last weekend at the Javits Center. It’s always a weird pleasure, because it’s while it’s still work, it’s working while interacting directly with fans. I have to admit, I might be happier attending as an exhibitor rather than as an attendee, because the crowds are super-dense, especially on Saturdays. It’s nice being behind a table with a seat of your own and a place for your bags.

    Friday opened up with good news and bad news. The good: Denpa and Kuma’s booth was located very close to the entrance off the north lobby. The bad: the booth was directly next to the Hololive performance area, where mini-concerts and broadcasts from one of the biggest-budgeted Vtuber networks took place. This meant that we were directly adjacent to a massive crowd of people at least twice a day, but also meant that we had to hear every performance, whether it was karaoke, a video game tournament, or a cooking show. I guess it could’ve been a lot worse for “bad news” but it was still a bit distracting.

    Saturday brought a visit from my contact at Azuki, where I designed some of the logos for their digital releases. He informed me that Azuki will be publishing two of their titles through Scholastic’s Graphix imprint, which would be their first foray into print media! Not only is one of those series Mecha-Ude: Mechanical Arms, but Graphix itself is a big deal: they publish some of the heaviest hitters in children’s graphic novels, including Dav Pilkey (Captain Underpants, Dog Man) and Raina Telgemeier (Smile, Sister, Guts). It’s exciting news for Azuki.

    I had originally planned to man the booth while my coworkers led our panel on Saturday evening; however, about a half hour before the event I realized that our panel started just as the main exhibitor’s hall closed down. “You going to attend the panel?” my boss asked.

    “Sure,” I said, noting that I hadn’t actually worked out the timing until that moment. “Great,” he replied, “we can even get you a seat on stage if you like.”

    I panicked. The last time I gave a public talk was during college. I’d written a paper and my professor had asked me to present it at a conference. At that time I’d assumed I could just forgo my notes and wing it; but of course I couldn’t, and ended up concluding my presentation poorly, with more than half my time remaining.

    Now, I would be representing my company as well as myself. I wasn’t planning to even attend the panel five minutes ago, let alone be a part of it. My coworkers assured me that it’d be fine and that I wouldn’t really have to speak if I didn’t want to, so twenty minutes later I found myself onstage in Panel Room 3, wondering what exactly was going to happen. Thankfully, it turned out to be extremely easy to speak off the cuff about work I enjoy doing, and I managed to answer a couple of questions without too much trouble.

    On Sunday I attended a roundtable discussion about manga lettering. These are the same people who do the same kind of work I do — see WTF is Manga Production?! for more on that — and it was terribly refreshing to meet even more people in the field, small as it is.

    I also managed to cruise around Artists’ Alley long enough to pick up some comics from two indie outfits: Moon Lair Studios and Space Between Entertainment. I didn’t see many other comics, but then again I didn’t spend too much time on the floor. (I completely missed the video game hall and all the exhibitors on the lower level.) Still, I’m looking forward to reading what I did pick up.

    All in all, working a convention is tiring, but it’s lots of fun connecting with people with the same interests. It’s getting me more excited for SPX in less than a month, though I still haven’t decided whether I’ll be attending that or not.

  • “I Am Stan” by Tom Scioli

    “I Am Stan” by Tom Scioli

    The thing about fiction is that the best of it follows a predictable structure of ups and downs, with a clearly defined end point. We expect stories to have protagonists and conflicts, and we have an idea of how many minutes or pages we have before these conflicts are resolved. In real life, things don’t work that way. There are no protagonists but there are more conflicts than we care to know about. Most of us don’t know when the end is coming. We all know that life isn’t fair, and the only satisfactions we get are the ones that we choose for ourselves.

    So while it’s normally good to have a biography with an even-handed account, Tom Scioli’s apparent dedication to impartiality turns out to be my biggest gripe with his book I Am Stan: A Graphic Biography of the Legendary Stan Lee. It appears to be an unbiased collection of anecdotes, but it has all the structure of a narrative and expects to be read like one. This left me searching for a story that wasn’t actually there, and wanting for some more insights into the controversies around the most famous name in superhero comics.

    Visual Lee

    Tom Scioli’s author’s bio describes his comicking as having a “singular” art style, with “kinetic layouts and imaginative writing.” I haven’t read Mr. Scioli’s other works, but even a glance at his website suggests that I Am Stan is not his finest outing. Clearly, the cover illustration alone demonstrates that he is capable of a much more weighty, solid, sturdy style; this doesn’t translate into the interior panels themselves. Characters are drawn in a simple style, so I don’t expect a lot of detail. At times, though, it appears as if the thumbnails for the book were used as the final art, which — and this is speaking as someone who is currently drawing thumbnails for his next comics story — isn’t a great look. Luminaries like Jack Kirby and Joe Simon are just distinguishable enough from each other that you can recognize them, though this gets more difficult throughout the book as Lee meets more and more people. Honestly, a little bit of caricature would’ve helped here.

    Most of the book’s script and lettering are fine; the book typically features a digestible number of words per bubble, making the dialogue seem like a conversation between two real people. Unfortunately, the storytelling sags tremendously when it quotes dialogue from interviews and roundtable discussions. At points like these, the bubbles turn into walls of text that overwhelm and sometimes obscure the tiny pieces of artwork that can still fit in the panel. This is unfortunate, as the dialogue itself is interesting; it’s just presented in an unappealing way.

    Structural Lee

    As far as pacing goes, the book starts with a speedy recap of Lee’s childhood. This segment, which lasts for about 12 pages, covers a lot of ground economically; it’s clear that young Lee was interested in anything and everything, though whether this is out of curiosity or necessity is left up to the reader. The story slows down once Lee makes it into the publishing world. All the trappings of a narrative are still there: recurring characters, repeated panel layouts, and running gags. Slowly, though, the book loses steam. While it still feels like there’s a story being told, it begins to feel more like a disjointed memoir as public events and personal vignettes start intertwining, sometimes with no fanfare. One page tells a story about how Lee treated his co-creators at Marvel, and the very next page will be about his hairpiece and deviated septum.

    To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with vignettes like these, except that there are no breaks in the story to indicate where one vignette ends and one begins. While it’d make the book seem more like an anthology, tagging some stories with a title or chapter number would’ve led to a more user-friendly experience.

    Speaking of tagging things, various industry legends and media personalities make their appearance, though they are often introduced diegetically by their first names. Major players are named in full (eventually), but unless you’re already familiar with DC/Marvel history, you would have a hard time figuring out who Neal (Adams) or Carmine (Infantino) was.

    Contextual Lee

    I like to think I know a little bit more about Stan Lee than a non-comics fan, but I basically went into this book cold. I know that Lee had his share of disputes, and on these issues, Scioli commendably takes an even-handed approach. Lee is generally presented as a hero, but there are plenty of instances that touch on his ego and forgetfulness.

    On a few other occasions, the narrative itself feels cold: the deaths of Lee’s parents are each covered in two to three panels, but the death of Lee’s longtime wife Joan – who appears in the book more than his parents do – is also only given two panels of a five-panel page. The remaining three panels recount Lee’s appearance at Disney’s D23 event. It took me some light research afterwards to find out that the D23 event was a mere ten days after Joan Lee’s death. Whether or not Scioli was critical of Lee for this move is unclear, which leads me back to my main critique of I Am Stan.

    Truthful Lee or Hyperbo-Lee?

    My problem with I Am Stan is that its apparent insistence on avoiding bias means that few of the events actually feel important. For example, one of the few Stan Lee stories I’d heard before reading the book was about how he met his wife Joan: Lee claimed that throughout his life, with whatever ability he had, he would repeatedly draw an ideal female figure he considered to be his “dream woman.” The story changes depending on who you ask – some accounts say a friend told Stan the drawings resembled an acquaintance and set up the two to meet at a party; others say Stan answered the door at said party and found Joan there – but it essentially ends with an awestruck Stan asking Joan out on a date.

    This event is depicted in I Am Stan, but with no sense of importance; Stan simply meets Joan and says that he’d been “drawing her all his life.” This assertion is all we get: we aren’t treated to any real or imagined view of Lee’s drawings. Scioli seems to be trying to be impartial, but in doing so the work comes off as impersonal. Injecting some drama (which would be biased) might’ve given more insight into Lee’s character and reputation.

    Ultimately, I wish I could recommend I Am Stan as Scioli has clearly taken pains to present an objective view of Lee. Objectivity, however, doesn’t always make for a compelling read. Including more content from friends, family, and coworkers, and combining it with a more rigidly defined structure might have made this book really shine.

    Everyone knows Stan Lee: His work at the creative helm of Marvel Comics resulted in the creation of many of the superheroes we know and love today, including Spider-Man, Iron Man, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and more. During his decades-long career at Marvel, Lee turned the comic book publisher into a cultural juggernaut that shaped and defined the burgeoning industry. In I Am Stan, critically acclaimed artist Tom Scioli reveals the man behind the comics and cameos using the same medium Stan Lee revolutionized.

    —Promotional text goes here for I Am Stan: A Graphic Biography of the Legendary Stan Lee by Tom Scioli.
    Published by Penguin Random House, 2023.

  • 2023 Media in Review

    2023 Media in Review

    It’s been a hell of a year for me, mostly not in a good way. Still, any existence in which you can enjoy the things you love is a good existence, so allow me to introduce some select media this year that struck a chord — harmonious or not.

    Books

    Camp Spirit, by Axelle Lenoir (Top Shelf Productions, 2020). Reserved high school senior Elodie is sent to act as counselor at Camp Spirit, getting far more than she expected when she’s saddled with uncontrollable children, staff drama, and a mysterious blue light emanating from somewhere in the forest. What’s great about this book is that the characters and world are so believable that when the possibly-supernatural events turn up, they don’t feel too silly or out of place. Elodie’s growth throughout the book is similarly believable in that she largely retains the same character despite having a couple of life-changing events over the course of the summer. By the end of it I couldn’t find a single thing to complain about, so it’s a 10 in my eyes. (Bonus props to Lenoir adding visual nods to other comics and cartoon heroines. My favorites were a troop of six campers: Kate, Natasha, and Jennifer were named, though if you catch the reference you can ID the other three as Kitty, Carol, and Kamala.)

    The Girl with the Sanpaku Eyes, vol. 5, by Shunsuke Sorato (Denpa, 2023). OK, this entry’s a little very self-serving because I’m actually the retoucher/letterer/production manager on this title, and I’m biased. That said, this is the final volume in the series about Amane Mizuno, a girl too self-conscious to talk to her crush. It’s an extremely simple premise, and it’s largely a sweet, dumb, and uncomplicated comic, but there’s a revelatory chapter in volume 5 that made me reconsider the lighthearted antics of the previous volumes. It’s not the kind of surprise that will convert any naysayers, but it ought to earn respect from those who’ve been enjoying the story as mindless fun.

    Adora and the Distance, by Marc Bernardin, with Ariela Kristantina, Jessica Kholinne, and Bernardo Brice (Dazzling Urbanite, 2021). I’d heard of this book when it came out, and it mostly boiled down to “Glen, I can’t give away the ending, you really just have to read it.” Now that I’ve read it, I completely understand why. That’s why it hurts to be critical of this book — well, it always stings a little to write or read a review — because it’s so well-intentioned but also manages to leave a mixed reaction. The story and art aren’t bad, but are noticeably inconsistent over the course of the book. Nothing so terrible that you’ll just slam the book down and never pick it up again, just enough so that you begin to question how some story elements and illustrations can be so beautiful one moment and so imperfect the next. So much promise that goes unexplored, and a finale that makes you question whether those missteps were intentional. It’s like watching your favorite Olympian performing unexceptionally during the finals: you are glad to see them in action, but somehow you just expected more.

    Go! Go! Loser Ranger!, vols. 1 and 2 by Negi Haruba (Kodansha, 2022). This is the first time in a while when I can clearly state something about an author: I’m losing interest in Negi Haruba. Not to say that he’s untalented; but with this series he’s clearly phoning it in. I picked up this title because I was looking forward to the twist in the Super Sentai formula. Here, the expected team of five Power Rangers-style superheroes have been protecting the Earth from an invading alien force for years. The truth, however, is that the Rangers have actually enslaved the aliens long ago and are exploiting their plight for their own fame and profit, which inspires a lowly alien foot soldier to take revenge. I was interested in the first half of Haruba’s previous series The Quintessential Quintuplets, but gave up on that story because the fake-outs and teases became too tiresome. Unfortunately, Go! Go! Loser Ranger! is similarly flawed. While Volume 1 ends on a subversive cliffhanger, Volume 2 stumbles hard. Page layouts are oddly underwhelming, the action is too frequently difficult to follow, there are way too many characters to keep track of, and the subversions are so commonplace they fail to surprise. Perhaps worst of all is the fact that Volume 2 ends on a cliffhanger just as neatly as the one in Volume 1, which leads me to believe that Haruba and his editors are not only planning the story beats for the weekly serialization, but for the compiled volumes as well. That’s formulaic on a production level, and I don’t think I care to follow Haruba down this road again.

    Films & Television

    Godzilla Minus One (2023), directed by Takashi Yamazaki. Over the years, Godzilla has had a number of turns been as nuclear allegory, hero, anti-hero, force of nature, legendary beast, demonic villain, and a biological menace across nearly 40 films and shows. My favorite is the “existential threat” Godzilla that we’ve previously only really seen in the original 1954 movie and in 2016’s Shin Godzilla. The same take on Godzilla features in Minus One, but what makes this film compelling is the fact that it focuses less on the apparent danger to life and much more on the reasons why life is important to begin with. Main character Shikishima is a failed kamikaze pilot who not only bears the shame of having fled his duty, but survivor’s guilt from a chance encounter with Godzilla. He manages to survive in what’s left of war-ravaged Tokyo, but Godzilla’s return forces him to consider ways to “atone” for the sin of his own survival. Oddly both nationalistic and anarchic, it’s the most interesting premise for a Godzilla film in years, and despite some incongruity between the human and SFX scenes, it’s a very strong film.

    Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2022). And at the other end of the daikaiju spectrum, we have… this. Monarch is an American TV production set in Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse, which is home to their version of Godzilla. While this show hasn’t finished its first season at the time of this writing, enough of it has been released for me to mathematically claim that this show is mostly bad. Like Minus One, this show focuses on humans affected by the attacks, only Monarch doesn’t have likeable characters. They’re either jerks trying to one-up each other in a pity party, or jerks because they’re Professionals™ who have “bigger things to deal with.” Characterization comes after the fact. It’s difficult enough to get an audience to warm up to a jerk, and Monarch has three of them as leads. It doesn’t help that the show’s plot is divided into two main time periods, each of which features flashbacks and jumps within each period. The creature effects are pretty great, but plot-wise, they have almost no bearing on the events. It’s a severe disappointment that one of the show’s creators is Matt Fraction, whose run on the Hawkeye comic in 2012 was one of my favorites in a long time. Still, I maintain that as bad as Monarch is, it’s not as offensively and disloyally bad as Obi-Wan Kenobi turned out to be.

    Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson. The sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sees Miles Morales rejoin Gwen Stacy, fighting a new threat to the multiverse. Not as concise as the original, which is even more of a problem because the original took its time. It’s an absolute joy to look at, though; the worlds of the multiverse are rendered in unique styles, my favorites of which are Gwen Stacy’s Earth-65, awash in watercolors, and Spider-Punk, who manages to look like every bit of scribbled graffiti you’ve ever seen in a basement music hall. It also features my favorite, Spider-Man 2099 Miguel O’Hara, every bit of a jerk as he was in the original comics, so that’s a point in the film’s favor. Still, I couldn’t recommend it to anyone not interested in Spider-Man or pretty visuals.

    Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), directed by Joel Crawford. I wasn’t expecting to like this as much as I did, mostly for its frank take on death. Well, the premise is that our titular feline hero has already used up eight of his nine lives, so I suppose it would be weird if it didn’t come up. Anyway, the animation is good, and the moral of the story is refreshingly mature for a kids’ movie. Also, it’s somehow not the first kids’ movie to casually drop the phrase “Death comes for us all” as a serious line.

    Well, there it is. See you in the new year!

  • AnimeNYC 2023 Haul Review

    AnimeNYC 2023 Haul Review

    AnimeNYC’s 2023 show ended back on November 20. While I spent most of the time working the Denpa booth selling some new books, I did manage to take a nice stroll through Artists’ Alley and was pleased to find a number of indie comics creators, whose presence I felt was severely lacking in the con’s previous year. So now, here are the micro-reviews!

    I Reincarnated as Myself Like Always! by Jane Mai (self-published).
    What starts out as a parody of the standard isekai premise turns into a reflective look at a man who’s wasting his life. With solid art and writing, this book starts off funny. But going into the final act, the tone abruptly changes. Not to say that it’s failed comedy, it’s just quite a different turn than what you might expect from such a silly title. It’s a bit like the Guns N’ Roses song “Sweet Child O’Mine”: a catchy first 2/3rds, then a major mood shift in the final act. Neither of the two sections are bad; they just feel like two good parts of two tonally different stories, and they don’t quite jell for me. On a production level, it’s neat that this book was riso-printed and hand-bound.

    Half in the Shadows, Half Burned in Flames by Ico (self-published).
    An artbook by Washington-based artist Ico and designed by Kan. It features beautiful drawings and paintings of characters from The Legend of Zelda. A satisfying balance of painterly techniques and abstract layouts, these illustrations are simply made to be enjoyed. The comments are about 95% in Chinese, so if you want to understand what the artist’s comments are you’ll have to get it translated. Bafflingly, the author’s bio alone is coupled with an English translation, but that’s a small criticism on a fine piece. The quality of the final book design is exceptional, and it’s almost hard to believe it’s self-published.

    Kisha: Demon Eater #1 by Newton Lilavois, Gian Carlo Bernal, and ClonerH! (Dream Fury Comics).
    Most people don’t actively search for demons, especially in a world where demons are proven to exist. But that’s what happens to the titular Kisha, who can not only sense demons, but becomes possessed by one who happens to share her name and appearance. The demon Kisha also happens to literally eat other demons, so to say that things get complicated by the end of the book is an understatement. Things move quickly in this book, but possibly at the expense of characterization. The story is strong enough to stoke curiosity in the second issue, and beautiful artwork makes picking up issue #2 seem inevitable. Excellent production values on the book itself, though some of the art and text flirt with the safety margins.

    Salvation #1 by Terence Young, Dwayne Robinson, Jr., and John Cruz (Animation, Comics, and Entertainment, LLC).
    Vahn is a young warrior cursed with a demon mark, so he seeks the wizard Solomon to remove it for him. However, humans and demons alike want Vahn dead, which means every journey and destination is bound to bring misadventure. I give good marks to the story, setting, and artwork. Unfortunately, the readability is hampered by the panel layout, lettering, and dialogue. It’s sometimes hard to figure out the correct order to read the panels and word balloons. The dialogue has yet to find itself, as it wavers between typical medieval fantasy formality (“Why am I the only one who must shoulder this burden?”) and contemporary casual slang (“Say what?”). Punctuation is also wanting. Still, the well-choreographed action scenes warrant a look at issue #2. Book quality doesn’t differ too much from more mainstream floppies, and seems durable enough.

    Ophiuchus by Ali Leriger de la Plante and Natasha Tara Petrović (Image Comics).
    A visual standout at this convention, this is a story about warrior robots going on a fantasy adventure to save the universe. Very little not to recommend about this book, as the pacing is even, the characters are distinctive and likeable, and the story is easy to follow despite the numerous names and concepts that show up. As previously mentioned, the art stands out as a signature feature of the book. Authors Petrović and de la Plante use a limited palette and minimal linework to create a world reminiscent of the moody, semi-abstract background art from the Pink Panther cartoons. The characters themselves feature strong silhouettes, enough so that when twelve new characters appear in a single panel, it’s possible to keep track of the action. It’s a fun book that can be read and re-read within an hour, and you might spend even more time appreciating the artwork. Good book quality, though there are a few issues with safety margins and the flat black blending with the dark blue.

    Neotera #1 by Randy Toroni (self-published by Studio Toroshi).
    In the distant future, humanity has left the Earth in search of a new home. Traveler Nox finally arrives on their new home planet Neotera, except he is centuries late and awakens in a body that isn’t entirely his. Moreover, the planet seems to possess few humans and far too many cyborg dinosaurs. Neotera has all the trappings of a mainstream shonen manga, complete with action, mystery, and sex appeal. Author Toroni’s biggest setbacks are in the script, lettering, and the quality of the final art, all of which feel rushed. Toroni’s concept art at the end of the book is solid, which seems to confirm that the book might have been produced at some speed. Still, the story ends on enough of a cliffhanger to justify a look at the second issue. Another solid print job, though I do get nervous that I’m going to break the spine.

    Vonn Sketchbook IV: 2019-2020 by Timothy von Rueden (self-published).
    Another artbook, this is a collection of sketches by Wisconsin artist/designer Vonn. Vonn’s drawings are a mix of photorealism and fantasy, which look great rendered in pencil. The inker in me wishes that Vonn would take the plunge and rebalance the grays into black, but that’s a minor nit. I mainly picked this up because it contains the artwork from Vonn’s illustrated playing card deck, an idea I also have been tackling on and off for the past year. The book judiciously uses gold leaf on the cover and along all the edges, giving a highly polished feel consistent with von Rueden’s brand.

    Overall, I think I made off rather well this year. Of the new series that I’ve picked up, I’m interested to see how the next issues will turn out, and anyway it’s next to impossible to judge an entire series by its first issue. It also makes me want to pick up the pace on my next comics project, which is already shaping up to be quite a bit longer than Valentine’s Day, and seeing how long that project took… well, comicking isn’t easy. See you again!

  • 2022 Media in Review

    Well, the end of 2022 is upon us, so I thought it’d be neat to go back and write a few thoughts about some of the media I consumed this year. It’s the first year I’ve actively kept a diary, and if said shoddily-kept diary is any indication, it’ll probably be the last. But let’s not dwell on that; on to the micro-reviews!

    Books

    Raid of No Return (Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales #7), by Nathan Hale. Doomed spy Nathan Hale returns in this edutainment comic by Nathan Hale. I’m not sure if the titular Hazardous Tales are the author’s or his namesake’s, but you probably won’t care when you read about the US counterattack on Japan after the Pearl Harbor strike. I love this series for its balance of lighthearted humor and thoughtful portrayals. Each book also has way more research than you’d think necessary for a kids’ book about a condemned man who delays his own execution Scheherazade-style by telling future histories he’s seen through time. Yeah.

    A Short History of the World, by Christopher Lascelles. A more straightforward approach to history, this book starts back from as far as we can tell—the Big Bang—and works its way forward through time. This is a relief compared to the regionalized accounts of history I received in public school, and really puts things into context. It’s inspired me to read The Penguin History of the World, and inspiring the will to learn is something good books do.

    The World According to Color: A Cultural History, by James Fox. OK, I haven’t actually finished this book yet. But like the previously mentioned A Short History of the World, it’s a well-researched and fascinating history of how cultures have interpreted—or completely ignored—the spectrum of ROY G. BIV that we’re familiar with today. With exhaustive citations, it’s a gateway to an entire aspect of history that gets overlooked even in standard art school education. Definitely worth a shot.

    Punk Rock Jesus, by Sean Murphy. In an alternate world rocked by climate disasters, a media company inspires hope (and profits) by cloning Jesus of Nazareth. This backfires roughly 15 years later, when the teenaged clone disavows his lineage. While the premise is intriguing, the book is ultimately a character study about J2’s bodyguard Thomas, who seeks to atone for the murders he committed as an IRA member. The story and plot are a little uneven, as it really isn’t clear who the main character is until about halfway through the book, though you probably won’t have that problem because I just told you about it. I mostly like this book for the black and white artwork, which strikes a nice balance between tight rendering and painterly expression.

    Films, Games, & Television

    The Batman (2022), directed by Matt Reeves. I’m not a fan of three-hour movies, but this one was surprisingly tolerable. Good action, detective work, and some off-kilter humor as well. The only thing is that omitting the final story arc probably would have benefited the film. Still, something I don’t regret watching.

    Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019). This adventure video game follows a lone Jedi as he navigates an Imperial-ruled galaxy. For the most part, this game offers a solid experience: challenging but forgiving gameplay, diverse environments, some cool storytelling devices and technology, and commonsense subversion of some established Star Wars lore. Story-wise, it’s a fun ride that doesn’t quite stick the landing, but the game as a whole is still a 9.5/10.

    Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022). What if Fallen Order was a TV show, and instead of being good, it sucked? That’s Obi-Wan Kenobi. This show is heartbreakingly stupid. The performances are phoned-in. Choreography is bad. Old, established lore is ignored—hell, even the lore that the show introduces itself is ignored. The direction is nonsensical and confusing. The writing is exceptionally poor: tension is “built” through fake-outs, having characters contradict something they said or did (often mere seconds after the fact), and outright lying to the audience. One particularly egregious sequence hinges on hoping the audience doesn’t understand how tunnels work. A phenomenally bad show that I desperately wanted to like.

    Bullet Train (2022), directed by David Leitch. A mostly-fun and refreshingly unserious action film. Good for people whose minds go off on tangents in the middle of discussions. Based on a novel by Japanese author Kotaro Isaka, the film apparently was accused of whitewashing its case of originally-Japanese characters. Complaints point to the success of Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings, both of which rely heavily on Asian cultures, as proof that Asian actors can lead profitable films. (“Profitable” not meaning the same as “entertaining,” as I could at least stomach Shang-Chi, while I turned off Crazy Rich Asians about a third of the way through.) While it’s true that there’s no reason for the characters to be White (or Black or Hispanic, for that matter) there’s also extremely little about this film that is distinctively Japanese, other than the location and the use of bullet trains. Author Isaka has himself claimed that the characters are “ethnically malleable,” so I don’t really understand the criticism. Hey, I went off on a tangent! No wonder I like this film!

    Floor is Lava. This is probably my favorite “stupid” show. Teams of three race each other in an obstacle course set in a room flooded with “lava.” It’s primal fun watching people trying to accomplish an apparently simple task, even as third-season contestants remark that “it’s a lot harder than it looks on TV.” This show is aware of how silly it is, which deserves more respect than some other shows I reviewed this year.

    ARK: Survival Evolved (2017). Try to escape an island full of prehistoric creatures. That’s the simplest I can put the premise of this survival game. There aren’t many games where you can go from shivering in the dark naked for an entire night to piloting a 100-foot tall flying mech to attack a herd (flock?) of T-Rex, but it’s possible here. The one problem is that the grind is pretty punishing. Even with mods making the game easier, it’s still a lot of work to build your empire. Thankfully, it still manages to be fun.

    Well, there it is. See you in the new year!

  • “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe

    “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe

    Back in 2018, at the very first Small Press Expo I attended, there was a solo vendor who sold a small selection of handmade zines. One of them was called “The List,” which the vendor summarized as a breakdown of the 1,000+ books that the author had read in a year. I purchased a few zines from that vendor and followed the author’s account on Instagram. It turned out that vendor and author were one and the same, and that person was Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir).

    Over the next couple of years, I followed Kobabe’s progress as e landed a book deal to produce eir own memoir… in comics form! It was neat to see so much progress based off the small zines from a few years prior. The book, Gender Queer, was published in 2019, and then fell off my radar for a number of months. It came up again in 2022 after being banned by a number of libraries across the United States.

    As someone who had followed the artist’s progress through Instagram (Kobabe even mentions “The List” in Gender Queer) I was baffled that anyone could find offense in Kobabe’s simple style and willingness to expose eir vulnerabilities. Could I possibly find what some have deemed “the statutory definition of obscenity”?

    Important for kids, but not for kids?

    Thematically, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Gender Queer. Kobabe is painfully honest and exceptionally polite in eir presentation of eir personal problems; eir comics self Maia never scorns people who don’t understand what e feels. On multiple occasions, Kobabe admits eir own imperfections: e is not above forgetting people’s pronouns, and openly acknowledges that eir use of the Spivak e/em/eir is “rare.” The more violently graphic illustrations in the book aren’t indulgent, either. Rather, they often depict some discomforting nightmare scenario anyway, so to expect anything less would be a disservice. Sex is discussed multiple times but depicted in only one panel, and while that panel is more explicit than the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, you’d probably get more mileage out of the latter. This book is about one person’s struggle to fit their sexual identity in a world that they literally don’t understand. If you’re expecting some “damn woke liberal LGBTQ+ snowflake pushing an agenda,” you won’t find it here.

    At the same time, it’s extremely likely that you are in this book. Yes, I mean YOU. You might not recognize yourself, but you are here. Maybe you identify as LGBTQ+. Maybe you’re one of the cisgendered background characters who shrug off the issue (and on whom the illustrated Kobabe does not focus.) Maybe you openly support your LGBTQ+ friends, family, and community, but draw the line at the whole “pronoun” discussion. Kobabe addresses all of these experiences, which makes Gender Queer essential reading for all adults.

    And here lies one of the sad ironies of the book: it’s a book that many wished they could have had as a child, but it’s quite clearly written for adults (and by “adults” I mean people mature enough to recognize “context.”)

    The Objections

    Perhaps the most famous objection to Gender Queer is its one panel wherein a grown man and a boy have a sexual encounter. Except, they’re not characters in the book and they aren’t even touching each other. In fact, they’re drawn as homages to more explicit Greek amphorae, which is only relevant because the scene is literally a fantasy encased in the fictional Kobabe’s mind, and clearly labeled as a reference to Plato’s Symposium. I suspect that in order to draw this reference to Plato’s Symposium, Kobabe has read Plato’s Symposium. I also suspect that detractors of this particular page have not read Plato’s Symposium, for the sensible thing to do when faced with a reference to Plato’s Symposium would be to REFER TO PLATO’S SYMPOSIUM!

    Nothing is frustrating the way quote mining is frustrating. Faced with literally hundreds of pages of context, some people just can’t see the forest for the trees. Similar objections were raised in opposition to Maus earlier this year. Complaints like this are out of proportion and maddeningly obtuse.

    Pobody’s Nerfect

    As much as I support Kobabe’s story and eir telling of it, I do think that it suffers structurally. Gender Queer at times feels like one very long zine, rather than a set of ideas neatly portioned off into chapters and essays. Thoughts and/or narrative formats change every six to eight pages or so. You might be reading a story one page only to be confronted with an infographic the next. The changes aren’t drastic enough to throw off the narrative, but they occur without warning, so it sometimes feels like you’ve missed a section in the book. Characters sometimes suffer from this as well: Maia’s ninth-grade crush is introduced and considered for an entire page, but then goes missing for ten whole pages. When they do show up again, it turns out that the crush is only as significant as the springboard for Maia’s introduction to David Bowie’s music. This is unevenly balanced later in the book, as Kobabe gives noticeably more confident and stylish introductions to Jaina Bee and Patricia Churchland.

    Still, this is Kobabe’s first book! E keeps a lot of good comics habits, like ending each page on a “stinger” that keeps the action going onto the next page. There are also some subtle plays with the format: comics Kobabe is asked an arresting question, which maintains a regular speech bubble, but its elongated tail wraps itself around Kobabe in a knot. There is a conscious effort here to make the most of the format, and Kobabe improves as the book goes on.

    Final Thoughts

    As someone doesn’t consider himself too concerned with (and occasionally stumped by) LGBTQ+ issues, Gender Queer was worth reading. Kobabe doesn’t ask for anything more than acknowledgement and support, which isn’t really different from what we all want, I dare say.

    In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.

    Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

    —Promotional text for Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe.
    Published by Oni Press, 2019.

  • “Utown” by Cab

    “Utown” by Cab

    I had the chance to finish Caroline Breault’s Utown today. At time of writing, it’s a webcomic, with a French-language print as well. An English version is due in 2023.

    You might be familiar with the premise : young starving artist Sam struggles to find a way to make ends meet while dealing with past trauma and social issues. Pair him up with runaway problem child Ed, throw in the impending destruction of their lifestyle, and voilà, your stage is set. It’s not a particularly original setup, but these days rarely anything is. Simply, Utown is a well-told story made with a lot of love and care.

    The character designs are cartoony, yet demonstrate real heft in their form. Breault’s style somehow manages to be both painterly and carefully rendered, but not in the “every frame a painting” sort of way that has crept into so many a blockbuster film. It’s apparent that a human hand has drawn these pictures, which is the sort of thing I love to see in artwork. The page layouts are simple, which is not a complaint: reading prose is always technically a simple thing to do, and comics shouldn’t deviate from that with too many overly-ambitious layouts. You probably won’t notice the layouts in the book (except for one satisfying game-changer in the end; you’ll know it when you see it) and that only helps the story.

    Given the lively comic art, you might conclude that the rules of reality for the narrative are also out the window. To its credit, Utown firmly avoids going any further into artistic abstraction. Publisher Oni Press states that the story is “perfect for fans of Scott Pilgrim,” which I feel is half-true. Both series feature a somewhat likable slacker as a lead, but there are no spectacular video-game style boss battles in Utown. Where Scott Pilgrim profits by literally punching his problems away, Utown‘s Sam has no such luck, choosing to get high or drunk (or both) in the face of adversity. The rest of the Utown cast react to their fate in all the ways real-world people do. There are no dramatic schemes, no elaborate revenge plots, no violations of physics for the sake of comedy. The cast act like their lives are important, and nothing that happens in the story ever feels contrived or unrealistically dramatic. Ultimately, it’s a slice-of-life in the truest sense, as these characters grow (or don’t) and have interests and lives outside of the plot and each other.

    Which, by the end of Utown, might be the point. This book shows us a chapter of one person’s life story, and it’s very clearly just a chapter. But it’s a complete chapter, well-told and presented, which is the best anyone can really ask for.

    Read Utown here.

    Utown is the story of a seedy neighborhood that a cast of misfits call home. Inspired by a string of real events that took place in my own city, the story follows Samuel, a 24-year-old semi-aspiring artist (but mostly a video store clerk) who’s doing his best at avoiding adulthood. When gentrification shows up at his doorstep, he must face the fact that the town he grew up in is no longer his safe haven—and that he’s not read to leave just yet. With no money and little options, it’s time for him to either step up and prove his worth as a serious artist or keep on repeating old, toxic behaviors.

    —Promotional text for Utown by Cab.
    Published by Oni Press, 2023.

  • Superman’s 75th Anniversary Logo has… Problems

    Superman’s 75th Anniversary Logo has… Problems

    What do you do when you have a little time to think about a trifling thing that you want to complain about? Put it on the internet, of course!

    I’m going to keep this critique light-hearted because I’m reviewing a logo for the anniversary of a comic book character. (Think about how high that ranks on people’s “things worth caring about” lists: A review of a logo for a comic book character‘s anniversary. It’d be lucky if it broke the Top 10,000.)

    So anyway, Superman is 75 this year, and to commemorate the event DC unveiled a 75th Anniversary logo. That’s all well and good, but look at that thing. LOOK AT IT.

    The first thing that came to my mind was “why did they overlap the 7 and the 5?” Presumably it’s to square nicely with the word “years” across the bottom, but that started a new question: why is the cape breaking the frame? My only guess is that it reads better as a cape that way than it does without it, but with Superman’s shoulder being aligned with the word “years” the cape looks like an extraneous design element. Text won’t sit in a nice box when set against that outline! Speaking of boxes, why is there a red box set directly against the blue figure when the colors are the same intensity? Not that I think that someone is going to run this logo in black & white for a letterhead or anything, but there’s no way that box would hold up in a one-color printing job.

    What if someone wanted to print it in monochrome anyway, for, let’s say, a letterhead, as I mentioned before? Well, for starters, that outline is not going to reduce well, I can tell you. There are too many small lines that aren’t to scale with the broad, clear lines of the text and the logo. Look at those ripples in the shoulder, caused by the cape. Don’t forget about that hair, too! Superman has sure gotten some spiky hair recently. Maybe it goes better with that pose.

    That pose, yes… Superman seems to be looking downward, in a vengeful, brooding manner. Some people seem to appreciate the change, but not me. From the start, Superman was a straight-laced do-gooder with a strong, almost smug sense of justice. Sure, this made him a bit flat as a character, but it’s also part of what makes him a “super” man; he has powers he could easily use to conquer the earth, but he chooses to uphold truth, justice, and general Midwestern U.S. ethics instead. And he’s smug about it. You know who’s vengeful and brooding? Batman. Not Superman. When Superman needs to mull things over, he doesn’t hunch over gargoyles during a midnight thunderstorm, surveying the city for evil and writing sonnets to himself. No, Superman flies thousands of miles to his private fortress (one he built himself, and didn’t inherit from his parents—unlike somebody else I could name) for a little R & R. He doesn’t even project his frustrations onto others! He’s a SUPERMAN, darn it! That’s why the old Fleischer cartoons always showed him standing proudly, arms akimbo, smirking into the stars! Superman is better than you!

    OK, so I went off track there. Still, I don’t have much love for the “75” logo. It certainly does what it’s supposed to, but there is a lot of explaining that needs to be done, and a design is a lot like a joke: you shouldn’t have to explain it. If you’re feeling brave, you can check out the comments on Deadline’s coverage of the story, where more than a couple of people share my opinion on the logo.