I do wonder what the readers of the New York Times Magazine must have thought when Gene Luen Yang’s Prime Baby first started its serialization in its pages. I guess if they’d read American Born Chinese or The Eternal Smile that they might’ve had at least the glimmering of an idea that it was bound to be a little odd. I’ll go a step further, though; not since first encountering Yang’s Gordon Yamato and the King of the Geeks have I seen such a strange book from Yang. Not that I’m complaining. But it’s definitely one of Yang’s more eccentric works.

Prime Baby starts with a simple enough premise, that eight-year-old Thaddeus Fong is less than impressed with his baby sister Maddie. She’s eighteen months old now and the only sound she ever makes is, "Ga," over and over again. But when Thaddeus realizes that she’s making the sound in counts of incremental prime numbers, well, that’s when things get odd. And odder. And then odder still. Prime Baby reminds me of a twisty path where every turn has something so strange that you’ll forget about everything you’ve seen up until that point. What starts as a story about jealousy, and a superiority complex turns into something radically different. with all sorts of new obstacles and weird moments. As a reader, you need to just roll with the punches, accept that you aren’t sure what Yang is going to throw at you next, and brace yourself for the inevitable.

Here’s the thing about Prime Baby, though. Even though the book ends in a very different place than it first began, in terms of setting, Prime Baby is a book that travels full circle. Those earliest emotions of jealousy and superiority come back around again, and manage to tie the entire book together. Without that last bit, I suspect I’d have been at least slightly annoyed by Prime Baby; a rambling, what’s-coming-next? sort of story isn’t easy to pull off, and there needs to be a reason for that winding road. I think Yang gives it to us at the conclusion, and it makes it all work.

Yang’s art is cute as always. Thaddeus manages to have one of the most diabolical smiles you’ll see in comics, no small feat. It’s funny, because Yang writes his protagonist as a scheming little mastermind, but it’s the way that Thaddeus smiles that sold him to me than his actual actions or dialogue. There are some fun little details along the way, too; not just Thaddeus’s designer facial hair, but items like the salt shakers worn on a string around each slug’s neck. (Think of it as the slug version of Christians wearing a cross around their neck and it’ll suddenly fall into place.) Speaking of whom, the slugs are the visual stars of Prime Baby. I could probably look at strips with them distributing bag lunches or knitting socks for hours. Yang takes the absurd and makes it work, here.

Prime Baby is in some ways a bit of a throwaway story; at just 64 pages and only several panels per page, it’s by no means a new major work by Yang. But it’s inexpensively priced, it’s funny, and at the end of the book I felt like I’d spent my time well by reading it. I’m looking forward to Yang’s next full-length book, but until then, it’s nice to have Prime Baby collected into one place. It’s silly, but it’s the good kind of silly.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

I remember when, years ago, First Second announced some upcoming books in their catalog that included a graphic novel written by Jane Yolen. Yolen is one of those masters of fantasy, with a bibliography rapidly closing on over 300 books, plus numerous short stories and awards to her credit. And, while many of her novels are intended for young adults, she’s written for adults as well. So a graphic novel from Yolen? This seemed too good to be true. Now that I’ve finally read Foiled, I must admit that I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.

Foiled follows Aliera Carstairs, a member of her high school’s fencing team that doesn’t fit in with any of the cliques. It’s a familiar basic setup for a fantasy novel, the outcast character slowly finding their own place in the world. Yolen’s certainly familiar and adept with that situation, and a lot of the first half of the book helps set up Aliera’s world and setting. Watching Aliera push through her mundane world isn’t bad; she’s got a dry narration voice, calmly and caustically describing everyone around her. It’s one of the draws of the book for this half; Aliera clearly views herself as more mature and learned than most around her, but at the same time Yolen lets flashes of Aliera’s teenage spirit push through on occasion. She presents herself as calm and cool, but when new student Avery is teamed up with her for a month-long biology project, she’s anything but collected. Her simultaneous attraction and confusion towards Avery is one of the most perfect distillings of the teenage hormonal surges I’ve seen depicted in comics.

With Foiled being a fantasy as well, though, once that element pushes forward into Foiled things get a little tricky. Once Yolen brings this part of the book into the story, it feels like everything is accelerated into a different pace. We get large exposition dumps presented to both us and Aliera, and it’s hard to entirely swallow how swiftly everything else plays out. What I can’t decide, though, is if Foiled should have been a longer book or not. I think a lot depends on if Foiled is supposed to be a stand-alone book or not. There’s certainly a lot of setup for a series (or even just a sequel), so it’s possible. And if that’s the case, I think I’m more all right with the rapid-fire pace of the second half. If there are additional books down the line, Yolen’s just pushing us to the point where we can have a new series of stories all blossom, once we know the truth about Aliera’s heritage and abilities. If Foiled is meant to stand on its own, though, I’d rather the book had just run an extra 30-60 pages in length. Why sprint towards the new status quo if we aren’t going to see anything to come out of it?

Mark Cavallaro draws Foiled, and when it comes to his work on the book I have no complaints whatsoever. I love the way he draws Aliera and company, from little pert noses to crisply drawn ovals and triangles for heads. It’s a very clean style, but don’t confuse that for one that doesn’t contain detail. Cavallaro knows how to create just the right bang and impact in the visuals; the double-page spread of entering Grand Central Station makes it feel massive and imposing, even to someone who’s been there many times before. And even when he’s drawing something as simple as Aliera getting nervous as time ticks by, he brings her squirming inner feelings to life with her face twisting and grimacing. Cavallaro also makes a decision in drawing the Faerie creatures as cute rather than hideous, but still giving them the right sense of menace when it’s needed. It’s a nice depiction of the characters, and it fits in well with the rest of the style chosen for Foiled.

This might be Yolen’s first graphic novel, but there are some nice tricks along the way she uses. When Aliera loses her foil, there’s a cute visual sequence on what happens to the weapon and where it goes from that point that wouldn’t have worked that well in a prose novel. Watching the various creatures transport the foil in the background while the rest of the story continues onward is a sort of storytelling that wouldn’t work in most other mediums, and I’m pleased to see how she worked it in. Likewise, she and Cavallaro use Aliera’s color-blindness with great effect in Foiled, giving a reason for Cavallaro’s pale blue and green washes across the pages, letting us really see Aliera’s world through her eyes and making the appearance of faerie have that much more of a visual pop off of the page. (Although it does make you wonder if Aliera’s mention of sports drinks looking too much like window cleaner to be a slight mistake, though.)

Foiled is an interesting book, one I’m glad I read. But I do wish the second half had unfolded at a slightly slower pace; barring that, I hope it’s because there’s a sequel (or more) planned down the line. Still, it’s a strong graphic novel debut for Yolen, and she clearly understands the format. Hopefully any more graphic novels from Yolen will have less of a wait involved. I’ll definitely pick up more comics from Yolen, though. It’d be fun to watch her slowly conquer another storytelling medium.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

A graphic novel based on a screenplay based on a short story? I suppose there are more circuitous routes out there for graphic novels, but none are immediately springing to mind. That’s the slightly thankless task that Danica Novgorodoff has with Refresh, Refresh, a story that gets traced back to a short story by Benjamin Percy. Reading the graphic novel, though, I ended up with a slightly disconcerting feeling that had I just picked up Percy’s short story that I would have ended up with a much stronger and more interesting experience.

The plot of Refresh, Refresh is something that will be coming more prevalent in media of all sorts over the upcoming years, the story of people left at home when family members go to fight the war in Iraq. It’s certainly not a bad jumping off point, and following three high school boys who are friends in a small town where most of the adults are in Iraq has an instant hook. If there’s one thing in Novgorodoff’s adaptation that definitely rings true, it’s the idea that these teenagers without any of their role models or mentors around are starting to unravel as they age, not sure how to fully become a man. So we see them have boxing matches with each other, fight with their "enemies" from school, awkwardly try and pick up girls. Josh, Cody, and Gordon are in a position where we can clearly see disaster looming overhead.

If I had to hazard a guess on where things go wrong with Refresh, Refresh, though, I’d suspect it was the initial transition into a screenplay. The shift from prose to screenplay can be a difficult one; you often lose any internal thoughts from the characters, as well as narrative transitions and embellishments. So when Novgorodoff was given her starting point of the screenplay, a lot would have dropped out of Percy’s award-winning short story. The end result is something that’s a little underwhelming. The story is choppy as it lurches from one scene to the next, with often a lack of follow-up from events. For example, when the electricity in Cody’s house goes out, it’s never mentioned again; the subplot of his mother trying to come up with enough money for rent and utilities quietly ignored for the remainder of the book. Refresh, Refresh comes across more as a loosely connected series of vignettes than a cohesive whole.

Cody’s also the character who probably suffers the most in the shift away from the short story format. As outsiders looking in, he comes across the most hateful and random, especially with his little brother. The problem isn’t so much that you can’t empathize with him, but rather that it’s hard to even understand what’s going on in his head. One assumes it’s more than just simple spite, but unfortunately that’s how it comes across by the story’s end. Still, it’s better than Gordon, who doesn’t ever get a story of his own. And as for Josh’s college acceptance drama, it’s telegraphed so strongly and blatantly that I actually groaned when it hit its conclusion.

I did like Novgorodoff’s art for Refresh, Refresh, though. It’s a squiggly, rough style that makes it a good match for the story. She’s able to get that anger across the page, and it’s coupled with a certain kind of youthfulness in her art that more or less sums up the main characters. Towards the end, there’s a sequence that looks to be painted in watercolors and it makes me wonder how Refresh, Refresh would have looked if the entire book was created that way. It’s so raw and breathtaking that it’s worth reading just for those pages; that’s definitely something I’d like to see more of from Novgorodoff down the line.

Refresh, Refresh left me with a feeling that I want to read Percy’s original short story more than anything else. James Ponsoldt’s screenplay being turned into a graphic novel by Novgorodoff was perhaps a losing proposition from the very start, but I give Novgorodoff for trying her best to make it as strong as possible. I’d like to read more from Novgorodoff, but in the future I hope she goes back to drawing her own stories instead.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

I have to hand it to Adam Rapp. When I first picked up Ball Peen Hammer, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d never seen anything by him before (even though he’s written novels, plays, and directed films), so I was going into the story blindly. And with hindsight, the book’s cover did warn me somewhat of the experience to come, with its stark black cover and single, slightly disturbing image. But by the time I was done with Ball Peen Hammer, I felt somewhat stunned, as if I’d gotten on a familiar bus route and somehow ended up in Hell.

Ball Peen Hammer is set in the near future, at a time when plague is running amok and most people are staying inside for safety. Rapp and artist George O’Connor have created a setting that evokes images of the Black Plague, with death littering the streets and near anarchy straining to break out. It’s there that we meet our main characters, although Rapp for the most part carefully keeps them apart in two seperate-but-close locations. As the characters struggle to survive, Rapp slowly tells their stories—and as a reader, you quickly begin to learn that this is not just a bad situation, it’s a deadly one that not everyone will be able to continue through.

It wasn’t until after I read Ball Peen Hammer that I noticed in Rapp’s biographical sketch that he’s also a playwright, but as soon as I saw that part of Ball Peen Hammer really clicked into place for me. It’s actually set up somewhat like a play, with almost all of the book taking place in two different, sparse locations. It’s easy to imagine a stage divided in two, one half or the other being lit while those characters interact with each other. It’s a technique that actually works well for a comic, too, because its narrow focus of location keeps the story claustrophobic and tense. The outside world, for the most part, simply doesn’t exist. There’s just the basement and the clock tower, while danger rules the streets and keeps everyone inside. It also helps Rapp’s story become that much more frantic as we start learning how deadly the plague is. One of the characters, Aaron, knows where there’s a fresh supply of antitoxin is located, but located across the city is just as far away as Mars. The characters are locked in their locations, unable to break free or even into each other’s spaces.

O’Connor’s art matches Rapp’s story, grim and dark. The people are drawn with long, wiry faces that twist up in emotion at the drop of a hat. Despite Rapp’s love of monologues, a lot of the storytelling is left in O’Connor’s hands, to let the audience know how characters are reacting to different events and ideas. For the most part, O’Connor nails it. He keeps the story flowing well, and the most chilling moments are just that thanks to O’Connor’s staging of the scenes. When the Collector enters and exits the basement through the sewer, for instance, it’s almost like watching smoke billow and pour out of a grate. His large frame somehow, impossibly fits through the small hole, and in a good way. It makes the Collector that much more sinister and hellish, like the devil himself rising up from the underworld to give a new assignment. Or later, when Exley has to make a horrible decision, it’s staged in a way that doesn’t show the worst moment but still lets the reader feel and almost hear the impact as it occurs. My only complaint with O’Connor’s art is that for a book that when a book’s grand total of characters is seven, two of them (Welton and Dennis) shouldn’t look so familiar that I started to think that Dennis was Welton, instead of a brand-new person on the scene.

Ball Peen Hammer is a bleak, grim book. It doesn’t tie its ends up neatly, and the characters who survive are not necessarily in a better place when everything is all said and done. That said, I’m highly impressed with the book. Rapp clearly understands how to write a comic book, and he and O’Connor work well together. This isn’t a book to jump into lightly, and you’ll feel a little grimy and sick by the time you’re done. For those willing to take the plunge, though, Ball Peen Hammer has its rewards. I’m glad I read it, and Rapp is definitely someone I’ll be keeping my eye out for in the future.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

Even under the best of circumstances, family can be difficult to deal with. That’s how Stuffed! opens itself to the reader, a story about a bizarre inheritance that freaks out the two brothers who find themselves with the delicate situation of dealing with its contents. It’s a basic story premise that’s been around for ages, with people having to either come together or be driven apart by a stressful third party. But while Glenn Eichler’s script is an amusing one, the element that’s missing in its pages may actually surprise you a little bit.

Tim Johnston’s never gotten along great with his family. He doesn’t really talk to his father any more, and his brother Ollie now goes by the name Free and is off living a nomadic lifestyle among other similarly free-spirited people. But when Tim’s father dies, it forces Tim to not only reconnect with his brother but to also re-examine his relationship with his deceased father as well the rest of the world. Because when your sole inheritance is the contents of a "museum" of antiquities that are mostly so bad even a circus sideshow wouldn’t want them, you know that somehow there’s going to be that one item that causes trouble.

I almost hate to say it, but I think that Eichler’s script is one that would have worked better in a non-print form. Eichler’s primary credits are for television, most notably co-creating and writing Daria. There’s no doubt in my mind that Eichler’s a funny writer, and one who gets the delivery of a joke and its punchline. The problem is, without actors to back up the lines in Eichler’s script for Stuffed!, a lot of them fall slightly flat. Reading the book, I kept thinking to myself that the book was missing that extra punch that is all the difference between reading a sentence on the page, and hearing someone genuinely funny deliver it. (It’s like reading Rodney Dangerfield’s iconic line, "Take my wife, please!" without ever hearing him say it; it loses something in the translation from one medium to another.) So when Tim grouches about his brother, or Free does something immensely stupid, or Howard and Talyah worry about their son Jamal, they often come across as a little more idiotic than intended. Howard and Talyah’s, "He just talked to us!" could be really funny if two actors gave it that right level of frantic, but delivered cold on the page it’s a lot harder to get a chuckle out of the moment. Even the moments where Tim is at work and dealing with crazy people came across a little flat, perhaps because once again they seem more like a chance for a guest star to have fun with the material, but without that extra push it’s just a slightly-annoying sidebar.

Nick Bertozzi’s an artist whose work I’ve enjoyed for a long time. That said, I think that he’s the first artist whose work hasn’t worked well with First Second’s normal 6×8.5" book dimensions. Bertozzi’s art often looks a little too shrunken down and crushed in Stuffed!, almost as if it was draw with larger dimensions intended but then retrofitted to this smaller size. Bertozzi’s art is at its best when there are just a few panels on the page; there, his art gets to show off its slightly silly, funny expressions on the book’s various characters. As soon as the drawings get smaller, though, they lose a lot of their punch. Free goes from a slightly off-kilter, hanging-onto-sanity guy into a random homeless man; you can’t get a good look the faces of the characters, and that’s one of Bertozzi’s strong points. It’s not an unattractive book, but I’ve come to expect so much more out of Bertozzi that here it seems like we’re only getting a book that plays to half of his strengths.

It’s really strange because I wanted to like Stuffed! and there’s a good story struggling to get out. But as it currently exists, I think it’s a story that’s being told in the wrong medium. Make it a movie with some strong talent and you’ll have audiences rolling in the aisles. There’s a lot of humor packed into Stuffed!. But right now, I think it’s just not getting itself to audiences in the right form.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

I’m a little mortified to admit that it’s taken me a couple of months to finally read The Photographer, the story of photojournalist Didier Lefèvre’s journey with Médecins Sans Frontièrs (Doctors Without Borders) into Afghanistan in 1986. It seemed like the kind of book that I couldn’t take lightly, that I wanted to reserve extra time to read. Finally, the rest of the world slowed down around me, and over the course of two days I dove into the book. What I found made me wish that somehow I could relive that initial experience of reading it all over again.

In 1986, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan was still raging on and with no end in sight. That didn’t stop Médecins Sans Frontièrs (Doctors Without Borders), though, which continued to send humanitarian aid into a country that most of the world had abandoned. It was Didier Lefèvre’s first major assignment as a photojournalist, to accompany a group from Médecins Sans Frontièrs (MSF) as they traveled from Pakistan into Afghanistan. It seemed like a simple enough assignment, one that would net Lefèvre a series of amazing photographs. What it actually resulted in was a job that almost cost Lefèvre his life.

The Photographer was originally published as three separate volumes in France, and together they document the rise and fall of Lefèvre’s journey into Afghanistan. It’s not until I hit the end of the first book within The Photographer that I realized that what Emmanuel Guibert had managed to tell an engrossing story about a trip to Afghanistan where the entire first book is set in Pakistan. There’s so much in that initial third that needs to be told; the preparations both physically and mentally, learning about all of the different people from MSF that Lefèvre would travel with, and getting to know Lefèvre himself. After all, there were no flights into Afghanistan that they could take, their journey instead meaning a long trip on foot, sneaking across the border in the dark and evading Soviet helicopters that would shoot at anything moving. Guibert tells Lefèvre’s story effortlessly (not a surprise to anyone who’s also read Alan’s War, Guibert’s biography of World War II veteran Alan Cope), keeping the narrative flowing smoothly and enticingly. Vignettes along the way early on are intriguing—is the person he talked to a spy, a journalist, or something else?—and Guibert always places a high level of importance upon every story and experience of Lefèvre’s that he relates.

It’s not until you get to the second book, though, that you realize that things are only just starting to heat up. The second book opens with the entire team having to hide under blankets when a Soviet helicopter is sighted. Even a fingernail catching the sun could result in death—and it’s at this point that it begins to sink in just how precarious a situation Lefèvre and MSF are in. It’s an unflinching look at the results of the war, with Juliette and the rest of MSF treating the injured as they arrive at each new town. I’ll admit that I was slightly unprepared for some of the sights in The Photographer; the number of children who were hurt by bullets, shrapnel, or land mines was heartrending, and there’s one moment where you see the rather graphic aftermath of an explosion where a young boy’s lower jaw is completely gone. (I found myself relieved to get to the end of the book and discover the after word explaining what happened to him as well as a few other of the patients.) It’s not all shock and horror, though. Lefèvre gets to know many of the Afghani people throughout his journey, and it’s hard to not warm to many of them. The Photographer is as much a portrait of 1986 Afghanistan as it is Lefèvre and the MSF mission, and it helps put a face on the people.

What goes up must come down, though, and the last volume of The Photographer details Lefèvre’s precarious journey back towards Pakistan, when he decides to journey back with a caravan instead of MSF so that he could get home a week sooner. It’s a harrowing travelogue, and Guibert brings to life Lefèvre’s despair and fear as things steadily go from bad to worse. What impressed me was that Guibert and Lefèvre don’t sugar-coat Lefèvre’s decisions and actions in this portion. There’s no singular person who’s at fault here, but some of the bad moves are certainly on the part of Lefèvre, and the book doesn’t flinch away from that honest portrayal. Without giving away many of the events of this portion of The Photographer, Guibert successfully gets the narrative into Lefèvre’s head here when things hit their all-time lowest, and it’s certainly the most emotional and scary moment of the entire book.

The Photographer is a combination of Lefèvre’s photographs and Guibert’s line art, and the two sync up much better than I’d have expected. Lefèvre’s photographs are reproduced in numerous sizes and dimensions; sometimes it’s a stream of images serving to show the passage of time, with dozens of snapshots over a single event or at times a stretch of the journey. At other moments it’s just one or two photographs dominating a page, letting the impact of coming across the grave of an MSF member from a previous trip, or part of the team in a precarious position in the river. Guibert’s art matches up effortlessly with Lefèvre’s photographs. It’s as if you’re seeing additional, lost photographs of the trip that were transformed into art (even though it’s clear that these are not), with a high level of realism and connection to the photographs of Lefèvre. In the portions of the journey where Lefèvre took little or no photographs for various reasons, it’s the art that has to carry the narrative, and Guibert does that with the greatest of ease. Frédéric Lemercier is given a cover credit for his work on the layout and design of The Photographer, and once you’ve read the book you can see why. This book wouldn’t have worked if the two hadn’t integrated with each other perfectly, and Lemercier does an excellent job of providing just that.

The Photographer is an amazing book. Alan’s War had told me that Guibert had a talent for biography, and The Photographer reinforces that statement. It’s hard to not come out of the book feeling slightly changed, as Lefèvre and Guibert expand the boundaries of your world. I will probably never go to Afghanistan, but The Photographer has given me an empathy for the region that I otherwise might have lacked. One of the best books of the year, by far, everyone with an interest in the world around them owes it to themselves to read this book. Highly recommended.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

When is a pirate book not a pirate book? Appollo and Lewis Trondheim’s Bourbon Island 1730 perhaps fulfills the answer to that rhetorical question, set on the Indian Ocean of Bourbon Island (present-day Réunion) as the age of pirates is slowly coming to an end. It’s a combination of adventure and historical fiction showing off the social interactions of the island, but I’m not entirely convinced that the book entirely succeeds on either front.

Raphael and Mr. Despentes are ornithologists, traveling to Bourbon Island to investigate the rumors that the dodo—brought to extinction by settlers in neighboring Mauritius several decades earlier—may still live on this other island. But while Raphael is excited to travel to an island where pirates still sail and adventure, the reality is nothing like he expected. Colonialism is slowly taking control of Bourbon Island over that of the pirates, and high tensions seem poised to tear the island apart as sides slowly begin to form, with the outcast groups of maroons (those who have fled society and formed their own in the wilderness) caught in the middle.

I’m still not entirely sure if Bourbon Island 1730 is supposed to serve more as adventure, or historical set piece. Appollo and Trondheim don’t seem sure themselves, with the book jumping from one set of characters to the next and providing conflicting messages. The hunt for the dodo itself is certainly little more than a MacGuffin to bring two outsiders onto Bourbon Island itself (those familiar with the extinction of the dodo will know that no dodos were ever found outside of Mauritius; modern scientists believe the reports of dodos were actually sightings of the also-extinct Réunion sacred ibis), and it’s certainly an inventive way to bring characters from Europe all the way to east of southern Africa. Once they’re there, though, the lack of focus seems to keep anything from developing to its full potential. Characters and situations are discarded left and right, and the conclusion of the book comes across so abruptly that it’s a little disconcerting. It feels like things were still building to a head when Appollo and Trondheim lose interest in the entire story, sending our characters back off to sea and the story over. It’s a disappointing end to what feels like it should have been the first in a series of books that continue to follow the inhabitants of Bourbon Island as it goes through its political shifts.

Trondheim’s art is good, but also a little more uneven than I’m used to from him. In his trademark style, characters have different animal heads instead of human features, and Trondheim does a good job of making them look as cute or menacing as he needs. A lot of the early pages, though, are lacking any sort of black fills (aside from Raphael’s head and clothes), making the art feel unfinished and sketchy. It’s actually hard to pick out what’s going on in those pages, especially once the action moves deep into Bourbon Island’s jungles. Thankfully the later sections of the book seem better designed for black and white publication, using fills to help characters and objects pop out of the page. Trondheim is at his best here when it comes to drawing the towns and buildings of Bourbon Island; it certainly feels like he’s done his research, plunging the reader almost 300 years into the past with old colonial style constructions. Not seeing Trondheim draw more of that sort of thing is one of the greatest losses, I think, for there not being another volume around the corner picking up where Bourbon Island 1730 leaves off.

Bourbon Island 1730 isn’t a bad book, but I think it doesn’t quite live up to its potential. At the end of the day, it’s a good book that felt like it should have been a great book. Books that Trondheim works on are normally the latter, and I think it ends up being a real disappointment to not hit its normal high marks. If you go in with lower expectations, you’ll probably be pleased with the end result.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

When the manga boom first really erupted into North America, a lot of publishers began also translating Korean comics (or manhwa) into English. One of the big benefits was that manhwa already is read left-to-right, so it didn’t have to go through the whole issue of "flipping" versus reading right-to-left. These days very little manhwa is being translated as the boom has settled back down into a more reasonable level, but occasionally a new manhwa shows up, like Kim Dong Hwa’s The Color of Earth. I think most people would agree that it’s books like The Color of Earth that are a good reminder why ignoring manhwa would cut us off from a whole wealth of really good comics.

Ehwa is a young girl growing up in Korea with her widowed mother. Even as Ehwa tries to understand the crass comments from the people who come to their inn, to her own body itself, big changes are ahead in her life. Boys are just around the corner, not only for Ehwa but for her mother as well. But it’s this arrival of the opposite sex that will ultimately bring Ehwa and her mother even closer together.

Kim’s The Color of Earth is based in part on his own mother’s early life, although it’s hard to say how many moments are actual events versus fictionalized versions of the full story. As a storyteller, though, Kim takes a leisurely path through a lot of Ehwa’s early life. It felt like Kim was carefully setting down building blocks, not only for The Color of Earth but the other two volumes ahead (The Color of Water and The Color of Heaven). Ehwa does a lot of learning about both her own body as well as women’s bodies in general in the first half of the book; it was hard to not make comparisons in my head to all the Judy Blume books I read when I was younger. It’s in this first half that my attention was much more focused on the story of Ehwa’s mother and her continuing romance with a traveling salesman. I’m glad Kim introduced this element earlier, because for people who aren’t as taken by Ehwa’s journey of self-discovery, it’s a welcome diversion and story to keep one’s attention.

That said, once the second half of The Color of Earth rolls around, things definitely begin to pick up. Ehwa being less naive and clueless makes for a more interesting story, and not merely because she’s a little more worldly. Her infatuations with two different men are intriguing, especially because both are in many ways out of bounds for Ehwa but for very different reasons. It’s hard to call her emotions at this point as being little more than infatuation, mind you; Kim is careful to give Ehwa very little actual interaction with either of them. It’s a great depiction of a young crush, and how something that feels like it’s so huge and overwhelming is in many ways just a drop in the bucket for things to come. Kim brings Ehwa through this stage of her life in a graceful and interesting manner, even as leaving you curious as to what will happen as she grows older.

The Color of Earth‘s art is interesting, because while Kim shows strong talent in drawing his characters, it’s actually the least favorite part of the book for me. Don’t get me wrong, I think he does a good job with drawing people in The Color of Earth. Scenes like the sad Ehwa balled up in the corner do a fine job with body language, showing her despair in a way that doesn’t require any additional dialogue or captions to explain what’s going on. But for me, the real attraction of The Color of Earth‘s art is how Kim draws the landscape of Korea. From big knotted trees to grassy meadows full of flowers, every time characters head outside of the town itself I couldn’t help but get excited because I wanted to see just what Kim would draw next. Looking at illustrations of a narrow bridge with moss covering its surface, or of the train winding through the countryside, it’s hard to not feel like Kim has transported you to a different place in time. And really, that’s The Color of Earth‘s ultimate power, to make you feel like you’re with Ehwa and everyone else in the earlier days of Korea.

There’s a lot to love about The Color of Earth. Some of the attractions are the smaller bits, like the ongoing saga of two of the regular patrons of the inn, or the strong relationship between Ehwa and her mother as Ehwa grows older and the two begin to have much more in common. First Second Books’s translated books normally come from Europe, but it’s easy to see why they were taken by Kim’s comics and wanted to bring them into English as well. The Color of Earth brings you to a different time, and with two more volumes ahead you’ll definitely want to extend your stay.

Purchase Link: Amazon.com

Two and a half years ago, Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese was released with huge (and well-deserved) critical acclaim. While he’s had a few books from other publishers years ago, since then the wait for a new Yang book has begun. Fans of American Born Chinese will no doubt be eager to hear that his new book, with artist Derek Kirk Kim, is now out. And, happily? There’s a lot to love here, too, with three stories that one-by-one tear the veil away from their initial situations to reveal something slightly different.

The first of the three stories, "Duncan’s Kingdom," was originally a two-issue mini-series from Image Comics published back in 1999. I remember reading it then (and writing a review of the first issue then) and really enjoying Yang and Kim’s story that begins with a medieval knight fighting frog creatures and turns into a hunt for a mysterious artifact known only as "Snappy Cola." What struck me upon the re-read of "Duncan’s Kingdom" a decade later is that it still really holds up as a story. While the basic idea behind Yang’s story is nothing new, it acquits itself well because of how Yang actually tells it. There’s a lot of emotional heft to this story; from Duncan’s early fumbling attempts to woo the Princess, to the later revelations of Duncan’s life, Yang keeps you interested and caring about Duncan and how his story unfolds. For a story that’s only 55 pages long, it’s impressive how well Yang is able to grab your attention.

It’s the second story, "Gran’pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile," that worked the least effectively for me. An homage of sorts of Uncle Scrooge and the other Disney ducks, Gran’pa Greenbax is a frog determined to have so much money in his swimming hole that when he dives into it, he won’t hit his nose on the bottom. When his hapless assistant Filbert shows Gran’pa Greenbax the Eternal Smile, a mysterious smile hovering up in the sky, Gran’pa and his granddaughters see their chance to make money in the most effective way possible: religion. I think part of the problem I had with "Gran’pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile" is that it feels slightly scattershot, going after so many targets simultaneously that it’s hard for it to really connect with any of them. There are good points to be made here about religion, creators, blind following, people using other’s beliefs for their own gain, and the working world. None of them really stands out as one over the other, though, and it’s a little frustrating.

I think the big stumbling point here is that "Gran’pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile" (unlike the other two stories in this volume) really needed to be an entire book in its own right. Everything’s overly compressed, so the shifts of the girls from accomplices to believers seems a little too sudden, the nemesis of the frogs feels like we missed an earlier introduction, and Gran’pa Greenbax’s big confrontation with Filbert lacks the sort of punch that it really deserves. 30 pages just isn’t enough to hit all of the ideas that the story is brimming over with; this could have been two or three times as long and have not felt padded or overly long. On the plus side, Kim’s art hits both halves of the story with strength, shifting from cartoonish to realistic so well that I wouldn’t be surprised if some readers didn’t initially realize they’re both by the same artist.

Closing out the book is easily my favorite story of the three in The Eternal Smile, "Urgent Request." Yang takes something we’re all familiar with—spam e-mails where a Nigerian prince is asking for monetary help in exchange for a fraction of his immense fortune—and asks the question, "What happens when someone answers the e-mail?" It’s here that we meet Janet Oh, an employee at CommTech who is routinely ignored, discarded, or looked down upon by everyone who meets her. It’s funny because until the halfway point of "Urgent Request" I really wanted to strangle Janet because of her extreme passive nature; looking back on the story, that’s clearly the kind of reaction that Yang wants to get out of the reader. Like the other two stories of The Eternal Smile, "Urgent Request" starts with one premise and then halfway through transforms it into something slightly different, letting us see that our perception of our lead character was not necessarily correct. With Janet, though, it’s different and more satisfying—perhaps because more so than Duncan or Gran’pa Greenbax, she’s not really fighting against some sort of outside force that has made her what she is, but rather her own perception of herself. Her gaining a spine in "Urgent Request" is the sort of moment that really made me sit up in my chair as I was reading and start taking notice of her. As we learn more about why she replied to Prince Henry Alembu, she becomes more and more interesting to read about. It’s a wonderful reversal of character for Janet, and it’s all the more impressive on how adeptly Yang is able to reasonably achieve that moment.

Kim’s art in "Urgent Request" is also at its strongest here. The art here is delicate and subtle in its beauty, with each two-colored panel having a gentle air about it. I love how Kim draws Janet, with her almost perfect mass of hair having individual strands of hair sticking out of it, or her delicate, graceful smile. Panels like Janet running through the rain show such a beautiful grace to the character, while keeping her true to that initial, slightly dowdy look that Kim creates for the character, and having the two able to co-exist makes her that much more interesting. Even something as simple as the page layouts are impressive here, with Kim often using just part of the page to help tell the story. There’s one page in particular where Janet overhears a co-worker and her boss talking about what they really think of Janet, and having the panels on that page just stop entirely halfway down the page is a smart visual shorthand to not only end the scene, but to help drive home what a crushing moment it is for Janet.

It’s great to not only have a new book from Yang and Kim, but to see their collaborations—especially "Urgent Request"—come across so nicely. Hopefully it won’t be ten years before the two work together again; they’ve clearly got a good understanding of how to bring the best out of each other’s contributions. Fans of Yang’s American Born Chinese (or for that matter, Kim’s Same Difference and Other Stories) will be really pleased with this book. It’s been well worth the wait.

Purchase Link: Amazon.com

Have you ever read one of those books that you absolutely cannot put back down? That was absolutely the case for me when it came to Alan’s War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope. What was a strictly chance meeting—comic creator Emmanuel Guibert and World War II American soldier Alan Cope—spawned not only a long friendship, but the retelling of Cope’s experiences in the European theatre in the 1940s. As the last of the World War II veterans are vanishing, a book like Alan’s War in many ways is more important than ever, recording those memories with such great ability and power.

Cope’s story, as dictated to Guibert, doesn’t pull any punches right from the get go. It would certainly be easy for Cope to portray himself in a particularly great light, but instead Cope lays it all out on the table as he remembers it, admitting that he’d never even heard of Pearl Harbor when America was suddenly plunged into World War II. Leaping into the moment that Cope was drafted, Alan’s War tells the experience by leaving nothing out. Training at Fort Knox is balanced with having to switch sleeping bunks on the train ride there, and care packages from his fellow soldiers’s families make as much of an impression as being in France and Germany. It’s by giving this full picture of what it was like for Cope to enter the war that you start to get an idea about what a huge, life-changing experience this became. Cope’s world was turned upside down after being drafted, and to only focus on the actual business of war would have left so much out of the experience.

There are certainly a lot of pieces of Alan’s War that will probably surprise modern audiences. The entire first third of Alan’s War has to do with Cope’s training as a soldier—how to drive a tank, how to be a radio operator, how to shoot a rifle—rather than being in the war itself. But it’s not until the end of those stories that the reason for amount of material becomes obvious. While Cope was drafted when he turned 18, he doesn’t actually set foot in Europe until his 20th birthday. It’s pieces of information like that which help enrich and make Alan’s War an actual memoir instead of just a list of footnotes about an important time period. And, as said before, Cope and Guibert don’t leave less-savory details out of the book. Cope admits to having looted in a fit of frustration, and it’s an especially interesting admission because while he neither apologizes nor really tries to justify his actions, you still get a real sense of how he felt at the time as well as now about his actions, and it makes his character that much more interesting.

The last third of Alan’s War is actually after the end of World War II, and that amount of extra material is absolutely justified. Through the rest of his life, you really see how being drafted ended up changing Cope’s future. The relationships that he formed with both people and with Europe carry through for the rest of his life, and it’s interesting to not only see how it set Cope down a very different series of paths than he expected, but how even once he’d settled down that faces from the past continued to resurface. I think a lesser writer would have cut this material out, or at the very least condensed it to a fraction of its length, but Guibert very wisely gives it the space it needs to really unfold. It’s a strong reminder of how a war’s conclusion does not mean that it’s erased from the lives of the participants, and how much of a lasting impact it really creates.

Guibert’s art in Alan’s War is beautiful; as fantastic as his watercolor art in The Professor’s Daughter was, I think I actually like his creations here even more. Guibert uses a simple, thin line to delicately draw the faces of his characters, allowing a lot of white space to fill in the details in our imagination. Guibert is capable of so much expression and emotion with this style; you can see Cope’s indecision and naivety so clearly thanks to the art, telling the story with additional levels that words alone would never quite convey. Guibert is just as good with the surroundings in Alan’s War; from small houses to large city streets, and marching battalions to rolling tanks, every scene comes across so vividly that it can’t help but make you feel like you’re there with Cope throughout his life. Guibert is careful in terms of how much detail he places into his art; many panels have empty backgrounds, to deliberately focus your attention on the people and events in the foreground, and it works very well. At the same time, though, he’s not afraid to add in the additional material when necessary; whatever is needed to tell the story is ultimately what Guibert draws.

I’ve already read all of Alan’s War twice, and I suspect before the year is over I’ll have tackled it several additional times. Published in French as three volumes of La Guerre d’Alan, I’m delighted that First Second not only published Alan’s War but as one complete book. This is the sort of story that once you begin, you’ll not want to stop until you finish. Guibert has talked about creating a companion volume titled Alan’s Youth taking place in Cope’s earlier life, and if it’s half as interesting as Alan’s War it will be a winner. This is easily one of my favorite books published all year long, and I suspect if you read it you’ll feel the same way. Highly recommended.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com