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Comic/Manga Recs, As of 8/10/11
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 10:01 amIn Comics:
Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom, by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez: This work just gets better and better as the story progresses! Although I must say that this one of the comics that I will be making sure stays out of son's hands for quite a while; it's not often that I am genuinely horrified by a comic, and there are some images in this installment that are quite disturbing. But for all the horror, the story and characters of this work continue to fascinate me and keep pushing me forward to the inexorable conclusion. In this volume, there's an excellent (if bloody) homage to Calvin & Hobbes that also references The Once and Future King with shades of Watership Down; a story that effectively parodies the old EC horror/war comics of pre-Code infamy; and there's a lot of plot advancement, with a final twist that is both unexpected and awful, in the best senses of the words. There are also hints of side stories that would be just as interesting as the comic itself, which makes me long for a spin-off about each of the keys and our heroes' adventures with them. Rodriguez's art continues to impress and the colors in this one are beautiful, too. (Their brightness makes a great contrast to the darkness of the story.) I'm really glad this comic is on my shelf, even if it's on the disturbing end of my fandom spectrum.
In Manga:
Wandering Son, Volume 1, by Shimura Takako (Trans. Matt Thorn): I have so many good things to say about this deft and moving piece of work that I almost don't know where to begin. Let's start with the deep empathy that Shimura has for her two main protagonists, a boy and a girl who are struggling with their sexual identities at the beginning of puberty, both of whom suspect that they're the wrong gender. Shimura writes and draws these two characters in a simple way, but with the hint that the issues they face are anything but simple. The last page of the book is particularly emblematic of this; Shu-chan, the male character, has been told that as a graduation present, his grandmother will buy him anything he wants; on the final page, he imagines himself as a girl and thinks, "Grandma can't buy me this." The background of the illustrations on this page start completely black, then move to grey, and then finally to white as Shu comes to this realization: a truth has been brought into the light for him, and its consequences leave him momentarily speechless. In this book, the androgynous look of manga character really pays off as well. Both Shu-chan and Takatsuki-kun appear appropriately transgendered, but never a parodied or grotesque version of genderqueer. I should also that this work is available translated from Fantagraphics Books and is well worth the $20 for the hardcover edition. Matt Thorn has done some nice translation work, deliberately preserving the tricky linguistic gendered language as best he could and he includes a thoughtful essay at the end of the manga about Japanese and gendered honorifics. This isn't a flashy or especially exciting manga, but it presents a real life story with honest and sympathetic characters, and I hope that lots of people pick this up so the translation can continue.
Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom, by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez: This work just gets better and better as the story progresses! Although I must say that this one of the comics that I will be making sure stays out of son's hands for quite a while; it's not often that I am genuinely horrified by a comic, and there are some images in this installment that are quite disturbing. But for all the horror, the story and characters of this work continue to fascinate me and keep pushing me forward to the inexorable conclusion. In this volume, there's an excellent (if bloody) homage to Calvin & Hobbes that also references The Once and Future King with shades of Watership Down; a story that effectively parodies the old EC horror/war comics of pre-Code infamy; and there's a lot of plot advancement, with a final twist that is both unexpected and awful, in the best senses of the words. There are also hints of side stories that would be just as interesting as the comic itself, which makes me long for a spin-off about each of the keys and our heroes' adventures with them. Rodriguez's art continues to impress and the colors in this one are beautiful, too. (Their brightness makes a great contrast to the darkness of the story.) I'm really glad this comic is on my shelf, even if it's on the disturbing end of my fandom spectrum.
In Manga:
Wandering Son, Volume 1, by Shimura Takako (Trans. Matt Thorn): I have so many good things to say about this deft and moving piece of work that I almost don't know where to begin. Let's start with the deep empathy that Shimura has for her two main protagonists, a boy and a girl who are struggling with their sexual identities at the beginning of puberty, both of whom suspect that they're the wrong gender. Shimura writes and draws these two characters in a simple way, but with the hint that the issues they face are anything but simple. The last page of the book is particularly emblematic of this; Shu-chan, the male character, has been told that as a graduation present, his grandmother will buy him anything he wants; on the final page, he imagines himself as a girl and thinks, "Grandma can't buy me this." The background of the illustrations on this page start completely black, then move to grey, and then finally to white as Shu comes to this realization: a truth has been brought into the light for him, and its consequences leave him momentarily speechless. In this book, the androgynous look of manga character really pays off as well. Both Shu-chan and Takatsuki-kun appear appropriately transgendered, but never a parodied or grotesque version of genderqueer. I should also that this work is available translated from Fantagraphics Books and is well worth the $20 for the hardcover edition. Matt Thorn has done some nice translation work, deliberately preserving the tricky linguistic gendered language as best he could and he includes a thoughtful essay at the end of the manga about Japanese and gendered honorifics. This isn't a flashy or especially exciting manga, but it presents a real life story with honest and sympathetic characters, and I hope that lots of people pick this up so the translation can continue.
