I stopped by the library the other day, just to see if they had anything new, and I happened across the graphic novel section, which actually had a fairly decent selection of collected comics. As I've said before, I balk at paying $20 for soemthing that will take me an hour to read, particularly if I don't know whetehr I'll like it. You can't beat free, though, so I checked a bunch of stuff out of the library to see what it's like. I'll collect them together here so as not to swamp the blog with separate comic posts.
100 Bullets I originally picked up just the first volume of this, and then went back the next day to get the next eight. This is good stuff.
The set-up is this: people in bad situations are approached by a mysterious stranger calling himself Agent Graves. He offers them a briefcase containing a picture of a person who has ruined their life, a gun, and 100 untraceable bullets. He promises that those bullets put them entirely above the law-- any investiagation into anything they do with the gun will stop as soon as the bullets are identified.
At first glance, it seems like Graves is just playing a game, to see how far people are willing to go when given the opportunity to take the law into their own hands. It quickly becomes clear that there's more going on, though. Graves and an associate of his calling himself Mr. Shepherd are linked to a shadowy and powerful organization called the Trust, and there's a dangerous and secret war afoot, with complicated allegiances and hidden agendas on all sides.
This is an extremely violent series, with gore aplenty and a high body count, but it's very well done. The plot is nicely twisty, the characters are interestingly complicated, and the art is pretty good. I ordered all the available volumes from Amazon last night (weirdly, volumes 3 and 8 don't show up on a search for "100 Bullets" and volume 8 isn't available new, though they claim to have it in a local Borders), and look forward to the next couple.
(Below: Astro City, Fables, and Lucifer)
Astro City was one of the things recommended when I asked for suggestions in the superhero genre, and they had the first volume in the library. They also had volumes four and five, but not two or three, but you get what you pay for.
I liked this quite a bit, too. It's somewhere between a straight superhero comic and Watchmen-- much more concerned with the inner lives of the heroes and the daily life of the ordinary people of Astro City than the conventional hero-ing. The big clashes with supervillains are almost relegated to the background, which to my mind makes it much more appealing than what I know of standard superhero stuff.
I ordered the first three volumes from Amazon last night, and will probably get more after that.
Fables. The recent 1001 Nights of Snowfall got a bunch of positive reviews recently from mainstream sorts of outlets, and it sounds fairly interesting. It's part of the Fables continuity, though, so I thought I probably ought to read some of the original stories first, before getting to the later ones (even though they're apparently prequels, and relatively independent).
The set-up here is that various characters from myth and legend are alive and well and living in the modern world. Old King Cole is the Mayor of Fabletown, but Snow White really runs things. Bigby Wolf is the Sherrif, Bluebeard maintains his castle, Prince Charming flits about leeching off rich women, and they maintain a farm in Upstate New York for those fables who can't pass for human. All of them were chased from their original homelands by a mysterious Adversary centuries ago, and have been hiding out in our world since.
This sounds very Neil Gaiman, but the execution is, well, sub-Gaiman. It seems like an inordinate amount of time is spent doing recaps and clumsy exposition, and there are some very ad hoc things about a lot of the characters and situations. Some of the setpieces are kind of entertaining, but three volumes in there really isn't much of an overall plot, and it's just not grabbing me the way the others did.
If it improves in subsequent volumes, make a case for it in the comments, and I might keep reading them out of the library. Otherwise, I think I'll probably pass on the rest of it.
Lucifer: Evensong. OK, this wasn't a library find, as I've been reading these collections as they come out. This is the final volume of the story, and plays more or less the same role as The Wake does for Sandman: it ties up most (but not all) of the loose ends left after the dramatic events of the previous volume.
While it's very well-done, there's really no drama here. It's sort of like a stand-alone version of the last third of Return of the King-- lots of touching farewell scenes, but no conflict. If some sort of accident had prevented the publication of this volume, I wouldn't feel terribly deprived-- the series as a whole is fantastic, but this is sort of a dispoable coda to the main action.
By all means, though, buy and read the earlier volumes. It's great stuff.
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I have to say, I'm a big fan of Fables, though I'm not entirely positive that the plot picks up in the way you expected, by volume 6 it seems to be gaining some serious momentum, so it might be worth it to press on a bit. I haven't read past volume 6 yet, but I know I'm looking forward to it.
I'll have to give 100 Bullets a try. Thanks for the suggestion!
I've been wanting to give 100 Bullets a try, and after your review I'm looking forward to it even more.
I've also heard great things about Fables, but after 3 volumes, I'm having the same response you are. Good, but it doesn't really drag you in. Though, to be fair, each volume is better than the last. After the first one, I didn't really have any desire to continue, but I hear it gets better, so I might keep trying.
I think I've gotten spoiled after reading Brian K. Vaughan's two current series, Y: The Last Man, and Ex Machina. Both have great characters, and wheels-within-wheels plotting that drags you in, but never gets you lost.
Also good is Vaughan's Pride of Baghdad, a story done as a single graphic novel, instead of monthly issues. A very gripping story.
K
100 Bullets: I'm shocked that you liked it. I couldn't stand it; it was very nearly unreadable, largely because of the phonetic dialect dialogue and the sordidness.
Astro City: I'll warn you that the Tarnished Angel volume is weaker than the earlier ones.
Fables: My take exactly. Good premise, bad execution. I don't think it gets better. Interestingly enough, Willingham's Proposition Player (a single volume work where a poker player wins souls in a card game, thereby becoming a minor Power) is MUCH better.
I, too, balk at paying that much, but I've got a great deal at my local comics shop. $2.50 to rent a trade paperback for 3 days. Not free, as the public library, but they've got more specialized knowledge and more complete (and current) collections.
They do have a predominance of traditional superhero stuff, though, but I imagine a library would have some of that problem anyway.
I read and enjoyed my son's copy of "Pride of Baghdad." I'll also go look for Frank Miller's "The 300" since I enjoyed the movie.
I've heard that Stephen King has greenlighted a graphic novel series of "The Dark Tower." Coincidently, I'd just heard the audiobook of King himnself reading "The Dark Tower." He reads well, despite two or three words that I was sure he'd mispronounced. But how many Fantasy novels have "parsec" and "heliograph" in the opening chapter? I'd foolishly ignored King until about 1979, assuming that, if the books were bestsellers, they weren't good. I revised my estimate completely. He's very talented, very hard working, has the sweetest deal in North American authorship for good reasons, and has ambitions beyond any genre, as noted by the New York Times and other mainstream venues. They teach his stuff in schools. Anyway, the graphic novels. Looking forward to them...
I owe a comic book to a publisher, based on a handshake deal at Comic-Con, 2 cons ago. I sent a too-long draft, and need to edit it down to size... I used to have a science column in a comic book, before they called anything "graphic novels."
[insert standard joke about George W. Bush's Presidential Library here]
Oh, and Neil Gaiman is a star at the forthcoming San Diego Comic-Con, where their snailmailings not that he is associated with 3 feature films all being released in 2007! Did you have an opinion on his work?
The first two issues of the Dark Tower comic series have been released, and appear to be straight re-hashes of Roland's life as a young man, without significant (or perhaps any) departures from the events in the books, except that they're portrayed in chronological order.
Thank you, Kate Nepveu! You've just helped me pick another present for my wife's birthday. Bless you, nondenominationally speaking.
Does anyone know the URL of that master chart that showed how all the characters in all the Stephen King universes actually connect or are hypothesized to connect? King is competing with Asimov, Dickens, Chekhov, Shakespeare, Balzac, Scott, and some others for Greatest Hypertext in All Literature. And it is now feasible to implement these correctly...