May 5th, 2010 by bweber
For The Win covers, UK (left) and US (right)
If I’m reading the press info correctly, BoingBoing editor and author Cory Doctorow will be kicking-off his latest tour at our very own Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, IL. He’ll be there on Wednesday, May 12th starting at 7PM. (Address below).
My review copy of his new book, For The Win came in the mail yesterday. It’s a long one, something like 480 pages. Since, I’m the kind guy who has to move his lips when he reads, it’s going to take me more than a week to finish. Still, I’ll post a review when I’m done. Meanwhile, here is the synopsis from Cory’s own site, craphound.com: FOR THE WIN [is] a young adult novel about macroeconomics, video games and the labor movement.
How Doctorow will weave all this together is sure to be interesting. The Acknowledgments page is interesting in itself and gives some clues to what else is happening in the book.
Here’s a good scan of a bad print-out detailing Cory’s tour dates.
If you’re within driving distance to Anderson’s or any of these other fine establishments, make the trip and tell ‘em Brad sent you!
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April 21st, 2010 by bweber
A little something I snagged from the nice Quirk Books people at C2E2. The card pretty much says it all:
(click thumbnail for full description.)
This will be in stores sometime in September. I might be getting an advance copy for review. Maybe. Still not sure on that one. I’ll let you know if/when it hits the doorstep.
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April 1st, 2010 by bweber
The cover of this book is from one of Francisco Goya’s Black Paintings which he painted on the interior walls of his house between 1819 and 1823. “Saturn Devouring His Son” is based on the Greek myth of the King of the Titans who ate his children from the fear that they would rise up and kill him. Which they eventually did anyway, making room for the Olympians. According to the Wikipedia entry, Peter Paul Reubens depicted the same story in the 1600s. Reubens’s painting is more classical, less cartoony, more horrifying.
It is the aspect of horror which is missing from Eat Thy Neighbor: A History Of Cannibalism. Not to say the book isn’t thick with sick and disturbing scenes. But the authors seem to delight in retelling these stories, accounting for every bizzaro detail, especially with the more recent and better documented cases.
Diehl and Donnelly start out all right: Part One (Cultural Cannibalism) is an even, intelligent, though somewhat light overview of one of the world’s last great taboos. But the deeper they slide into Part Two (Case Studies Of Taboo Breakers), the authors wind-up treating the subject matter like a couple of fifth-graders, recounting every gory detail and reveling it them. And with fifteen “case studies”, the gore and brutality goes on ad nauseum.
With a topic like this, you’re an idiot not to expect gore and brutality; they’re just part of the deal. But in this book, gore and brutality is all there is. It’s clear the authors editors lashed together newspaper accounts and some of what they saw on the History Channel, but bypassed weightier material such as court documents or psychology texts. At no point in the “case studies” do the authors pause for some much-needed analysis or discussion.
By the time they get around to their lame closing assessment of “The Future Of Cannibalism,” it’s too late for them to save their book from being considered anything but tasteless.
Steer clear of this one.
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November 19th, 2008 by bweber
The Savannah College of Art and Design has taken the time and trouble to do something no one has previously attempted: adapting original Twilight Zone scripts to comics.
While there have been a number of earlier comic book incarnations of the seminal TV show, none could be considered faithful translations of Rod Serling’s screenplays. Many of The Twilight Zone episodes themselves are missing elements that didn’t make it from the page to the small screen –– lines, scenes, or characters edited or eliminated for running time or budget, or their provocative nature possibly troubling the sponsors and viewers.
These missing pieces –– the excised, the overlooked, the unexplored –– were what SCAD Professor of Sequential Art Mark Kneece (Hellraiser, Batman:Legends of the Dark Knight) found in each show’s original screenplay. From these pieces, Kneece et al were able to construct a “director’s cut” of the eight episodes selected for this graphic novel series.
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July 12th, 2007 by bweber
Man, am I behind on my reviews. People are nice enough to send me books then I don’t get the word out about the good ones. Shamey-shame-shame on me.
Here are a couple to get me up-to-date and to get you informed about what needs buying for you and the kids —
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July 12th, 2007 by bweber
If you ever land a book contract and need a good literary publicist, call MediaMasters. They’re the fine folks who, among other high-profile projects, orchestrated the wildly successful launch of First Second books.
I believe they’re largely responsible for helping Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese make it to the 2006 National Book Award Finals, as well as why there are more than a few First Second titles on the impressive list of 2007’s Eisner Award Nominees.
Granted, the books themselves had a lot to do with it. But never underestimate a publicist’s role in putting those deserving books into the hands of appreciative readers — and the people on award committees.
Anyway, I’ve done some work for and with MediaMasters. They know what I do and what I like, so sent me copy of David Peterson’s Mouse Guard: Fall, 1152.
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July 12th, 2007 by bweber
The matte finish and monochromatic covers of Taro Gomi’s DOODLES and SCRIBBLES create an odd presence on bookstore shelves — an eye-catching negative space among the shinny, toxic colors of the other coloring books. Even before you pick it up, it’s clear these are going to be different. And lots of fun.
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May 3rd, 2007 by bweber
CASEY AT THE BAT, Earnest Thayer’s minor epic poem about baseball, gets a wholly fresh and nostalgia-free update by artist Joe Morse. Morse abandons the handlebar moustaches and turn-of-the-century trappings of previous editions. Instead, he brings the 1888 poem into the modern inner city.
To do that, the book’s design sets-up a slick transition from the Victorian Era to current time by placing over the first page a sheet of vellum watermarked with an old-timey logo for the Mudville Nine. The vellum overlays a heavily graffitied brick wall above which floats a word balloon filled with the poem’s title.
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May 2nd, 2007 by bweber
I don’t have a bad thing to say about Jeff Kinney’s Diary Of A Wimpy Kid, which is a surprise since I can usually find something bad to say about most anything.
Based on Jeff Kinney’s long-running Web book at Funbrain.com, the edition published by Harry N. Abrams is the first of three books which collect a somewhat streamlined version of Greg’s diary entries.
Rather than give my own rambling plot summary, here’s one cobbled together from the publisher’s website:
It’s a new school year, and Greg Heffley finds himself thrust into middle school, where undersized weaklings share the hallways with kids who are taller, meaner, and already shaving. In book one of this debut series, Greg is happy to have Rowley, his sidekick, along for the ride. But when Rowley’s star starts to rise, Greg tries to use his best friend’s newfound popularity to his own advantage, kicking off a chain of events that will test their friendship in hilarious fashion. The hazards of growing up before you’re ready are uniquely revealed through words and drawings as Greg records them in his diary.
So what’s to like?
The voice and logic are all authentic 5th grader. The situations always feel real. They’re usually ridiculous and played for absurdity, but all the more real for that. Nothing Greg, his family, or classmates say or do feels remotely forced or contrived. There is not a false note in this book in event, dialog, or action.
The book design is well done. The cover looks like it’s bound in genuine pleatherette; the interior pages are ruled like a writing journal; the typefaces were selected (or created) to look like the entries were handwritten.
(click on the thumbnail for detail)
Kinney’s deceptively simple illustrations add significantly to the story. In many cases, the understated humor in the text is punctuated/amplified by what’s going on in the pictures.
That kind of alchemy tends to be found only in the finest picture books or comics. Diary Of A Wimpy Kid falls into neither category. Fortunately, the publisher recognized this and marketed the book accordingly.
Abrams is smart: they’re not presenting Kinney’s book to be anything it isn’t. Calling it ‘A Novel In Cartoons’ is dead-on accurate. This isn’t a ‘graphic novel’, though readers of Manga, GNs, and other graphic fiction will gravitate to it.
And the fact that Diary Of A Wimpy Kid will, in all likelyhood, wind up shelved along side the other graphic fiction at your local public library should get the book more of the attention and traffic it deserves.
There’s plenty else to discuss about this book, but this review has run long enough. Therefore, I will close by iterating about Diary Of A Wimpy Kid “The Three Best Things Anybody Can Ever Say About Any Book”*:
I would pay full cover price, including applicable sales taxes
I would give this book as a gift
It was worthy of the time I spent reading it
Buy the book and make this Jeff Kinney guy some money! YOU GO NOW!
Abrams website
Amazon.com
[* “The Three Best Things Anybody Can Ever Say About Any Book” is TM/C/R/SM 2007 by Bradley James Weber. The broadcast, re-broadcast, use or invocation of the listed listing device without prior written authority from, and excessive payment to, Bradley James Weber is strictly prohibited.]
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April 13th, 2007 by bweber
First, a few disclosures:
1) I met Bill Rubin on my way to Comic Con 2005
2) Bill has kept me up-to-date with the progress of the book
3) He bought me lunch and
4) was kind enough to find a place for my name on HOMELAND’s Acknowledgements page
I lay all this out so there is no misunderstanding, no whiff of malfeasance or calls for my impeachment. Especially on my first review for this site.
Another disclosure: I’ve had a tough time writing this review.
I like the book. It’s well executed; it’s ambitious; it reads well; I enjoyed it and learned a lot. Still, I have pages of false starts. It wasn’t until today that I realized the problem: my expectations were in the way.
Despite having followed the project for nearly two years, having seen advance artwork and heard Bill’s stories about the book, I was still expecting a non-fiction graphic novel — a character-driven, historical narrative told with boxes and balloons.
Boy, was I wrong.
HOMELAND is exactly what it says it is: “the illustrated history of the state of Israel.” And while the book employs numerous aspects of sequential art storytelling, it manages to transcend them in some way.
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