I've read them recently, and I want to start clearing the decks to end the year square -- so they get shoved together, even though they have nothing in common:
The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book by Joe Daly (Fantagraphics, October 2009, $22.99)
My master plan had been to review this and Shane White's
Things Undone together, under a headline something like "No Way, Dude! Two Books About Slackers." But then, on further reflection, I decided that it wasn't at all fair to the protagonist of
Things Undone to call him a slacker -- he has his faults, like any of us, but he clearly worked hard and cared about his career. So that put the kibosh on
that idea.
The main characters of
Red Monkey, on the other hand,
definitely are slackers. Dave is a freelance designer with an unfortunate tendency to anthropomorphize his work -- he's put faces on bricks on the first page of this graphic novel, which his client does not appreciate -- who hates working for "mundane people" and would rather be smoking weed. His buddy Paul doesn't even have the semblance of a day job; he's just a mooch who sometimes makes a few bucks selling craft items to other stoners. Dave is the red monkey of the title -- he has feet like hands, which allow him to climb very quickly. "Double Happiness," on the other hand, is the name of an off-page Chinese restaurant run by one of his neighbors; it's mostly in the title to show that there are two separate stories here --"The Leaking Cello Case," which was serialized in
SL magazine and published separately (presumably in South Africa) in 2003; and the much longer and new "John Wesley Harding."
Both stories see Dave and Paul get involved in vaguely shady -- but entirely weird -- dealings. These are basically stoner crime stories, with Dave and Paul as relative innocents who get caught up in hallucinogenic toad trafficking, or secret microwave generators that destroy wetlands. Daly doesn't rely too heavily on stoner humor, thankfully, but Dave and Paul are discursive and occasionally addled, and they wander through the stories with the good-natured nonchalance of men who've got a lot of good bud behind them. Daly keeps these as stories
about stoners rather than as stoner stories -- this isn't the way Dave would tell the story (thankfully); it makes more sense than that.
Dungeon: The Early Years, Vol. 2: Innocence Lost written by Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim with art by Christophe Blain (NBM, October 2009, $12.95)
The Dungeon series continues to expand and proliferate; I've reviewed parts of it several times but I'm more and more coming to believe that I should be putting all of these books onto a single shelf and then reading them all in "order." (Internal chronology is almost certainly not order of creation, though, and it's difficult to determine the latter with an ocean and a language separating me from those original publications.)
This volume continues the story of young Hyacinthe, who eventually became the Dungeon's creator and Keeper. As is becoming typical, each sub-series sees a young and (more or less) idealistic hero having more and more adventures, and facing down more or life, until he becomes the "evil" -- or perhaps
monstrous is the better word -- background figure of the series set later in time. As Herbert became the Great Khan, so we see that the Keeper was once young Haycinthe.
Many of the other books were suitable for younger readers -- not for the youngest, but generally good for tweens and particularly teens -- but this volume is darker and more obviously sexual. (To quote one blunt conversation -- "He told you he loves me?" "I've subtly deduced it." "On the basis of what observation?" "He pays for whores whom he dresses in thigh boots. And when he makes love to them and shouts 'Alexandra! Alexandra!'") It's also, as I hinted above, becoming more and more clear that Sfar and Trondheim are weaving a very large tapestry, and are willing to bounce back and forth in their timeline to place each thread in its proper place.
The
Dungeon series looks like a satire of swords & sorcery, and may have begun that way, but it's turned into a deeper and more resonant work than that;
Dungeon is about, at its core, the eternal battles between individual and society, between youthful vigor and mature wisdom, between hope and experience. The adventure has always been tinged with more darkness than a similar American series would have allowed, but it's broadened into the neighborhood of tragedy now -- or, if not tragedy in particular, than the sadness inherent in the inevitable decay and end of everything.
Trotsky: A Graphic Biography by Rick Geary (Hill and Wang/Serious Comics, September 2009, $16.95)
Hill and Wang's "Serious Comics" imprint hasn't gotten the attention of the similar forays into graphic storytelling by Scholastic and Villard, and it doesn't seem to have been as commercially successful, either. This may because of the limits of the market (the shelf is only so big, and consumer's wallets so open), or of the limits of Serious Comics's remit -- only biographies of famous Americans -- but there isn't any notable buzz over the line. (The fact that
its official blog had only one entry doesn't help.)
I reviewed Geary's previous book for Serious Comics, a biography of
J. Edgar Hoover, which was the usual well-researched and strongly told historical story we've come to expect from Geary (as this book also is). But I also note that the covers of both books were assembled from interior art, implying that Serious Comics didn't pay for (or just didn't
ask for) a separate cover. The graphic treatment of those covers is fairly strong, given the limits of black-and-white comics panels, and I can see that a display of many Serious Comics titles could be very impressive.
Publishing tea-leaf-reading aside,
Trotsky is a well-researched and engagingly told (if, inevitably, very wordy) graphic account of the life of the loser of most of the great Communist power struggles on the early 20th century. I have the vague sense that the audience for books like this are mostly schoolchildren looking for the subjects of a report, but I'd be surprised if school systems in at least half of this country would be particularly amenable to a book on
Trotsky. (Of course, that assumes they remember Trotsky, which I doubt anyone to the right of Teddy Kennedy does, these days.) Geary is excellent with historical material as always, though I do miss the sly humor of his early short strips. Perhaps some enterprising publisher can hire Geary for a project that merges all of his strengths -- maybe a story about the mole-men's invasion of the Columbian Exhibition or something equally unlikely?
, by Edgar Allan Poe and Gahan Wilson, from the new Classics Illustrated line; Graphic Classics: Louisa May Alcott
, the latest in the series edited by Tom Pomplun; and R. Sikoryak's more satiric and allusive Masterpiece Comics
.
, the operating system that, according to all accounts, does not suck very much at all, in hopes that you will buy one or several, either for yourself or as stocking stuffers.
by the man who led the team that developed it. Or maybe a squeaky duck
. Or even a Weiand 7263 Chry 392 Hemi D/Q Hi
.
Well, we're all one more week closer to death since the last time I typed one of these posts, which means it's time to do it all over again. As usual, this is a list of books that came in the mail last week -- which means that I haven't read any of them. But I have glanced at their covers, and the press releases/cover letters (where applicable), and I in many cases have a previous knowledge (cursory or not) of the author or series. So here's what I can say about some books that just showed up on my doorstep.
, in March. It's the story of Edward Fairfax, who isn't one of the Company's cyborgs but is not precisely human, either, and his adventures in "a secretly steampunk version of Victorian England, and in a Europe filled with covert and hidden advanced technologies." I'm looking forward to this one.
, a contemporary fantasy about a man who mysteriously inherits a magic house. Of course, since this is Wolfe, the story won't go in any obvious directions. Even more interesting, this is an epistolary novel -- told entirely in letters. Wolfe does sometimes get too hermetic and convoluted for his own good, but he's also one of the few writers who could really do a great, modern epistolary novel.
, which Pyr will officially publish tomorrow. I haven't read any of the earlier ones, but I'm sure it's the kind of serviceable space adventure that we've all come to expect from Resnick, probably with at least hints of the greater depth that he shows now and then.
And last for this week is a new edition of a book I sold many copies of back at the book clubs: Luis Royo's second collection, Malefic
. Royo's work is definitely stylized, and I know many people will consider that his "sexy" shades pretty heavily into "sexist." (I don't agree, exactly, though I can see the point.) I've always liked his work, both aesthetically and with a publishing insider's appreciation of how it can really help a book sell like crazy. This edition is "remastered" -- whatever that means in book publishing, particularly applied to a book from 1996 that likely was digitally produced to begin with -- and has a new cover. It will be published by NBM -- which has published nearly all of Royo's work in North America for two decades -- in February.
We expect our stories to be carefully formed, these days -- but we also often demand that those stories be "true." That can cause problems, since real life very rarely shapes stories to fit human standards. Let's take, for example, the recent movie The Duchess, about the life of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire -- the advertisements and trailer promised the usual "triumph of love over circumstances," but the reality of her life was quite different. And the movie, to its credit, follows the reality.
, Jack Frost
, and Nightschool: The Weirn Books
.
, p.22
by Lewis Trondheim and Fabrice Parme; Adventures in Cartooning
by James Sturm, Andrew Arnold, and Alexis Frederick-Frost; and Cat Burglar Black
by Richard Sala.
My sons are not particularly invested in the Bond movies at the moment -- this time more than even last week, since they'd just gotten new rental video games (the reward for getting all As and Bs on their report cards) that morning. So I was the only one who saw Tomorrow Never Dies straight through, and even I had a laptop in front of me most of the time.
Since I'm spending this week mostly in meetings as part of Wiley's seasonal Sales Meeting -- we don't do "Conferences," for whatever reason -- I thought I might as well inflict some of those books on you as well.
and Credit 911, for example).
by Douglas Hubbard -- it's not a flashy cover, but it's very readable, and (I think) intriguing. I also expect the flood of mostly white covers over the past several years will lead to a similar flood of mostly-black covers, so I'm happy to get this one out before the rush.
Then comes one of the covers that I'm most proud of having been involved with -- Anatomy of a Fraud Investigation
. Additional points, at least as I count them, because this is actually a two-color cover.
Just like last year, I disappeared on vacation for the first week of November, which made the rest of the month overly crowded with incident and left me with less time for reading and blogging than I have most months. Still, having a vacation to get entirely away from everything is still wonderful; I recommend it to everyone.
(11/4)
A. Scott Berg, Max Perkins, Editor of Genius
(11/13)
Ken Grimwood, Replay
(11/14)
John Kelly, The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time
(11/24)
