When Boom! Box first solicited Fence in the fall of 2017, they billed it as a fusion of Yuri! On Ice (an anime about figure skating) and Check, Please (an amazing web comic about college hockey and baking). This was a great marketing move, because I immediately added it to my pull list, and I am more than thrilled to review the first volume.
Fence, Vol. 1 collects issues one through four, and follows Nicholas Cox, a scrappy guy from the wrong side of the tracks who dreams of becoming a world-class fencer. Lacking the funds to pay for formal training, he cleans up a fencing studio in exchange for lessons, and enters a regional fencing tournament. He’s confident bordering on cocky, and the bottom seed, so of course he’s eliminated in the first round by the enigmatic Seiji Katayama, a fencing prodigy. Seiji disdains Nicholas, and he has a lot to learn about sportsmanship, but still beats Nicholas 15-0. Nicholas vows to beat Seiji one day, no matter how hard he has to work.
Despite his disastrous loss, Nicholas is recruited by the head fencing coach of Kings Row, an all-boys boarding school with a middling fencing program. Nicholas accepts the offer of a shot at a fencing scholarship, thinking he’ll get another chance to beat Seiji, who’s being recruited by Exton, the top fencing school in the country. However, once Nicholas arrives at Kings Row, he discovers that Seiji, for some reason, decided to come to Kings Row instead of Exton, that Seiji is also his new roommate, and that they’re both competing for one of the coveted three spots on the varsity fencing team. Now, not only is Nicholas’ honor on the line, but also his scholarship—if he doesn’t win a spot on the team, he’ll lose it, and won’t be able to afford the tuition at Kings Row.
Overall, Fence is a joy to read and experience. The dialogue and story, by C.S. Pacat, is sharp and funny, and she easily integrates explanations and background information about fencing techniques and rules into the story. This makes the story and technicalities easy to follow, with the added bonus of looping the reader in without making you feel like an idiot. Fencing novices will have no trouble following the story, and near novices like me (thank you, one semester of fencing class) will definitely learn something new.
What makes this comic really stand out, though, is the art. Pencils are done by Johanna the Mad, a popular web artist who makes her comic debut with Fence. She excels at dramatic framing, and I paused many times while reading this book to admire just how well she captures movement and emotions, whether it’s the swagger of Seiji Katayama leaving defeated opponents in his wake, how cavernous and intimidating the salle (a room used for fencing) feels on the first day of tryouts, and Nicholas’ anguish in defeat.
With the uber-dramatic framing, sometimes Fence feels less like a graphic novel and more like Japanese anime. The flow of the panels and the story feel an awful lot like anime cuts, and the plot is a classic sports anime storyline. Although not a huge fan of anime myself (Yuri! On Ice is one of two shows I’ve seen in their entirety), I’ve been to enough Otakons and listened to my otaku friends talk about sports anime enough to recognize it when I see it. The tropes are all there, including the scrappy underdog, the characters who go from being rivals to friends to maybe more (hopefully—Seiji and Nicholas are still firmly in the “rivals” stage of that evolution), and even the odd-couple friendships. There’s even one panel where one character is so in awe of Seiji that a wreath of red roses appears around the aloof prodigy’s head.
You would think that this would make Fence tropey and predictable, but somehow it really, really works. All the elements—the dialogue, the pencils, the inks—come together to create a loving homage to sports anime in comic form, with enough twists to make the story original and exciting. You can really tell that Pacat and Johanna the Mad are in sync for the vision of this comic, and the result is an entertaining, fun book that would be a great addition to any library.
On top of all of its merits, Fence also features an incredibly diverse cast. You would think that the upper echelons of prep-school fencing would be overwhelmingly hormonal white boys, but the fencing team at Kings Row is made up of hormonal boys of all races, cultures, sexual orientations, and gender identities. It’s fantastic to see that kind of representation in this comic, and I hope other creators in the industry follow suit.
Fence, vol. 1 by C.S. Pacat Art by Johanna The Mad ISBN: 9781684151929 Boom!Box, 2018 Publisher Age Rating: (13+)
Hell hath no fury like a pre-teen’s angst, and Raina Telgemeier once again captures the range of relatable emotions and experiences that make her such a reader favorite in Ghosts.
Catrina (or Cat) is about to enter sixth grade, and her parents are moving to Bahia De Luna on account of her younger sister’s health. Maya was born with cystic fibrosis, a severe condition that affects breathing and digestion and for which there is no cure. Maya isn’t that much younger than Cat, but both Maya and Cat are at that age where being a few years apart makes them as close as Earth is to Neptune. Maya is still innocent enough to assume the world is filled with wonders; Cat is experienced enough to know that bad luck can lurk behind any corner. This recurring motif is established early on in the story as Cat admonishes her sister for running ahead to pet a black cat that crosses their path.
Soon after their move, Maya and Cat meet a new neighbor, Carlos, who offers to take them on a ghost tour of their new town. According to Carlos, ghosts enjoy the foggy, accommodating climate of Bahia De Luna. While Maya is thrilled by the idea of ghosts, Cat remains uncertain. Cat’s uncertainty is perfectly befitting to her age: as an almost sixth-grader, she is too young to be rational about the possibility of meeting a ghost, but too old for the haunted house-style of ghost entertainment.
And yes, the ghosts in this book are real. Like humans, they love attention, comfort, and company. They thrive on the opportunity to feel connected to others. And they love orange soda. Furthermore, how characters approach the ghosts parallels how we welcome the strange, the uncertain, and the unknown in our lives. As Cat learns to embrace the presence of ghosts, she is also learning to embrace her new friends, her deceased grandmother’s Mexican heritage, and the ultimate uncertainty of her sister’s illness.
For a book about death, this book is alive with the stench of adolescence, and Telegemeier is nearly unparalleled in capturing the small moments of those tween years we all cringe to remember. This includes Cat poking critically at her neighbor’s homemade flan to watch it wiggle while her sister devours it and Cat’s decision to comfort her bedridden sister by blasting music and getting in bed to spoon her.
Telgemeier has shown growth, in her capture of setting and mood, as an artist and writer in Ghosts. To convey a sense of enchantment and sadness in this Northern California town, she sticks with a color palette of mostly blues and purples, which lead to an attention to color in the most delightfully small places, like Cat’s purple Chuck Taylors, her purple barettes, and the purplish cast of her cosmetics against an open window in the middle of the night. Telgemeier also cuts back on dialogue to let the setting do some of its talking, whether the talking be the rush of dark waves at the coast or the overwhelming sensations at the town’s Day of the Dead celebration.
For Cat, growing up means more independence, more confidence, and more friendships. For Maya, growing up means her degenerative disease only becomes worse. Telgemeier marks Maya’s slow descent into her incurable disease by giving her an oxygen tube about halfway through the story that started off as temporary but begins to feel permanent towards the end. Maya’s movements also become more and more restricted: at the beginning of the story, she was the one racing ahead, and by the end, her mother is telling her she’s not in a good condition to be outside trick-or-treating.
Rather than amplify the tragedy here by allowing Cat to fully realize her sister’s deteriorating condition, Telgemeier decides to leave Cat—and, I believe, most younger readers—blissfully unaware of this subtle decline. By giving us a happy ending short of a cure, Telgemeier is declaring her primary allegiance to elementary readers who might otherwise find this story too upsetting. As a middle school teacher who often feels that middle school readers are overlooked, I can’t help but feel that the emotional heft of the story deserved a more emotionally weighty ending where the significance of Maya’s deterioration played a more central role in Cat’s coming of age. That said, I bet the popularity of this book will outlast one, if not two presidential election cycles among elementary and middle school students. Readers, you’re in for a treat.
Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier ISBN: 9780545540612 Scholastic, 2016 Publisher Age Rating: 8-12
It’s always a busy day at Cartinflas Used Cars/Carros Usados. Lupe Impala (mechanic extraordinaire), Elirio Malaria (small, winged, and talented detailer), and Flapjack Octopus (fastest car washer north of the Salton Sea), exemplify teamwork in all that they do and the customers appreciate it; too bad that their boss is a jerk. They hope someday to save enough money to open their own shop. And they want a car to get around in—”They’d seen some cars blast by fast…and others that could shift and drift… but they wanted a car that would go low and slow…bajito y suavecito.” They don’t get paid a lot, so their best chance, as they see it, is to to use their teamwork, talents, and free resources to win the Universal Car Competition, “the most mechanically inventive, exquisitely detailed cosmic car wins!”
In Cathy Camper and Raúl the Third’s world, the streets are filled with dust, faded signs, and anthropomorphic creatures. The pages of Lowriders in Space are textured and faux stained by coffee, setting up a base layer of worn-in atmosphere. The panels and characters are drawn in shades of black, blue, and red, like a tri-color ballpoint pen wielded by a very imaginative and car-obsessed Mexican-American dreamer. It’s gritty and hopeful, sparkles shine out from under a layer of dirt, and street art and old-school handpainted billboard art inflect style that matches the tone of the tale.
Throughout the book, Lupe, Elirio, and Flapjack joyfully code-switch, and their Spanish phrases are translated in footnotes and a glossary at the back. The friends have to travel far beyond their streets to find the key to winning the Universal Car Competition. In search of the perfect steering wheel they embark on a cosmic journey through the universe, powered by old rocket parts found in an abandoned airfield. Their lowrider whooshes and flames, and they meet every small bump in the road with a smile and a can-do attitude.
The joyfulness of Lowriders in Space, partnered with its matter of fact embrace of Mexican-American culture, makes it a shoo-in for younger readers who want to read something with some diversity and a great sense of fun. They’ll have a blast taking in all the details of the cityscapes, learning some Spanish vocabulary and phrases beyond what they got in Dora, and maybe have an urge to help wash the family car afterwards. And as the title page states that this is Book One, hopefully this is not the end of Lupe, Elirio, and Flapjack’s adventures.
Lowriders in Space, volume 1 by Cathy Camper Art by Raúl the Third ISBN: 9781452128696 Chronicle Books, 2014 Publisher Age Rating: Ages 8-14
When Boom! Box first solicited Fence in the fall of 2017, they billed it as a fusion of Yuri! On Ice (an anime about figure skating) and Check, Please (an amazing web comic about college hockey and baking). This was a great marketing move, because I immediately added it to my pull list, and I am more than thrilled to review the first volume.
It’s always a busy day at Cartinflas Used Cars/Carros Usados. Lupe Impala (mechanic extraordinaire), Elirio Malaria (small, winged, and talented detailer), and Flapjack Octopus (fastest car washer north of the Salton Sea), exemplify teamwork in all that they do and the customers appreciate it; too bad that their boss is a jerk. They hope someday to save enough money to open their own shop. And they want a car to get around in—”They’d seen some cars blast by fast…and others that could shift and drift… but they wanted a car that would go low and slow…bajito y suavecito.” They don’t get paid a lot, so their best chance, as they see it, is to to use their teamwork, talents, and free resources to win the Universal Car Competition, “the most mechanically inventive, exquisitely detailed cosmic car wins!”
