Canciones from NBM Graphic Novels brings to visual life selected poems from one of Spain’s outstanding literary figures, Federico García Lorca. Drawn from Lorca’s poetry collection of the same name, each piece is combined with fantastic and dreamlike illustrations, creating a striking blend of visual and poetic artforms.
Federico Garcia Lorca published his Canciones in 1927. The title simply translates to Songs in English. Widely influential in his time and beyond, Lorca’s poetry spends much of its time just outside of everyday reality. From a tree lamenting its own inability to grow fruit to a boy searching for his voice which is now with the king of the crickets, the dreamscapes of Lorca’s work nevertheless ring true with lines of striking observation and beauty.
“Day, it’s so hard for me / to let you go away! / You leave filled with me and you return without knowing me,” he writes in “Canción del día que se va” (Song of the Departing Day). Many of Lorca’s poems are filled with longing and regret, while others find their way to whimsy or celebrations of art and beauty. Abstract without being inscrutable, imaginative without losing their grounding in real life, each invites the reader to slow down, to linger, to wander with Lorca’s verses across landscapes real and imagined. They are powerful in their brevity and simple even as they peel back corners of experience and invite the reader to look at the world from a new angle.
This version of Canciones is more than just a collection of Locra’s work, however. Dutch artist Tobias Tak has crafted a visual journey to accompany each selected poem. Weaving both the original Spanish and the English translations into each page or panel of art, the result is a true fusion of writing and illustration. Tak’s style is highly reminiscent of older children’s book imagery, particularly fairy tales. Across these pages, people who look like trees move among anthropomorphic animals while sun and moon look down in pleasure or judgment. Elevating the fantastic dream elements of the poems even higher, Tak demonstrates a clear appreciation for the poetry while simultaneously crafting his own visual narratives to supplement Lorca’s words. Tak delivers us prologues and epilogues, taking these characters on wonderous journeys across land and sea. In his capable hands, each poem flowers into its own narrative while a broader sense of story arises from across progression of each piece, from the opening “Preludio” (Prelude) to the final “De Otro Modo” (In Another Manner). There is no true story here, but as Tak brings a version of Lorca’s vision to life, the collection reaches for a higher meaning than any one of these poems would achieve alone.
The publisher does not appear to assign an age rating to this volume, and there is certainly nothing troubling in the content of the poems or illustrations. That being said, the book will likely appeal most to an adult audience. Younger readers may be intrigued by the imagery, but the sometimes abstract nature of Lorca’s work will hold greatest value for older audiences willing to tease out the complexities of lyrical poetry.
Overall, Canciones is a worthwhile read for any lover of poetry, art, or more literary graphic novels. A relatively quick read, it nevertheless is worth spending time with to absorb the full detail of Tak’s illustrations and ponder the resonance of Lorca’s poetry. While either of these artists is worth appreciating on their own, Canciones is a wonderful blending of the two, finding tension, beauty, and meaning in the melding of two rich, artistic visions.
Canciones By Federico Garcia Lorca Art by Tobias Tak NBM ComicsLit, 2021 ISBN: 9781681122748
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+) Creator Representation: Spanish, Gay
From the onset, I must admit to being a long-time, hardcore Doors fan. I became fascinated by Jim Morrison et al. during my early university days living in a dormitory, armed primarily with a portable record player and all of the Doors’ output. I remember adding the Doors fifth studio album, Morrison Hotel, to my collection when it was released. The album was a critical and commercial success upon its release and remains one of the band’s classic albums. I can hardly believe that fifty years have passed since then but reviewing this graphic novel magically and effortlessly dissolved the passage of years.
Jim Morrison died in 1971. The surviving members of The Doors, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, collaborated with author and columnist Leah Moore to transform their legendary album, Morrison Hotel, into an anthology with an impressive selection of illustrators to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Moore, along with the individual artists, did much more than illuminate each of the songs from the album and the history and musings of The Doors themselves. Each of the entries in the anthology dissect the historical period, especially for the United States: the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, the fight for equality for marginalized people, space travel and the moon landing, and the attitudes of the general public to the waning of the social revolution and music of the nineteen-sixties. This examination of several key events effectively resulted in a time-travel journey back to 1969, armed with the baggage of the era and a memorable and poetic soundtrack to carry the reader there and back.
Krieger and Densmore gave Moore and the illustrators access to their photographic archive and, along with the research into personal and historic events from 1969, the creators used their imaginations to develop the individual entries based on the lyrics of each song on the album while highlighting and telling a linear story of the band and the environment enveloping and shaping them during the recording of this album. The anthology is prefaced by a short introduction by Krieger about the genesis of the album photograph and cover. It establishes the mood for the illustrated journey that follows. In some instances, the lyrics are superimposed on “snapshot” illustrations evoking the tempo of the song, in others, the story is told through the lyrics themselves.
While I enjoyed all of the entries, there were several stories that I found outstanding. Colleen Doran’s “Ship of Fools” intersperses the historical renderings of the shipping boats with the then-contemporary images of the moon landing in a complex and emotive explosion of color and sensations. The following entry, “Land Ho!” by Ryan Kelly, uses gritty realism incorporating the fighting in Vietnam and post-traumatic stress disorder in an intentionally jarring manner, bringing the reader back from the sensuality of Doran’s illustrations. Several entries later, the reader vicariously experiences Jill Thompson’s light and summery rendition of “Indian Summer”. The final entry, “Outro” by Tony Parker and colorist Alladin Collar, brings the reader back to the prose introduction, recapping the discovery of the Morrison Hotel and the how and why of the infamous photograph. It also brings the reader full circle to the satisfying pleasure of listening to the album in its original format—no streaming! Chris Hunt did the art work for the cover of the graphic novel.
As Leah Moore stated in a Rolling Stone interview: “The Doors have so much theatre, and swagger and storytelling, they’re a totally natural fit for a comic. The lyrics they wrote, and the energy they played with—I think the songs don’t just lend themselves to the medium, they actually cry out to be comics.” I think she is 100% correct! Highly recommended for public library collections, especially for music lovers, historians, and aged hippies such as me! It would also be of value for high school collections studying recent American history.
Note: there is also a Limited Deluxe Edition (only 5,000 made) in a slipcase with three (3) 9×14.5 art prints with images from the book, a certificate of authenticity signed by writer Leah Moore, and an exclusive 50th Anniversary Edition 12” picture disc of the complete Morrison Hotel album. Libraries are unlikely to purchase that edition, but diehard Doors fans may want it for their personal collections.
Morrison Hotel By Leah Moore Art by various Z2 Comics, 2021 ISBN: 978-1940878362 Publisher Age Rating: Adult Related media: Music album to comic
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18) Creator Representation: British-American
Imagine a world where the famous female painters of the past are women and seeing art through their eyes. Another History of Art by Anita Kunz envisions a world where famous art was painted from a feminist perspective. Alternative takes are made on artists such as Picasso, Van Gogh, and Da Vinci adding a satirical look at male-dominated art. To get a true appreciation for what Kunz was going for, I found I had to look at the original works and do a side-by-side comparison.
The first artwork shown is Kunz’s take on Botticelli’s Primavera. In her version, it is of a woman who is holding hands with two monkeys. The Botticelli version is more of a panorama, telling a mythological story of the birth of the world. Kunz narrowing her focus on what is known as The Three Graces (Pleasure, Chastity, and Beauty) is what she wants us to reflect on. She makes a bit of a joke of it by making two of the Graces monkeys. She focuses on the male perspective that a woman’s worth or quality should be based on their sexual purity or outer beauty. In Botticelli’s version, he is careful to hide the nudity with arms placed in the right areas, back turned away from the viewer, or cloth covering the intimate areas. Kunz doesn’t shy away by giving us a hint of a side boob. By having monkeys instead of women being nude the nudity isn’t overt as it shows them in their natural state.
The next piece that captured my eye is called The Daughter of Man. It’s a take on The Son of Man by Rene Magritte. Magritte’s version, it’s of a man in a suit wearing a bowler hat with an apple over his face. Magritte has said that this painting is a reflection of our inner conflict between what is seen and what is hidden. Kunz’s version of this piece, it’s full-frontal nudity of a woman with flowing brown hair. She wears a bowler hat too and a red apple covers her face. She has tattoos extending from her face down through her arms. Some tattoos extend up from her legs and wrap around her torso. While Magritte’s version hides the body of the man, Kunz’s does not. This is a reflection of the obsession with women’s bodies and that we aren’t always looking at their faces. We are not willing to look beyond the artificial.
Common themes and imagery featured in the graphic novel are nudity, primates, pop culture icons like Popeye and Mickey Mouse. In comparison with the original artists Kunz is riffing on, I found her artwork to be lighter in tone and composition. The original artwork tended to be starker and darker. When I first opened this book I expected that I would be able to breeze through it quickly, but I found I was lost in my understanding of the themes being explored. I found it necessary to look at the original art and interpretations that had been done. It enhanced my understanding of both works and added an appreciation to what Kunz was trying to say.
Another History of Art is a tricky book to recommend. I feel that it is pretty much a niche book. It’s for those that like classical art and don’t mind a satirical look at it. It’s also for those that want to take the time to reflect on art. I found that a side-by-side comparison with the original to be necessary to fully comprehend and understand the themes. I needed to know what both sides were trying to say before I got a firm grasp of it. This graphic novel is geared more towards adults, but I could see older teens who are mature and nerdy about art find something of value in it.
Another History of Art By Anita Kunz Fantagraphics, 2021 ISBN:978-1-68396-446-9 Publisher Age Rating: Adult
Young Leonardo depicts the life of artist and thinker Leonardo da Vinci during his childhood, prior to beginning his formal art study under Andrea del Verrocchio. The plot is episodic, moving through a series of short vignettes of experiences in the young artist’s life.
While it may be impossible to document da Vinci’s childhood years with total certainty, the episodes are based on information from his many notebooks. Quotations from the artist are interspersed throughout the book. Through the series of lighthearted comics, we see Leonardo’s beginnings in art, as well as his curiosity about the world around him which manifested in inventions, scientific discoveries, and constant observation. Other character traits are also highlighted, such as da Vinci’s habit of working on many projects at once, often abandoning one to start another, and his style of drawing subjects realistically at a time when most patrons of the arts expected to be shown in a more flattering light.
Young Leonardo does an excellent job showing the human side of the legendary artist. We see him deal with teasing and trouble fitting in from the neighborhood kids, at the same time dishing out some teasing of his own to his family members. His Nonna seems especially harried by Leonardo’s antics. While joking and playing like an ordinary child, Leonardo is forever engaged in lofty ambitions such as the pursuit of flight. Several of the vignettes show him testing a variety of wings he has constructed. Several comics show his other scholarly interests such as architecture and anatomy.
The full-color artworkconsists mainly of a traditional panel structure with between nine to twelve cells per page. Some pages lack borders around cells, and a few vignettes are wordless. Characters are drawn in a cartoonish style, only given four fingers per hand for example. However, astute readers will recognize the realism Augel brings to the book. Drawings from Leonardo da Vinci’s actual notebooks are woven into the story and appear throughout the book. Characters are included who match portraits sketched by da Vinci, and the entire da Vinci family is introduced in a pose reminiscent of The Last Supper. Most of the vignettes are comical with some tongue-in-cheek references along the way. One page sees Leonardo painting the borders around the cells, yet failing to finish them, a reference to the many projects he abandoned throughout his career.
Endmatter includes biographical information which illuminates the main text, as well as activities the reader can try in order to practice one of da Vinci’s experiments, a vocabulary quiz, and a matching game. A teaching guide follows which includes additional background information, common core connections, and ideas for using the book within a classroom setting. There is much young readers can learn from the life of Leonardo da Vinci, and Young Leonardo presents these lessons well. Leonardo is a character who shows perseverance and grit, While he does abandon some projects, he never stops inventing and trying new ideas. He continues his pursuit of human flight despite setbacks. Even when others mock or question him, he continues to seek knowledge and to create. This book is a great tool for classroom instruction, and an enjoyable title for readers interested in history.
Young Leonardo By William Augel Art by William Augel Big, an imprint of Humanoids, 2020 ISBN: 9781643376417
Title Details and Representation NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Tween (10-13) Creator Representation: French,
This is the first of a new nonfiction graphic novel series highlighting, as the series says, “marginalized trailblazers.” This volume tells the story of the life of Edmonia Lewis, a Black/Ojibway woman born in 1844 in New York, who triumphed over prejudices against her race and sex, the challenges of poverty and lack of education, to become a well-known sculptor.
Information on her early life is sketchy, but she apparently spent much of her childhood with her Ojibway aunts, after her parents’ death. Her brother, who supported her artistic career, followed his father’s career as a barber from the age of twelve. Supported by abolitionists, Lewis struggled to get an education despite prejudices against her race and sex, present even in the partially-integrated schools available. Her college career at Oberlin ended disastrously, when she was falsely accused of poisoning two of her classmates and attacked and left for dead before the trial. Although she was acquitted, the school continued to suspect her and, accusing her of theft, forced her to leave without matriculating.
She started her sculpting career in Boston, under the aegis of the Abolitionist movement, and then traveled to Italy with the help of various Abolitionist patrons. There she found her skin color less of a hindrance than her sex and poverty, but she continued to forge her own pathway, although she sometimes angered her patrons and fellow sculptors. She reached the zenith of her career with her sculpture, The Death of Cleopatra, exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. After this triumph, she returned to Rome, but the changing artistic trends and decline in the popularity of Neoclassic sculpture eventually left her in obscurity. She eventually moved to London and died there in 1907. Her greatest work fell into obscurity only a few years after its exhibition and was only found and restored in the 1990s. Contemporaries and visitors of Lewis reported her as continuing to work and maintain her bright and cheerful personality until her death. She maintained a close relationship with her brother, who continued to support her as well.
Notes, sources, and an extensive study guide are included in this slim volume. The art is detailed and focuses on red-tinged earth hues. Edmonia is shown as a determined, strong woman with curly black hair, dark brown skin, and a red cap perched on her curls. She moves through the panels as the central figure in a swirl of historical characters and her white contemporaries. Her Neoclassic style is well-represented in the lines and faces of her white marble statues and busts. While the art focuses primarily on faces and the eponymous “talking heads,” action and interest is added by interposing examples of Lewis’ work and shifting from panels to spreads of her surrounded by action and movement as she moves through her career.
The unique subject matter, accessible art, and extensive resources for teaching in the back (they include educational standards, a multiplicity of questions on the art and subject, and educational activities) should make this a stand-out title. However, there’s one serious problem – the size and layout of the book. It’s a tiny volume, 7×5 inches, and the font and art is correspondingly reduced. While there is plenty of detail and emotion in the faces shown, it’s difficult to catch the nuances when the faces are so tiny and many readers will find the small size of the font frustrating. At less than a hundred pages, this title will quickly disappear on a shelf or be lost and only the most dedicated readers are likely to work through the small size of the font.
Nonfiction graphic novels are extremely popular with my middle school and high school readers, the best audience for this small but dense volume, but sadly, this one is likely to go unnoticed. However, with its very affordable price point and availability in paperback, schools may find it useful to purchase in bulk for a class read. The publisher appears to be planning one volume per year (Rachel Carson in 2021 and Willem Arondeus in 2022) and I can only hope that they will perhaps consider binding them into one large volume and enlarging the art and text to correspond.
Seen: Edmonia Lewis By Jasmine Walls Art by Bex Glendining, Kieran Quigley (Colorist), DC Hopkins (Letters) ISBN: 9781684156344 Boom, 2020 Publisher Age Rating: Series ISBNS and Order
Title Details and Representation NFNT Age Recommendation: Teen (13-16), Tween (10-13) Character Traits: Black First Nations or Indigenous Creator Highlights: Black
Bizarre, playful, and abstract are just a few of the words that come to mind when admiring the work of Herbert Crowley. In his lifetime, Crowley exhibited artwork alongside Picasso, Van Gogh, and Renoir. And yet, Crowley’s work has been largely forgotten by popular culture. The Temple of Silence: Forgotten Works & Worlds of Herbert Crowley is a rare glimpse into the life and art of an elusive figure.
Before delving into this work one unavoidable topic must be bridged: this is not a graphic novel. This is very distinctly an art book that, if we are going by the Dewey Decimal System, belongs in the good ol’ 745s. Yes, the text does contain comic strips. However, the majority of the text is dedicated to a biography of Herbert Crowley, scattered between images of Crowley’s distinct sculpture work, bohemian friends, and early sketches. Now, onto business.
Crowley is most notable for his Symbolist cartoon strip; The Wigglemuch, which ran in the New York Herald in 1910 for only fourteen weeks before disappearing from the Sunday pages. The appeal of Crowley’s work seems to derive primarily from both the nihilistic, yet beautiful, tone of much of his artwork, paired with the understated nature of the creator. These elements culminate into what is the perfect example of an Outsider artist, also defined as an artist who works outside of the establishment.
Described by creator Justin Duerr as a “magical mascot” in Herbert Crowley’s art, the Wigglemuch are rotund, animal-like creatures serving to accompany their human companions across landscapes rooted both in fantasy and in historical imagery. Quite frankly, the drawings are gorgeous. Crowley was known for his scrupulous work and obsessive attention to detail. Upon first glance, Crowley’s artwork appears to be relatively simplistic. His human figures mimic the form of paper dolls in a toy theater. His landscapes often contain no more than a clear sky and a distant mountain range. And, yet, upon closer observation, intricate lining, near-perfect circles, and subtle emotional gestures abound. As expected in any competent comic strip, the captioning of each panel adds to the complexity of these images.
In true Symbolist fashion, the story in these comics is told indirectly. There is no punchline. The Wigglemuch is strictly a series of actions written in verse, allowing for interpretation by the reader. The creatures of The Wigglemuch, referred to as both ‘Wigglemuch’ and ‘Wiggles’ are thrust into a series of concurrent adventures requiring liberation from their circumstances. This is, perhaps, consistent with Crowley’s constant financial struggle as a visual artist and ongoing suicide ideation. Either way, readers of The Wigglemuch are sure to find meaning in Crowley’s work.
Duerr is clearly passionate about the work of Crowley and this passion transcends the pages of The Temple of Silence. The curation of Duerr’s research and Crowley’s artwork is stunning. I was wholly engrossed by Duerr’s enthusiasm and look forward to his forthcoming work. The Temple of Silence: Forgotten Works and Worlds of Herbert Crowley is an essential collection title for those interested in Outsider art and 20th century art movements. However, the book is not a necessary addition to a graphic novel collection.
The Temple of Silence: Forgotten Works and Worlds of Herbert Crowley By Justin Duerr Art by Herbert Crowley ISBN: 9780997372991 BeeHive Books, 2020 Publisher Age Rating: 18+
Robin Ha writes in the Acknowledgements page at the end of her graphic novel, Almost American Girl: “So you can only imagine how thrilled Mom was when I finally told her I had been working on this memoir for over a year and found a publisher for it. After realizing there was no turning back on this project, Mom insisted that I at least leave her out of my story completely. I told her that would be impossible. She was the driving force behind it. If she hadn’t wanted me to write this story, she shouldn’t have brought me to America in the first place. Mom was so upset with me that she avoided me for months.”
This acknowledgement is a bittersweet moment for this reader after spending time with Ha’s journey as a young teen, first in South Korea and then in the southern United States, powerless and bewildered and, at that time, totally dependent upon her single mother. Ha could not have articulated, in print and illustration, her story without her mother’s presence whom, at the beginning of Ha’s tale, was considered a superhero to her daughter. This memoir effectively and beautifully illuminates Ha’s early experiences as well as contemporary issues of immigration, the sense of belonging, parent and child relationships, the stress resulting from social hostility toward single parenthood, bullying, and, in balance, highlights the power and impact of art in determining self.
Ha’s artistic ability is the grounding for her as she presses forward counter to new step siblings that are obstructive at every junction, not understanding much of the language at school or the school culture, and being able to make friends. She also no longer has access to the volumes of manga and manhwa she and her friends devoured. This is a time of extreme tribulation and only subsides when circumstances allow her and her mother to move to a more accommodating part of the country where she finally connects with others who are much more compatible with her. Ha’s command of the written word is a testimony to this blossoming journey of self awareness and growth as an individual and artist. The comic drawing class she is encouraged to join becomes her escape from her seclusion and gloom.
Ha’s art illuminates the locations in both Korea and the United States, her realistic characters are actualized and individualized, and is permeated with a soft color palate with splashes of bright color when she is experiencing excitement or other strong emotions. Ha’s illustrations extend a glimpse into the frustrations and alienation caused by the paucity of comprehension of unfamiliar language and society. The varied employment of panels successfully carries the transitions the reader experiences from Ha’s ordinary life to that of her fictional world and back again. The chapters are all delineated by a solo snapshot page filled with dense colours that offer a glimpse to the episode to follow. This is an emotional ride for all those involved, characters and reader.
Highly recommended.
Almost American Girl By Robin Ha ISBN: 9780062685094 Harper/Balzer + Bray, 2020 Publisher Age Rating: Young Adult
Browse for more like this title NFNT Age Recommendation: Tween (10-13), Teen (13-16), Older Teen (16-18), Adult (18+) Character Traits: Korean American Creator Highlights: Own Voices
Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide is famous for her haunting black and white photos. Isabel Quintero and Zeke Pena have created an enthralling graphic novel in which Iturbide’s story and photographs are brought to life for a generation who may be entirely unfamiliar with their groundbreaking work. Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide is an important graphic novel for the current culture. Mexican stories need to be told. Graphic novels like this are a reminder that the history and culture of Mexican art and artists is vast and rich. This graphic novel may be a few years old but its review is crucial.
The story opens at an art gallery with photographs on display. A group of young people ask the photographer about their style and methods. That photographer is Graciela Iturbide. She explains her methods and motives to the young attendees while the story fades into the past. The story moves through time—back and forth—from the Sonoran Desert and Mexico City to India and Frida Kahlo’s bedroom. It covers her most famous photographs as well as her childhood and relationship with her father. Graciela appears to explain in her own words what was going on at the time, the inspirations for the photographs, and her own thought process.
Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide is uniquely illustrated. The artist painstakingly recreates Graciela’s history and photographs through similar yet powerful black and white illustrations. The actual photographs accompany the illustrated versions. It’s refreshing to see artwork and photography depicted in this way, particularly in a graphic memoir. It is one thing to see an illustrated version of a piece of art, but to see it held up against the real thing is entirely different and adds great depth to the story. The attention to detail is astounding and the artist made the right decision to keep color out of the book. Graciela’s medium was black-and-white and her biography should be the same.
The writing itself feels a bit stilted and that may be entirely based on the translation. It’s hard to feel a rhythm while reading. The author includes an interesting use of a second person point of view. The author addresses the reader in short snippets of text before each chapter break. These breaks in the fourth wall are a way to introduce the reader to where the story will take place next. It’s helpful in a way, but also a bit distracting. Graciela’s descriptions are poetic and imaginative while these breaks feel unnecessary. Graciela is more than capable of telling her own story in her own way. Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide is a fascinating look into the life of a prolific and iconic Mexican photographer. Their work resides in many museums around the world. This graphic novel cannot tell Graciela’s story in its entirety, but it does a great job of introducing readers of all ages to her life and her work.
Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide is appropriate for readers 13+. It is enjoyable to readers of Tillie Walden’s On a Sunbeam, Pénélope Bagieu’s Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World, and Liana Finck’s Passing for Human.
Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide By Isabel Quintero Art by Zeke Pena ISBN: 9781947440005 Getty Publications, 2018 Publisher Age Rating: T
Browse for more like this title) Character Traits: Latinx
Ever wanted to be able to review the art of the main characters and monsters from the Dragon Quest franchise in detail and at leisure? Or maybe love the Dragon Quest games and want to get to know more about them? Then this book is the perfect choice! Dragon Quest Illustrations is a fairly comprehensive collection of finished art, sketches, and even unused art for playable characters, non-player characters, and monsters over the lifetime of this franchise.
Dragon Quest Illustrations is part of the 30th anniversary celebration of the Dragon Quest games; as such, it contains art and illustrations from all of the games, from the very first to the most recent. The book is thorough in its coverage, as it also includes illustrations from the spin-off games, not just the main series. Content is organized chronologically, and within that the spin-offs (so the spin-off games that came out around Dragon Quest VII come after Dragon Quest VII in the book). There is thankfully a table of contents page to make it easier to jump to different games’ art as needed, because it can be hard to tell where one game begins and another ends in the early generations, other than the text at the bottom of each page stating the game.
For those interested, the start of each game’s section has package art and any promotional art, as well as what systems (computer, video game console, or handheld console) it came out for and what the title was for that release. Otherwise, there’s not a lot of text in the book, aside from the introduction by Akira Toriyama, a brief section discussing the art of each game, and a closing message from game designer Yuji Horii. This is truly an art book, focusing on the images and not discussion. The analysis section rarely devotes more than a paragraph or two to each game generation, though it has some notes of interest for fans of the games and discussion of how the art changes over time.
The book itself is quite sturdy, being a hardbound edition with lovely endpapers in a chess pattern design that has silhouettes of monsters in each square. However, because the cover is primarily white, it will show wear and tear very quickly. Dragon Quest Illustrations is not an unusually sized book, if compared to graphic novels or other art books, which tend to be larger, so it will fit fairly easily on the shelf. There is also an attached poster in the front, so that would need to be removed before circulation and possibly given to the youth services or teen librarian to then distribute or hang in their area of the library. It does have a condensed history of the package art on the back of the poster, but it is very likely to get torn or torn out, so might just be best to remove it.
However, is it worth adding to the collection? I’m not sure. It’s truly an art book, so for students of video game/character design it could be useful, and as a retrospective of Toriyama’s art over the years it has merit (particularly for fans of his work), but other than that it’s a pretty narrow group this book will appeal to, unless the population contains a lot of Dragon Quest fans. It might be worth looking into whether video game art books circulate well or if there’s a demand for such items that has been overlooked.
Dragon Quest Illustrations: 30th Anniversary Edition By Akira Toriyama Art by Akira Toriyama ISBN: 9781974703906 VIZ Media, 2018 NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Tween (10-13), Teen (13-16)
There’s a kind of conflict between the representational art that drives the comics world and the world of “high art.” For decades the art world has worshiped at the altar of abstraction, much to the frustration of creators who want their work to directly reflect what they see in front of them. Similarly, creators who want to tell stories have felt stifled by art’s current atmosphere, which discourages artists from telling audiences what to think or how to feel. So, can a book attack the pretensions of the professional art world without becoming pretentious? Matthew Thurber’s Art Comic answers this question with a resounding “Why bother?”
Critics have met Art Comic with accolades. It even had a chapter included in The Best Comics of 2018 anthology. In a word cloud describing this book’s Internet reviews, “satire,” “hilarious,” and “merciless” would play starring roles. However, few critics have chosen to address the book’s many problems. Satire isn’t excused from basic rules of storytelling. Humor can have its own aesthetic, but any aesthetic needs to be chosen and executed with care. The book certainly has its funny points—the dead artist who eats the God of Art Heaven only to be applauded by his fellow artistes—but much of its humor feels unearned. Not only is there not much of a coherent story in Art Comic, there aren’t even many hints of a story worth telling.
Satire functions best when it comes from a place of love. This story demonstrates neither a love for art nor a love for comics. Thurber talks about real problems—hero worship, celebrity culture, commercialism, suppression of ideas and talent—in the art world without suggesting any improvements. It hits targets readily, but they’re all low-hanging fruit, ideas no one would openly defend.
There is a plot. In fact, there are many plots. An artist-turned-knight errant, questing like Quixote to destroy art’s vanities. A suicidal artist in an art-obsessed Heaven, outraged by the pointlessness of his posthumous creations. A black female art student who, finding no room for her religious beliefs in the secular art world, wanders the world in a boat, meeting pirates, serial killers, and the like. An evil cabal of vampires called The Group, sabotaging generation after generation of potentially great creators. Two human-appearing robots who constantly have sex. A group of porcine cartoons known as the Free Little Pigs, dedicated to bringing destruction to all commercial art. And then there’s Cupcake, possibly the main protagonist of this comics soup, obsessed with filmmaker/photographer/sculptor Matthew Barney, and apparently acting as Barney’s real life stunt double when the creator gets bored with his jet setting lifestyle. All of this adding up to one quintessential truth: too much chaos is boring. Art Comic’s people ricochet from plot point to plot point while in the background the two robots joylessly copulate. The best of them try to destroy art—all art—and have nothing to offer in its place.
The book’s visuals struggle as well. Thurber is a good, if straightforward, visual storyteller. That said, the book’s backgrounds vary between the lazy and the haphazard, with characters standing in monochromatic voids more often than not. Buildings are usually well-rendered, but the book’s sense of perspective is arbitrary, resulting in people with stunted legs looming larger than the buildings they’re rushing towards. The characters themselves are almost uniformly grotesque. It can be argued that this is an intentional choice, but in most comics characters are ugly for a reason; whether it’s Sluggo from Nancy or Tom Hart’s Hutch Owen, their appearance says something about them. Here each character, sympathetic or monstrous, is burdened with overdeveloped facial features and visible individual teeth in every panel. There’s no emotional expression in their faces or responses, or responses seem inhuman and unreal. All of these details taken in, as often as not the readers then have to watch these characters have sex. These visual problems combined with gratuitous sex and nudity throughout undermine any points that the text might be making about art, emotions, and depth. It forces a response the same way a crucifix immersed in urine does, but it’s equally trite and shallow.
For myself, I believe in the power of absurdity, of Dadaist comics and comics based on somnambulist fantasies. However, this is a book that combines the frustrations of a long, meandering dream where nothing is accomplished with undergraduate discussions about the interference of the marketplace and the purity of art. It concludes nothing, choosing self mockery as its easy way out. It commits only to the ideology of Cynicism. There may be genuine emotions somewhere in this book, but behind its multiple absurdist backdrops, curtains, and facades, they are only obscured and lost.
Art Comic’s prominence means public and academic librarians may want to purchase it, though unlike a lot of better books it doesn’t need the help. Issues of quality and gratuity may keep librarians from purchasing it. It is a stand-alone volume with no sequels currently planned. Its primary audience is adult, as its topic is unlikely to interest teens or younger readers, and it belongs firmly to Adult collections.
Art Comic By Matthew Thurber ISBN: 9781770463004 Drawn and Quarterly, 2018 Publisher Age Rating: Adult
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