PROPAGANDA Reviews: Rough Guide To Graphic Novels

The Rough Guide To Graphic Novels

by Danny Fingeroth, includes 30 page strip by Roger Langridge

Published by Penguin / Rough Guides Ltd.

It’s pretty obvious what this book is all about. The Rough Guide series is a universally recognisable brand. After years of travel guides, they’ve expanded into other areas, providing reference books for various subjects. I suppose the Rough Guide To Graphic Novels, given the increasing popularity of such books, was practically inevitable.

And it’s joining the party a little late. We’ve already got a few of this sort of book adorning the shelves already. (Paul Gravett’s Graphic Novels To Change Your Life, 500 Essential Graphic Novels being the two that spring to mind immediately). And I remember fondly the old Slings and Arrows Guide To Comics published back in the 90s by Frank Plowright. My copy long since vanished in various house moves but I still remember the enjoyment of perusing what was essential a review list of many hundreds of titles. It was great to have it back then, but is this modern equivalent as relevant now, in this age of always on Internet and a wealth of information on any comic title we could wish to search for at the mere click of a mouse button?

After reading through the pages of this 302 page book by Danny Fingeroth I have to say I think it’s very good indeed for what it is. Of course, I imagine that almost everything in it’s pages could be found somewhere online, but that’s not really the point. Inside The Rough Guide To Graphic Novels, the layout is, as you would expect from a Rough Guide book, excellent. It’s clear, well designed, visually interesting but never overwhelming.

(Interior page from the Rough Guide. Nice, simple, clear design.)

It’s split into 8 meaty sections, including a rather good 30 page comic called “For Art’s Sake” by Fingeroth and drawn by the ever wonderful yet hugely underated Roger Langridge that riffs on the ideas of the Rough Guide To Graphic Novels with a young artist type taking a crash course on Graphic novels. The comic is good, and a welcome addition to the book as a whole.

(Roger Langridge’s nice 30 page piece in the Rough Guide takes us on a little tour of the Graphic Novel world.)

There’s a quick introduction to the idea of the Graphic Novel, a look at the evolution of the Graphic Novel, a good section on some of the more notable and important names in the world of Graphic Novels and then we plunge into the meat of the book: the list of Danny Fingeroth’s 60 best graphic novels. No matter what Fingeroth chose to represent as the best 60, there were always going to be dissenting voices. And so it is here. But that’s always going to be the problem with any book of this sort and shouldn’t be considered a criticism. But just to give you an idea, here’s Fingeroth’s list of the 10 Graphic Novels Everyone Should Read that he starts his best 60 list with:

Maus,
Persepolis,
The Quitter,
A Contract With God,
It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken,
Stop Forgetting To Remember,
Kings In Disguise,
Brooklyn Dreams,
Alice In Sunderland,
Why I Hate Saturn.

I’m sure there’s no one of us out there who agrees completely with this ten, but I feel it definitely gives you an idea of the range Fingeroth covers in the book. Which, on the whole, is surprisingly wide and very good indeed.

There are some unusual choices throughout the 60 best Graphic Novels. For example; Raymond Briggs’ masterpiece Ethel & Ernest is overlooked for When The Wind Blows. Andi Watson gets Slow News Day in, but I’d rate Breakfast Afternoon way above it. However there are also some very pleasant surprises. My book of 2007; Lappe & Goldman’s excellent Shooting War finds it’s way in, as does Howard Cruse’s tale of social and sexual liberation in Stuck Rubber Baby and James Sturm’s Jewish baseball saga; The Golem’s Mighty Swing. Three entries in the canon of great graphic novels that I certainly didn’t expect to see here, although I’m very happy that they are.

But arguing about exactly what Graphic Novels should be included is just a fun exercise. It’s Danny Fingeroth’s choice here and he’s made a great job of selecting a good variety of work. Fingeroth does cheat cleverly throughout the book though, by including extra titles in sidebars throughout the book, it’s a clever, well designed way of effectively more than doubling the number of Graphic Novels included.

(One of the 60 best; Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde. Again, throughout the book, the design and layout is clear and informative.)

A couple of criticisms though:

It’s a very North American centered list. A fair number of Brits make the cut as you would expect but only four books from Europe is staggeringly under-representing a vital and major part of the world (the books are; David B’s Epileptic, Rutu Modan’s Exit Wounds, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Joann Sfar’s Rabbi’s Cat).

It quite deliberately overlooks Manga, with only Akira making the list, despite the cover featuring manga artwork prominently. Manga is relegated to a 20 page section of it’s own. Yet with manga taking an increasing percentage of the Graphic novel market, this rather clashes with the idea of this being an all-inclusive Graphic Novel guide. I understand why it’s been done this way and there are plans to have a seperate Rough Guide To Manga in 2009, but I do feel that the cover rather misrepresents the interior content.

But with these books, it’s not what is or isn’t included that really matters. The important thing is how good the writing is within the individual entries. Does Fingeroth justify the selections well, does he communicate to the casual reader exactly why they should pick up any of these books?

I have to say he does. He writes simply, setting out each book well, covering it’s history, the context, a quick overview of the story and art and why it warrants inclusion. He never veers into overbearing, purple prose or tries to blind us with his knowledge. Just like the design of the book, the critical writing is clear and well done.

Minor grumblings aside, it’s an excellent little resource book that will sit well upon my shelf. Not as all-encompassing as it may have been perhaps, but within the remit it set itself it does the job very well.

PROPAGANDA @ FPI Blog: Rough Guide To Graphic Novels

Latest review up on the FPI blog now:

The Rough Guide To Graphic Novels by Danny Fingeroth and Roger Langridge

Odd And The Frost Giants

Molly’s reading shelf is a little like mine right now. At least half of it is waiting to be read. Everywhere we go, whether it’s libraries, school, charity shops or the local independent bookshop; Simply Books, we seem to come back with something to read.

So it’s no surprise that we’ve only just gotten around to finishing Neil Gaiman’s World Book Day offering: Odd And The Frost Giants.

First off, the strangest thing about it was how I found myself reading it. I’ve recently listened to a couple of Gaiman’s audio books and I found myself quite naturally reading it in his style. Not a problem as I would imagine it reads well when he reads it in his style as well. So for the past 5 nights, Molly and I have been immersed in the world of the Norse Gods. It’s Molly’s first meeting with them so her ideas and images of them were all new and based on what Gaiman gave her to play with. Mine though are all based on reading Marvel Comics’ Thor as a child.

With Odd, Gaiman’s taken the old Norse tale of the Frost Giant stealing both Thor’s hammer and the Goddess Freya and shifted it slightly. No Thor in a dress for a start.

Odd is a strange boy, with an infuriating ability to smile a knowing smile guaranteed to annoy everyone. Odd’s life has been anything but lucky so far; his father lost at sea, his leg crushed by a falling tree and his mother remarried to an boorish oaf. He’s decided he’s had enough and makes his way to his father’s old woodcutting hut. Which is where he meets an Eagle, a Bear and a Fox who turn out to be Odin, Thor and Loki, all tricked into animal form by the Frost Giants, who’ve taken over Asgard and want the goddess Freya’s hand in marriage. Now Odd, being Odd, simply decides that a trip to Asgard to free Freya, vanquish the Giants and return our three animal Gods to their right and proper form is the thing he should do so he sets about doing it.

Once there, Odd discovers it’s not an army of Frost Giants who’ve conquered Asgard, but just one. And he’s stuck through pride and an unwillingness to lose face. Frankly he’s getting a little fed up with Freya as well, who hasn’t stopped shouting at him yet. But how can a boy with only one good leg defeat a Frost Giant?

You won’t be surprosed to know that Odd takes a very Gaimanesque path to this particular fight. It’s a feature of Gaiman’s work, and a commendable one, that his characters more often than not seem to think themselves out of a problem. And so it is with Odd.

Molly’s long been a Neil Gaiman fan thanks to my insistence of giving her his books every opportunity I could. Luckily, she loves them all and it’s still a special treat to curl up with Why I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish or Wolves In The Walls. Over time I can see Odd joining that list as well. Five nights of really great reading for £1. Marvellous.

The Six Sacred Stones – Matthew Reilly

Another year, another Matthew Reilly book.
I’ve written previously about the whole wonderfully trashy read that is Matthew Reilly. Think of it as Indiana Jones with better technology, a habit of uncovering things in sealed rooms/caverns/pyramids and maps, lots of maps.

This is the follow up to Seven Ancient Wonders.
And it’s almost the same book. Same hero, same basic conspiracy/escapade/caper, same mad-cap dash around the world as time runs out, same bit of mysterious ancient hocum.
But please, please don’t think I see this as a bad thing.
A Matthew Reilly book is something you throw yourself wholeheartedly into. Kind of like a warm blanket and hot chocolate for the reading muscle.
As all his other books, the writing is simple, the plot simple, characterisation is something elbowed in between the action. And this is still a good thing.

Sometimes it’s lovely just to relax into a book, get dragged along by the sheer pace of the thing and have a big smile on your face when you realise that the hero has just done 20 plus impossible things. In the first 50 pages.

The best way to give you an idea is just to give you the suitably breathless ad copy:

“Unlocking the secret of the Seven Ancient Wonders was only the beginning…
bestseller, After their thrilling exploits in Matthew Reilly’s rampaging New York Times7 Deadly Wonders, supersoldier Jack West Jr. and his loyal team of adventurers are back, and now they face an all-but-impossible challenge.

A mysterious ceremony in an unknown location has unraveled their work and triggered a catastrophic countdown that will climax in no less than the end of all life on Earth. But there is one last hope.
If Jack and his team can find and rebuild a legendary ancient device known only as the “Machine,” they might be able to ward off the coming armageddon. The only clues to locating this Machine, however, are held within the fabled Six Sacred Stones, long lost in the fog of history.

And so the hunt begins for the Six Sacred Stones and the all-important knowledge they possess, but in the course of this wild adventure Jack and his team will discover that they are not the only ones seeking the Stones and that there might just be other players out there who don’t want to see the world saved at all.

From Stonehenge in England to the deserts of Egypt to the spectacular Three Gorges region of China, The 6 Sacred Stones will take you on a nonstop roller-coaster ride through ancient history, modern military hardware, and some of the fastest and most mind-blowing action you will ever read.”

Phew….

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Haunted is a strange tale, not really fitting in as a novel and not really fitting in as a collection of short stories either. Haunted is 23 short tales, told by a group of people who’ve chosen to abandon their lives for three months to escape to an artist’s retreat.

But the artist’s retreat is no beautiful desert island or picture postcard log cabin, it is a run down, cavernous theatre. Sealed in from the outside world they start their confinement full of ideas. But soon turn on themselves, creating a nightmare world where food, heat,power and good will are in increasingly short supply. Soon they all start competing with each other for the dubious award of most shocking experience, resorting to mutilating themselves in an attempt to secure the starring role in what they see as the inevitable media frenzy following their release.

Each short chapter details the next degradation they put themselves through and Palahniuk certainly tries to cover a lot of ground; cannibalism and self-mutilation seemingly in nearly every chapter. And between the ongoing tale of the suffering we have the victims telling stories to each other. These are described as “23 of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach churning tales you’ll ever encounter.”

Now I may be a victim of having read far too much, seen too much weird stuff and had my ideas of what constitutes the most “horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach churning” things warped and twisted by reading the Fortean Times, Bizarre magazine and the ravings of Warren Ellis as he links to things like eel-sex and body modding , but I just didn’t see it that way.

Sure, the stories are nice, funny examples of the weird and strange stuff that fill Firtean Times or Bizarre. But they’re no more than that.

But then I look online at a few reviews to see what everyone else thinks and I find phrases like this:

“Palahniuk is a modern author and ‘Haunted’ is a very modern book. Filled with some of the most violent and graphic imagery I have read, this book is only for those with a strong constitution.” Review from here

“Anyone easily offended or suffer from a weak stomach should definetly avoid this book. For example, the story simply titled “Guts” opens the book and has been making people faint and vomit around the world simply by reading it or having it read to them.” Review from here.

Maybe I am more twisted and attenuated to this sort of thing?
Maybe I should be worried?
Or maybe, just maybe, I’m right and this isn’t overly graphic, isn’t a horror tour-de-force I think Palahniuk has just had a few ideas floating around his notebook for years that he always thought he could do something with and never managed to. Then he decided to have a clear out. And this is the result. And instead of presenting these ideas as a short story collection he decides to take a blunderbuss approach to today’s celebrity culture and create a slightly tedious, slightly pretentious framing device of the storytellers retreat.

A shame really as I loved Fight Club (film and book), Survivor and most recently the astonishingly good Diary.

The Prestige – Christopher Priest

I’ve always been of the opinion that a media thing, an artistic endevour is best served by it’s original media. If it was a book first and then a movie, always read the book first and then, if you like it, go see the movie.

But the Prestige was one of those rare occasions where it worked in reverse. I saw the dvd a little while back and really, really enjoyed it. Enjoyed it so much in fact that I then went out and added the book to the overflowing bookcase of books. But I made a resolution this year to read again and this was the book that started the year off:

Christopher Priest‘s The Prestige:
It’s a book about Magic, and science, and on the feuds we can keep going for many years. Set at the turn of the century before last, two stage illusionists start a bitter feud that stretches across the decades and the generations.
The aristocratic Rupert Angier and the working class Alfred Borden are competing magicians in the Victorian era, who take their competitive nature too far and begin sabotaging each other’s acts. Tragedy follows and the fallout from the feud is felt a century later as the descendents of each man come together to uncover the truth.

The book is really an expansion of the film. Obviously the film-makers decided that they had to cut all of the modern day stuff to fit into the film and I can’t help but think it was a good idea. But despite that it was still a hugely enjoyable book and I’ll return to the film to watch again and compare sequences.

Alex James – A Bit Of A Blur

Alex James’ Bit of a Blur is almost the perfect biography. It’s light, clipped and friendly, written with a warmth and sheer joy of life that made it one of those books that fair races by.

A Bit of a Blur runs through four phases in Alex james’ life so far: Early Blur complete with a life of no money but sheer happiness at being a rock star struggling for success. Mid Blur full of the trappings of success, lots of rock excess and a sheer love of what’s happening to him. Late Blur, with tales of Fat Les, flying aeroplanes as a coping strategy and a growing idea that it’s all a littl bit wrong. And then the final portion. Happiness, life changing moments and walking away from the rock star life with the arrival of true love, three children and the life of a gentleman farmer.

Of course, a rock star writing about being a rock star can be awfully tiresome but throughout his tales of excess and bass playing James’ writing never allows the rock excess to dominate the proceedings. His style of short, clipped sections, detailing a moment before moving on to something equally interesting and involving keeps it all moving. And perhaps the final accolade for these sorts of biographies, it’s not even necessary to be that much of a Blur fan to enjoy it.

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows

It’s a terrible thing having to lie to your own daughter about a book:
According to Molly we’re reading the whole thing together. But it’s a difficult book to just read a couple of chapters per night and it’s very, very easy to just sit and read chapter after chapter. Which I did.
Hence the lying. “No darling, of course I’m not reading ahead. Absolutely not.”
Bad me.
Finished it in the early hours of Monday morning.
Bad, bad me.

It’s practically the perfect ending to the whole series; but obviously I’m not going to tell you why, that would just be spoiling it after all.

However, there are some spoilers in the bit that follows, including the complete end to the previous book, so just skip it completely if you don’t want to know.

This Potter, inevitably and justifiably so, is the darkest book of the series. It had to be; after all, at the end of the Half Blood Prince the magical world was in chaos, Voldemort was nearly triumphant and the Order of the Phoenix was in ruins, desperate and surrounded by their dead. Dumbledore was dead, Snape had betrayed them and Harry had realised that his final school year would be spent hunting down the Horcruxes he needed to destroy Voldemort.

A desperate and dark time. And Rowling starts Deathly Hallows as she ended half Blood Prince. It’s a grim, depressing and very dark storyline.
Harry and his friends are isolated and on the run with very little hope in their lives for a large part of the book. Rowling’s certainly not been afraid to take her world into a very dark place. Death is everywhere, starting in the first chapter and ever present after that. Such is the strength of Rowling’s writing that the sense of dread foreboding is everpresent and it’s obvious that no-one is safe here.

Possibly because she had so much to do, so much plot to cover and so many questions to be answered, Deathly Hallows is a much more linear and directed book than the previous volumes. Or perhaps she just took some advice from a good editor this time.
Either way, the end result is a long book with an incredibly fast pace, linear flow to the storytelling and a thankful lack of those annoyingly distracting subplots Rowling seemed to throw in at will in previous books.
By the end of the book pretty much every question has been answered, every dangling plot thread resolved.

I know you could throw the criticism that every plot thread is resolved so comfortably and nicely, with a whole heap of redemption and love seeming to fill every character’s lives, but that’s because you’re too cynical about these things.

I thought the ending was a treat. It will horrify some, annoy others. But I loved it. And although I’ll have to tread very carefully with the content and the high mortality rate when I’m reading it to Molly, I reckon she’s going to love it as well.
I closed the book, soppy, sentimental tears in my eyes and then smiled long and wide. A great ending.

Seven Ancient Wonders – Matthew Reilly

Seven Ancient Wonders (Amazon Link)

Like I said here, Matthew reilly is my guilty secret author. His work is incredibly fast, undeniably trashy, deliberately designed to be read as a blockbuster movie rather than a book. His plots are always pretty easy to layout.
Hero (or small team) vs Villains (lots of them, usually French, but in this one they’re American or European). Hero is either trapped somewhere and has to get out or looking for something and has to travel the globe to find it. And it always takes place in a sealed environment (Antarctic base, Ancient Temple, Sealed Building etc etc).
Indeed he even goes so far as to put loads of maps and diagrams in so the reader can follow exactly where the hero and bad guys are in the latest high velocity running battle.
And I just lap them up.

In Seven Ancient Wonders the hero is a rugged, Indiana Jones type with a small multinational team, fighting on behalf of a group of smaller nations to save the world from the massed ranks of the Americans and the Europeans by stopping the secret of the seven ancient wonders falling into the wrong hands. The ancient capstone of the great pyramid was secretly removed and split into seven pieces by the ancients and hidden in the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.

Cue round the world dash, lots of racing through caverns, tombs and catacombs (all with little diagrams and maps for us readers), lots of action, the occasional attempt at dialogue, action, guns, lots of traps, action, fast vehicles, chases, a teensy bit of characterisation and then more and more impossible scenarios and action.

Seven Ancient Wonders did test my patience slightly. Normally he really just throws you in straight away, no bother with characterisation or any of that nonsense, straight into the chase and get the guns blazing.
But it was over a hundred pages before he really got going and over 300 pages before he did the thing that all of his books do at some point. He always writes something in his books that is so impossible, so unbelievable that you have to just give in to it, laugh at the wonder of the set-up and go with it all the way to the end (often in one sitting from this point on).
In Seven Ancient Wonders it was the part where the hero, on the run in Paris, manages to roll the bus he and his team are escaping on, through 360 degrees and continue their escape.
I know.
Fantastically unlikely isn’t it.

Like I said, guilty secret author, I make no defense for it, except that it’s fun for a while.

Mobius Dick by Andrew Crumey.

Mobius Dick (Amazon link)

A while ago (link) I wrote about how I didn’t know whether it was me our the book at fault when I found myself losing interest in Mobius Dick.

Well I finished it on holiday in Anglesey and I’ve decided it’s definitely the book at fault.
It was meant to be a:

“dazzlingly inventive story that blends techno-thriller, historical fantasy,
philosophy and farce”

It was actually non of these things.
It was a big mess of badly constructed ideas & all of these badly constructed ideas were then pretty poorly executed. I was really hoping for great things from this and I was bloody disappointed.
The basic idea was that John Ringer receives a mysterious text message which then takes him in search of a woman he used to know. On the way we journey through the work of Schrodinger, Mann, Schumann, Melville and more. Until the end, where the quantum theories and parallel world theories come crashing down to end the story in a deeply disappointing manner.
I’ve read countless comic book explanations of this sort of thing and even the worst of them was better than this.

Ho hum, onwards to a bit of Martin Amis now….

(Update – the Amis will have to wait, 50 pages in. It’s Matthew Reilly time!)