A Graphic Novel/Memoir Extravaganza!

In the last two months, I’ve read nine graphic books, either novel or memoir. It’s been fun seeing such a great variety of the genre, and I thought it was about time to discuss them! In reverse chronological order, then:
Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
French Milk by Lucy Knisley
Freddie & Me by Mike Dawson
Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch by Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli
Incognegro by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot
The Dreaming, Vol. One by Queenie Chan
Bayou, Vol. One by Jeremy Love

Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Chris recommended this series, in a wonderfully written review of volumes one through five (all of the published ones so far) that you should go read to find out more about the actual books. I’m not going to lie; this series is a big departure for me, much closer to what people think of as comics than any other graphic book I’ve read. And as such, I wasn’t a huge fan of it when I first read it. I think I mentioned it on a Library Loot vlog as ‘weird.’ But now I’ve had time to think about it, and I find myself really curious about the characters! What will Scott get up to next? So I’m going to go ahead and put the second volume on hold. And hopefully approach it with a more open mind this go round! :)

French Milk by Lucy Knisley
This is a travel memoir; Knisley spends a month of her college senior year living in Paris with her mom. I loved the drawing style, which is very much ‘sketches I happened to draw in a Parisian cafe.’ And I thought it was refreshing of Knisley to acknowledge culture shock-that some days, she didn’t feel like being in Paris, trying to speak a different language, etc. That being said, I thought the book was a bit random. Like a real journal, it didn’t really tell a story. And to me, at least, a published book needs some kind of arc to it. So while I enjoyed reading this, I didn’t love it. I think the editor could’ve done a better job. That being said, it was still neat to read a book by someone about my age! :)

Freddie & Me by Mike Dawson
I read this memoir, which is about Dawson’s love of Queen from childhood through adulthood, for the Dewey’s books challenge. Dewey said she really enjoyed it, because it reminded her of her childhood. I had the same reaction to this one that I did to French Milk: it was an interesting read, with some awesome moments, but it lacked a unifying story arc that I find necessary in a book. Dawson was a British boy who moved to America when he was young, but not before he discovered Freddie Mercury. The book follows his school years relatively closely, and I thought this early part was the strongest. After that, it kind of jumps around, combining important parts of Dawson’s life with his memories of Queen. I’m glad I read it, since Dewey felt such a close connection with it, but I think as someone a generation younger, I felt a bit more disconnected. Still, there are some beautiful, funny, and poignant parts.

Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch by Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli
I’d already read the short story version of this, and I thought it was really interesting and clever. The graphic novel version made the narrator more personal, with a definite resemblance to Gaiman! And since the story takes place at a kind of freak show/underground circus, the illustrations really added something. That being said, there was a comic book feel to it that didn’t appeal to my personal aesthetic sense. And I really don’t like it when skinny women are portrayed in a book with huge p*rky br*asts (trying to avoid creepy Google searches) and almost no clothes. So that made me a bit cranky. Honestly, as much as I love Gaiman’s novels, I can’t say I feel as strongly about his graphic books (which is funny, since it’s what he’s most known for). I think my eyes are still trying to adjust to traditional comic drawing, since I never read them when I was younger!

Incognegro by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece
After several lukewarm reviews, you’ll be happy to know that I adored Incognegro! First of all, the title is still super awesome. :D And it’s set in the 20s, one of my favourite time periods. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, though; this is far from a flapper romp. Zane Pinchback is a reporter from the South who now lives in Harlem. He’s light enough to pass as white, so he takes trips down South to report on lynchings, which the white papers simply ignore. That’s backstory; the book is about Pinchback going down to investigate a murder his own brother and been accused of (and arrested for). It definitely has a noir-ish feel to it, but it’s more of a hint than a full-on theme. While the book is necessarily sad, the plot tells a good adventure story, and I hope there’s more in the series. Zane is based on the real-life founder of the NAACP, which I find fascinating. I really want to read a bio of Walter White now!

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
For some reason, I was under the impression that this was a memoir. It wasn’t actually until the end that I realised one of the storylines definitely wasn’t a memoir. This is definitely fiction! It involves three distinct storylines: one mythological one about a monkey king who wants to become a god, one about Jin Wang, a young Chinese-American boy who moves from China town to an almost all-white neighbourhood, and one about a white high schooler named Danny and his cousin Chin-Kee who comes to visit and embodies every stereotype about Chinese people. (For the record, I thought that Jin Wang one was the memoir part-I mean, the names are almost the same too, so I’m sure it’s autobiographical fiction.) I loved the mythology story and found Jin Wang’s to be a touching coming-of-age one. The Chin-Kee storyline was pretty painful, but that was the point. The three come together in the end in a fun twist. I definitely very much enjoyed this (the drawing style appealed to me), and I’ll be reading more of his books in the future.

Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot
Have you seen the movie Moulin Rouge? The first time I saw it, I was utterly confused and disoriented for the first twenty minutes; the constant cuts made me vaguely sick, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. But then, it all started to come together, and soon I just loved it. That’s what reading Alice in Sunderland is like. It’s a totally post-modern, genre-defying, pro-comic manifesto that’s also a history of Lewis Carrol (aka Charles Dogdson) and the British town of Sunderland. Since Talbot’s taking a stand that comics are art (he calls the Bayeux tapestry one of the first comics, which I thought was such an interesting view point!), he makes the book a pastiche of styles. I’m sure this isn’t a graphic novel for everyone, and I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to the genre, but I loved it and plan on rereading it at least once!

The Dreaming, Vol. One by Queenie Chan
The Dreaming was my introduction to manga, a genre that has never appealed to me at all. But this storyline sounded really neat (twins find themselves at a boarding school in the Australian bush where creepy things happen), and it’s written by a woman (a lot of my concern about manga revolves around the portrayal of female characters), so I went for it. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, I have mixed feelings. It just felt too shallow for me. The plot moved along at a fast pace, but none of the characters felt like real people, and I wasn’t sure why I should care what happened to them. There was a total cliffhanger ending too, but I don’t find myself dying to get the second volume. That being said, I just read it, and I’ll probably feel differently about it after awhile (like my reaction to Scott Pilgrim). It takes me awhile to process books outside of my comfort zone! :)

Bayou, Vol. One by Jeremy Love
The last one, which I read just last night, and which I definitely loved. This too ends on a cliffhanger, and I want the second volume right now! (Of course, it’s not published yet.) It’s a dark story, set in the 1930s South, that revolves around the miscarriages of justice black people suffered at the hands of whites. But that’s not what the book is about; it’s merely what begins the plot (which I’m not going to summarise; I didn’t know what would happen going in, and I think it works best that way). There’s a marvelous blending of folklore and fiction here; it’s like Southern gothic magical realism awesomeness. The Bayou is personified, and you’ll see giants, monsters, faeries and more. As if that wasn’t enough, the drawing is absolutely beautiful. The muted colours, Love’s vision…I want to frame the whole book page by page and decorate a wall with it. I highly, highly recommend this! And if that’s not enough, go read Nymeth’s review and Chris’ one; they’re much better at this sort of thing. And they have pictures of the art!