blahflowers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blahflowers) wrote2014-05-16 06:05 pm
blahflowers) wrote2014-05-16 06:05 pm
'Beasts of Burden', 'Neurocomic', 'Bandette' & 'Stitches'
Full disclosure: I have never seen 'Watership Down'. The prospect of it bored the pants off me. I quite liked 'The Wind in the Willows' as a child and, if it's hot badger action you're after, then William Horwood's Duncton books are worth looking out for. But on the whole, talking animal stories are not my thing. So 'Beasts of Burden- Animal Rites' by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson really doesn't impress.
In a nutshell it's the wacky supernatural adventures of around half a dozen dogs and one cat in what the afterword tells us is the town of Burden. We have ghost dogs, witches, werewolves, torrential downpours of frogs and oh god, this book is a lot more boring than a book that has such cool ingredients has a right to be. Part of the problem is that half the book is collections of short stories from various Dark Horse anthology books so the stories have to sacrifice depth or scene setting for action. However, as the second half of the book is from the 'Beasts of Burden' comic series it is surely not unreasonable to expect that at this point some time might be taken to make a belated effort to set the scene, such as naming the town that this all takes part in. Certainly you would think they would probably introduce the characters and make sure that they all actually have character, but no, despite being different breeds, and in a couple of cases different species, they are entirely interchangeable except for the pug who is the typical 'I don't need you guys and I think you're stupid but for some reason I can't help but hang around with you, maybe the writer thinks I'm comic relief' type. Jill Thompson's painted artwork is lovely and she is great at illustrating the many shots of animals standing around in various locations chatting. When she has to actually draw action scenes then it can sometimes be a bit more hit and miss although composite frog monsters are tricky. In the end it's an eight page joke story that has been allowed to get out of hand.
Neurocomic is a publication from Nobrow Press in association with the Wellcome Trust. In it Doctors Matteo Farinella and Hana Roš take us on a quick trip through the biology and chemistry of the human brain as a simple protagonist wanders around trying to find his way out (Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics' is given a nod for it's ideas about how comics can transmit information at one point) of a strange land. On his way he meets some of history's researchers into how the brain works as well as neurotransmitters, dendrites and granules. It's a simple and clearly illustrated lesson on what we know about the brain at the current time and won't keep you long.
I would not have it said that I'm an enemy of whimsy. The first volume of 'Bandette' by husband and wife team Paul Tobin and Coleen Cooper is very silly but very charming. It's also, in a complete opposite to my complaint about 'Beasts of Burden', a very good example of how you don't need to spend a lot of time explaining the premise of a story. Bandette is a thief in a not particularly defined European city. She specialises in art and in stealing art from anyone she feels is not nice enough to deserve to own such pretty things. She is deliberately carefree and dresses rather like Robin from Batman. She has the obligatory sidekicks of her own and is always available to help the police with situations they find difficult to deal with in order to stop them concentrating too heavily on her. Her main rival is another thief known only as 'Monsieur' but her more pressing concern is the arch criminal 'Absinthe' who was put a price on her head, causing a number of colourful would-be assassins to track her down.
This is a light and carefree romp of a collection, aware of its silliness and never letting itself get weighed down in angst. I don't know almost anything about European comics so I don't know whether Coover accurately captures the aesthetic but her artwork has an energy and a colour that puts me in mind of 'The Italian Job', only with the cast of 'Why Don't You?' rather than Benny Hill and Michael Caine. Its greatest crime as far as I can tell is in collecting a measly five issues and then a bunch of backup stories to introduce the cast more fully. Where is volume two?
Lastly for this go around is 'Stitches' by David Small. It's a claustrophobic and monochrome story of Small's childhood in Detroit somewhere around the middle of the last century. The son of distant parents, his father a doctor and his mother a dissatisfied housewife. At the age of fourteen he is admitted to hospital to have what he is told is a benign lump excised from his neck. He wakes after two operations with only half of his vocal chords and enforced muteness. This is very much a story about what we don't say to those who should protect us. His mother seems unwilling to learn how to relate to this child she has produced, resenting his presence at the parties she throws. His dad is much less of a presence in the book but has that middle-century middle-American stereotype look about him and arguably had the greater effect on his son's life. Small's illustrations are simple and spare but he manages to capture the way a glance can tell a whole story perfectly. It's reminiscent of the family dynamic that Alison Bechdel explores in 'Fun Home' and 'Are You my Mother?', what are our parents when they're not being our parents? Secrets come tumbling out at the end, in a way that possibly seems too convenient to be trusted, but only lead to more silence rather than reconciliation. Cut too deep and scars will be left.
In a nutshell it's the wacky supernatural adventures of around half a dozen dogs and one cat in what the afterword tells us is the town of Burden. We have ghost dogs, witches, werewolves, torrential downpours of frogs and oh god, this book is a lot more boring than a book that has such cool ingredients has a right to be. Part of the problem is that half the book is collections of short stories from various Dark Horse anthology books so the stories have to sacrifice depth or scene setting for action. However, as the second half of the book is from the 'Beasts of Burden' comic series it is surely not unreasonable to expect that at this point some time might be taken to make a belated effort to set the scene, such as naming the town that this all takes part in. Certainly you would think they would probably introduce the characters and make sure that they all actually have character, but no, despite being different breeds, and in a couple of cases different species, they are entirely interchangeable except for the pug who is the typical 'I don't need you guys and I think you're stupid but for some reason I can't help but hang around with you, maybe the writer thinks I'm comic relief' type. Jill Thompson's painted artwork is lovely and she is great at illustrating the many shots of animals standing around in various locations chatting. When she has to actually draw action scenes then it can sometimes be a bit more hit and miss although composite frog monsters are tricky. In the end it's an eight page joke story that has been allowed to get out of hand.
Neurocomic is a publication from Nobrow Press in association with the Wellcome Trust. In it Doctors Matteo Farinella and Hana Roš take us on a quick trip through the biology and chemistry of the human brain as a simple protagonist wanders around trying to find his way out (Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics' is given a nod for it's ideas about how comics can transmit information at one point) of a strange land. On his way he meets some of history's researchers into how the brain works as well as neurotransmitters, dendrites and granules. It's a simple and clearly illustrated lesson on what we know about the brain at the current time and won't keep you long.
I would not have it said that I'm an enemy of whimsy. The first volume of 'Bandette' by husband and wife team Paul Tobin and Coleen Cooper is very silly but very charming. It's also, in a complete opposite to my complaint about 'Beasts of Burden', a very good example of how you don't need to spend a lot of time explaining the premise of a story. Bandette is a thief in a not particularly defined European city. She specialises in art and in stealing art from anyone she feels is not nice enough to deserve to own such pretty things. She is deliberately carefree and dresses rather like Robin from Batman. She has the obligatory sidekicks of her own and is always available to help the police with situations they find difficult to deal with in order to stop them concentrating too heavily on her. Her main rival is another thief known only as 'Monsieur' but her more pressing concern is the arch criminal 'Absinthe' who was put a price on her head, causing a number of colourful would-be assassins to track her down.
This is a light and carefree romp of a collection, aware of its silliness and never letting itself get weighed down in angst. I don't know almost anything about European comics so I don't know whether Coover accurately captures the aesthetic but her artwork has an energy and a colour that puts me in mind of 'The Italian Job', only with the cast of 'Why Don't You?' rather than Benny Hill and Michael Caine. Its greatest crime as far as I can tell is in collecting a measly five issues and then a bunch of backup stories to introduce the cast more fully. Where is volume two?
Lastly for this go around is 'Stitches' by David Small. It's a claustrophobic and monochrome story of Small's childhood in Detroit somewhere around the middle of the last century. The son of distant parents, his father a doctor and his mother a dissatisfied housewife. At the age of fourteen he is admitted to hospital to have what he is told is a benign lump excised from his neck. He wakes after two operations with only half of his vocal chords and enforced muteness. This is very much a story about what we don't say to those who should protect us. His mother seems unwilling to learn how to relate to this child she has produced, resenting his presence at the parties she throws. His dad is much less of a presence in the book but has that middle-century middle-American stereotype look about him and arguably had the greater effect on his son's life. Small's illustrations are simple and spare but he manages to capture the way a glance can tell a whole story perfectly. It's reminiscent of the family dynamic that Alison Bechdel explores in 'Fun Home' and 'Are You my Mother?', what are our parents when they're not being our parents? Secrets come tumbling out at the end, in a way that possibly seems too convenient to be trusted, but only lead to more silence rather than reconciliation. Cut too deep and scars will be left.