Graphic Novel of the Month: The Fountain

In the year 1535, Spanish Captain Tomas Verde & his soldiers are in the Americas searching for the Tree of Life. He is under the command of the Spanish queen, who has a target on her head from the Grand Inquisitor. They suspect the Tree of Life is being held a Mayan temple & are preparing to storm it. Forward to the year 2005, Dr. Thomas Creo is experimenting with new cancer treatments that involve untested plants and vegetation. Time is ticking for his miracle drug, as his wife has brain cancer. Further in the future, to the year 2463, the astronaut Tom is traveling to the nebula Xibalba. He travels in a clear sphere, accompanied by a tree and a woman who appears out of thin air time to time. Tom believes that the tree is dying & bringing it to Xibalba will cause him & the tree to live forever.

Darren Aronofsky, who wrote & directed a film of the same name, pens the novel. He originally wrote the screenplay, but when it seemed like a dead project, had the script become a graphic novel (but eventually was able to create the film.) The story is dense with themes & motifs, which includes obsession, love, trees & death. Aronofsky has left the connections between the three Toms to be created by the reader & doesn't spell everything out. All the Tom characters are distinct & well molded, but still have aspects of one another. Problems do arise from the transition of one era to another & it can be jarring to the reader.

Kent Williams paints the novel & does so beautifully. He creates an atmosphere for each time period, which helps with the time jumps. The conquistador sections contain many shades of red & gold, much like the Spanish flag; the modern scenes are grey & sterile, much like hospital; & the astronaut's scenes are colorful, bold, & otherworldly. Aronofsky let Williams' painting tell much of the story & they hold their narrative weight.

Graphic Novel of the Month: Asterios Polyp

I reviewed this graphic novel at the beginning of the creation of the blog, but somehow, that review has been lost, but that is fine, because Asterios Polyp is a graphic novel that deserves a second look. Written & drawn by David Mazzucchelli (who was the artist for City of Glass), this magnum opus follows a paper architect (meaning, he designs buildings, but they only stay designs) whose apartment burns downs from a lightning storm on his fiftieth birthday. Leaving everything behind, Asterios drives off until his car breaks down & becomes a car mechanic's assistant. Flashbacks then show Asterios' failed relationship with his insecure wife caused by his patronizing, self-important personality & her need to find a voice of her own.

The story is very layered & between the scenes from the present to the flashbacks, there are also many unique segments, like conversations between Asterios & his unborn twin brother. A favorite segment of mine features a theater like production of the Orpheus myth starring the characters of the novel. The narrative is rich with Ancient Greek inspirations. At one point, Asterios says that he feels like many, petty deities, like those on Mount Olympus, makes more sense than one all-knowing, all-caring god. He even says that his family's name was cut in half, which could make it Polyhemus, the cyclops of from Homer's Odyssey, which could also explain why Asterios is only shown profile.

The cryptic, layered narrative is just one dimension of the story. Mazzucchelli adds more meaning to the story with his drawings & he stretches his artistic muscle. At points, characters are drawn individually & stylistically different to convey their personality. The chapters are divided by a picture, which is a motif in that chapter. All of the drawings are colored in mostly cyan, magenta, & yellow, giving the novel a unique pop that I've never seen before in graphic novels. But, all of these artistic liberties that Mazzucchelli take doesn't bury the emotions of the story. They are not forgotten & Mazzacchelli's finely tuned hand actually makes the sentiments more pronounce.

I venture to say that Asterios Polyp is one of the definitive graphic novels of the last decade because he uses the form of the graphic novel to create new ideas in storytelling. Nothing is left untouched, including the half-covered boards & the not-big-enough dust jacket. Asterios Polyp has the potential to be a real game changer.

Graphic Novel of the Month: Batman: Hush Unwrapped

Batman, "The Dark Knight" & "Caped Crusader" of Gotham City, has a stalker who is teaching his old enemies new tricks. Villains like Killer Croc, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Scarecrow, & The Joker pop-up, all refurbished in different way & Batman knows that someone is helping them out, who is a wrapped stranger who goes by the name "Hush". Feeling this constant shadow, Batman begins to reevaluate his relationship with those closest to him, including his sidekick, Robin; his ex-sidekick, Nightwing; his friend, Superman; & the anti-hero, Catwoman. Batman & Catwoman's relationship begins picking up some heat, but Batman can't help but feel that their new romantic feelings appeared the same time that Hush began lurking around.

Batman: Hush Unwrapped is the same story created by comic superstar creators Jeph Loeb & Jim Lee, which was Batman: Hush, but this Unwrapped version contains only Lee pencil drawings with no inking or coloring, except for the sound effects & Batman's internal dialogue. These raw drawings show off Lee's incredible talent. They are detailed, clean & kinetic. Critics may not like his mainstream approach to his characters that contain unrealistic anatomy for both female & male characters, but Lee is the best of the blockbuster artists. He tries his hand with painting with great results at times during Hush, & his splash pages are particularly noteworthy.

Loeb is known for his work with Batman, writing the best-selling Batman: The Long Halloween & Batman: The Dark Victory. Hush is similar to his other Batman stories; they contain a large array of characters from the Batman mythology with a mysterious enemy in the background. This allows staple characters to react in new ways not thought of in the past. Loeb takes advantage of what the Batman character does best: be a detective. Batman is constantly pondering, as is the reader. The mystery is real & the threat is ever growing, while the character relationships are believable. The interactions between Batman & Catwoman are my favorite parts of the novel.

This is a fantastic collaboration that resulted in one of Batman's most torturous stories, both physically & psychologically. If you're a Batman fan or just a fan of superhero comics, this is a must read & non-superhero comic readers should pick is up for its thrilling style & mystery.

Graphic Novel of the Month: Signal to Noise

Signal to Noise tells the story of a nameless film director who is dying of cancer. Struggling with the idea that he only has a couple of months left, the director debates over writing his final script; the script & the film that he has been wanting to make for years. He storyboards the magnum opus in his head & eventually writes the film, knowing that he won't see the finished product. In the end, he states that he feels better, not because his cancer has remitted, but because he came to terms with his immortality, because "the world is always ending for someone."


Neil Gaimen wrote Signal to Noise & the artwork was by Gaiman's frequent collaborator, Dave McKean. The novel doesn't really have a clear plot center; the story often goes in & out of the director's head as he plans out the film, which is about villagers in the year 999 a.d. who think that the world will end at the start of the new millennium. The narrative juxtaposes conversations the director has with those closest to him along with the narrative of the screenplay.

McKean's artwork is something to behold in this work. It is often a collage of painting, drawing, photographs & digital art & contains many visual metaphors that go along with the narrative. McKean, for the most part, keeps the panels, which breaks up the images. Each page is its own artwork, but the panels become a piece on their own.

Signal to Noise is heady, cerebral, & expressive. I think it is flawed of me to call it a narrative, but rather a reading of an emotion. It shouldn't be viewed as a graphic novel, but as graphic poetry, where you read it & consider the works possibilities.

Graphic Novel of the Month: In the Shadow of No Towers

"Waiting for that other shoe to drop!" That is the theme for Art Spiegelman's first page of In the Shadow of No Towers & ultimately the theme of the whole book, which is Spiegelman's graphic essay about the anxiety & paranoia that came about after the 9/11 attacks on the Two Towers.  When open, the book is too be read length-wise & is newspaper sized. The 10-page book starts from Spiegelman's thoughts on the attacks to the coming year filled with odd politics & fear-mongering. Spiegelman claimed he created the book to get over his post-traumatic stress disorder caused by being in New York City during that tragic time.

The pages contain many of the characters from Spiegelman's other books & he will often randomly turn into a mouse, much like his highly popular & highly acclaimed book Maus. The glowing, ghostly frames of the towers are incorporated throughout the book. At the end of the book is a number of old comic strips that Spiegleman helped get him through creating the book, including The Yellow Kid & Little Nemo in Slumberland. In the Shadow of No Towers is a fine example of an artist working through his inner & outer demons.

Graphic Novel of the Month: Tintin in Tibet

Boy adventurer & reporter Tintin gets a horrible premonition involving his good friend, Chang, and a plane crash in the Himalayas. When it turns out that his vision is true, Tintin and his allies, the graceless Captain Haddock & Tintin's white terrier, Snowy, head to the Himalayas in search of Chang. The locals make it clear that the mountains are dangerous & Captain Haddock repeatedly states that the trek is most likely fruitless, but Tintin won't stop until he finds his friend. The three get a guide, Tharkey, and three porters to help with the expedition, but the porters run when there are signs of the fabled yeti. At the plane crash site, Chang isn't anywhere to be found, but Tintin doesn't give up hope, as little clues lead to party further into the mountains, but they have to weather the cold, wind, & the abominable snowman.

Tintin in Tibet is the 20th book in the Tintin series created by the Belgian Hergé. It follows the Tintin trend created by Hergé: cartoony characters with realistic backgrounds, flat-coloring, international adventure, & slapstick humor, usually created by Haddock. Fans and critics of Tintin find Tibet to be Hergé's best work. Tintin has never been braver, & the same goes for the usually cowardly Haddock. This book also features one of the few times Tintin has ever cried in the series, who is usually an unshakable character.  There is a good deal of drama and drive in this book.

The personal history revolving around this book is interesting. Hergé was experiencing nervous breakdowns while going through a divorce from a marriage of twenty-five years & he was experiencing reoccurring dreams of nothing but white space. His therapist advised Hergé to quit the Tintin series, but Hergé sought out to finish his current story, which turned out to be therapeutic. Hergé set the story in the Himalayas to convey the lost & emptiness he feels during his dreams, making Tibet the most colorless book of the otherwise vibrant series. After he finished the book, Hergé's breakdowns lessened, he married his new wife that year, & he never experienced anymore dreams of white.

Graphic Novel of the Month: City of Glass

"It was a wrong number that started it all..." which is the line that starts City of Glass. In the graphic novel adaptation of Paul Auster's book of the same name, mystery writer Daniel Quinn gets a puzzling phone call asking for detective Paul Auster. After many nights for the same request, Quinn decides to play along & gets a case from Peter Stillman, a mentally abused man-child, & Stillman's wife & speech therapist, Victoria. They tell him that Stillman was locked in a dark closet for years by his father, Peter Stillman Sr., a professor who was seeking out the original language before the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. After serving time for child abuse, Peter Stillman Sr. is being released & the couple is worried that he may show up to get revenge, so they pay Auster (Quinn) to follow Stillman.

That is the overall narrative structure of the novel, but this is more than just a detective story. There is much to say about this novel & I wrote out five paragraphs of analysis with more on my mind, but I deleted it all. It's just too heavy of a novel to be discussed in a couple of statements. There are assertions & contradictions in the novel about identity, authorship, & semiotics, along with many visual themes & motifs. If I were to teach a class on comic theory (which may or may not be a class anywhere, sadly) I would have this as part of my required reading. I also didn't realize this, but City of Glass perfectly pairs up with last months G.N.o.t.M., Understanding Comics. I would recommend reading that one first, and then hit City of Glass. It will help you with the match shots & panel transitions that are fill the pages, making City of Glass quite cerebral & technical. 


To put it into perspective as too how much effort was put into this novel, it took four people to adapt it from a written novel to a graphic novel. Paul Karasik wrote the script, David Mazzucchelli drew it, Paul Auster supervised the adaption & Art Spieglman organized it. I haven't read the original, but as a work on its own, it is something of a revelation.

Graphic Novel of the Month: Understanding Comics

Scott McCloud is a comic book writer & artist who experienced some minor fame & success with runs on various comics & with his own creation ZOT!, in 1993, McCloud decided to break out of fiction & try to theorize the confusing & misunderstood comic book. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art was his graphic novel where he defined the comic & its vocabulary, gave its history & theorized the various elements of the comic & their uses. It was a groundbreaking graphic novel because it was comic theory in comic form. Most comic theory books before this were text-based, but McCloud wanted to emphasize the power of the medium.

This graphic novel does have its controversy, especially when McCloud defines the comic & what he considers art. His definition of art includes "any human activity that doesn't grow out of our species' two basic instincts: survival & reproduction." This definition opens a whole can of worms that many will find engrossing. Still, McCloud realizes that he theories are just that & hopes that this novel will open up a debate.

McCloud makes the novel fun to read & look at. He draws himself & the panels as simple as needed, but shows off his drawing muscle from time-to-time for examples. As much as he tries to make it digestible, there is a lot of theory & thought in every page & is not a read-in-one-setting kind of book. This one requires a couple of reads in order for you to retain a good portion of the details. Still, I highly recommend this book for comic lovers, art lovers, & book lovers (so pretty much everyone), as it will change the way you look at comics forever.

Graphic Novel of the Month: Little Nemo in Slumberland

The King of Slumberland, Morpheus, invited six year-old Nemo to be a playmate for his daughter, the Princess. Slumberland can only be gained when Nemo is sleeping, so every night, King Morpheus & his attendants find ways to get him to the kingdom, but Nemo's dreams quickly turns into nightmares & he wakes up, usually falling out of his bed. He gets woken up right before some sort of serious injury, like falling off a flying horse or being crushed by giant mushrooms, or by running into Flip, the mischievous son of the Sun & nephew of Dawn. Flip is competing with Nemo for the Princesses attention, despite being an outcast in Slumberland. Every time Nemo sees Flip's "Wake Up" hat, he wakes up. Nemo does make his way to Slumberland, but he gets lost in the Palace. In the Palace, reality isn't a factor & every room is a new funhouse, with the rules of physic being forgotten.

Winsor McCay created Little Nemo in Slumberland in 1905. It first appeared in the New York Herald every Sunday, and then moved over to New York American where the strip changed its name to In the Land of Wonderful Dreams. McCay definitely has the creativity & the skill to pull off the surreal. He drew some of the most imaginative images ever in comics, at a time when the comic strip was still in its infancy. These creative images are so striking because McCay's artwork contains clean lines & flat coloring that caused the large & highly detailed backgrounds & weird characters to stand out from the rest of the other comic strips. A strip titled "Night of the Living Houses," where Nemo gets attacked by walking houses, was the first comic strip to be entered into the Louvre.

Readers will have to overlook the racially influenced caricature of the Imp, whose face resembles minstrel show make-up. Fans of the strip state that the Imp is treated positively & is not shown any form of humiliation throughout the tales. Also, McCay followed the method of "draw first, write later" causing the text to be sometimes squeezed in the bubbles & in the gutters of the panels. Fortunately, McCay sometimes numbers his text, so the reader knows where to go.


Nemo has been reprinted many times, but it is best seen in the So Many Splendid Sundays! edition, as the comic is shown in its original scale & is an impressive display of the illustrations.

Graphic Novel of the Month: Hellboy: The Chained Coffin & Other Stories

During W.W. II, the Nazis tampered with anything that would allow them to change the tide of war. One attempt included summoning a demon from hell. They were successful in summoning a demon, but it was a demon infant. The infant was intercepted by Allied forces & raised by Professor Bruttenholm & the Bureau of Paranormal Research & Defense & is named Hellboy. In The Chained Coffin & Other Stories, Hellboy travels the world solving supernatural mysteries for the B.P.R.D. as the "World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator."


In the story The Corpse, a family needs Hellboy's help in order to get their baby back from faeries. In order to do so, Hellboy must bury the thieves' dead friend in sacred ground, but nothing is as easy as it seems. The Baba Yaga features Hellboy dealing with a Russian witch who counts dead men's fingers. In The Iron Shoes, Hellboy confronts a redcap from Border folklore who lurks in an abandoned tower. The winter special, A Christmas Underground, has Hellboy fulfilling a dying woman's final wish by rescuing her daughter from a prince of the underworld. In The Chained Coffin, Hellboy receives a vision of a nun & a priest protecting their dead mother from a demon, while learning a little about his past. The Wolves of Saint August contains a trip to a village filled with the ghosts of werewolves. The Almost Colossus story focuses on Hellboy tracking down a homunculus in order to save one of his teammates.

Hellboy is an interesting mix of super heroics, folklore, & horror. The stories are often humorous, weird, spine-chilling & monster packed. Mike Mignola plays with comic conventions in subtle way, such as word balloons, which may be designed according to the character's speech pattern. The most notable thing of Hellboy is Mignola's artwork, which is a mix of old-school flat coloring & German Expressionism. Mignola is also a master of shading & color, using shadows to create an eerie atmosphere. This collection features the best of Mignola's talent, most significantly The Corpse, which is probably the best comic story telling from the last 15 years, & A Christmas Underground, which is an oddly sweet holiday story that I will cherished along with my other holiday favorites, A Christmas Carol & The Gift of the Magi.  

Graphic Novel of the Month: Quimby the Mouse

Quimby the Mouse is a collection of strips by Chris Ware during his college years at the University of Texas. The strips features Quimby, a mouse that is modeled off other famous characters like Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat & Ignatz Mouse, but Quimby isn't a happy-go-lucky character like they others. Quimby is often depressed, insecure, or cruel. Juxtaposed with the strips, Ware writes about his life at the time, which includes his time away from his home town, Omaha, NE, & the death of his grandmother. Ware's text explains a lot of Quimby's random occurrences, such as Quimby being "Quimbies," which is two Quimby bodies sharing a pair of legs, but one body is withering away. The text also brings further insight into the relationship between Quimby & Sparky, a body-less cat that Quimby acts either maliciously towards or benevolent. Quickly, it becomes clear that Quimby is less about a cartoon mouse & more of Ware's confession.

The single-page strips are presented beautifully & features Ware's talent to play around with font & the comic book form. The layout of the panels often challenges the reader to figure out where to go next. One strip in particular doesn't feature a beginning or end. Often, the words become the frames for the strip, or the strip will be featured in a house or building, with each panel being contained in a different floor or room. If you're a fan of Ware's most famous work, Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Boy in the World, then I recommend quickly finding a copy of Quimby the Mouse (mostly because I think Quimby is the better of the two.) But for non-Ware fans, Quimby is an inventive autobiography that is both somber & humorous (& by humorous, I mean, amusing melancholy.)

Graphic Novel of the Month: Gods' Man

A poor, struggling artist makes a deal with a mysterious, masked stranger. The stranger gives the artist an ancient paintbrush used by the greatest painters of the past. All he has to do is give the stranger his previous art & sign a contract. After this meeting, the artist's luck changes when he moves to a big metropolis, where he starts to gain attention because of his artistic depiction of the city's monumental buildings. The artist is quickly seduced by his new upper-class status, but quickly realizes that fame & fortune is abusive. He escapes back to nature in order to find the innocence that he lost in his craft & himself, but it may be too late.

Lynd Ward's Gods' Man is the first of six "wordless novels" he created. Made in 1929, Ward's novels, along with the novels of Franz Masereel & Otto Nuckel, are thought to be some of the earliest graphic novels, despite Ward reporting that he never read comics. The novels are made out of wood engravings & Ward's woodcuts are dramatic, featuring a combination of Art Deco & Expressionism. Ward's greatest strength is creating rays of light with these woodcuts that not only radiate through the darkness of the clouds but also radiate off the pages, despite being stark black & white images. Gods' Man is a breathtaking piece of work. Truly a masterpiece in a class & medium of only a few.

Check out Judith Klau's analysis of the book here.

Graphic Novel of the Month: Scarlet Traces

Scarlet Traces (written by Ian Edginton & illustrated by D'Israeli) takes place 10 years after the events of H.G. Well's The War of the Worlds & Martian technology exists side-by-side with Victorian era Britain. Because of reverse engineering, the British Empire covers two-thirds of the world. Hansom cabs in London now operate with robotic crab legs, & the government has the power of heat-rays on their side. Still, things aren't so sunny for the British Empire, as bodies of women start washing up in the Thames River, with blood drained from them. The public fears it may be a vampire, but adventurer Captain Robert Autumn & his manservant, Archie Currie, think otherwise & investigate the situation.

If you're a fan of steampunk, this is the graphic novel for you. For those who do not know what steampunk is, it is a subgenre of science fiction that creates an alternate history, usually in the 19th Century or Victorian Era Britain. There is an emphasis on overly mechanical, impossible steam-powered machines, & Scarlet Traces is no different.  D'Israeli has created a world where old meets the unearthly. His technological designs are intricate & require a second look, while his styling of characters, locations & events are distinct, vibrant & sometimes frightening.

Edginton definitely cares about the source material & reuses many of the themes from W.o.t.W. Edginton's script makes a commentary about quick advancement in technology & the price of these advancements. The story makes note of the reversal for Britain. While Britain was being eliminated & colonized by Mars in W.o.t.W., in Scarlet Traces, Britain has total control over a majority of the world. Who is to say that Britain's globalization attempts will not result as it did for the Martians? Although lessons in colonization is less of an issue this day & age, Scarlet Traces is a lesson in disregarding the caution signs of history.

Graphic Novel of the Month: Madman-The Oddity Odyssey

Madman is a superhero who doesn't know where he comes from. All he knows is that he was killed & then stitched back together. The resurrection granted him uncontrollable precognitive & empathic powers.  Taking the name Frank Einstein (say it fast) after Frank Sinatra & Albert Einstein, Madman seeks out the help of Dr. Flem & Dr. Boiffard to learn more of his past, but the malicious Mr. Monstadt, who wants the doctors' notes on life & death, interrupts his plans. With his trusty yo-yo & slingshot, Madman must confront zombies, gangsters, & rednecks to figure out who he is.

The Oddity Odyssey collects the first three stories of the Madman series. Mike Allred definitely likes to combine genres, as the narrative contains science fiction, humor & romance, & has the feeling of the underground comix of the 70's while containing the old-school, super-heroic mentality. Allred's artwork is clean & distinctive with blue-grey shading that gives the book a pulp-noir feel. The book presents itself as containing one of the weirdest heroes in comic history, & I don't doubt it. Its weird, its quirky & its fun.

FYI: I don't know if I've ever mentioned, but the graphic novels featured during the "Graphic Novel of the Month" is part of the JCBA & can be viewed anytime.  

Graphic Novel of the Month: Barefoot Gen Vol. 1: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima

Its 1945 in Hiroshima, Japan & W.W. II is starting to close. That is the setting for Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa. Nakazawa tells the story of young Gen & his family's struggle during the war. Japan is suffering a food shortage & Gen & his siblings, Shinji & Eiko, sacrifice their portions so that their pregnant mother can eat. Gen's father, Daikichi, suffers persecution from the authorities because of his anti-war stance. Gen's elder brother joins the air force, only to learn that he has enlisted to become a kamikaze pilot. It seems that the war has engulfed every aspect of Gen's life, but Gen's family holds on to what is important & stick together through the worst of it. That is, until August 6th.

Barefoot Gen is similar to last month's graphic novel pick, Persepolis. They both follow the themes of family ties & resisting the hegemony during a time of change that devastates a country. Nakazawa draws heavily on his experiences of growing up in Hiroshima. He shows what everyday life was like during his childhood & that may be the reasoning behind the cartoony nature of the novel. It follows traditional manga (a Japanese comic) cartooning, with the rounded faces & big eyes (think Mickey Mouse,) but Nakazawa also uses every comic convention, from speed lines, sweat beads (to represent emotion like embarrassment or confusion,) & "cross popping" veins (to represent anger or irritation.) Still, the drawings are simple, which is suitable to here; the story doesn't need elaborate illustrations. This is the first volume out of an epic 10 volume series, but Volume One works greatly on its own as a modest, emotional & anti-war piece of fiction.

Graphic Novel of the Month: Gemma Bovery

Posy Simmonds writes and draws the fall & rise & fall again of a British woman living in the French countryside. The story is told after the title character's death through the eyes of a local baker who has followed Gemma and stolen her diaries, allowing him to connect the dots. In it, we discover that Gemma was a dumpy & generally unhappy woman. She hated her house, she hated the countryside, and she hated her husband, Charles Bovery. After going on a spending spree for a new wardrobe and losing weight, the bored Gemma starts a love affair with a young student in town, but fails to think of the consequences that may follow. Simmonds has created something more than just a modern retelling of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Instead, she has detailed the annoying & sometimes humorous behavior of the well-off and inflated middle-class.