This was the best graphic novel I have read in awhile. Peter Kuper exploited every advantage that the comics format has to offer and to great success. I loved the blocky artwork with a little scratchiness to it and really enjoyed the sepia colored flashbacks.
The story was amazing and I had to force myself to put the book away so it wouldn’t be over too soon. This is the type of book that makes me despise comics in that it takes such a long time for an author to create another work.
Where are the drawings? That’s right, I have read an entire book without pictures. Well, technically there are a few photos of the main subjects of the book.
Sadly, I am very proud of having read an entire book that wasn’t a comic. This one was at least good enough for me to have finished. The author profiles some teenage chess players in New York. There are sprinklings of chess history, or at least modern chess history that applies to teenagers.
The chess team plays various tournaments, building in size and importance as the book goes on. At the end, it just seemed to kind of fizzle out. Perhaps that was the point, that the various members of the team go off in different directions and whatnot, but I found it disappointing.
When I read the Scrabble book, Word Freak, I was way more involved in the tournaments and really inspired to play Scrabble. This book was just engaging enough to allow me to finish reading it.
Generally I’m not a short story kind of gal, but I do make the exception for comics. I found a few of the stories to have superb writing and I loved the drawing throughout the book.
The characters were all well developed and true to life, especially considering that they only exist for a few pages each. A couple of the stories were a little lacking, but still worth the read.
The author loses his job, his girlfriend, his apartment, his grandma and then the twin towers in New York. He gets a bus pass and heads out for a loop around the country.
I liked the somewhat heavy artwork and the continuous story was compelling. The author turned into somewhat of an annoying jerk while drinking and I found myself enjoying the book a little less because of it. Everyone he met on the trip was pretty likeable, though, so I ended up with mostly positive feelings about this one.
What could be better than a travel memoir and graphic novel in one? At times it seemed a little clunky, with dialog clearly only meant to inform the reader almost to the point of being a lecture. I really liked the artwork and would love to see more from Josh Neufeld.
The author explains in the beginning that the book was originally written as an informatonal and inspirational pamphlet to hand out to other teenage single moms. There isn’t much detail or depth to the story, but it was enjoyable to read.
This memoir had an interesting structure, with some chapters written in comic form and authored by one sibling while the other chapters were straight up text and written by another sibling. The execution was lacking and I ended up just feeling disappointed. I didn’t care for the old-school comic art from the brother and the sister’s writing was too sentimental to be original or engaging.
Hopefully this book writing approach will be attempted by more talented authors because I still think a hybrid comic/traditional work has great potential.