Hafu. That’s Japanese for anyone who’s half-Japanese. It can either have an “exotic” or negative connotation depending on the person and situation. It’s not pleasant being a hafu in Japanese. Christine Mari experienced this reality and shared her experience in her comic “Halfway There: A Graphic Memoir of Self Discovery.” Christine Mari is half-American, and half-Japanese. She moved to the US from Japan when she was five and has been […]
Graphic novels have been around for decades. Nowadays it seems like we take for granted that there are thousands of graphic novels available. That was not the case once upon a time. Pictures in books were only meant to be illustrations that accompanied the book, not the entire book. Early 19th-century artist Lynd Ward changed all that by creating God’s Man, a “wordless novel” made up of 139 woodblocks that […]
For the past four months or so I have been playing “Bloodborne.” I’m no expert who can beat these games wearing no armor and not get hit once (in fact, I suck at these games to the point I over-level. Yeah, I know.) So it comes as no surprise that I found out there were four Bloodborne comic books, all written by Ales Kott with artists Piotr Kowalski and Brad […]
That’s right, I’m reviewing another Speak adaptation. I do like that book that much. This time it’s the graphic novel with artist Emily Carroll. As with the previous two, the plot is about high schooler Melinda who everyone hates because she went to a party and called the cops, getting everyone in trouble. The real reason and this is no longer a spoiler, she got raped at that party but […]
Before I start, I just want to say that I will try my best to keep the politics to a minimum and focus more on the graphic novel as a whole. Immigration in the United States is a super complicated topic that I will not get into on this blog. This is a review blog and, while I do review things that have political leanings in them, I do my […]
What some of you may not know, I and an associate have been doing a panel called Comics: An Underappreciated Form of Literature for the past two years at Boroughcon (new, super small con in New York City.) We’ll be doing it again this year at Xavier High School Comic Con on May 11 (time TBA) so come on by. The reason I brought up the panel is that last […]
I know I’m late for this, but life happens. So, Stan Lee, one of the greatest if not THE greatest comic creator ever, has died. Now, I’m not going to reminisce about how great a person Stan Lee was because I never knew the guy personally. I wanted to meet him at a convention but never got the chance. Instead, I’m going to talk about how his work influenced an […]
Time to sound like a broken record: I tried to like this. Yes, I tried to read the novel, failed and now I read the comic and even failed at that. Let’s just get on with it. Two friends, Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade, decide to go to an amusement park that has just arrived in their town. This amusement park is operated by Cooger and Dark, two figures who, […]
I have no shame in stuff like this. As many of you have hear, there is an animated version of The Killing Joke coming out this September. It’s about now a good time for me to talk about it. I remember reading this comic a few years ago and being underwhelmed by it. Yes, I did not like it when I read it a few years ago. With the movie […]
Yup, another comic review. This one’s a little personal. As with almost all the books I read, I found this while perusing my local library’s shelves. See, libraries are still useful. This comic is called Two Cents Plain: My Brooklyn Boyhood by Martin Lemelman. The reason I picked up this book is because, like Martin, I was born in Brooklyn to foreign parents and the Brooklyn I grew up in […]
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