More graphic novels; spread the love

Now, I went to Birmingham Central for a few hours on Friday, and as well as getting out a few titles, I also read two graphic novels whilst in the library. Because in both cases, I literally couldn’t put them down! And hence read them right there, in the library, instead of actually withdrawing them. Take a look:

Domu: The Dreams of Children, by Katsuhiro Otomo* is a manga, although personally I’d just class it as a graphic novel (maybe since it’s a decent sized book, and isn’t published by TokyoPop like ALL other mangas translated to english here**).

It is also a damn good read. The story is based in an apartment block which has has a mysterious amount of suicides and ’strange deaths’. The tale is a fantasy, featuring two main characters with strange, telekenetic abilities, but it is also something more… the characters are deeply varied: from a troubled, violent alcoholic; to a man with the mind of a child; to a multitude of police officers desperate to solve the case.
Personally, I was impressed by the art style – unlike in most mangas I have read, the characters are very easy to tell apart, and in general the drawing style isn’t so clustered as to confuse the poor reader. As well as playing on emotion and suspense, there is a fair bit of blood in there, so it isn’t for the younger readers.

I have heard that the english translation is hard to find (though the internet could be lying to me on this one), but if you can find it in a library or cheap in a store, I highly recommend you give it a read!

I Never Liked You is an autobiographical graphic novel by Chester Brown. What caught my eye initially, as I picked it off the crammed bookcase of graphic novels and flicked through it, was the art style. The pages all had a solid black background, with a varying number of white panels floating on the page – sometimes only one panel per page, sometimes many. Unusual, to say the least. But what kept me stood at the bookcase reading it for twenty minutes was the writing style, and the very strange tales woven into it; for an autobiography, it felt oddly surreal.

The story is about a young Chester Brown in his teenage years, being picked on at school and having numerous difficulties with the girls of his age, as well as his experiances dealing (badly) with his mother’s schitzophenia. It’s dark, but oddly compelling… and very ‘human’ – after all, everyone can relate to the awkwardness of being a teenager.
This book is actually one of two of Chester Brown’s autobiographical novels. Based on this one, I would definatly like to read his first one, The Playboy!

And, since my descriptive writing skills are failing me today, I’ll leave it at that.
In short, if you can find them, they are both worth a read – especially Domu, by Katsuhiro Otomo!

_{*Katsuhiro Otomo is better known for his cyberpunk manga, Akira. But I’ve never read it, so can’t really comment on it.
**I’m not kidding when I say almost all the manga over here is published by TokyoPop, and is therefore printed in teeny, tiny books. Anyone say eye-strain?}

~ by abisnail on 21 June, 2009.