Author Archives: Anna

Other Media

by Anna

Kinsey has mentioned this before, but in addition to reading, we also watch a lot of television and listen to podcasts. I have two very particular* recommendations that are bringing me joy in these extremely trying times:

The Dragon Prince

Netflix

TheDragonPrinceOh, The Dragon Prince! The first season of this cartoon just hit Netflix a few weeks ago, and it probably would have passed me by entirely except for a thread of kudos on twitter. And I absolutely loved it! It reminds me of my favorite cartoons from when I was a kid: character-driven and quest-oriented fantasies like The Secret of NIMH and The Last Unicorn. Rebecca and I rationed ourselves and watched the nine half-hour episodes over three days, but were still real sad when we finished them.

About halfway through, I commented to Rebecca that in a weird way it made me think of Game of Thrones for kids. The world is split into multiple kingdoms that have been fighting each other for some vague number of years. A variety of characters from different lands and backgrounds must form and break alliances to strive for their own goals. And, of course, the violence is turned way down and the sex eliminated entirely. Dare I say I enjoyed it more?

Wolverine: The Long Night

Stitcher

TheLongNightIf The Dragon Prince is Game of Thrones, then Wolverine: The Long Night is True Detective (season 1, the only season). The Long Night is Marvel’s first authorized podcast and it is a beautifully done drama in the style of old radio shows like Dragnet and The Shadow. Now I love a classic radio drama to begin with, but I really think this is something special.

Also like The Dragon Prince, each episode of The Long Night is disappointingly short, only about half an hour. For the first five episodes, at least, Logan himself is very much a peripheral character: talked about briefly, but only showing up in person (in voice?) a very few times. The primary narrators are two FBI agents who have been dispatched to rural Alaska after a fishing boat is found with the entire crew slaughtered. Once the agents are in town, they discover that previous suspicious deaths had been hastily charged to bear killings, and that the whole town is a tangle of secrets centering around the one wealthy family.

The whole show does a wonderful job of creating atmosphere just through different tones of voice, and some light musical overlay. The writers manage to convey an impressive amount of information through dialogue without a lot of single-person narration or exposition. It just makes me so, so happy, and my only qualification is that there isn’t enough of it (yet), so it can be a bit frustrating.

*I say particular because while I love both of these, they are each for distinct fan-bases. Rebecca loved The Dragon Prince, as well, but doesn’t care for any radio dramas, and certainly wouldn’t like a noir-like mystery radio drama. Kinsey, a big podcast fan, is not super into cartoons, though it is possible that The Dragon Prince is charming enough to overcome that.

One of Us is Lying

by Anna

By Karen M. McManus

One_of_Us_is_LyingThis book is literally The Breakfast Club, but if someone killed Anthony Michael Hall (and if Anthony Michael Hall had a real mean streak). Simon, the victim, wrote a gossip blog, revealing secrets about his classmates. He’s killed before he can post a new piece, while in detention with the four classmates he wrote about. Of course, those four are an over-achiever, a delinquent, a queen bee, and a jock.

Which could have been a little too clichéd except that the chapters all rotate through the four teenage suspects in their own voices. It is just so clever because it is pretty much a locked-room mystery, but we get to read the thoughts of all the suspects and truly none of them seem to have done it. As the book goes on, in addition to being a real stumper of a mystery, the characters become more complex and sympathetic, and I don’t want any of them to have done it.

They all have their own different struggles, which are naturally not helped by being suspected of murder. But the investigation turns their lives around in such a way that each one has to discover how to be true to themselves, and that’s very satisfying to read, too.

A quote from one of the chapters really captured the feeling of the book for me: “I guess we’re almost friends now, or as friendly as you can get when you’re not one hundred percent sure the other person isn’t framing you for murder.”

Small Press Expo

by Anna

Private I

By Emily Willis and Ann Uland

Private_IPrivate I is about a gay private detective in 1940s Pittsburgh who teams up with a wealthy young society lady to investigate her sister’s death. As Rebecca said, it is pretty much perfect for me! It is not the most polished in either writing or illustration, but that’s not really what the Small Press Expo is about. There are several actual small presses with a small line of carefully curated comics, but even more of the exhibitors are individual creators, who self-publish and offer the highest quality they can afford. What I got is a printed ‘zine’ style comic of Chapter 1 of a web comic, which I’m now very much looking forward to following.

Run With Your Demons

By Isabella Rotman

Run_with_Your_DemonsThis is a tiny little comic, about 6” x 6”, that is also a lovely webcomic. It is not so much a story as a bit of motivation on how to deal with all the negative voices in your head, but I really liked the unexpected nature of how Rotman represents internal voices vs. internal resilience.

Your Black Friend

By Ben Passmore

Your_Black_FriendRebecca and I attended a panel for the first time, one on reporting and journalism in a comic format. It was really interesting, and I heard later that it was one of the better panels. Ben Passmore was one of the panelists, talking about how he’s narrated his experiences in current civil rights protests. After the panel, I went to his table and picked up Your Black Friend, which is a short book sharing what he would like to be able to tell his white friend about his experience as a black man but doesn’t feeling comfortable saying. It is simply written and constructed, but extremely effective. 

The Nib 

At least two of the panelists also work for The Nib, which collects political and nonfiction comics, with a liberal bias, of course. I’ve talked about this before, but one of the things I really appreciate about nonfiction comics is that they can make topics accessible that normally seem too complicated or fraught. One of the panelists touched on this from the creator’s perspective, saying “If what I’ve written is too wordy, it is a sign that I don’t know it well enough to really explain it.”

Magpie Murders

by Anna

By Anthony Horowitz

Magpie_MurdersYou know how sometimes you want something interesting and different from what you’ve read before but also still want the same comfort and satisfaction as you get from those familiar books? I have to assume that I’m not the only reader chasing this catch-22.

Magpie Murders is a perfect fit for that particular mood! (Teaser: the rather awkward lack of “The” in the title is pertinent.) The novel is actually two mysteries from different genres, both titled “Magpie Murders”. The prologue introduces us to a modern-day editor who is sitting down to read the publisher’s proof of the latest mystery in a very popular mystery series. The next 175 pages is then that proof, a post-WWII English village mystery featuring an eccentric German detective. I was almost immediately sucked into this mystery, forgetting the more modern setting until it ended.

It was a bit jarring to then jump to the modern day, but the editor is very likable and sympathetic. She is convinced that the proof contains clues into a mystery regarding the author in her own time, and the remaining 200 or so pages follow her investigation.

Both mysteries are very good, and contrast well with each other, as well. I had some concern that the author would try to do something modern and clever and leave the reader hanging on one or both mysteries, but luckily it all ties up very satisfactorily. Almost anything more I say would begin to contain spoilers, so I guess I can only finish up with heartily recommending it.

Also, I found the book per a review on another wordpress blog that had been recommended to me, and which I promptly followed for the name alone (Anna’s unite!) and which I also recommend.

Nice Try, Jane Sinner

by Anna

By Lianne Oelke

NiceTryJaneSinnerThis book should be terrible. The premise is that a high-school dropout goes to community college and enters the college’s “Big Brother”-style reality show, which sounds agonizing, right? I hate both coming-of-age stories and reality shows, but I loved this book!

The saving grace is Jane Sinner, herself. Told in first person through a series of journal entries, including screenplay-like dialogue, Jane has a dry cynicism that gives hard-boiled detective characters a run for their money. The publisher description compares Jane Sinner to Daria, which is perfect and also explains why I loved her so much.

So, I was definitely invested in her, but I also got so caught up in the stupid reality show! It’s relatively low-stakes since it is created by another student at the college on a shoestring budget (he is putting his 5-year-old VW Golf up as the final prize). Jane mostly signs up for the free housing.

The author does a really good job of including the mundane (but very humorous) details that really bring the characters and story to life. At the same time that Jane Sinner is trying to get her life back on the rails, the other contestants have their own motives, the producer and film crew have their ambitions, and the various staff and students of the college interact with the show in their own ways.

Basically everyone involved is flawed but also just so human that I ended up caring for all of them, even while they were all quite literally competing with each other.

Two Very Different Graphic Novels

by Anna

How to Talk to Girls at Parties

By Neil Gaiman, Fábio Moon, and Gabriel Bá

How_to_Talk_to_GirlsI’d heard the title How to Talk to Girls at Parties around a bit, but it had sounded a little too pickup-artist-y for me. I hadn’t realized that it was a short story by Neil Gaiman, but I’ve lost some confidence in him lately. It’s a bummer, but many writers who were at the cutting edge of the feminist movement, pushing equal representation forward, have seemed to get stuck in their own hayday and been left behind by the advancing social mores.

All of this to say that I probably wouldn’t have read this if not for the adaptation to graphic novel illustrated by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, who paint gorgeous watercolor illustrations. Unfortunately in this case, their drawings of unworldly lovely young women only serve to underscore my central issue with the story.

Two teenage boys, one confident, one not, are looking for a party. The confident boy counsels his friend Enn (N for Neil, perhaps?) that he just needs to learn to talk to girls, perhaps just the first baby step in understanding that girls are individual people just like boys, but this story doesn’t get to that point. Instead it veers off into a very Gaiman-like mythos that is interesting and evocative, but seems to conclude that girls can be dangerously unknowable and foreign. Which isn’t great.

Trashed

By Derf Backderf

TrashedTrashed is pretty much the diametric opposite. You really couldn’t get much more mundane than this “ode to the crap job of all crap jobs,” to quote the front cover.

Backderf got really known for his autobiographical graphic novel, My Friend Dahmer, and this is a sequel of sorts, I guess. After high school, where he was casual friends with Jeffrey Dahmer, Backderf worked as a garbage man. Trashed is a fictionalized narrative, combining his own experiences with a great deal of research into the sanitation industry. It is a very funny, eye-opening look at a part of daily life that most of us pay as little attention to as possible.

Cruising Attitude

by Anna

By Heather Poole

Cruising_AttitudeThis post-surgery recovery is not kidding around, and I’m still not quite up to reading plot-based books. Luckily, I ran across this memoir of a flight attendant, which is basically just a chatty string of anecdotes about a world I didn’t know anything about before.

I had my stereotypes, of course, and honestly, the book confirms quite a few of them. Ms. Poole, herself, seems like a bit of a bitch, very concerned with appearances and status, but that is partly what makes her a good flight attendant.

The industry sounds completely bonkers – more rigidly managed than I’d ever guessed. Of course, uniforms, hair, and weight are all carefully regulated, but even lipstick color must match the team. Everything (everything) is done by seniority – the longer a flight attendant has been on the job, they can choose the better flights, the better positions on the flight, even the better rooms in the various boarding houses that cater to the unusual schedules of flight attendants. It seemed like an even more extreme example of a sorority.

So, while it confirmed that I would never have wanted to be a flight attendant and don’t have much in common with anyone who would want that, it did make me much more sympathetic toward them. One reason the regulated low body weight isn’t as much a problem is that they aren’t paid enough to afford regular meals, and they all try to supplement as much as possible with leftovers from first class meals.

Lore Olympus

by Anna

By Rachel Smythe

Lore_OlympusI was about a 100 pages into Kinsey’s recommended Six of Crows last week when I was hospitalized for an emergency appendectomy. The surgery went well, but recovery has been slow. Between managing pain, digestion, and a slew of medications, my attention span was shot, and I had to put aside the gritty, fantasy heist story. I tried a couple of other books, but anything with a plot more involved than, like, solitaire, and I lost the thread.

Luckily, I ran across* the fluffiest of fluff, which made my final day in the hospital bearable! Lore Olympus is a weekly web comic that retells the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone in a modern setting. The art is incredibly lush, and the story reads like the most indulgent of fan-fiction. Is there an extremely wealthy but emotional distant man who falls uncontrollably in love with a manic pixie dream girl? Well, I mean, that’s just canon. Are there sumptuous parties in elaborate mansions? Check! Beautiful and improbable clothes? Check! An absurd amount of dogs? Check!

There’s 23 chapters up right now, and it updates on Sundays. Each chapter consists of a single scroll down panel with some really interesting vertical composition, which I found particularly easy to navigate on my phone in bed, making it the perfect companion for required bed rest.

*Via a Twitter thread on “middle school weird girls” and the subset of “the ancient mythology stans,” in which I full-on recognized myself.

The Dangerous Art of Blending In

by Anna

By Angelo Surmelis

Blending_InI missed posting this in Pride Month, but this can just as easily be read for Gay Wrath Month instead! This is a semi-autobiographic coming-of-age story about a seventeen-year-old boy in the months after the summer he realized without a doubt he is gay. Coming from a very strict and orthodox Greek family, his domineering and abusive mother is very much not okay with it. Like, performing-an-exorcism not-okay.

Surmelis does a particularly good job of capturing how overwhelming large groups of people, particularly teenagers, can be, all talking over each other and shifting topics constantly, which is both an impressive literary feat and difficult to read. I was having minor anxiety while at the same time appreciating his skill.

Also, authentically, the protagonist describes himself as a geek and a loner, who doesn’t fit in, though he has several close friends, and an even wider circle of pleasant acquaintance from school. As someone who truly isolated herself in high school, this used to make me sort of resentful, but I think it actually just goes to show that most of us feel isolated and out of place in high school, regardless of our relative popularity.

The scenes of abuse are difficult to read, and thing that got to me in particular was how many adults saw and looked the other way. I remember that from My Friend Dahmer, too; that author wrote that there were so many adults that saw Dahmer’s decline and did nothing. Luckily, this book ends much more happily. I kept flipping to the author’s photo in the back to reassure myself that he looked so handsome, happy, and cared for.

What football will look like in the future – 17776

by Anna

By Jon Bois

17776

I ran across this tweet this morning, and sort of grudgingly clicked through, expecting to be disappointed, or at the most mildly amused. Guys, I concur with entirely: this is the single most creative use of the internet as a storytelling medium I’ve seen so far!

I love me some web comics, and artists are doing some very interesting things with animation and layout online, but this is next level. This isn’t going to sound like a compliment, but I mean it as one – it reminded me a bit of Infinite Jest, mostly in the sheer scope of characters and the futuristic world (17776 is the year), but also in riffing on sports (football here, instead of tennis).

Infinite Jest was unbelievably innovative for a printed book, of course, but with the internet, Bois (and several editors, designers and a developer) is able to use video and sound to create something really unique! (For what it is worth, I do not enjoy or understand football at all, and I still really enjoyed this, so don’t let that stand in your way.)