Wraithborn Redux by Marcia Chen, Joe Benitez, Joe Weems, Victor Llamas, Studio F, Mike Garcia

Rating: WARTY!

Note that this is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I should have paid more attention to the 'redux' portion of this title! It makes me wonder what went wrong with the first one that necessitated this one. For me, this one failed also, and there were multiple reasons for it. One was that it offered nothing new, and brought nothing original to this genre's table. Worse than this, we have a supposedly heroic female main character who is always in need of rescue. It was pretty sad.

Add to that the absurd over-sexualization of every single female character who appeared in this story - except of course the designated "Fat One" who actually only looked 'fat' because all other females in the story were anorexic everywhere except for their breasts. There was school-bullying running rife with no teachers in sight. There were trope cliques and not a single thing that was fresh or refreshing to read. Overall, it was a decidedly pathetic effort at redux-ing trope and cliché. And that was just the school. The demons and those which controlled them were no better and no more inventive.

Just how many warmed-over tropes were there here? Almost too many to count. We have the designated hero raised and trained by eastern monks. There was a twist to this: that the untrained unsuspecting girl gets the power he was trained for, and this is what attracted me to this story, but even that twist was a fail in the final analysis because this girl was so clueless and so helpless. Even when she began to warm up to her role, she was still completely lackluster and unappealing.

In her we had the semi-orphaned nondescript girl who's a nervous wreck, and who's bullied by cheerleaders! Seriously? Who can't kick a cheerleader's ass?! This girl, Melanie, has your standard quirky, supportive friend. There's a red under the bed (literally red-haired here), and demon dogs which came straight out of the Alien movie series. They were not the only movie rip-off. Kalin, the guy who was supposed to be the wraithborn dude, is a rip-off of Kylo Ren, right down to the first initial, the sword, the black robes, and the ridiculous and totally unnecessary face mask. Seriously?

These morons fight with swords when a machine gun would have done a better job on the Alien dogs in a tenth of the time. What the hell is wrong with these writers and artists? Sword-fighting dudes and pneumatic females? Please! Get a life! Get a clue. Come up with something truly original. Then you won't have to wonder why your comic isn't selling. This one was crap and I certainly do not recommend it. In fact it's comic books like this that make me think it's worth petitioning not for a maturity rating aimed at those who read the comic, but a maturity rating for those who write and illustrate the thing so I get some advance warning of what I'm getting into.

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

Rating: WORTHY!

The compiled results of a web comic, Nimona is possibly the best graphic novel I've ever read. It's certainly up there in the top five. I was quite blown away by it, for the artwork, the humor, the plot and the story. It's brilliant! Noelle Stevenson is of Lumberjanes fame. I reviewed a volume of that unfavorably back in May, 2016. I'm happy to positively review something else she has done!

Nimona comes off as a young and ambitious girl who is ready to get her feet wet in the world of villainy. She volunteers to work with the evil Ballister Blackheart in his endeavors against his old friend, now arch-nemesis, Goldenloin, but in the course of this story, the question arises as to who is really a villain here and who is the golden hero.

Lord Blackheart isn't interested in having an assistant, but when he discovers that Nimona is a shape-shifter - and can shift into any shape - animal or person, he realizes she might have some value as a hench-man...woman...wench? The problem is that he has a code of conduct to which she evidently doesn't seem very interested in adhering. She's all for havoc and chaos, whereas his villainy is less brutal and more structured.

Nevertheless, they learn to work together and they discover the government is hoarding jaderoot, which is a deadly poisonous material and very dangerous to work with, even in small quantities. But how is Blackheart to get word out about the government's villainy in hoarding large quantities of a mateirla they themselves had banned, especially when he's a well-known villain himself? Maybe Nimona can help with that!

I dearly loved this story, and I consider it well worth the eighteen dollar asking price in the hardback print version I read. I recommend it highly.

Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare, Matt Wiegle

Rating: WARTY!

No Fear Shakespeare is a collection of "translated" Shakespeare texts - in other words, delivered in modern English instead of in the antique lingo with which Shakespeare was familiar. A PDF of Romeo and Juliet done in this way with the original English alongside it can be read online here. I reviewed Hamlet done this ways back in January 2017, and liked that one. This one just didn't get there for me, but it is a simpler introduction to Shakespeare if you want to try to get a handle on him.

Everyone knows the story to one extent or another, but to me this story has always been a really bad YA love story. In fact, in a way, if we include Rosalind, who despite being a no-show here, is an important player in the story, it's a bad love triangle. If John Green had written it (barf!), it would have had a truly pretentious title like, "The Absence of Rosalind" or some such trivial drivel.

Yes, Shakespeare does turn out a nice phrase here and there, but this is sadly canceled out for me by the sick bawdiness and the un-pc attitudes of every male character in the entire story, because they're omnipresent with their puerile attitude, and thoroughly out of place here. Yes, I get that this is what audiences wanted back in Shakespeare's day, but that's no reason to worship him today (or even toady). This is often praised as the love story to outdo all love stories, but it's not a love story at all. There's no love here, only a deranged lust and foolishness, shallowness and cluelessness. It's ultimately a story of the brain-dead and the vacuous, a Dick and Shame story, and if we can blame violence in society on video-games, TV, and movies, then we sure as hell can blame relationships gone wrong on Shakespeare's juvenile view of them.

I ask not "wherefore art thou Romeo?" but why Romeo & Juliet instead of Juliet & Romeo? The answer to that is that this isn't actually a story of a love, true and deep, between two people, it's about a mentally disturbed dickhead and his wasted life. Juliet is thirteen years old, and is nothing more than collateral damage here, not really a character at all, but merely a narcissistic mirror in which Romeo reflects himself in all his vainglory. Not that she has any more clue than Romeo, but he doesn't love her, he wants her only as an emollient for his rough and rudimentary lust and need.

Look how the story begins - with Romeo pining for Rosalind! He's all Rosalind all the time, and there never can be another until the instant - not after several weeks of growing to know her, but the very instant - he sets his reality-challenged eyes on Juliet. From that moment, Rosalind is out, passé, forgotten, so five minutes ago, and nothing but a flimsy fantasy. Now it's all Juliet. I call bullshit on that one!

Is this really how Shakespeare viewed love? Very likely. He married at eighteen a woman eight years his senior for no other evident reason than that he got her pregnant, so he was just as irresponsible as Romeo. Worse, he then turned into a deadbeat dad, and abandoned his family to head south to live a Hollywood life - or what passed for it back then. While he may have visited, he didn't actually return to Stratford until he grew old and retired. What did he know of true love? Nothing.

And what of positive influences in Romeo's life? There are apparently none. It seems that all he has known is violence, never love. He never talks to his parents nor they to him. He takes his advice (not that he really listens) only from kinsmen and "friends" who never once try to set him on an even keel, because they're just as shallow, belligerent, and moronic as he is!

There are no responsible women in his life, and no one at all in Juliet's - not close male family, nor female friends. She's completely isolated and essentially imprisoned, having to beg permission even to go to church and confess! What the hell sins does she have to confess? She never goes anywhere to commit any, and does nothing with her short life. She's thirteen for goodness sake, ripe for taking advantage of!

And what of their affair? They meet one evening and marry almost immediately. Instead of looking to how he can make his wife happy and how they can be together, he lets his temper get the better of him and without a thought for any consequences or for his wife, he kills someone from Juliet's own family - the very man he had sworn love and kinship to not an hour or two before! When Juliet says, "O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon" she should have used Romeo, not the Moon. The Moon is actually extremely constant, but Romeo is far from it.

For murdering Tybalt, Romeo is lucky enough to be banished, not killed, but even then he can't get his act together! At the same time as he's banished, Juliet's father pretty much threatens to banish her, so here's the perfect opportunity for the two of them to hit the road and start a new life somewhere, but neither has the smarts to see it! Instead, they both take the easy route out. In short, this story is a badly written one which could have been much improved. Not only did Romeo murder Tybalt, he also murders Paris. His behavior is one of constantly slithering away from taking responsibility for his actions. He won't own-up publicly to being Juliet's husband! paradoxically, he won't avoid a fight, yet he won't fight for his marriage. He's a train wreck not even waiting to happen and in the end the world is better off without him. The real tragedy here is that he derailed Juliet from her life, too. So much for love; try selfishness instead.

As for the graphic novel version, I can't recommend it any more highly. It does tell the full story - including the parts which the movies, even the definitive Baz Luhrman version, routinely avoid, but the artwork isn't very good, and apart from simplifying the story and making it somewhat more accessible, if that's important to you, it really doesn't bring anything new to the table.

As You Like it by William Shakespeare, Richard Appignanesi, Chie Kutsuwada

Rating: WARTY!

So when we're reviewing a graphic novel adaptation of a Shakespeare play, do we review the original work? This isn't the original work. It's an adaptation by Richard Appignanesi. So do we review the adaptive work? Well it's not original, so we can't ignore that from which it was adapted. So what about the graphic portion of it by Chie Kutsuwada? That's the only part of this work that's truly original, but even so it's still derived from Shakespeare's. Aye, there's the rub!

So, in fact, we have to review all three simultaneously. All of Shakespeare's a stage, and all the writers and artists merely players. They have their successes and their failures, and each play in its time fulfills many roles. There are seven stages. First there is the writing of the original, then comes the acting of it on the stage by the original players, then the adaptation by many other actors. Next the catch-phrases enter the lingo, and works of art take the field depicting renowned scenes form the play. Movies then come along in their various forms necessarily shedding much of the original work in order to conform to a silver screen chronology. After this come the novelizations, and the death of the play wrought by crappy YA adaptations which pay little heed to the original and, let's face it, less heed to intelligent story telling.

I have to say if I were reviewing only the Shakespeare portion of this particular story, I would have to rate it warty. The reason for this is the same reason I've rated so many YA novels negatively, because of instadore. Some reviewers call it insta-love, but the fact is that it's not love. Love is a lot more rational than writers give it credit, even as it might seem completely out of control, but what was depicted here not once, but four times, was insanity.

The truth is that what's irrational is this falling in lust (which I call instadore) and stupidly mistaking it for love. Instadore is shallow and far to fast to be meaningful. You'd have to be a moron to trust that. It doesn't mean it cannot grow into love, but the overwhelming chances are that it won't, yet endless YA authors insist otherwise. Fie on them, say I! And fie on Shakespeare's crappy, meandering, confused, and ultimately meaningless of usurpers and exiles and forest foolishness.

What I did like here was the artwork and the adaptation. Both were well done. The art in particular, which was gray-scale line drawings, was very well done, integrated with the text well, and went beyond mere panels depicting the text. It truly was worth reading. If you want to get a handle on Shakespeare and not get enmeshed in his absurd endless punning, and his clueless idea of love, his thoroughly un-pc attitude, and his boorish male characters pandering to the lowest common denominator in his audience, then starting with something like this isn't at all a bad idea. I recommend this one.

Lucifer Book Four by Mike Carey and assorted artists and colorists

Rating: WARTY!

I requested three graphic novels from the local library because I am not about to spend thirty dollars for a graphic novel i probably will not like! All three are going back one of them unread, the other two read only a quarter the way through in one case and half-way through in the other.

They're all tied (very loosely as it happens) to a TV series Lucifer which is based on the character from the Sandman comics, and which I really enjoy. I tried a couple of the Sandmans a while ago, and did not like them at all, but I thought maybe the dedicated Lucifer comics might be better. They were not. I looked at two of them. I made it only a quarter way through the mainstream one, and I was not impressed at all by either one I looked at, so I did not even open the third. I'll stick with the TV show.

In view of the comments I make below, I should mention here that the TV series has some racism about it in that the entire cast is nearly all white. There are two main characters: Amenadiel, played by D. B. Woodside who is black, and a Cape Colored South African-born actress Lesley-Ann Brandt, who plays Mazikeen. Both of these guys are are excellent, so people of color are not quite as underrepresented here as in the comic books, but are still shamefully absent. The difference though is that there is a far larger pool of people controlling the TV show than there is the comic book. While I readily admit it should not be so, it seems to me that it would be a lot easier to depict whoever you want in a graphic novel, including making a fair representation of people of all colors, and yet still they failed.

This volume (volume four, and I have not read the previous three, so I admit to coming into this in progress) was a fat tome, fully three-quarters of an inch across the spine, but there is no page numbering so I can't quote a page count. While saying again that I came into this in progress (the library did not have any earlier volumes), if I were to pick up any novel at random and start in on it half-way through, it would make some kind of sense. It might be missing key facts and important information, but at least the layout of the story would be coherent. Such was not the case here. I had no good idea what was going on or where it was supposed to be going.

Worse than this, was that what did come through with crystal clarity were some obnoxious themes running through this work, like rotted threads in a fabric, and which are evidently common to this series judged by what I've now seen of it. The worst of these is the racism. All the good-looking stand-up characters are white. All the obviously evil characters are people of color. That's truly sick and warped. Yes, 80% of the artists doing this volume are white (only Ronald Wimberly is black), but is this an excuse? No. Additionally, the male artists are as usual, squeamish about depicting male genitalia, but have no problem at all sexualizing woman.

That's not acceptable to me and I cannot recommend such a gory (again the gore was often of adults abusing children - what is wrong with these writers and artists?) and disjointed work where the sole purpose of it seems to be perpetuating a sick story instead of telling an engaging one.

Lucifer Cold Heaven by Holly Black, Lee Garbett, Stephanie Hans, Antonio Fabela

Rating: WARTY!

I really enjoy the TV series Lucifer based on the character from the Sandman comics. I tried a couple of those and did not like them at all, but I thought maybe the dedicated Lucifer comics might be better. They were not. I looked at two of them, and I made it only half way through this one and a quarter way through the mainstream one, and I was not impressed at all by either one. I'll stick with the TV show.

This particular edition collates six individual comics into one. The story here is that god has been killed and a disgraced Gabriel and Lucifer have to work together to solve the case. They evidently didn't get the news that god has long been dead for all thinking people who are not blind sheep! LOL!

Yes, the premise is utterly absurd, and I really have no time for the traditional trope angels and demons shtick, but I thought perhaps this might have some of the charm and humor of the TV show. It did not. The tow are completely unrelated. This whole graphic novel series of Lucifer is exactly that: graphic with gore, and rot and evil, and with nothing to leaven it or save it. The story made no sense. I mean, if god is in his Heaven and is surrounded by adoring dead Christians (or Jews or Muslims, or whatever), then how did anyone ever sneak by to murder him? What does it mean that a god is mortal? None of this is considered in the hell-bent rush to the gross-out.

The comics are obnoxious in ways other than the pointless gore, though. They're racist. There are no people of color here - everyone is white because, presumably, the main artist is white. Either that's racist because the artist doesn't consider non-whites - the overwhelmingly massive majority of people on Earth - to be worth representing, or it's racist because we're being shown that white people are overwhelmingly evil. While it's tempting, sometimes, to consider that, it is in fact not true, excepting our current government of course!

More than this, in this comic there was a fat-shaming episode in that the only person who was overweight who was depicted in the entire comic here was evil. Everyone else, even the evil people, were slim and good looking. Fat people are evil? Way to go, Lee Garbett! Being a male artist, Garbett is very squeamish about depicting male genitalia. In his favor, I perhaps should say that he doesn't pneumatically over-sex his female characters, but it's harder to judge that because there are almost none in the story, which is curious given the gender of the writer.

So, in short, I cannot recommend this story. It was trite, and predictable and amateur, and the artwork was the same. Worse, there was nothing new here at all.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Neil Babra

Rating: WORTHY!

No Fear Shakespeare is a collection of "translated" Shakespeare texts - in other words, delivered in modern English instead of in the antique lingo with which Shakespeare was familiar. A web version of Hamlet done in this way can be found here.

I'm familiar Hamlet from its general reputation, and from the Kenneth Branagh and Mel Gibson movie versions, but I've never read the original play. I will be setting that right at some point since reading this gave me an idea for a novel! Those who have no familiarity with this story (the full title of which is The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, but shorted merely to Hamlet for this book) might be surprised to discover how many quite well-known English catch-phrases were derived from this play. It seems like it's full of them. This was Shakespeare's longest work and was derived from the medieval Scandinavian legend of Amleth which in the beginning is very much like the Hamlet we know, although the ending is rather more convoluted (Amleth ends up with two wives!).

This graphic novel follows the 'No Fear' text, and the black and white line drawings are rudimentary (and predictably shaded dark in many places!), so the artwork was no great shakes (peer!), but overall I liked the way this was done. I found it eminently readable and easy follow (although frankly the text could have been more legibly printed, especially in the reversed panels where it was white text on a black background).

The story is of course that Hamlet's uncle, with the rather un-Danish name of Claudius, murdered Hamlet's father and took over the throne, but disguised the murder and got away with it. This never made any sense to me. Hamlet was old enough to be king, so if his father was king but died (whether murdered or through natural causes), why was Hamlet not king? I think Shakespeare screwed up!

Whether Hamlet was insane or merely faking it to achieve the end result of exposing his uncle is a much debated question. I think at first there is no doubt of his sanity, but certain later actions of his, such as his lack of remorse at slaying the father of the woman he purportedly loved, and his callous rejection of this same woman and lack of concern over her becoming unhinged suggest to me that while he wasn't exactly what I'd term missing a few planks from his stage, he was certainly a folio short of a play!

So in the end, as is the wont in Shakespeare's tragedies, there's a slaughter and, as Prince Escalus might have it, "all are punish'd." Denmark falls to Norway, the very nation which was lost a war with it before the play begins. This part made no sense to me either. Did Shakespeare not know his Europe? It made zero sense that Norwegian armies would need to March across Denmark to get to Poland! Why did they not go directly through Sweden (a country with which they had not been at war recently), or simply sail though the Baltic? That Shakespeare, I tell you! But let's take a page out of Shakespeare's book on this: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so"! So it's all good and I recommend this one.

Small Favors by Colleen Coover

Rating: WORTHY!

I haven't reviewed a Net Galley graphic novel in a while, but there hasn't been much come up which has interested me. In their latest flyer this was the only one that I thought might be worth my time, and in the end I wasn't quite sure of that to begin with. I was won over by the playfulness and sheer exuberance of the stories. As I intimated, this is an advance review copy for which I thank the publishers.

I wasn't at all familiar with Colleen Coover's work, but I am now! Note that this isn't all she does, because when I tell you this is a graphic graphic novel for adult-only audiences which features explicit and what many might consider even kinky sex, you might wonder where she's coming from. Well, I can't speak or her, but for her characters, it's obvious where they're coming from!

The comic is a series of stories, with mini-stories interleaved, and separate by title pages which are done in grey-scale. Nearly all of the art is black and white line drawings which for me were charming and well done. I enjoyed them so much that I had some trouble adapting to the color section which is contained towards the middle. It felt really odd after I'd become so comfortable with the original artwork, but it wasn't bad at all - the line work was the same and the coloring was nicely done.

The inventive tack taken here is that main character Annie is called onto the mat by her conscience for excessive masturbating. Apparently at the age of twenty-one, she's already used up her lifetime allotment of "sexual self-abuse" as it used to be termed. I confess I never knew there was one!

A part of her conscience named Nibbil (which is misspelled Nibble at one point in the comic) is assigned to her twenty-four-seven to keep her on the straight and narrow, but this only results in her avidly exploring the bent and wide, since Nibbil is at least as big of a nymphomaniac as Annie. Happily, the two fall in love, but this doesn't prevent them exploring their sexuality with others. One thing I really did like about this was the brief interludes. No, this is not about girls wearing briefs and being lewd, it's a series of mini stories scattered through the main collection. How to spank Girls was hilarious.

The obvious candidate would seem to be Annie's next door, and single, neighbor, a young Asian woman about whom Annie fantasizes daily, but this doesn't happen (not immediately!). Instead they encounter another lesbian who is feeling lonely, an African American woman named sage. Soon the three of them are bosom buddies - in every sense of the phrase. This sparks a whole new set of stories. The sweet thing about this is the love between Annie and Nibbil, which is never lost sight of, no matter what adventures they get into.

The stories were for the most part highly amusing, such as when they play doctors which I thought was funny, as was the jungle adventure fantasy in which Annie and Nibbil take part, but be warned that every one of the stories is focused on sex. Even a trip to a yard sale ends up with them nude and passionate. They really have no life that doesn't involve sex!

Some potential fans might find that a turn off since there really isn't much story here. Others might find it a bit repetitive. I might have classed myself in those groups if the stories had not been so playful, unabashed, amusing, enthusiastic, and yes, even innocent in a weird, juvenile, exploratory way. The characters are all so likable and passionate, particularly Annie and Nibbil, that you can't help but appreciate them.

I have to mention that safe sex was not a concept here, which I found sad. Admittedly when having sex with the embodiment of her conscience, Nibbil, this wasn't an issue, but when they began to involve Sage and others, then at least a nod and a wink towards hygiene and safe sex needs to be in there, no matter how fleeting. There's nothing wrong with adventurous sex, but adventurous sex with multiple partners carries baggage that is neither erotic nor fun and which can be at best debilitating and at worst, deadly. Adventurous sex means trusting your partner(s), and this means informed consent and responsible sex. It's by no means incompatible with being erotic, and I think it's sad that more writers don't get this.

That said, I did like these comic stories. I really appreciated the author's sensibility about how the tales should be told. I think she got the tone right, and I consider them a worthy read for anyone who is interested in erotica in the comics.

The Mighty Zodiac Starfall by J Torres, Corin Howell, Maarta Laiho

Rating: WORTHY!

Note that this is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher!

In the fantasy world of Gaya, where animals are human (and in a refreshing change, the rabbits are evil!), the great dragon guardian of the sky - which curiously looks just like a constellation! - dies before the replacement is ready, and the rabbits, which had been banished to the moon, are free to come down to Earth. The fall of the dragon was literally a star-fall, hence the subtitle of the graphic novel. Six stars came down, and if the rabbits can destroy them all, then chaos will reign.

The only thing standing in the way is the once Mighty Zodiac. Refreshingly based on the Asian zodiac (Dog, Dragon, Goat, Horse, Monkey, Ox, Pig, Rabbit, Rat, Rooster, Snake, Tiger) instead of the western one, that's about as far as the story delves into Eastern beliefs. The Asian zodiac is tied to the twelve-year orbit of Jupiter, and the animals are associated with "elements" such as water, metal, wood, fire, etc), but none of this impacts this story.

The eleven non-evil warriors are dispatched to recover the stars, to keep them safe from the machinations of the "rabbit army" which sounds scary and looks scarier! The eleven don't necessarily get along, and there's friction and politics, but in the end they pull together. The story continues in other volumes. This was well-illustrated by Corin Howell, beautifully colored by Maarta Laiho, and nicely written by Joseph Torres. I recommend it as a worthy read!

Manga Claus by Nathaniel Marunas, Erik Craddock

Rating: WORTHY!

Subtitled The Blade of Kringle, this isn't a manga, it's a regular graphic novel, but it's about ninjas, including ninja teddy-bears and a ninja Santa! Erik Craddock's art is great, and the story by Nathaniel Marunas is hilarious.

An aggrieved elf uses a bit of illegal magic to amp up a ninja toy, ordering it to go wreck the toy-building area of Santa's Workshop (a map is included!). The elf plans to come in later and conveniently save the day. Unfortunately, the ninja starts doing his job too well and somehow unleashes a hoard of ninja bears, who go on a wild rampage through the workshop. Only ninja Santa can save the day. Or can he?

This story reminded me very much of My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable by David Rees, but without the bad language and with better art! I'm thinking mainly of the humor here because it had that same kind of off-the-wall snap to it that made you laugh out loud. I recommend this highly.

Penny Arcade Attack of the Bacon Robots by Jerry Holkins, Mike Krahulik

Rating: WORTHY!

This is an amusing retrospective of comic strips done by these guys who obsess over video games. I'm not a video gamer: I get much more fun out of a good novel (writing or reading) than ever I have had from any number of dumb video games, but I understand the culture, and besides, this isn't a video game! It's a commentary of a host of them over several years, and it's really amusing, even if you're not familiar with the games, which I found to be a curious phenomenon. Some of the games I did have a passing familiarity with, others I could guess at, some I'd never heard of. I've played none of the ones mentioned here except Pac-Man, but I still enjoyed the attitude and observations. These guys have a great sense of humor and it shines through their work. Yes, some of the strips fell flat for me, but most of them - and sometimes surprisingly - did not.

I think to get the most out of this you have to be of a certain culture and a certain era, but I do recommend it one for anyone who knows a little about gaming culture, or who has geek blood, and I would particularly recommend it for for those who are immersed in the culture and consider themselves trivia buffs on the topic, but note that these comic strips are from the period 1998 through 2000, so they have nothing to say about modern games. They're exclusively about obsolete games, which might well be beloved by potential readers. I found it a worthy read, anyway. Besides, I loved the title!

Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga by Koji Aihara, Kentaro Takemura

Rating: WORTHY!

This was educational (somewhat), humorous (particularly in the bathroom humor department, be warned), and entertaining, but it's really much more of a satire on manga than ever it is a how-to manual, although it does offer a surprising number of tips and suggestions.

Under the guise of explaining how easy it is to draw manga, the two authors/artists offer a commentary on the state of Japanese manga, what motivates it, and which trends are hot and cold, taking potshots at everything out there, including themselves. The line-drawing artwork is pretty decent and quite varied, and some of the stories they tell are pretty amusing. There is a distinct tendency towards bathroom humor and there is some quite explicit nudity depicted, so this isn't the book you want to give young children who may be displaying a flare for, or an interest in, comic book illustration.

That said I found it amusing and interesting and I'd recommend it for anyone who has a broad mind and is interested in manga.

Emma by Po Tse, Cystal S Chan, Stacy King

Rating: WARTY!

With line drawings by by Po Tse (aka Lemon Po), story adapted by Cystal S Chan (aka Crystal Silvermoon), and English script by Stacy King (aka Stacy King), this manga version of Jane Austen's Emma failed to please me. The adaptation wasn't bad, but reading it backwards isn't natural for we Westerners, and though I liked a manga version of Pride and Prejudice, I feel that i, like Po Tse, have to draw a line here!

In some supplementary material at the back (aka front) of the book, Po's art is praised for his "uncanny talent," but to me every drawing looked the same. It was hard to distinguish the characters except by their hairstyle, and I have never been a fan of that pointed nose, pointed chin, ridiculously large-eye mangled - er manga - style. It strikes me as lazy, where every face is merely a clone of every other, and the only actual difference between them is in the eyes and hair. After this experience I think this is the last manga of this nature I will read.

I have a few observations on the story, too. This is one of Austen's later novels. It was not her last, but it has been praised for good plotting, yet no one seems interested in saying a word about how snobbish and elitist it is. Yes, I get that this is how society was back then, and Austen is merely reporting it, but this only serves my point. Where is the daring, the invention, the scandalous skirting of the rules? I use the word 'skirting' advisedly because Austen no doubt wore skirts. Her book really isn't much more than a dear diary, is it though, in the final analysis?

The snobbery, even from the "heroic" Mr Knightley, is shameful, and it makes it only more obnoxious knowing that this was the acceptable norm back then. The talk is endlessly of people above their station, and poor matches. Love has no place in this world whatsoever, so where is the romance? It cannot breathe here, starved of oxygen as it is.

Emma is a frivolous, immature, vindictive, interfering and very stupid woman, and not at all pleasant to read about. She fails to grow and learn, yet ends up with everything despite her foolish meddlesome behavior, yet we're expected to condemn characters like frank Churchill, Philip Elton and August Hawkins, who are in reality just like Emma, if somewhat more exaggerated. While I confess I do like the movie featuring Gwyneth Paltrow, and I like even more the one featuring Alicia Silverstone, I really can't recommend the story of Emma or this graphic novel version of it.

Drowned City Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans by Don Brown

Rating: WORTHY!

At a time of Thanksgiving it's important to remember what we have to be thankful for, and to recall things which are, even after a mere decade, in danger of being forgotten. One of these was Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans, which was an appalling and embarrassing tragedy and which highlighted a complete failure across several systems including the local authorities under the (at best) neglectful Mayor Nagin, the Federal government under the utterly clueless George Bush, and pretty much everything in between.

Don Brown's (and yes, I'd pick Don over Dan any time!) very well-written and nicely-illustrated graphic novel tells the story as it was, unvarnished and nothing swept under the rug. It covers everything from the start (and I mean literally the start) of the hurricane to the cruel and horrific aftermath. It's a horrible read and I mean that in a sense I hope you'll understand: horrible, but necessary lest we forget what happens when humans are absurdly over-confident and tragically unprepared.

Vampire Academy Graphic Novel by Leigh Dragoon, Emma Viecelli

Rating: WORTHY!

For a graphic novel created by two female writers/illustrators, I found this to be rather more sexualized than it ought, particularly regarding main character Rose. Emma Viecelli's artwork aside though (and the art wasn't bad at all in general terms), the adaptation by the curiously-named Leigh Dragoon was faithful to Richelle Mead's original, and overall, the story was told well. As usual I could have done without the ridiculous and pathetic "romance" between Rose and the academy's pet gorilla, but other than that, I liked this adaptation and I recommend it for anyone who likes the original or who is interested in getting up to speed on the story without reading the original, which I reviewed back in May, 2014.

There was one bit of unintentional amusement, which is when Rose has one of her trips into Lissa's brain. The illustration clearly shows Lissa from a third party perspective, climbing up through the trapdoor into the attic where she meets Ozera, but the text confidently states: "And there I am seeing the world through Lissa's eyes." No, you don't see the world through Lissa's eyes looking directly at Lissa, unless she's in front of a mirror! Sometimes I wish writers were a little more intelligent than this - or artists, whoever is at fault here, but they're no worse than movie or TV depictions of such things which are routinely in third person perspective and which look utterly ridiculous because of it.

The Complete Marvel Cosmos with notes by Guardians of the Galaxy by Marc Sumerak

Rating: WORTHY!

Note that this was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

While this may have limited appeal, specifically to Marvel geeks and younger readers, I found it interesting and amusing. What does that say about me? Let;s not get into that! The book is a lot of text, but is also heavily illustrated, so it showed well only on my Bluefire Reader app on a tablet, and on my Adobe Digital Editions app on my desktop. In Amazon's crappy Kindle app it looked horrible. The images were tiny and disjointed and the text was all over the place.

What you see is what you get here: a tour of the Marvel Universe in all it's exotic improbability. Some of it is nonsensical, some whimsical, some engrossing, and some entertaining. The Guardians of the Galaxy have handwritten comments between paragraphs making wry and sarcastic observations on the text. Some are a bit trite and predictable, but many are amusing. There is a lot of mentions, of course, of Marvel's super hero stable, but the book is more of a tour guide, discussing cultures and interesting sights, with little "what to wear" and "where to eat" features which can be funny.

Covered are the Kree Empire, the Shi'ar Empire, and planets such as Asgard (including the ten realms), Battlerealm, Chitauri Prime, Earth, Ego, Halfworld, Moord, Planet of the Symbiotes, Weirdworld, Planet X, and the moon Titan, as well as non-planets such as Cancerverse, Dark Dimension, Darkforce Dimension, Knowhere, the city of K'un-Lun, Otherworld, The Superflow, the Negative Zone, the neutral Zone, and so on. It's pretty extensive!

I recommend this for anyone who wants to dig deeper into Marvel's extensive universe and have some fun along the way.

Bad Machinery Volume 1 The Case of the Team Spirit by John Allison

Rating: WORTHY!

Note that this review is based on an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Bad Machinery is exactly what it says! It's totally bad-ass and hugely hilarious. But let's not confuse the case of team spirit with a case of liquor! These kids are only middle grade after all. This book, one of a series, is set in a Grammar school in England, and it's a locale with which I am intimately familiar having attended one myself. The story is set in Yorkshire, where my parents were born and raised, and I grew up next door, in Derbyshire. Non-Brits may need some remedial assistance on the lingo, but most of it isn't hard to understand. The graphic novel is evidently composed of webcomic dailies.

I adored this story. Every one of the characters is one I wish I had known at my own school, but alas and a lack of them was what plagued me there. Charlotte Grote, Jack Finch, Linton Baxter, Mildred Haversham, Shauna Wickle, and Sonny Craven are the weird, whacky, and charming students dealing with assorted life crises in their own peculiar ways. Sometimes their agendas conflict and other times they align.

The big deal is that a Russian owner of the local soccer club is trying to demolish houses to build a new stadium in their place, but this Russky seems to have pissed-off the mother of all bad luck, as becomes apparent when a satellite crashes onto the football pitch in the middle of a game, and assorted other disasters befall him. Plus Mrs Biscuits is also Russian, but not interested in rushing anywhere. She refuses to move from her home which sits, of course, right in the way of the Russian's plans to raze the land and raise a stadium. Two of the girls decide to make her the subject of a school project.

Each character has their own cross to bear. Shauna's, for example, is her slightly dysfunctional younger brother whose favorite non-word is BORB. Linton is plagued by his overly attentive mother and his fear that the beautiful new soccer stadium may never materialize. Sonny's father misses his own brutal grammar school days which appear to have been the inspiration for Michael Palin's Ripping Yarns, specifically the episode titled Tomkinson's Schooldays. Jack suffers an older sister who attends the same school and dispenses remarkable advice like, "It's a good idea to shave off your eyebrows" and "be sure to wear eye-shadow for gym." I fell in love with Charlotte though, disgusting as that is, since I'm old enough to be her father, but her sense of humor completely slayed me. She is the queen of bizarre observations and off-the-wall comments such as when she wants to discuss the procedure for extracting mothballs from moths.

The story meanders delightfully and abstrusely towards a satisfying conclusion. The art isn't spectacular, but it's serviceable and it got the job done for me. I haven't read any others in this series, but I fully intend to correct that oversight, first chance I get - which wasn't until 2019! I guess I got really busy with other stuff!

Grave Surprise by Charlaine Harris, Royal McGraw, Ilias Kyriazis, Tamra Bonvillain

Rating: WORTHY!

I'm not a fan of Charlaine Harris. After enjoying True Blood on TV, I started in on the Sookie Stackhouse novels, but had a poor experience with them, so I gave up. A graphic novel about a different subject altogether OTOH, sounded like it might be a good idea, and this one certainly started well. The best part of it was that it continued well and turned out to be a great read. I really liked Ilias Kiryazis's art work, and the colors done by Tamra Bonvillain were exemplary. But it's not just lines and color, it's the story, too. In this case, that came through for me as well, despite being a bit improbable here and there!

Harper Connelly is an interesting and intriguing character with her pierced lip and lobe rings in her ears. The story is that she was struck by lightning and found afterwards that she can discover how a person died by simply standing close by where they are buried - or their body was dumped. She cannot identify the killer, but she can give quite a detailed description of how they died.

How she gets this information is a mystery since sometimes it supposedly comes from young from children who could hardly so much as know, let alone understand, how they died. I don't believe in gods or the occult, but I do enjoy a good story about the supernatural. The thing is that if you're going to tell a story like this, you really need to work out your mythology beforehand, otherwise anything goes and there are no rules, and your story fails for lack of intelligent structure. But I'm willing to let a small amount of this slide as long as it doesn't start ripping up the story or credibility for me. In this case it wasn't an obstacle.

Tolliver is Harper's step brother. They're very close, and he acts as her manager and companion. During an exercise to demonstrate that Harper's power is real, she makes a disturbing discovery - a grave contains two bodies, one much more recent than the other. The newer body is that of a young girl who was abducted from outside her home, and later killed. Harper had been called in by the girl's parents to see if she could find Tabitha Morgenstern's body and had failed - evidently because the body had been buried far from the girl's home town. Now Harper has discovered it, the spotlight is on her and the awkwardness of dealing with Tabitha's parents, whom she had failed two years before.

I found the use of the Latin word 'alumna' at one point to be interesting. This is the technically correct use when describing one female graduate. The plural is alumnae. In this male-dominated and very pretentious society, most people talk and think only of 'alumnus' which is the singular for a male graduate, and alumni (for a group of male or mixed male/female graduates). While it's commendable that the authors got this right in a technical sense, I personally feel that this deliberate distinction between male and female in such titles (along with actor/actress, author/authoress, and so on, isn't productive and is divisive, so 'alumnus' would have been fine with me, but the less pretentious graduate is better!

But I digress! The story was fun, and interesting, although the villain became obvious to me before it occurred to Harper! I'm usually not very good at these things which is why I enjoy them so much, os the fact that i figured it out suggests that others may well do so long before I did. That aside though, I loved the story and the art, and I really liked the concept. I would enjoy reading more about this interesting couple.

Generation Zero by Fred Van Lente, Francis Portela, Andrew Dalhouse

Rating: WORTHY!

I had no idea what Generation Zero was about having no exposure to it before (it's very much a young-adult version of X-Men, although it has no affiliation with the Marvel property as far as I know). Along came this graphic novel which sounded appealing and I was pleased to have the chance to review an ARC. So thanks to the publisher! Note that this is a work of fiction, and not to be confused with the New Zealand youth organization focused on the much-needed weaning of our society from fossil fuels!

It turns out, as the blurb tells us, that Generation Zero is a group for kids who were experimented on by private military contractors in Project Rising Spirit, aimed at producing 'psychic soldiers'. Well, they apparently succeeded. The blurb tells us the soldiers won their freedom. How that happened I don't know. I find it hard to believe that the government would let them go so easily, but maybe it wasn't easy. Anyway, now they have a new mission: helping teens in need.

No one feels more in need than Keisha Sherman. Her boyfriend just died in a highly suspect car accident in the too-good-to-be-true town of Rook, Michigan, heart of a new and suspiciously rapid tech boom. Keisha never was your regular teen. Sporting a rad look and hanging with the out-crowd, she appeals to Generation Zero through her computer because she knows her boyfriend was onto something suspicious going on in this town, and that;s why he died. She discovers that Generation Zero is not so mythical. She's advised to destroy the computer she used to contact them (why this must be done isn't explained!), and get on with her life. Pretty soon, new students start showing up at her school, and they make the out-crowd look normal.

These students are evidently Generation Zero: Animalia (shape-shifter), Cloud (a mind scrambler), Cronus (the gorup leader), Gamete, Telic, and the Zygos twins. These guys, plus one other shadowy sort, and Keisha and are going to make a difference. As long as the suspiciously compliant adults in the town, including Keisha's own father, who is a cop, don't trip up their plans. Note that there are other members of Generation Zero which aren't featured in this graphic novel.

I liked this for the characters, the artwork, which came in two styles, one for regular life, and one for this oddball sequence which depicted the world as people saw it, not as how it was. That was pretty cool. The drawing depicted people realistically, without the improbable and genderist proportions of super hero comics. Some were overweight, one of Keisha's friends was in a wheelchair There is no bad language and no overt sexuality although one scene shows a young couple in bed together, but they're just talking. I liked that the story wasn't afraid to be real all the way through. I liked that the main character, Keisha, was African American and female - not a common occurrence in far too many graphic novels - and that she had a younger brother who was a bit of a special needs kid.

But it's more than just getting the a realistic set of characters. There has a to be a story, otherwise it's just pretty pictures of interesting people, and this one felt good and plausible (in the framework of the story, of course!). So I recommend this. It hit the spot and I'd definitely be interested in pursuing the story.

Zoe Dare vs The Disasteroid by Brockton McKinney

Rating: WARTY!

This was another oddity from Net Galley in that it didn't specify that it was a graphic novel when it actually was. It's like this is the inverse of the other two which I'd initially thought were going to be graphic novels, but which turned out to be books of short stories. In this case I felt I was on safe ground since I know the publisher and the cover looked very graphic novel-ish! I really liked the cover and the graphics inside (the other covers inside were not so hot, but the panel work was to my taste and looked really good, I thought).

For me, the problem with this was the story, and it's story I come for, otherwise all you really have isn't so much a graphic novel per se as a coffee-table book. What attracted me to the story was the idea of a kick-ass female Evel Knievel and especially that such a person was the only one who could save Earth from an asteroid which seemed intent upon plummeting into the planet's crust. If it had actually been that, then this might have made for a great graphic novel, but it really wasn't in the end. The blurb was a bit more misleading than blurbs usually are because it turned out that Zoe wasn't the only one who could save Earth.

The two AI robots that were also advertised in the blurb turned out to be a bigger disaster than I'd feared they would be. I wasn't keen on them in the first place, but I was willing to risk those for a good story about two strong female characters. The problem with these robots though, is that they were far more 'A' than ever they were 'I'. I saw absolutely no point whatsoever to them, and their endless spewing of "Hashtag <smart mouth comment regarding current situation>" throughout the comic was fingernails-on-chalkboard irritating. In fact, in terms of being truly annoying, they were the equivalent of the two transformers, Mudflap and Skids in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, minus the racism, but every bit as bad otherwise.

I liked Zoe's "punk rock" sister, but why she was specified as punk when she really wasn't very punk at all, is a mystery. A rad haircut doth not a punk make! Despite this, she was my favorite, with Zoe second, the alien girl third. No one else rated at all because they were nowhere near as interesting as the three girls, which is actually quite a compliment from me! I think the two biggest problems though, were left-field nonsense and what felt like a thrown-together story. The problem was one of weight: there was too much silliness baggage for this story to be able to take off. One problem was how these guys got into space to go after the disasteroid (great name for the story, by the way).

Given that the space shuttle has long been retired, I saw no sense in 'resurrecting' it to get these guys into space, especially since the space shuttle was completely useless for anything other than low Earth-orbit missions. The new Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft being built by Lockheed Martin and the ESA is what's going to be used for these things in future, and that's not likely to be ready before 2024, but it would have been nice to see it enter service in the comic world. The shuttle is way over-used in stories and film, and it's antiquated and tired-looking. Could the writer not stretch a little bit and treat us to something intelligent like that instead?

This wasn't the biggest technological problem. The idea that you can get onto a motorbike (which is powered by internal combustion), and ride it off an asteroid and down to Earth in emulation of the iconic if cartoonish sports-car drop in the Heavy Metal movie, was just ludicrous beyond belief. You can get away with this in cartoons, but if you're trying to make your story seem even remotely realistic, you need to understand some basic physics, the primary problem of which, here, is that an internal combustion requires air. There's no air in space! This is why we use rockets the fuel of which carries its own oxygen supply! Motorbike leathers will not protect you in space! These are childish mistakes which remove all hope of anything even approaching realism. Yeah, it's fine for Saturday morning kid's cartoons, but grown-ups need to be treated with more respect than this. Conversely there is air around the Earth and it will burn you up if you fly back in from space without adequate protection, which a motorbike and leathers will not offer!

This whole thing made me feel like this was fan-fiction, thrown together rather than thought-out, and it was a very unsatisfactory story, with someone who had a death-dealing chest wound coming back to life because "Hey, I'm a stuntman, I do it all the time?" No! Just no! It was simply too nonsensical and too fly-by-night. If the whole story had been goofy form the off, then these things would have fit better, but it wasn't. It was for these reasons that this failed for me, and I was truly disappointed because I had high expectations; but what seemed to offer an original, fun, and engaging story fell apart in the execution. I wish the author all the best. I think he has some good stories to tell, but this wasn't one of them.