A selection of November graphic novels

Briar Vol. 1: Sleep No More by Christopher Cantwell with art by German Garcia (2023) 128 pages

Reading for #hooplachallenge "Beyond the Storybook" theme this month. Clearly leads right into volume 2, but I didn't love it enough to continue. Maybe later. Chapter one "Nothing Sharp in Sight" has the lovely transition from soft storybook telling of Sleeping Beauty leading to dystopian fantasy future. We even get a rodent of unusual size! The beginning of Briar Rose's journey is handled well. Bloody and scatological, Cantwell's use of language is stilted. Chapter two "The Witch Which Witches Not" reveals the evil that pursues Briar Rose and her growing band of misfits. Chapter three "Of Villainous, Cruel Gnomes" starts with a flashback for a new character and continues with the same sort of dark adventure. Chapter four "Adra Adrata Adracta" brings the threads together pretty well and reveals a surprise that makes sense going back to the beginning. I like the band of misfits and visually I like the series. I do want to find out what happens next, so I probably will pick up volume 2 at some point.

Ruins by Peter Kuper (2015) 328 pages

"Samantha and George are a couple heading towards a sabbatical year in the quaint Mexican town of Oaxaca. For Samantha, it is the opportunity to revisit her past. For George, it is an unsettling step into the unknown." I loved seeing the butterfly's journey. I loved getting to know the city of Oaxaca (wah-ha-ka) and surrounding areas of Mexico. Many layers to the relationship story, but a troubled one.

Lackadaisy: Volume 1 by Tracy J. Butler (2009) 96 pages

Tracy J. Butler is a local St. Louis artist. This is set in St. Louis in 1927. Prohibition has sparked the engine of organized crime. The story is full of 1920s slang and references. Good sense of humor. Good character development of anthropomorphized cats in spiffy outfits.

Once Upon a Time Machine edited by Andrew Carl, written and illustrated by many artists (2012) 431 pages

Anthology of many international comic artists adapting fairy tales from around the world into futuristic tales. There seems to be a large number of artists from Philadelphia invited to contribute. It is a mix of more or less successful adaptations. Some artists have provided just a single page illustration, but it is the other short adaptations that make it worth your while. I'll highlight a few that I thought were clever and unique, but you may be more strongly drawn to others. I thought "Pinocchio or The Stars Are Not Wanted Now" had a nice twist on the lesson of telling the truth or telling lies. "The Puppet-Show Man or No Strings" is based on a story I'm not familiar with, but it drew me in with its grungy art and 'be careful what you wish' lesson. "The Shepherd and the Weaver Girl" feels epic and mythical. This adaptation of the Chinese myth has a clever way of drawing on the old and imagining it in the future. I also liked the nanotechnology dreamed up in the adaptation of "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi." The adaptation of "The Ugly Duckling or The Ugly Part" changes the ingredients of the story quite a bit, but achieves a better moral in the end. I really enjoyed "Vasilissa the Beautiful" based on a Slavic Baba Yaga tale. And "The Gold Piece or A Destiny Earned" was sweet and meaningful.

Washington's Gay General: The Legends and Loves of Baron von Steuben by Josh Trujillo with art by Levi Hastings (2023) 192 pages

"A graphic novel biography of Baron von Steuben, the soldier, immigrant, and flamboyant homosexual who influenced the course of US history during the Revolutionary War despite being omitted from our textbooks." I love learning about history and a person's life in this way. Well illustrated and moves along fairly quickly. Some memoir scenes and other brief introductions of queer people in history are sprinkled in too. 

Ash's Cabin by Jen Wang (2024) 320 pages

I grew up enjoying Illustrated Classics versions of Swiss Family Robinson and Robinson Crusoe. I also loved imagining the survival stories in Island of the Blue Dolphins and Incident at Hawk's Hill. I loved this story of nonbinary Ash challenging themselves to find their grandpa's hidden cabin in a National Forest in California. It feels very real as Ash studies and prepares. This is not a spur of the moment decision. Learning to survive with their dog, Chase, is an experience in which they learn from their mistakes and find what is most important in their life. Great art and structured like a journal.

The Stoneshore Register by G. Willow Wilson with art by M.K. Perker (2025) 128 pages

I like the lead character, Fadumo, a refugee and stranger to this Pacific Northwest town. The townspeople are fairly well drawn too, but we don't get to know them very deeply. I like the exploration of the uncanny and weird. I didn't enjoy chapter 4 as much. Chapter 5 nails the real message of the graphic novel when the immigration agents come looking for Fadumo. G. Willow Wilson's writing continues to be enjoyable.

Aristotle: A Graphic Biography by Tassos Apostolidis with art by Alecos Papadatos (2024) 216 pages

Nice framing device with a colleague of Aristotle teaching his students about Aristotle's life and thoughts. I like the basic color scheme. Some lengthy text for historical exposition is mixed with occasional humor and fairly detailed summaries of Aristotle's major philosophical concepts. I like the peek into daily life around Greece of the time and how Aristotle's relationships with family and friends is portrayed. The book does a good job of making him more than just the figure behind these abstract ethical/scientific concepts. He was real and enjoyed life.

The Last Days of New Paris

 The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville, 209 pages.

This book is difficult to categorize and even more difficult to describe, but I will do my best here. In 1941, while the Nazis were occupying Paris, a strange bomb went off. The so called S-Blast filled the city with physical and uncontrollable manifestations of Surrealist art. Between the so-called manifs and the demons the Nazis summon to attempt to maintain control, Paris is rendered strange and unstable, as well as being totally cut off from the rest of the world.

The story bounces back and forth between a solitary Surrealist soldier trying to resist the occupying Nazis in 1950 and a house full of Surrealists resisting in their own, more cognitive, way before the S-Blast. This book was extremely weird, but I found it very compelling throughout. I think fans of the Surrealist movement in particular will love this novel (and it's extensive index of references), but I enjoyed it as someone who knows little of the movement as well. This is a short book that packs a lot in with a startling degree of complexity, and I would recommend it for people feeling like they want to read something different. 

Howl's Moving Castle

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (1986) 329 pages

I listened to the audiobook. I have not seen the animated movie yet. There are a handful of elements from The Wizard of Oz, like pieces of a puzzle, that are jumbled and rearranged to make this new fantasy adventure. Later in this story, I could hear in my mind Dorothy being asked, "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" The main character Sophie is a young woman venturing out to find her fortune when the Witch of the Waste transforms her into an old woman. Sophie's self-image is a normal, everyday woman who is bored of making hats for a career, but it turns out she has magical abilities as well. She'll also find out if the rumors about Wizard Howl eating young girls is true. I should say that this is quite unique. There is no one single quest. The characters are trying to achieve many different things. From scene to scene I had no idea what was coming next. The author avoids many fantasy tropes. From slime, to Wales, to misfired spells, and tricky geography it gets pretty weird, but enjoyable. 

 

Dr. No

Dr. No by Percival Everett, 262 pages

Mathematics professor Wala Kitu is the world's foremost expert in nothing. Which makes him the perfect asset for John Milton Bradley Sills, a billionaire who wants to be a Bond villain, by stealing a box of nothing from Fort Knox and using it to make nothing happen to the world. With his trusty one-legged dog Trigo by his side (well, in a Baby Bjorn carrier anyway), Dr. Kitu takes Sills' money and embarks on the plan to steal nothing, slowly realizing along the way that nothing can cause a whole lot of havoc to the world, and he may be the only one who can keep nothing from happening.

If that paragraph confused you, imagine reading 262 pages like that. This wasn't the weirdest book I've read (that would be Tacky Goblin) but it certainly is near the top of the weird list. The overuse of the word "nothing," the globe-trotting plot mixed with page-length mathematical/philosophical paragraphs, Trigo talking to Dr. Kitu in his dreams...the whole thing feels like it was co-written by Joseph Heller and Jean-Paul Sartre. It's too clever by half, and Everett takes plenty of opportunities to give us a wink and let us know that. 

Driftwood

Driftwood by Marie Brennan, 206 pages

Every world or universe thinks it's alone until its apocalyptic death drives it to Driftwood, the place where all worlds go to literally drift off into nothingness. They come out of the Mist, to the Edge, and as parts of each world fade away, they become Shards that rub against each other in the pull of the Crush — the center of Driftwood and the place where all worlds are forgotten and smashed into nothing. As such, Driftwood itself is an odd land, with wildly variant inhabitants and their respective cultures, as well as different rules of physics in each of the worlds and Shards. But one man, aptly called Last, is famous throughout Driftwood as the last of his kind, a race that died out before the grandparents of anyone still alive were born. But when it seems that Last has finally died, the Drifters gather to remember the man or the charlatan or the god...whoever each person thinks he was or is.

This is a fascinating little book, with plenty to mull over after the final pages are done. And about those final pages... I'm not going to spoil this book by saying that they're odd. In fact, I'd love it if someone would read this book simply so I can talk about this ending! It's not my favorite book this year, but it's definitely thought-provoking and creative, so it gets a thumbs up from me.

Manfried Saves the Day

Manfried Saves the Day by Caitlin Major, illustrated by Kelly Bastow, 224 pages

What if, instead of humans having cats for pets, cats had humans for pets? That's the idea behind the Manfried comics, with human-sized cats taking care of their small cat-sized humans (who only say "hey," of course). This book finds Manfried's owners fighting to save the Catlanta Man Shelter from destruction by a developer, who will hand over the rights to the shelter if Manfried wins the annual man show.

It's wonderfully weird, with just a hint of Best of Show to spice things up. If you read it though, beware that the men at the man shelter wear just as much clothing as your average real-life cat does.

The Hike

The Hike by Drew Magary  278 pp.

A man on a business trip with a few hours to kill takes a walk down a path near his hotel. Sounds innocent enough. But then it turns into a surreal acid trip worthy experience with monsters, giants, a 15th century explorer, a hovercraft, and a talking crab. When I started it my reaction was indifferent, then the weirdness began and I was hooked. I don't want to say too much because any explanations would give too much away. The ending was perfect. The audiobook was well narrated by Christopher Lane.

Tacky Goblin

Tacky Goblin by T. Sean Steele, 134 pages

This is hands-down the weirdest book I've ever read. Forget unreliable narrator: this book has an unreliable plot, unreliable characters, unreliable settings, and an unreliable timeline. My best description is that it's about a guy who seems to be moving out of his parents' house to live with his sister in L.A. There are other people who live in their apartment building, including the guy's girlfriend (who may or may not be much older than him) and a noisy neighbor upstairs. Beyond that, there are some weird black pills, a talking mold stain on the guy's ceiling, a creature named Barb that is alternately a dog and a human baby, and some imaginary characters that don't know they're imaginary.

I'm OK with books that are a bit weird, and with elements of books that don't make sense. But when the whole book makes no sense? Nope. Just too weird. I read the whole thing in the hopes that something would cause everything to come together, but, despite the plot getting slightly less weird toward the end, it didn't. Maybe I'm missing some sort of weird symbolic thing (some of the back cover reviews mentioned coming-of-age symbolism, which *maybe* I can get), but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, unless you're looking for something to read during an acid trip.

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman, 283 pages

Christa did a great wrap-up of the seminal points here, so I won't retread what she wrote, at least not too much. Our narrator, A, has an obsessive roommate, B. Both of them have low self-esteem issues, though it's hard to say who's in worse shape. A also has a boyfriend, C, and their relationship seems to be the textbook definition of dead-end. Then there's a whole bunch of stuff about beauty cream commercials, and the disgusting-sounding (yet somehow really enticing to A) Kandy Kakes, and a lot of talk about oranges. Oh, and a really creepy cult.

I honestly don't know what I think of this book, other than that it's really weird. So if you're up for an odd book, go for it. Just don't expect to crave an orange afterward.