Hoi!
Today I've got four comics and graphic novels to discuss.
I've got a whole series where I talk about graphic novels and reviews
sort of like four or five at a time.
if you haven't seen those yet - links in the description.
This is "Dan and Sam", which was sent to me by Pan Macmillan, the publishers
and this was one that I'd actually never heard of before
it is a story of Dan and Sam, they are a couple that own a cool, underground restaurant in London
they just have a really happy life together, until one night Sam has an accident and dies.
Obviously Dan is devastated.
Then on the first Halloween following her death, he goes to visit her grave and she is there, and they have one amazing day together.
And from then on, every year he gets to spend one day with her.
Meanwhile, he's trying to deal with the restaurant, and the staff, and his life,
and he goes to therapy, that's the sort of general set-up of it.
Most of the pages are in black and white.
Except for the bits where he is with Sam.
The set-up of this was really sweet, i quite enjoyed all the different characters,
But I have to say that this is, from the get-go, not really the kind of story that I'm particularly interested in reading.
There's one narrator, I think he's a restaurant reviewer,
and he goes to his restaurant all the time and he kind of talks you through a lot of the story.
Especially towards the end that would drag a little bit - so I think if this is something that sounds really appealing to you,
give it a go, I quite liked he drawing style, but it's not really my kind of thing.
The next is "Take it as a Compliment", which you might have seen in a recent book haul I did
This is the MA project of Maria Stoian who is from Scotland.
And this is basically a collection of stories people have shared about a time that they have been sexually harassed or sexually assaulted
There are 20 different stories
They vary in how severe they are
some of them are long, some of them are short
some of them have whole written pages of words, some have no words at all
I absolutely loved the drawing style, which differed from story to story
and I really loved the colours as well. Each story had their own colour scheme.
And while I did - I don't want to say "enjoy it" - cause that seems like the wrong word,
I thought it was a very interesting read, it was very beautiful, it made me think a lot
but i do feel like, probably because the writing was taken directly from people's statements, as far as I can tell
the writing could have maybe done with a little more work
Cause i feel like for a lot of the stories the final sentence would be a little bit jarring in a way, it didn't feel like it was the last sentence -
- you'd turn the page and sort of be surprised.
So that was the only thing i wasn't too crazy about, but other than that this is, I think, a really good graphic novel.
Then I have "Killing and Dying" by Adrian Tomine, which looks like this
It actually has a plastic flap right here, there we go
This is a collection of six different stories
Some of the titles of the stories are "A Brief History of the Artform known as Hortisculpture" -
"Go Owls", "Killing and Dying", "Intruders".
Some of these were black and white, a lot of them had really muted colours, it's quite nice paper as well.
And i think what I liked most about this was that it felt like ordinary stories with a bit of an extraordinary twist,
sort of just randomly taken from people's lives.
Some of them didn't have a huge set-up or a huge ending, they're just snippets.
I feel like this is a graphic novel and a genre that I haven't really read before.
The one that was probably my favourite is about a girl who discovers that she looks really, really similar to a porn star
and about how that affects her life, and at some point she also runs into this girl.
The story actually starts with this pink page and a white page that says "Amber Sweet", and then this says "Amber Sweet" but written in a mirror image.
I think that one could also probably could make a good birthday present for the right person
And then finally there's a comic that I picked up, i have to admit, purely for the cover because it looked freaking awesome
And it was, fortunately! It is "Paper Girls Number 1"
This story is about four girls who have, like, a paper round
but it also incorporates some sci-fi, just to give you an example of what it looks like.
The pace is really good, the drawings are fantastic,
The characters are all really different - I just really, really liked it.
It obviously ends on a bit of a cliffhanger so I am going to pick up the second issue as well.
Those are some of the graphic novels and comics I've read recently
I hope you enjoyed this, i'll put links to all of them in the description, and I'll talk to you guys later! Doei!