The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina / Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Robert Hack

   Do you ever read something and say to yourself, "oh, this was extremely written and drawn by  men." This book has it all, including a sequence of pages focused on the all important question: should a 13 year old girl completely change her appearance in order to be more sexy? Remember, it's best if this sexiness is imposed on her by a male relative without her consent. There's also a panel where the foreground is completely taken up by one characters breasts and the mid-ground is focused on a teenage girl in a bikini.

   LISTEN, I really wanted to like this book, and I did like parts of it! But there was so much in here that was just so off-putting that I finished the book feeling frustrated and upset. And I realize that this blog has kinda become a (very sporadic) negative review blog in that last while and that's not my intention for it! I want to like the things I read! Anyways there's a LOT of spoilers ahead.

   So, this book, ostensibly about Sabrina, opens with a prologue focused on her father in which he betrays and then attacks her mother, while taking Sabrina as his possession. Sabrina's whole family and community knows that her mother is a) alive, and b) incapacitated and institutionalized by her father, but they all tell her that her mother is dead. So we begin Sabrina's life with control being exerted over her and those around her by her father. Skipping forward, Sabrina's father has been somehow encased in a tree, and Sabrina is a 13 year old going to public school for the first time. She's getting ready for school when her cousin comes in and says she needs to be more sexy, and casts a couple of glamours on her while she says "don't cast a glamour on me". While at school she sees a football player and is like "wow, I love him, and I hate the girl who also likes him and said 'he's mine', also both of us are fully developed even though we are, again, 13" Upon returning home from school Sabrina displays one of her few moments of agency-exercising by, you guessed it, taking agency away from someone else by casting a spell on Harvey to make him like her!

   I realize I'm just typing out a cynical synopsis but I'm so annoyed with this book! It could have been so good!

   Once again, I'd like to remind everyone that this book is ostensibly About Sabrina. So Betty and Veronica are witches now and they raise Madam Satan from the dead (she killed herself so OF COURSE she was sent to, and this is a direct quote, "that particular circle of hell reserved for suicides" WOW! I HATE IT!). Madam Satan threw herself to hungry lions, literally, because Edward Spellman aka Sabrina's father said he wanted to marry a mortal woman instead of her. This is the same mortal woman, remember, who was violently and brutally attacked by Edward earlier in the book. Madam Satan goes to the place where Diana (Sabrina's mother) is institutionalized, tells her her story, and then decides to - instead of helping her - give her "clarity" and thereby subject her to further pain and torture at the hands of doctors and nurses!

   Here's something I really hate: when books pit all of their female characters against each other, especially women hating each other because a man chose one of them over the other one. The man caused this problem! Not the woman! Rosalind and Sabrina hate each other because hey both liked Harvey. Madam Satan curses Diana because they both liked Edward.

   Meanwhile, Sabrina is now dating Harvey and he is pressuring her for sex. She asks her aunts if she can have sex and they say "no, you have to be pure for satan", and she doesn't question that at all. Madam Satan, by now disguised as a teacher, uses her breasts (I am not kidding) to distract Harvey (the 16 year old boy) from his football game and then says "oops, sorry for distracting you, by the way isn't it just too bad that Sabrina runs off into the woods at night, probably for sex with randos?" Which of course makes Harvey angry so he runs into the woods to find and rebuke Sabrina. Sabrina is, of course, going to her "dark baptism" in the woods which is a big ceremony where it's implied she is going to have sex with satan?

   In The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the netflix tv show, Sabrina decides, of her of volition, to not go through with her dark baptism and accepts the consequences. It's a good moment! In The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the comic book I'm currently writing about, Sabrina's dark baptism is interrupted by Harvey and he stops it, and then is killed and eaten by the witches who were there while some other witches scream at Sabrina that she is so horrible for ruining the dark baptism (because of someone else's actions that she has no control over?). Now Madam Satan, who manipulated Harvey into trying to find Sabrina, goes to manipulate Sabrina into raising Harvey from the dead.

   The two times in this book that Sabrina shows an interest in furthering her skills in spell crafting and casting are both times when she wants to make Harvey do something. Oh yeah and after Harvey died his mom gives a ring to Sabrina and was like "he was going to propose, isn't that beautiful" and I was like "they're??? 16????? He only liked her??? because of a spell???"

   So Madam Satan gets Betty and Veronica to come and help Sabrina get through a trial and then the four of them reconvene to raise Harvey from the dead but SURPRISE Madam Satan ACTUALLY released Edward's spirit from the tree it was encased in and put it into Harvey's body. So! Harvey/Edward goes back to Harvey's parent's house where Harvey's mother murders his father because he's like "Harvey is dead and I have a bad feeling about whoever is knocking on the door" and then Harvey/Edward is like "Harvey isn't here anymore" and then ties her up and phones Sabrina (HIS DAUGHTER) and says "I'm back". End book!

   So! We begin with Edward controlling, attacking, and lying to women and we end with Edward controlling, attacking, and lying to women! This book, once again, ostensibly about Sabrina, focuses way way more on Harvey and Edward, with the women in their lives acting as a backdrop. Once again, there is SO MUCH this book could've done and/or talked about, and it just, didn't.

   I also know that other people really liked this book and I am so curious about your opinions!! Did I read this book entirely wrong????? Did I miss something??? Honestly I would like to have missed something!!

February's Reading

   I feel much better about February's reading, even though I didn't finish any more books than I did in January. But! I am mid-way through a handful of others, and feel more excited about reading in general. I'm counting February as a good reading month. Thank goodness for comics to put an end to reading-disinterest. 

   The books:

• Treasure Island!!! / Sara Levine - I wrote a review of this book, it was an excellent read.
• Rat Queens, vol. 2 / Kurtis J. Wiebe, Roc Upchurch - more shenanigans, more hijinks, more backstory, a little more of a jumble than volume 1.
• Giant Days, vol. 1, issues 5-10 / John Allison, Lissa Treman/Max Sarin, et al. - are you reading John Allison yet? ARE YOU? He writes web comics, and Giant Days is the continuation of a story he started on his site. His writing is excellent and heartfelt and his comics are great, READ THEM. (He does the art for the web comics, someone else does the art for Giant Days)
• Y: The Last Man, vol. 4 / Brian K. Vaughan - I didn't really like this volume the first time I read it and I didn't really like it upon reading it again. Onward and upward, I guess. 

    I'm not sure if you went and immediately started reading Bad Machinery and Mordawwa: Queen of Hell and Bobbins by John Allison but if you didn't you should read this thing he said about the next issue of Giant Days: "It’s not as out there as issue 11 was, but it does feature the constant threat of wolf attack, and the most gloves ever to appear on panel in a direct market comic book." Constant threat of wolf attack. ARE YOU CONVINCED YET? Just read his comics! You will be doing yourself a favour.

   Okay, there's a lot on his website to try to sort through right away, so HERE is a link to the beginning of one of the early Bad Machinery cases (please read it and grow to love Charlotte Grote as much as I do)(did I mention that Bad Machinery is about friendship and mystery-solving and sometimes aliens?). Maybe start there, or with one of the other cases, an archive of which you can find HERE, if that link decides to work properly.

Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant / Tony Cliff

   WHAT A DELIGHT. This book is full of all kinds of things that I like. Awesome lady? Check. Shenanigans? Check. Flying boat? Check. A flying boat.

   Delilah Dirk is an adventurer who simultaneously escapes a prison and rescues the titular Turkish lieutenant, Erdemoglu Selim, from being beheaded, and then they proceed to get into and out of several scrapes. Delilah Dirk is like the Count of Monte Christo and Indiana Jones and Batman rolled into one. She's traveled the world, learning new skills! She's a member of English high-society! Does she have a revenge plot to carry out? You could look at it that way, I guess! Regardless, she is great. This book is pure fun from start to finish. Highly recommend.

   This story started out as a webcomic, and you can read some of it here.

Some Tiny Reviews

The Romanov Sisters / Helen Rappaport 

   ARE YOU READY TO GET SAD? Because if you aren't sad yet, you're GONNA BE.This book is really good but also daunting in that there's a dark cloud hanging over the whole thing. Well, there's like eighty dark clouds with one especially giant, especially impenetrable dark cloud.

   Humanizing historical royals! A better understanding of many different motivations! Non-dry writing! Win win win (no matter what).

The Girl With All The Gifts / M. R. Carey

   I had to stop listening to/reading this because I was having trouble turning my back on dark spaces; it is very scary. I thought this book was for children. CHILDREN. It is not, and I was not prepared. I reckon I'll come back to this one, because it is quite good, but not for awhile here.

   Zombies! Experiments! Too scary for me at this time!

Step Aside, Pops / Kate Beaton

   I don't think I'll ever have anything bad to say about Kate Beaton, she is a national treasure. I gave The Princess and the Pony to my nieces and they love it. I could have gotten them a fat pony stuffie for Christmas and I am only just now realizing my grave error.

my new motto

 

November's Reading

   Anemones have nothing to do with November's reading but I was thinking about the Vancouver Aquarium and remembered that I have a bunch of pictures from the last time I went there uploaded so here we are. Aquarium pictures all up in here.

   At the beginning of November I went on a bit of a reading-rampage which quickly petered out, and I am back to starting books and quickly discarding them or getting books out of the library and then leaving them on my floor for several weeks until I have to return them. My current goal is to finally finish reading Bad Feminist and to finish listening to The Romanov Sisters.

the world's grumpiest frog

   Perhaps my problem with November's reading and therefore my dropoff in reading productivity is just comics-satiation. I read a lot of comics. I also started re-watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and oh boy, I love Phryne Fisher to Australia and back. However, I've started Cocaine Blues multiple times and never made it out of chapter one. Should I try again? I don't know.

   The books:

• Through the Woods / Emily Carroll - I highly, highly, highly, recommend this book. Spooky! Scary! Pretty! Moody! It has it all. 
• Revival, vol. 3 / Tim Seeley, et al. - this title continues to be good, I quite like it, recommend. 
• The Night Wanderer / Drew Taylor, et al. - Canadian Gothic in the strictest sense: mysterious First Nations vampires in Canada. 
• The Undertaking of Lily Chen / Danica Novgorodoff - I have mixed feelings about this one, but am inclined towards liking it. Water-colour-y and nice. I would like to know more about the history and mythology and whatnot. 
• Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore / Robin Sloan - a fairly resounding "meh" on this one. 
• The Secret Sharer / Joseph Conrad - I thought I was reading Heart of Darkness the whole time I was reading this, it was very confusing. 
• The Plain Janes / Cecil Castellucci, et al. - enjoyable, but ultimately not super memorable and didn't inspire me to read the next volume. 
• Lumberjames, vol. 1 / Noelle Stevenson, et al. - mysterious monsters at camp! If there's three things I love, it's mysteries, monster stories (sometimes), and summer camp. I'm quite delighted with Lumberjanes. 

   If you read one of these books, make it Through the Woods. I'm still thinking about it. As a bonus, reading comics will leave plenty of time for watching old-timey mysteries. 

Through the Woods / Emily Carroll

   If there is one word to describe this book, it is "HELLA CREEPY", which , I admit, is two words, but "creepy" by itself just doesn't cut it. There was one particular panel in "His Face All Red" that made me GASP OUT LOUD. FOLKS, this book is GOOD and it is SCARY and I told the barista who recognizes me that she needs to read it and she said she already has and she loved it. Both the barista and I recommend this book, you should defs go get it.

an appropriate reaction, really

   SO: Emily Carroll is a genius of horror and atmosphere. Like Shirley Jackson, but with comics, and more monsters. This book is a wee collection of short stories, each one with a sort of fairy tale (in the Grimm-est sense) feel to it and an underlying menace and unease. Innocuous things are worrisome, and there is so much tension created by some ambiguous endings. It's great. Even Emily Carroll's choice of colour is spot-on, with plenty of black with huge splashes of red and blue and mostly red.

   "His Face All Red" is the only title I can remember right now but the other stories are ALSO GOOD, and ALSO SPOOKY, and I'm just gushing now so do yourself a favour and read this tome. It'll take you an afternoon and the time of year is perfect for it. The snow is just starting to fall (although it is late as) and it is getting darker and darker so why not read something that will make you have some difficulty sleeping? Why not indeed.

make fairy tales terrifying again

The Photographer / Emmanuel Guibert

   You may recall my effusive post about The Initiates and how much I loved it, and now it has led me to this book and I love it even more as a result. The Photographer follows Didier Lefevre on a mission with MSF/DWB in Afghanistan in 1986. How much did I know about Afghanistan in 1986 before reading this book? NOTHING. And now I know a little and really, that's a step forward in my life.

   SO: Didier Lefevre was given an assignment by Medicins Sans Frontieres to photograph the work of some of their doctors, and very few of the photos were ever published. This book has reams of the photos accompanied by comics to carry the narrative. The combination is visceral and the story is by turns harsh and uplifting. I cried a bit. It took me quite awhile to read, just because there's so much going on and so much to look at and the subject matter is heavy. A large portion of the book deals with just getting to and from Afghanistan, and the amount of time and work it took to arrive at the assignment location. It's astounding. I'm at a bit of a loss to properly review this book. Just read it.

   I'm not sure how it happened, but the majority of my reading about the Middle East in the last couple of years has been in comic book form. This one is one of the better ones, and has made me move Joe Sacco's Palestine closer to the top of my to-be-read list. Also: I'm becoming more and more convinced that I need to pay more attention to French comics-writers/artists. Dem francophones, am I right. 

   I need more nonfiction comics in my life! Tell me what to read!

Reading in June

   It's Canada Day! A day to celebrate the Our Home and Native Land, the True North Strong and Free! Even though I sometimes say, "what is your deal, Canada?" I do truly love this place where I live. I mean, come on, it's beautiful. Have you SEEN the Rockies? Here's to mountains and beavers and Canada geese and healthcare and saying "eh" and making fun of Americans without them realizing it. It is our way.


   800 miles of paved road! Truly, a monumental day. Rick Mercer is king of keeping a straight face. 

   Enough overt patriotism, let's get to the books. Here is what I read in June:

•  Smoke Gets in your Eyes / Caitlin Doughty: when I finished reading this book I told my mom how I want to be buried, and thought about writing a will. Basically, a good, interesting, sometimes morbid read that inspired action. A+.
• Saga, v. 3 / Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples: OMGOSH READ SAGA NOW, THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
• Y: The Last Man, v. 3 / Brian K. Vaughan, et al.: this story is more nuanced than I remember and I'm so glad. I'm waiting on volume 4 at the library.
• The Secret Adversary / Agatha Christie: sometimes you just gotta re-read some Tommy and Tuppence to clear your heart and mind.
• Ms. Marvel, v. 2 / G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona: still good, still totally on board with this.
• Chew, v. 1-3 / John Layman, Rob Guillory: chicken as a controlled substance?! Yes.
• Revival, v. 1 / Tim Seeley, Mike Norton: a zombie-ish story that's nothing like The Walking Dead! Yes please. 
• Sandman, v. 1 / Neil Gaiman, et al.: the art is...distinctly of its time. But the story is engaging so far so I think I shall continue with it.
• The Initiates / Etienne Davodeau: SO GOOD, READ THIS NOW.
• Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, Deadpool Killustrated / Cullen Bunn, Dalibor Talajic/Matteo Lolli: thoroughly underwhelming. A distinct lack of the kind of Deadpool hijinks I know and love which is weird considering these books feature Deadpool traveling through various universes to kill everyone from Captain Nemo to Tom Sawyer to all the Marvel heroes while being chased through space and time by Sherlock Holmes and a crack team that includes Mulan. THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN DELIGHTFUL, but was boring instead.
• Mind the Gap, v. 1 / Jim McCann, Rodin Esquejo, Sonia Oback: yes, very good, volume two come to me soon.
• Starship Troopers / Robert A. Heinlein: did you know that it is possible for science fiction to be more political than Dune? I didn't either! But it can! Robert A. Heinlein has OPINIONS and he means to SHARE THEM.
• Perfume / Partick Suskind: bonkers, but in a good way. I tried to tell a friend of mine what this book was about and she said "you read weird books." Highly recommend.
• Graceling / Kristin Cashore: firmly in the "meh" category with a side of "what the hell." Don't bother with this one. 

   SO MANY COMICS. I've been on a serious comics kick. If I had to recommend one book out of these, I'd have to say Saga all the way with a caveat for adult content.

   I've been pretty lax on the book-review front lately, who knows if that'll change much over the summer. I have rocks to climb and camping trips to go on and a river to float down. July is here and boy do I love summer. I am already sunburnt.

   ALSO, bonus recommendation: if you like podcasts and you like spooky things and you like storytelling then get Lore into your ear-hearts at your soonest opportunity. It is GREAT.

The Initiates / Etienne Davodeau

   Everyone stop what you are doing and stop reading whatever comics you're reading and pick up The Initiates and be delighted. It's about comics and about wine and most importantly, about FRIENDSHIP. You heard it here first. Davodeau writes comics, his friend Richard Leroy makes wine, Davodeau asks Leroy if he wants to teach him about the world and process of wine-making, while being taught about the world and process of comics-writing. Cue a year of adventures at various comics conventions, vineyards, publishers, restaurants, and much much more.

   Let's talk about the art: it's lovely. It's perfect. PERFECT I SAY. Take a gander at this here spread:

so moody

   AM I RIGHT? I am constantly astounded by what people can do with black, white, and grey. It's like the art in The Walking Dead, no colour, which is exactly right for the story. I think colour would take away from the story here.

   Here is something I love to see/hear/read about: people who clearly love and are passionate doing what they do. It's a really beautiful thing. I remember seeing a video of David Bowie performing Rebel Rebel  and being blown away by how much he loved what he was doing in that moment. It's the same love and passion that I see in a lot of rock climbers. People who love what they are doing are the people I want to learn from and get to know, even if that just means getting to know thier work. Davodeau is passionate and knowledgeable about comics, Leroy is passionate and knowledgeable about wine, and it definitely comes through in the whole tome. Reading this book made me want to a) read a ton of comics, b) take a wine-tasting course, c) keep a sketchbook, and d) go to France. I put several comic books on hold as they were mentioned in the book, and there's even a bibliography of sorts at the end, listing the books that Davodeau assigned to Leroy for his comics-education.

   Here is something else I love: friendship. It's a strong theme here and I couldn't be happier. This book gets a resounding 10/10 from me. Seriously folks, it's spurring me to action and what more can you ask from a book? I want to gather all my pals with all their specialized knowledge and trade knowledge and experiences with them and teach and be taught and expand my horizons. It's making me think about what I have and what I know and how I can give those things to the people around me. Basically what I'm saying is READ THIS BOOK STAT.

   Here's the David Bowie video because I can't mention it and then not show it to you:


   P.S. for those with an aim to diversify their reading, this is a work in translation by a French author in a non-conventional format! Bam.

Y: The Last Man, v. 1-2

   After reading Herland last year I didn't know quite what to say about it, and so didn't write anything about it on this here blog. Don't get me wrong, it was an excellent read, I just found it difficult to match up my 21st century brain/learning/reading/feminism with Charlotte Perkins Gilman's version of a female utopia. I do my best to judge our predecessors by the standards of their own time instead of by ours, but no matter what era it's set in, the link between eugenics and early feminism will always elicit the same response from me and that response is "no, no, no, no, no, no."

  My homeland has a bad history when it comes to eugenics. I am deeply grateful to the Famous Five, but it is a hop, skip, and a jump from the Persons Case to reading more about Emily Murphy and Nellie McClung to understanding their role in the creation of the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta to finding out that it wasn't repealed until 1972 and being equal parts angry with some of the women who, essentially, made me a person under Canadian law, and sorrowful for the more than 4,000 people who were sterilized, many of them without their knowledge or consent. It's a tricky landscape. First-wave feminism is rife with gender essentialism and racism and so many other problems, but out of it also came marital property rights, political rights, prison reform, and a myriad of social assistance programs. I have to constantly remind myself to look at these women through their contemporary paradigm. Nevertheless, it hurts to know that the woman who said "never retract, never explain, never apologize - get the thing done and let them howl" also thought that people with mental disabilities shouldn't be able to have children.

   Sans Teeth, Sans Eyes, Sans Taste, and Sans Men While We're At It

   But the title of this post isn't Herland, so why am I talking about it? Herland is about a prosperous country populated only by women, and Y: The Last Man is a comic about an apocalyptic event where every human male on earth (except one, Yorick Brown) dies, along with every mammal with a Y chromosome (except one, Ampersand the monkey). Herland is a story of utopia; Y: The Last Man is most definitely not. Thinking about Herland made me want to read Y again, and so here we are. I don't know if I'll write about the entire thing as I'm reading it, we'll see how it goes.

   First things first: Y: The Last Man is 500% not a book for children. It is a book for thinking adults. This is for a plethora of reasons, among which is graphic violence and plenty of nudity, but also a whole lot of political and philosophical ideas that you need developed cognitive functioning to think through. All you have to do to know that this book's audience should be smaller is to go over to Goodreads and see people decrying The Daughters of the Amazon as feminists, which brings me to my first point. Actually, my only point, because if I go into everything this book is making me think about this post will last for a hundred years. 

   The Daughters of the Amazon Are Not Feminists

    Here is what feminism basically is: the belief that people should not be discriminated against or oppressed based on socioeconomic status, race, or gender, and that all people have equal value and should have equal rights. This does not allow for the idea that The Daughters of the Amazon are in any way feminist, as they destroy sperm banks (because to them sperm = poison), maim and/or murder women who in any way assist Yorick, claim that men are deformed women (a gender-bent idea direct from ancient Greece), hunt down and murder transgender people, and desecrate any sort of monument to the deceased half of the population. To them the event of all the men dying was a righteous judgement from Mother Earth, and it is their job to erase even the memory of men from the minds of the last generation. They are militant and violent, and kill anyone who opposes them.

   The women who join the Daughters are programmed to be zealously loyal and obedient, while becoming increasingly willing to  use violence and coercion to achieve their end. The leader of the Daughters, Victoria, at one moment claims that all are equal, then issues orders to kill which she expects to be obeyed, referring to herself as a queen and to the other women as pawns. To Victoria, and to the women she leads, "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

   When I read about these women I don't think "feminism", I think "oh, they embody the worst of patriarchal society, it's just flipped around." Someone who can read "men are deformed women" and equate it with feminism has clearly neglected to do any sort of background reading, and missed the part where the ancient Greeks said "women are deformed men," and used that reasoning to reduce women to chattel. The Daughters of the Amazon are clearly militant extremists, using much of the same rhetoric that has been used to oppress women for centuries. They are not, and never were, feminist.

   In Conclusion

   If you decide to read this comic, I recommend you do so with your thinking cap on. If you want to read a comic written by Brian K Vaughan that doesn't involve worldwide man-death, read Saga instead. It's currently ongoing. Both stories, Y and Saga, are Shakespeare-esque.

How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less / Sarah Glidden

  Every time I write a post about a comic book I have to resist the urge to write a long post about why I disdain the term "graphic novel". It's a struggle.

   So: Sarah Glidden and her friend took a Birthright trip to Israel, on a tour that focused on the history and politics of the places they went as opposed to being focused on shopping or all-out sight-seeing.This book is the result of that trip, and Glidden manages a level of even-handedness and openness that is impressive. She goes into the trip with a certain set of ideas about Israel and the situation there, and has many of them challenged. She talks about propaganda and preconceived notions and the history of Israel and it's all very well written and drawn. Read it! Or at least consider reading it.

   It is a bit difficult to write a post about this book. It's very good, Israel is very complicated, you will probably gain some insight by reading this wee tome. 

   Maybe you are unsure of the literary value of comics, or you just haven't tried out the medium to see how you like it, or you are a comic lover who doesn't know what to read next. I think I can safely say that I speak for myself and the comic lover when I say that comics are worth your time, and can deliver stories/messages/ideas in a way that no other medium can. Yes: there are ridiculous comics, but there are also ridiculous books and TV shows and movies and newspaper articles and things from every other media source. Comics get a bad rap sometimes, which I attribute to the 90s, but let me encourage you to give them a go. There are some true gems out there, and you don't even have to look very hard to find them.

   Some comics other that How to Understand Israel which may expand your ideas about comics or which you might enjoy: Persopolis / Marjane Satrapi, Jerusalem and Burma Chronicles / Guy Deslisle, and Magneto: Testament, Red Skull: Incarnate, and Battlin' Jack Murdock from Marvel. One I've read and loved but which comes with a lots of violence, it is classified as a horror story warning is Locke & Key and if you've ever talked with me about comics for more than five minutes I've probably a) talked about how much I love Locke & Key, b) peered at you through narrowed eyes while wondering if you'd like it, and c) lent you a copy of the first volume and then pestered you for your opinion thereafter.

   I love comics, I think you might too, you just have to get the right ones. It's like books! Some people love some of them and some love others. I have a friend who hates 1984 but I love it and have 1984 shirts and a "doubleplusgood" necklace and that's just life, ain't it? You gotta find what you like. 'Nuff said.

Tom Longboat

   Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant fame published a comic about Tom Longboat today, and I am sorry to say that I didn't know about him before. Now I do though, and he was awesome. Also, my low-level googling has led me to this picture, which I love:

   Look at their faces!

   Anyways, I advise you to type "Tom Longboat" into google dot com and do some reading.

best of 2014: webcomics

   Admittedly, I feel somewhat pretentious with this blog, telling you what I read and if/why you should read it, and expecting that my writing and opinion will have an influence on your choices. Who am I to tell you what you should read? And now with a "best of" list. Such audacity. However, putting my vanity aside, I have had an excellent year media-wise. It seems only fair to spread the love. And so: a few posts on what I thought were the shining stars of my media consumption this year, and, naturally, the yearly "what I read" and "what I watched" posts.

   To begin: webcomics.

• Earlier this year, Anthony Clark and KC Green teamed up to start BACK, a wild-west-esque comic which has proved delightful in the first thirty updates.  There are gunfights, graveyards, witches, and two brothers holding a town hostage by means of bodily gas. What? Just take my word for it, check it out, it's a good romp. Clever and funny. 
• If there is one comic artist/writer who I will always recommend to everyone, it is John Allison. He is behind the excellent (and now ended) Bad Machinery, which revolves around a group of teens in Tackleford, England, as they solve mysteries. The last case wrapped up earlier this year, at which point Allison turned his focus to Bobbins, which is also set in Tackleford and features many of the same characters as Bad Machinery. Both comics are well worth your time. Those links go to the beginning of the last Bad Machinery case and the beginning of the latest Bobbins story, respectively. 

   BACK, Bad Machinery, and Bobbins all start with "B" and feature paranormal elements, I am sensing a theme here. 

   Join me next time for "best of 2014: movies"! So exciting.

Boxers and Saints / Gene Luen Yang

   It is important to have a good base of knowledge when it comes to history, and while I'm doing pretty well on the Western history front, I know next to nothing about non-Russian Asian history, and my knowledge of Russian history pretty much revolves around the Romanov assassination. Anastasia: dead? Not dead? You decide.

   When I heard about this pair of books by Gene Luen Yang I knew that I ought to read them. I'm sorry to say that my knowledge of the Boxer Rebellion was limited to:

1. It happened in China
2. It didn't go well for anyone involved

    Boxers is written from the perspective of Little Bao, a boy living in rural China at the beginning of the Boxer Rebellion. He and his brothers learn kung-fu and form the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists. Saints tells the story of Vibiana, an unwanted fourth daughter who becomes a Christian, sees visions of Joan of Arc, and moves to Peking. The two stories are intertwined, with several events being directly experienced by both Vibiana and Little Bao, but with opposing viewpoints.

   Both books are well written and engaging stories, and the art is beautiful. They're a good primer on a brutal uprising. Essentially, they were exactly what I wanted them to be and I recommend them to anyone.

travel

   Have you heard of Guy Delisle yet? He is a writer and cartoonist from Quebec who often lives and works in unstable countries and keeps a record of his time there in comic form. His latest book is about Jerusalem and I am half way through it and it just might be his best yet.

   Jerusalem : Chronicles From the Holy City is somewhat difficult to explain. Here's a book that gives space to playground visits with Deslisle's two children as well as a day-by-day account of the role of Doctors Without Borders in the 2008-2009 Gaza War, what it's like trying to access different religious sites in and around the city, and the traffic. It's a hefty 336 pages, and takes more time to read than your usual comic fare. There is a lot packed into Deslisle's drawing,  

battle burns

   I haven't been reading much these past couple weeks, but here is a quick recommendation for you.

   Do you like stories about pals? Do you like fighting evil? Do you like sick Battle Burns? Do you like working through differences as a team to achieve a goal? If you answered "yes" to any or all of these questions, then you will probably enjoy reading Adventure Time. Not to mention that it is written by the consistently hilarious and clever Ryan North (of Dinosaur Comics fame). Incidentally, Ryan North also recently published a book through Kickstarter called "To Be or Not To Be : That is the Adventure" which is, naturally, a choose-your-own-adventure version of Hamlet. He is also Canadian, so there's the added bonus of these books contributing to your "Canadian Authors I Have Read (And Enjoyed)" list.

   Do you want to read this  book? Do you live in close-ish proximity to me? I will lend it to you. This goes for most of the books I post about, actually.