Category: Reviews

Book-A-Day 2018 #182: Young Frances by Hartley Lin

I don’t want to oversell my expertise here: I’ve never worked in a law firm, and my professional work is generally marketing to attorneys within companies rather than firms. So I may be just saying that one thing I’ve never experienced personally matches another thing I’ve never experienced personally. [1]

But Hartley Lin’s Young Frances  is a remarkably nuanced, detailed, smart look at the pressure cooker that is a major Big Law firm, smart about office politics and full of off-handed details about both how bruising and all-consuming it can be and about how it used to be so much worse. Ever more exciting, that’s not the point of Young Frances: that’s the world she lives in, and the work she’s doing and trying to make meaningful, but the story of this graphic novel is about her personally.

Like all of us, her work life is not her whole life — but it’s a huge piece of that life, and influences everything else. She struggles with insomnia, and worries about what she should do with her life, and has a complicated friendship with her roommate Vickie, a gorgeous actress on the verge of a huge career breakthrough. In lesser hands, Young Frances would be a “quarterlife crisis” book — yet another story about someone young and aimless.

But Frances Scarland is not aimless. She just doesn’t have much confidence in her aim, and wonders if the life she’s building for herself is worth what it costs. We all wonder that, at least now and then, and I think most of us are not as confident as we look, either. She’s a hard worker, focused on details, and cares about what she’s doing — and she’s also embedded in an organization that is designed to bring in large groups of young, hard-working people every single year, run them ragged, and then spit out most of them within three to five years. A big law firm is a brutal place to work, even if you’re not an attorney — maybe even more so, since shit proverbially flows downhill. Frances is support staff, a law clerk: she’s very far downhill.

But firm politics also lead to alliances and schemes and favoritism. At the beginning of this book, Frances is given the kind of thing that can pass for promotion in an organization like that: asked to support another practice group and given more work as others are let go. So she’s soon working mostly for the chilly rainmaker Marcel Castonguay, head of Bankruptcies — and he seems to favor her, to want to further her career.

But the core of Young Frances is that question: is this her career? Is this really what she wants to do, or is it just what she happens to be doing now? How does it affect the rest of her life? And does any of that matter?

Her roommate Vickie pulls her in other directions — sometimes frivolous, work-shirking ones, sometimes scarily major, change-your-life-entirely ones. Frances Scarland needs to decide who she is and what she will do. Like all of us do. And, like all of us, it’s not a one-time decision: every day is another choice, another step in one direction or another.

Lin tells this story in quiet comics panels, three tiers to the large pages and a precise semi-ligne claire style. This is a book full of words — these are lawyers and their support staff, with a subset of actors! — but his open pages and crisp lettering makes it all flow smoothly and evenly throughout.

Young Frances is simply astonishing as someone’s first book: Hartley Lin has arrived, fully-formed, as a mature artist with a strong story to tell and a deft hand at handling characters. We’re only halfway through 2018, but this will be really hard to beat as the debut of the year.

[1] ObligatoryReference: “So, what you’re telling me, Percy, is that something you have never seen is slightly less blue than something else you have never seen.”

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Book-A-Day 2018 #178: On the Camino by Jason

Why does someone go on a pilgrimage in modern Europe? The obvious reason would be religion, but that’s rarely the central purpose these days. It’s not part of general cultural life for Christians — not the way the hajj still is for Muslims — and many of the people who make those journeys aren’t particularly Christian to begin with.

But pilgrimages continue. People find a reason to walk, and find something for themselves at the end of the walk. The Norwegian cartoonist who works as “Jason” trekked the 500-mile Camino de Santiago in northern Spain in 2015, soon after his fiftieth birthday. And he made a book out of it, On the Camino . He doesn’t say why he went; it’s not clear he knows, or has a single “why.” And he doesn’t tell us what he found out, for the same reason.

What he does is tell us the story of the trip, placing us in his head and shoes for that month-long walk, and to let us feel what it was like to be Jason on the Camino. (Well, his real name is John, and that’s what he tells people his name is in the book. But you know what I mean.)

It’s all told in a very Jason way: matter-of-fact, almost affectless, with animal-headed characters moving through a world depicted fairly simply. He works entirely in black-and-white for this book as well. Jason himself is at the center of the trip, obviously, and is the viewpoint the entire time. This is what he saw and did in thirty-three days of walking, told like a Jason graphic novel. He even gets in his abrupt shifts of points of reference, as when he sees a giant slug on the trial — first drawing it “giant” and then it’s actual size.

The story is inherently different from Jason’s fictional works: there’s no twists to the plot, obviously, and he can’t throw in genre elements for complications or interest. On the other hand, how do we know this is all true? We think it is because Jason tells us so, and because it has the everydayness and banality of real life — but that’s justification rather than proof. That’s the case for any non-fiction story, of course: how can we believe the teller and the tale? If there’s no reason not to tell the truth, we assume it is the truth — we’re all lazy, both as storytellers and listeners.

Jason is an introvert, most comfortable alone — as you would expect from someone who spends his life sitting in a room to think up stories and draw them — and much of On the Camino, starting from the very first page, is his struggle to be more open, to come out of his shell and engage with the other pilgrims and the locals. He has no gigantic epiphanies — we wouldn’t expect them from Jason, anyway. His hopes aren’t dashed, either, which would be more in keeping with his fiction.

Instead, he walks. He meets some people, and runs into some of them repeatedly. He has some good conversations and interesting thoughts while walking alone. He also has blisters and bedbugs and food that doesn’t agree with him. Every life and journey has good and bad, yes? It’s a cliche even to mention it.

And he tells that story, in his four-panel grid, with his stone-faced characters with animal heads — this is a Jason book, and it looks like one. He will not tell you what to think of it in the end; he’s never told you what to think of any of his stories. But you can take the trip with him. I think it’s worth the time.

(Note: this book does not credit a translator. And, in the story, “John” speaks English much of the time. So my guess is that Jason translated it himself, or wrote a text for this edition in English. I think I’ve found the original French edition, Un norvégien vers Compostelle , published only four months before the US edition.)

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

REVIEW: Black Lightning The Complete First Season

Did we really need another DC Comics super-hero on television? That was pretty much the thought rattling in most minds when Fox first announced development of a series based on Black Lightning. When they passed on it, the CW snatched it up (of course), and ran the short first season starting in January.

The answer is a resounding yes. The show is most certainly heroic, but whereas the other Greg Berlanti-centric series fully embrace their four-color roots, this series pivoted for delving into its ethnicity. The production team of Mara Brock Akil and Salim Akil wanted something more urban, something more “street”, exploring the black experience with heavy doses of super=powers to keep you riveted.  In the special feature Art Imitating Life: The Pilot Episode, Salim Akil described an all-too-familiar incident of being pulled over by a police officer and the choices a black man has at that moment. He wanted to translate that to something dramatic and make viewers understand in tangible ways.

The 13-episode series is now out in a two-disc Blu-ray set from Warner Home Entertainment well before the second season debuts in the fall. In case you missed it, this is a good chance to get familiar with the story. While there are heroes and villains, they are more relatable in some ways and they serve the black community well by showing a wide array of types.

We have the title star, Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams), a high school principal, his estranged wife, Dr. Lynn Stewart (Christine Adams), the albino criminal Tobias Whale (Marvin “Krondon” Jones III), and Police Inspector Henderson (Damon Gupton), all petty much as depicted in the comic book cocreated by Tony Isabell and Trevor VonEeden. However, another way this show differentiates from the Arrowverse is that Pierce has two daughters, teenage Jennifer (China Anne McClain) and her older sibling, Anissa (Nafessa Williams), a lesbian and counselor at the school.

Nafessa Williams as Thunder and Cress Williams as Black Lightning — Photo: Annette Brown/The CW — © 2018 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved.

The notion of Pierce being older, with children, went beyond Isabella’s original plan but enriches the character and setting. Pierce retired nine years before the show started, in order to give his girls a normal life. He threw himself into his work at Freeland High School, making the school a safe place for its predominantly black population.  That all changes when Jennifer gets caught up with a boy tied to The 100, the mob controlling the underworld, and is held against her will. Pierce suits up and gets back to work as Black Lightning, recognizing his city needs a hero.

Supporting him, in the most Berlanti-esque way is Paul Gambi (James Remar), no longer the humble tailor, but a covert operative who was involved in the government program that gave Pierce his powers and was now searching for ways to create more metahumans. Between this and the 100 spreading a drug called green light that addictively gives people temporary powers, Black Lightning has his hands full. With Gambi operating from a secret base, guiding Pierce and being a computer whiz (of course), the two pick up where they left off.

They need help and it first comes from Anissa, who has discovered her super-strength and invulnerability, suiting herself up to strike her own form of justice. When she and Black Lightning faceoff, secrets are revealed and an alliance is formed. Jennifer wants nothing to do the family business, preferring to work towards college and having a good time. However, an adrenaline surge reveals her own powers and like it or not, is caught up in the fight.

The series’ thirteen episodes touch on life in Freeland, which is where it excels. We see all strata of people and the difference good people can make. There’s the flipside, the dropouts and wanna-be thugs who contrast nicely with those just trying to get by. Most of the good guys and bad guys are of color and race is not avoided. The show is less interesting when it comes to the government conspiracy stuff in the background and with luck, it’ll be less relevant in the second season. Pierce is a little too perfect, a little too much the role model as a principal but he certainly commands the students’ respect (if only…)

The writing is certainly a cut above the Arrowverse shows with the Salim Akil setting the tone with the first two episodes then letting Jan Nash, Charles Holland, and playwright Kelli Goff among others run with it. Akil also directed the first and final episodes, again, bringing his vision to life.

While OWN’s series like the admirable Queen Sugar do a wonderful job treating the black experience with the respect it deserves, its noteworthy that many of the same issues and themes are on display here, a series more likely to be seen by a wider range of viewers, letting its message waft over us, seeping in between bouts of electrically-charged action.

The high def transfer and DTS HD audio track are just fine. The other special features include the too-short A Family of Strength, the obligatory Black Lightning: 2017 Comic-Con Panel, and Gag Reel. It would’ve been nice to have the source material explored giving Tony, Trevor, and DC their due but maybe next time. The bulk of the Special Feature time is well over half an hour of Deleted Scenes, clustered together rather than interspersed episode by episode. They’re worth a look since there are some nice character moments among the family.

Book-a-Day 2018 #174: 5 Worlds, Book 2: The Cobalt Prince by Siegel, Siegel, Bouma, Rockefeller & Sun

I don’t read enough books aimed at kids to really know the shapes of subgenres these days, and so it’s dangerous for me to speculate. But I’m pretty sure the 5 Worlds series is not the only graphic novel series these days marching down the trail that Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet  series blazed.

I’m not saying that to point a finger: the opposite, in fact. I think there’s a whole bunch of books like this: fantasy adventure stories for middle-grades readers, told in graphic novel form, with groups of spunky kids and their quirky adult allies racing to save their entire, weirdly-constructed worlds from some manner of Dark Lord that particularly resonates with kids.

What I am saying is that I won’t be able to explain the places the 5 Worlds series breaks away from that subgenre, and what ways it’s faithful to it. I can only say that I see a dim territory stretching out behind this book, full of other wonders, and then describe what’s right in front of me.

What is right in front of me is the second book in that series, The Cobalt Prince . (I didn’t see the first one, The Sand Warrior.) It’s co-written by brothers Mark Siegel (Editorial Director of First Second and cartoonist of the excellent graphic novel Sailor Twain ) and Alexis Siegel (writer and translator of various things, including Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat), and drawn by a team of three: Xanthe Bouma, Matt Rockefeller, and Boya Sun. Neither the book itself nor the cover letter explained how the three divide art duties, so insert a graphic of me shrugging here. Maybe it’s the old pencil-ink-color, maybe it’s figures-backgrounds-finishes, maybe they all work in the same style on different pages, maybe something entirely different.

Our Chosen One this time is Oona Lee, a preteen girl who is one of only two Sand Dancers — the particular kind of magic used in this universe — who can call the Living Fire. Our universe is made up of five worlds: it seems to be one large planet and four moons, all habitable. (I don’t see how that can be possible, but this is not hard SF.) Each planet has a magical beacon which can only be lit by the Living Fire, and Oona believes the beacons of all five worlds must be lit to make everything right. (It is not hugely clear in this book exactly what was not right, though there is a big evil thing called the Mimic lurking around and threatening everyone.) In the first book, she lit the beacon of Mon Domani, the central mother world.

So, at the beginning of this book, she’s off to the next world — Toki, the blue one, seat of a militaristic blue people — to light the next beacon, along with her friends Jax Amboy (a popular professional athlete who is secretly an android) and An Tzu (who is slowly disappearing because of some mystical disease which will definitely be plot-important).

Possibly new in this book is Oona’s long-lost older sister Jessa, who went away with the Toki people when Oona was very young, Jessa has since become blue, like the Toki people, lost her ability to call the Living Fire and may have been ensnared by a body-possessing spirit of evil called the Mimic (the Dark Lord of the series).

There are shocking revelations, several Everything You Know Is Wrong moments, lots of magical and physical battles, at least one noble sacrifice, and one character coming back from what seems like certain death. It’s a good adventure story in this middle-grade mode, and will be very appealing to fans of Amulet or The Last Airbender (which seems to have seriously influenced the magic system here). Its appeal to adults is not quite as strong; we’ve seen things like this many times before. But it’s good at what it does, has nicely rounded, attractive art, and delivers on what it promises.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Book-A-Day 2018 #171: Demon by Jason Shiga (4 volumes)

When religious people talk about the dangers of pure scientism, they’re talking about Jimmy Yee. Maybe a bit about his creator, Jason Shiga, too.

But Yee is the poster boy for why believing in only what you can prove is really, really bad: he murders an appreciable fraction of the entire human race during this story, mostly because he sees no reason not to. And the only possible ethical justification is that, most of the time, he’s only killing himself.

Without getting into the traditional arguments against suicide, I think we can all agree that killing yourself is at the very least generally less bad than killing someone else. But what if every time you kill yourself, you also kill someone else by taking over their body?

Demon  is a very Jason Shiga comic, which is to say it takes a particular premise and then inexorably rolls out all of the entirely logical consequences of that that premise, leaving human feeling (except for a certain glee in destruction and mayhem) entirely out of the equation. The worldview here is a kind of happy nihilism: nothing matters, everything is disposable, and that’s wonderful for our viewpoint character.

Or, to put it another way: Demon is Miracleman #15 from the viewpoint of Kid Miracleman, going on for several hundred years.

Actually, that’s another thing that’s annoyingly cartoony about Demon: it goes on for well over two hundred years, but society and technology don’t change in the slightest. Oops, that might be a spoiler.

I should probably explain all of those disjointed thoughts.

OK. This long, multi-volume graphic novel [1] opens with Jimmy Yee, in a cheap motel room. He hangs himself. He wakes up in bed in the same cheap motel room, and slits his wrists in the bathtub.

And wakes up in the same cheap motel room. And kills himself with the gun he finds in a drawer.

And wakes up in the same cheap motel room. And takes an overdose of pills.

And wakes up in the same cheap motel room. And runs out into traffic to be hit by a semi.

And wakes up in Intensive Care, with the truck driver’s daughter crying over him. And manages to go for several hours without killing himself.

Eventually, Yee figures it out: he’s a demon. (Why a “demon?” Metafictionally, for shock value on Shiga’s part. In-universe, it just seems to be the word Yee randomly fell upon to describe himself.) When he dies, he instantaneously takes over the body of whoever is closest to him. He wasn’t waking up in the same motel room — he was serially possessing, and then killing, every single person staying at that motel.

There are a few other rules to his demonic self — and it turns out to be a SFnal rather than fantasy explanation, as one would expect from Shiga — which come out in time. But that’s basically it: live forever, take over other bodies when you die, do whatever you want without consequences as long as you can find a way to kill yourself.

The Javert to Yee’s Valjean is “Agent Hunter, OSS,” part of a super-secret US government operation designed to control and utilize demons…of which Yee is the only one when the OSS finds him. (OK, it’s not quite that dumb, but it’s close — Shiga is rolling out complications at speed and not worrying a lot about how plausible any of them are.) As usual, Shiga is good on complications and logical extrapolation and sometimes shaky on worldbuilding — “but what if” is generally good enough for him.

Hunter wants to use Yee, and any other demons there may be — and Shiga isn’t going to let the opportunity to add more baroque complications pass him by — for a grandiose and supposedly humanitarian purpose. But, of course, to do that, he needs to set up fiendishly complicated control structures to keep Yee confined.

And it’s that fiendish complication, both of control and of breakthrough, that Shiga really cares about. Demon is not about what it’s like to live forever, to be be able to be anyone, it’s about how to do the seemingly impossible using just the demon ability. Even when having the demon ability would let one find more elegant and interesting ways to solve problems, Demon always comes down to “kill lots and lots of people, often but not always yourself repeatedly.” Yes, Yee does have his Sad Jaded Immortal moments, since those are required of any story like this, but at least Shiga gets them over with quickly.

What Shiga does take joy in is those complications, and the megadeath is really just a way of keeping score — for all the gore and horrible things here, Shiga’s cartoony art and relentless eye for a weirder, more complicated way to keep demons out or fight their way in is what makes it exciting and fun.

It’s a borderline sociopathic kind of fun, admittedly. But it is fun nonetheless.

I don’t think the ending entirely makes sense — Shiga makes one more twist on his demon concept, and I don’t see how that actually works — but he needed to do something like that, just to make an ending for this thing. It’s certainly as plausible as anything else in this crazy story.

Fort many, many readers, Demon will be too much. That may include a few of you who think it’ll be just fine — it’s the kind of story that just keeps going, and hits places you might not want to go with it. But it’s an interesting book by a great comics creator, and it’s in many ways the purest Shiga book yet. It is horrifying and laugh-out-loud funny and nutty and goofy and appalling in its inventiveness. It’s all Shiga, bless his heart.

[1] It was originally serialized as a webcomic, and then collected. In fact, it seems to still be available online , though I think it’s not supposed to be.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

REVIEW: Pacific Rim Uprising

REVIEW: Pacific Rim Uprising

I recognize that I was in the minority, finding Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim loud and boring. Still, it made a ton of money encouraging Universal to release a sequel. What we got was the equally loud and just as uninvolving Pacific Rim Uprising, out tomorrow on disc from Universal Home Entertainment. The film cost something like $150 million to make and with a worldwide gross of $290 million, clearly didn’t connect with its audience, hopefully ending the franchise.

With Del Toro merely supervising, the film was handled by first-time director Steven S. DeKnight, better known for his screenplays. We have the perfunctory robots hitting kaiju with destruction raining on the poor populace but we are disengaged from the characters and without emotional connections, the film falls flat.

The film picks up a decade later and while the world has been rebuilding, the Kaiju threat we saw at the end of the first film, is ready to erupt. Keeping us safe fails to Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), son of Stacker Pentecost, who collaborates with scrappy Amara Namani (Cailee Spaeny) who pulls a Riri Williams and has built her own Jaeger suit out of spare parts she has scavenged. Both are pressed into service when the monsters come back. They are supposed to take orders from Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood), but we know better.

All the story beats are familiar as are the archetypal characters, leaving us with little to be thrilled or surprised by. There is absolutely nothing exciting about the character arcs or the fights, which are, oddly, slowly paced.

Thankfully, the 1080p high-def transfer is strong and you can enjoy metal versus muscle fights in the comfort of your home. The Dolby Atmos audio track is also fine, more than up to the needs of the special effects.

The combo pack of Blu-ray, DVD< and Digital HD comes with a handful of Special Features that are just as adequate and uninteresting as the film itself, We start with alternate and deleted scenes (6:56), with optional commentary from DeKnight; Hall of Heroes (3:25) with Boyega narrating a piece about the Jaegers; Bridge to Uprising (4:39), with cast and crew talking about building a sequel; The Underworld of Uprising (3:47); Becoming Cadets (5:58); Unexpected Villain (5:48); Next Level Jaegers (5:08); I Am Scrapper (2:42); Going Mega (3:21); Secrets of Shao (3:14); Mako Returns (2:08); and, Audio Commentary: Director Steven S. DeKnight, which shows how much thought and effort went into the planning for the film, but doesn’t explain why it fails to excite.

REVIEW: Tomb Raider

Let me stipulate upfront that I have never played a Lara Croft game or saw the first film adaptation of the Tomb Raider franchise. I have a passing familiarity with her thanks to the virtue of Lara being the first major adventure video game female star (where are the others?). As a result, I approached the Blu-ray release of the March Tomb Raider film, out tomorrow from Warner Home Entertainment, with an open mind.

While Angelina Jolie seemed picture perfect in her turn, the slightly smaller, more athletic Alicia Vikander has made the part her own. It helps that the film is effectively her origin story and for 118 fun minutes, we watch her go from clueless Millennial to adventurer after being told she has to claim dad’s inheritance or lose it all…now. She is 21, aimless, and seeking a purpose when life hands it to her and she decides to grab it. Then hang on to it, when she heads for the isle of Yamatai. Dad (Dominic West) leaves a message warning her off, but by then she’s invested and goes for it. I gather this script from Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons is based on the 2013 reboot of the video game franchise.

Lara Croft feels right and solid as a character, thanks in a large part to Vikander’s strong acting in any role. Unfortunately, Lord Richard Croft, rival Mathais Vogel (Walton Goggins), and other supporting roles are less well-defined, a disservice to actors involved, notably Kristin Scott Thomas and Derek Jacobi.

The movie zips along just fine and the stunts and escapades feel good, more than just an 8-bit video game come to life, but there’s also an unevenness throughout spoiling the fun.

The film comes in a variety of packages and the Blu-ray, DVD; Digital HD combo pack was reviewed. Word is the 4K UltraHD looks spectacular and since it was shot digitally, it looks pretty darn sharp in 1080p. The lossless Dolby Atmos/TrueHD 7.1 and DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio tracks are equally attractive.

The film underperformed at the box office, which is a real shame, but it may explain why we get a mere four bonus features. First up, is Tomb Raider: Uncovered (7:04) as cast and crew talk production; Croft Training (6:03), Vikander prepares and gets buff; Breaking Down the Rapids (5:33), Director Roar Uthaug leads us through the set piece; and, Lara Croft: Evolution of an Icon (9:51), a nice history of the video game that became a phenomenon with fans/experts Megan Marie and Erika Ishii giving us gushing context.

REVIEW: Games of Thrones the Complete First Season 4K Ultra HD

REVIEW: Games of Thrones the Complete First Season 4K Ultra HD

With still a year-plus to go before the final season of HBO’s brilliant Game of Thrones, and who knows how long before the next novel in the Song of Fire and Ice series, there is anticipation that needs tending. HBO is addressing that with the roll out of their 4K UltraHD editions of the first six seasons.

Out Tuesday is Games of Thrones the Complete First Season in a four-disc slick package. If you own the DVD, should you upgrade? Absolutely. If you own the Blu-ray, should you upgrade? Well, that depends. If you have the first Blu-ray release, you might want to upgrade to get not only the sharper image but the Dolby Atmos audio track. If you have the edition with Dolby Atmos, then you have to decide how much you crave the slightly better picture.

The 2K to 4K upgrade is certainly lovely to look at and they do an amazing job with the shadows, rather important for a series such as this. However, it’s incremental so you have to decide for yourself. This is a nicely enhanced upgrade of the original footage, shot digitally at 10 bit, 1920×1080 resolution. With Blu-ray often providing us with 8-bit recordings, the extra 2 bits makes quite the difference. Apparently, the technicians coaxed every bit out of the original digital recordings and provides with additional visual detail as well as a more natural range of colors in the texture of people, places, and things. While not revelatory, you certain gain a new visual appreciation for the production values that were present from the outset.

Keep in mind that all the Blu-ray special features are carried over to this set and the Digital HD code provides you with the same sharp streaming option. You should be aware that the In-Episode Guide feature isn’t here. It would have been nice, for completeness’ sake, to have HBO include the retail exclusive featurettes that appeared on Target, HBO Shop, and Walmart editions.

Looking back at the show, you think about how much younger and more innocent we, and many of the characters, were back then. The, ahem, starkness of good versus evil was very clear and only towards the end of the first ten episodes were the moral gray areas beginning to cast its own shadows over the characters and their connections.

There are far worse things you could with your lazy summer days than revisiting Westeros and enjoying how it all began.

REVIEW: The Bridge: How the Roeblings Connected Brooklyn to New York

The Bridge: How the Roeblings Connected Brooklyn to New York
By Peter J. Tomasi and Sara DuVall
208 pages, $24.99, Abrams ComicArts

Once upon a time, Brooklyn was a city separate from New York, separated by a river and giving rise to vastly different cultures. Yet, people commuted from the Brooklyn shore to Manhattan Island and in the 19th Century, a visionary engineer thought a bridge was needed to connect the two.

The feat of engineering is something worth celebrating and David McCullough did that with his 1972 The Great Bridge, which served as the source for Ken Burns America Collection: Brooklyn Bridge. But, there are other ways to tell that story and Peter Tomasi, a comics writer and editor, has been longing to tell this story for years.

Thankfully, his dream, like John Roebling’s, has become a reality. Unlike the elder Roebling, at least Tomasi is still around to see it. Tomasi is known for how his humanizes his heroes, making them relatable in ways that do not diminish their amazing accomplishments. Partnered with Sara DuVall, we get to see the people who toiled for decades to make the Bridge a reality.

As with so much of the 19th century, the story begins with the Civil War as John’s son, Washington, experiences much. A Union soldier, he had been trained at his father’s side and more than once used his knowledge to help construct bridges for the soldiers to use. He saw much, endured much, and brought home those memories and more than few injuries.

Washington also fell in love, meeting Emily Warren at an officers’ dance. They were infatuated with one another and they formed a partnership that was stronger than the steel wire the Roeblings’ factory produced.

No sooner did Washington return from the war in 1865 than he and his father embarked on drafting plans to convince the governments of two cities that a bridge was not only necessary but also possible to build. By this point, the cold, taciturn John has ingrained a worldview and work ethic in Washington that ensured the two would work compatibly which proved fortuitous when the suborn older man died from an untreated infection.

The difference in Washington, much as it separates Tomasi from many of his comic book peers, is the touch of humanity. Over the years between construction (1869) and opening (1883), Roebling goes out of his way to ensure the men’s safety, shortening work hours, having an on-site doctor, etc. His loyalty to the men is inspiring as is his relationship with Emily. She comes into her own as his cheerleader, champion, and ultimately surrogate when he is too ill to leave their home.

With 208 pages to work with, DuVall paces things nicely and her art, simple and clear, helped by Rob Leigh’s strong lettering and nice palette from colorists Gabriel Eltaeb and John Kalisz. They help us see the depths men had to dig before hitting bedrock, the physical and emotional toll the work took, as well as the political shenanigans that almost derailed the project in its final phase.

Overall, this is a masterful use of the graphic novel format to tell an important story in a compelling way. Highly recommended for readers of all ages.

REVIEW: Batman Ninja

In the 1950s, Batman was transformed into a variety of beings or wore a colorful assortment of costumes to goose sales. Thankfully, that silliness was retired with the New Look and wasn’t resurrected until the Elseworlds what if stories of the 1990s. That same approach has now crept from the page to the screen with Batman Ninja, out now on DVD from Warner Home Entertainment.

This anime-style adventure comes from director Junpei Mizusaki, (producer of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure), working from a script by Kazuki Nakashima (Kill La Kill, Gurren Lagann) and character designs from Takashi Okazaki (Afro Samurai). As a result, it comes with a strong pedigree for the creative approach.

Rather than a posit an ancient Japan that needed a protector styled in the form of a bat, this gonzo story actually takes the heroes and villains of Gotham City and transports them into the past. It’s weird, wild, wacky and not at all to my taste so your mileage will almost certainly vary.

We have the Dark Knight (Kōichi Yamadera/Roger Craig Smith) sent to feudal Japan without his high-tech gadgets and has to go back to the basics to save the locals from the Joker (Wataru Takagi/Tony Hale), Catwoman (Ai Kakuma/Grey Griffin), Harley Quinn (Rie Kugimiya/Tara Strong), Two-Face (Toshiyuki Morikawa/Eric Bauza), Gorilla Grodd (Takehito Koyasu/Fred Tatasciore), Deathstroke (Junichi Suwabe/Fred Tatasciore), Penguin (Chō/Tom Kenny), Bane (Kenta Miyake), and Poison Ivy (Atsuko Tanaka/Tara Strong). Also transported are Alfred (Hōchū Ōtsuka/Adam Croasdell), Nightwing (Daisuke Ono/Adam Croasdell), Robin (Yuki Kaji/Yuri Lowenthal), Red Robin (Kengo Kawanishi/Will Friedle), and Red Hood (Akira Ishida/Yuri Lowenthal). Along the way, he finds new allies and becomes a ronin of sorts, a masterless samurai out to protect the innocent from the wicked, fulfilling a prophecy about a foreign bat ninja coming to save them.

I guess

 the creators thought they were getting one shot at this project and therefore threw in every trope you could ask for, making it feel weirdly familiar but also oddly humdrum. The most interesting turn comes when villains lose their memories and acclimatize to their surroundings. There’s also a nice twist with Grodd.

Produced in Japan, the Blu-ray release offers up both the original Japanese vocal cast and an English audio track. Visually, it is an amazing piece of animation, mixing traditional drawings with 3-D virtual realities so you’ve not quite seen a Batman animated feature like this before.

The Blu-ray comes with a handful of useful features delving into this project’s background. We start with East/West Batman (10:00) where Mike Carlin (Creative Director Animation, DC Entertainment), Ames Kirshen (VP Interactive & Animation DC Entertainment), Eric S. Garcia (Producer, English Screenwriter), Leo Chu (Producer, English Screenwriter), and Junpei (Director),  Mizusaki, Nakashima, and Okazak take turns discussing the challenges with bringing an American super-hero to Japanese storytelling.

Then there’s Batman: Made in Japan (15:00) which goes further into the traditional Japanese storytelling elements while focusing on Okazaki.

 

Of course, there’s New York Comic Con Presents Batman Ninja (40:00).

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