The Last Dragon: Jane Yolen, Rebecca Guay

This graphic novel is a simply gorgeous work of art, every frame and every word. After two hundred years of peace, a dragon returns to the islands of May, to a town called Meddlesome, and the only answer is to find a hero to slay it. The hero imported for the task is not what anyone expects, and the true hero of the hour is not who anyone expects.

This is a simple but layered story told exquisitely in words by Jane Yolen and in images by Rebecca Guay. Every detail is perfect, from the lettering to the borders adorning many pages. This is a small gem.

 

Moon Called graphic novel: Volume I

Not how I pictured her, but well done

Thanks to NetGalley and Dynamite Entertainment for providing me with this ARC.  I was a little excited about a Mercy Thompson comic series.  I love the medium, at its best, and I love Patricia Briggs and Mercy.  It could have been a match made in somewhere really great.  But.

The positive: I think the story was pared down very well.  It’s a massive challenge, to take a 288-page novel and morph it into a series of – what, 40-odd-page issues?  The whole picture-is-worth-1000-words trope doesn’t necessarily mean that the thousand words a picture is worth are useful to storytelling in an adaptation.  The script for this series – the first four issues, at least – did a very nice job of conveying just about everything that needed conveying.

Why is he green?

It’s the artwork I have a massive problem with.  Some of it was very well done, but it’s individual frames.  Overall, I was deeply disappointed.  I don’t mean that Mercy doesn’t look right, or Zee, or what-have-you.  I can adapt to others’ visions of characters I love: I adapted to Elijah Wood.  I mean that nothing looks right.  The coyote looks silly.  Hell, the wolves look silly, often – paws don’t quite sit on the ground properly, faces look strange – there is nothing of the beauty or fierceness or fearsomeness even ordinary wolves project, much less weres.  There are a huge number of canids in this story; I only wish someone with a better feel for them had drawn this book – although the human anatomy isn’t done much better in many cases.  And while I’m sure it’s not easy to illustrate the in-between stages of a were’s change, there has to be a less foolish-looking way than was used here.  Also, the book deserves better than classic Batman-style printed sound effects: “GRRRRRRR” and “BLAM” and such are probably hard to work around, but I wish they’d tried.  All of the artwork just seems to rely too heavily on cliché.

Jesse, on the right: Was her hair supposed to be crazy?

Incredibly awkward pose

And I have to say it: Mercy doesn’t look right.  She’s too shallowly pretty, too dark-haired-Barbie-doll.  And she’s the one I have the least issue with, I think.   Adam … I really, really hate what they did to Adam.  Adam Hauptman is supposed to be beautiful, and I see where they were trying for that.  They missed, and hit waxy-effeminate-faery-no-one’s-taking-THAT-seriously instead.  And Jesse … She looks like a china doll – one of those scary china dolls whose huge blue eyes open and close on their own, and which gets up in the middle of the night and kills you in your bed.  Overall, the humans are too smooth, and the wolves too rough.

The Return of the Dapper Men: Jim McCann

Return of the Dapper Men – written by Jim McCann, illustrated by Janet Lee – accessed through Netgalley.

This is a hard book to review.  First, while it’s obvious that the artwork is beautiful, it was hard to appreciate it fully when every page of the digital preview copy I received through Netgalley was imprinted with an extremely obtrusive watermark.  I understand the desire to prevent piracy, but this huge, very obvious image distracted and detracted.

But that aside, I love the look of it.  It’s classic picture book wonder with a splash of comic book visual language, and solid underpinnings of fine art.  In short, it’s beautiful to look at.  Into a world in which the clocks no longer tock, and thence stopped ticking, and thence time stopped; where children 11 and under play amongst the gears below ground while machines work above, and there is no one else; where a clockwork angel watches over them all from the harbor while one of the machines, in love with her, works very hard to reach her – into the stasis, on the echoes of the first bell chimes in forever, come 314 dapper men, flying in on open umbrellas.  All are silent identical redheads who wear green bowlers and uniform frowns – except for one, who is cheerful and engaging and zooms in on the two most unusual folk of the land: a boy named Ayden and his best friend, a machine named Zoe.  They are friends where for the most part children and machines do not mingle.

And everything changes.

With the advent – the return – of the dapper men, time has started up again, and the sun begins to set for the first time anyone remembers, and Ayden and Zoe begin to find their destinies.

It’s a dreamlike story, with a steampunk edge, but with all it has going for it it is oddly unsatisfying.  Without details of the climax I can say that the reasons for it completely escaped me.  With details:  Why did the angel abruptly fall into the sea?  Did time catch up with her?  Why her and no one and nothing else?  How was Zoe her replacement, when she stood not quite as tall as the clockwork angel’s head?  Why did 41 die – and, more, why did he kill himself?  There was no apparent point to it, and nothing gained.  Why did the Dapper Men come back right then, and where have they been, and why did time begin again with their return – and, most annoying to me, why did it stop in the first place and where is everyone over the age of 11?   I’m fine with mystery and unresolved questions – but not when I’m promised answers and they never come.

It’s distinctly possible that the answers I’d like to have are hidden somewhere in the text; Tim Gunn says in his introduction that there are puzzles and anagrams throughout the book.  I dislike being made to feel stupid by what I read, and … well, the closest thing I found to the kind of wordplay he talks about is the place name Anorev, which is Verona backwards, and Zoe is shown standing on a pile of books including Romeo and Juliet.  There are layers of reference there (though a bit facile, in a way: this is no Romeo and Juliet story).  Otherwise … “Zoe” means “life”.  Ayden/Aiden means “little fire”.  41 is one less than Douglas Adams’s 42.  And so either I missed a whole level of the story, or, to quote Nicholas Stuart Gray, “It ducked”.

I like the idea.  I love the artwork.  The adjuncts were charming: the introduction by the dapperest man of all, Tim Gunn; guest artwork which ranged from adorable to gorgeous; and, my favorite, a behind-the-scenes making-of featurette detailing how one page came to life.  It just felt like the idea still remains just that: an idea, not quite communicated.