Wytches by Scott Snyder

Genre: graphic novel, horror
Pages: 192
Published: 2015

Everything you thought you knew about witches is wrong. They are much darker, and they are much more horrifying. Wytches takes the mythology of witches to a far creepier, bone-chilling place than readers have dared venture before. When the Rooks family moves to the remote town of Litchfield, NH to escape a haunting trauma, they're hopeful about starting over. But something evil is waiting for them in the woods just beyond town. Watching from the trees. Ancient...and hungry.

I had my eye on this graphic novel for a while.  When I finally bought it, after flipping through the first few pages, I had high hopes.  Creepy witches who stalk a family from the shadowy cover of the woods and cover art that reminded me of the art from the 30 Days of Night graphic novels--count me in!

While the concept is indeed a different take on witches, I was disappointed to find that the story is more strange and gory than scary.  As a horror fan, I am always on the hunt for scary, which is quite a different thing from downright disturbing or gory.  On the other hand, I enjoyed the writing and the characters, and grew to care about them enough that I feel certain I will read the next volume when it is released.  Sailor, who has just moved to a new house and a new school after being involved in a mysterious death, immediately drew me in as a character.  Though outwardly cool and hipster-ish, she has anxiety and is struggling with her past along with her fears for the future.

Her father, a goofy and eccentric man who writes and illustrates children's books, is also a great character.  His paternal love for Sailor is the driving force behind all of his actions in the story, and in many ways he is the real hero of the graphic novel as he undergoes a number of trials and tribulations in an attempt to save Sailor from a terrible threat.

The art, on the other hand, turned out to be less than brilliant in my opinion.  Many panels look perfectly decent, especially when it is daytime.  But other parts of the story, particularly the creepier parts which take place at night, look oddly blurred or just weird.  Sometimes I found myself squinting just to try to figure out what I was looking at.  While the style is definitely unique and the colors are striking, I prefer reading graphic novels where I can actually tell what is going on.  Part of that may be purposeful, since for most of the story it is difficult to even guess what exactly is happening, but overall I think the art just wasn't for me.

Scott Snyder also wrote a short piece at the back of the graphic novel that gave me a good shudder.  It turns out that the backstory behind Wytches is just about as creepy as the story itself.  When Scott Snyder was a kid, he and his friend would wander around playing in the woods near their houses.  Snyder, apparently already a story-teller at a young age, would make up these outlandish stories about the horrid witches who roamed the forest.  Years and years later, Snyder returned home and walked through the woods alone, heading towards this old abandoned meat-packing truck where he and his friend used to hang out.  Suddenly, he thought he saw a vaguely human-shaped blur moving from tree to tree.  Though he never found out who (or what) this figure might have been, Snyder developed the concept for Wytches shortly after having this eerie experience.

While the story isn't perfect and the art is not a style that I found appealing, I did enjoy Wytches.  I grew to care a lot about the characters considering the length of the graphic novel, and will definitely be eagerly anticipating the release of the second volume of this horror comic.

Locke & Key by Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodríguez (Series Review)

Genre: graphic novel, fantasy/horror
Pages: 6 volumes, about 180 pages each
Published: 2014

Synopsis: Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them. Home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all...

Review:

I originally intended to review this series volume-by-volume, but I think a series review will be better.  Locke & Key has a plot with so many twists and different characters introduced in each volume that I don't think I would have much to say about each individual volume without revealing tons of spoilers.

I started reading the Locke & Key series because I love, love, love anything to do with haunted mansions on mysterious islands.  The title of the first volume, Welcome to Lovecraft, also caught my eye because I recently read a ton of HP Lovecraft stories and really enjoyed them.  Because the individual volumes are unreasonably exorbitant at $25 each, I made a gamble and bought the box set with all six volumes to save about $100.  I love gorgeous box sets!

Locke & Key is the story of siblings Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode, who move with their mother to a family property on the East Coast after their father, a school guidance counselor, is tragically murdered by a deranged student.  Keyhouse is enormous and filled with mysteries, as six-year-old Bode finds out when he discovers that there is a serious echo in the estate's well-house.  Not merely an echo that repeats what Bode says, but an echo that speaks back to him and seems to know a lot about his father and his troubled family...

The "echo" in the well begins to emerge.

The echo bides Bode to find a key in the house which will set it free.  Meanwhile, Sam Lesser, the boy who killed the Locke kids' father also hears the voice of the thing that lives in the well while in prison on the other side of the country.  Sam manages to escape from jail and sets off to finish murdering the rest of the Locke family at the "echo's" behest.

The keys hidden around Keyhouse prove to be the Lockes' only defense against the incredible numbers of deranged killers and shadowy monsters that seek to destroy them and open a gateway to another, more brutal world in the town of Lovecraft.  These are extraordinary keys forged by Keyhouse's former inhabitants from an otherworldly substance and which can do virtually anything they are designed to do.  One key can unlock someone's head, permitting all of their memories to be removed or new ones planted.  Another can transform a person into an animal, another can give them wings.

Kinsey Locke trying out her wings

I cannot really write much more about the various supernatural threats which the Lockes encounter without spoiling at least the first volume.  However, I can say that it is not simply the fantasy elements or the simply gorgeous full-color illustrations that caused me to read all six volumes within about a week.  (To clarify, for many years the only graphic novel type books that I read were manga, which are largely inked in black and white, so I still find myself somewhat impressed upon reading full-color graphic novels.  My reaction would probably be comical to devoted readers of Western-style comics, but I catch myself thinking, "Wow, they colored in everything?!")

My favorite aspect of Locke & Key is the characters, especially the major characters Tyler and Kinsey.  These teenagers confront bizarre, catastrophic, and possible apocalyptic circumstances like...well, like most teenagers would!  Tyler feels an extraordinary amount of guilt about his father's death and tries to adjust to his new school by joining the hockey team, though he doesn't like hockey, and spending most of his time with Zach Wells, a smooth-talking guy whose history he knows very little about.  Kinsey is also dealing with her fair share of guilt and grief.  She is quick to use the magical keys to attempt to solve her problems, literally removing all her fears and insecurities from her head with the "head key" and giving herself wings to fly far away from Keyhouse and the school where she has trouble deciding where (or if) she fits in.  The fact that Kinsey has a different hair style in almost every volume is, to me, so reflective of the transitional and confusing place that she finds herself.  Some of my other favorite characters are Kinsey's friends Scot, Jackie, and Jamal.  They are very visibly the outsiders at preppy Lovecraft Academy, and provide a lot of the series's humor.  Did I mention Locke & Key is hilarious?  Because it is.

Ironically Joe Hill, the brilliant writer behind Locke & Key, is the son of that other renowned horror writer whose book Bag of Bones I just wrote a very meh review of, Stephen King.  While his horror novels seem to be as enormous as his father's, I do hope to try reading one of Joe Hill's books, perhaps NOS4A2.  Apparently it is both a vampire book and Christmas-themed???  OK, because we are talking about the author of Locke & Key, I will give it a shot!

Series Rating:

Update to 2016 Graphic Novel/Manga Reading Challenge: with Locke & Key, I have now read 6 of the 24 graphic novels I hope to have read by the end of this year!

2016 Horror Reading Challenge & Graphic Novel/Manga Challenge

In my hunt for reading challenges to take on the rest of this year, I've found two more that are right up my alley.

The first is the 2016 Graphic Novel/Manga Challenge, hosted by Nicola at the challenge's blog.  I really like this challenge button, because it is very eye-catching and perhaps a little scary.

Mostly I just really want to see the rest of this guy's costume!  For this challenge, I am going to sign up for the Bronze Age or intermediate level, that is to say, I am going to try to read and review 24 graphic novels, comic collections, and/or mangas during the remainder of this year.  Since I am in the middle of reading several excellent graphic novel and manga series, including Locke & Key and Attack on Titan, I hope this shouldn't be too difficult!  Other graphic novels I want to read soon include The Umbrella Academy, Rat Queens, Lumberjanes, the next few volumes of Lazarus, Outcast, The October Faction, American Vampire...yeah, quite a few, to sum it up.

The next challenge I'm signing up for is the 2016 Horror Reading Challenge, co-hosted over at the blog Cornerfolds and at Books, Movies, Reviews, Oh My!

I am going to try to read and review 16 or more books that belong to the horror genre, and win the Horror Hound badge.  I usually read a lot of horror, especially collections of nineteenth-century ghost stories and Gothic novels, which I adore.  I have been trying to force myself to read The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, a very classic Gothic novel, but admittedly it has a very slow start which is discouraging me.  Last year I read Matthew Lewis's The Monk, which is insanely entertaining and twisted, and also Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto, arguably one of the first English Gothic novels.  Otranto is pretty silly, and features a guy getting crushed to death by a giant helmet (no, really), but it was wildly popular after its publication.  Right now I am reading something a little more modern: Stephen King's Bag of Bones.  I am not a big fan of King typically, so we will see how that goes.  I'm looking forward to reading books for both of these challenges, and will add them to a new Challenges page so I can keep track of them more easily.

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

Genre: comic strips collection
Pages: 166 (hardcover)
Published: 2011

Review:

I really don't have much to say about this collection of comics except that Beaton's work is awesome.  I had never heard of her or this book before this adorable rendering of Napoleon caught my eye in the graphic novel section of the library last week, but I will be definitely be stalking (er, visiting) her website in the future and keeping an eye out for her other printed collections. 

 If you have ever paged through the comics section of a newspaper and thought, "Wow, I wish there was a comic in here which puts a funny spin on Queen Elizabeth I's speech to her troops before the Spanish Armada...that's obviously comedy gold," then you will certainly appreciate this book.

As a few of you among my multitudes and multitudes of readers may know, I have been student teaching in an English classroom this last semester.  So, I especially appreciated the comics here which poked fun at classic literature and authors, because I was able to share a few with my class.  I showed them a comic about Oedipus Rex (yes, these poor fifteen-year-old souls were subjected to Oedipus as an assigned text; yes, they did laugh at the sexual innuendos, after I kindly pointed them out; no, I did not have the power to choose or significantly alter the curriculum).  I also decided to show one of my classes this hilarious comic which pokes fun at two of the Brontës sisters' penchants for brooding, abrasive men...

 And after I pulled the comic up on the projector, I was like, "Pretty funny, huh?" 

And some of them laughed quite appreciatively, but I soon realized that was only because they could not believe I'd shown them a comic strip that included the word "asshole."  I guess maybe they don't get to read Jane Eyre until twelfth grade English. *shrugs*

Even if you don't enjoy snickering at the notion of Goethe having to deal with encounters with proto-Romantic, foppish fanboys obsessed with his The Sorrows of Young Werther, the book also has some fun with less literary books and pop culture.  Anyone who grew up reading Nancy Drew books will absolutely love the series of comics which imagines the plot of a Nancy Drew mystery based on its title and cover.  For example, 

There are also some comics which poke fun at the Tudors, Watson and Crick, and Batman, and a few about Canadian history which, hey, I didn't get at all.  Honestly, if there was one thing this book has inspired me to do (other than make my students think I'm even more of a nerd than they suspected), it is to learn a little about Canadian history, because it is an area where I am sadly lacking in knowledge.  I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who possesses nerdy inclinations or simply the inclination to breathe in oxygen and nitrogen.  It is a real treasure, and the comics are not of the type I have ever come across before.   

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Just a quick update, because I realize I haven't really posted one in about three years: 
I do hope to continue posting on my blog this summer after such a loooonng hiatus.  I had all but abandoned this blog, but recently I started to have more free time for the first time in what feels like forever and I began to feel the familiar itch to blahblahblah about what I'm reading in a more private and personalized space than Goodreads.  I look forward to exploring how the book blogosphere has changed since I last frequented it, and hopefully to talking a bit with those of you who happen to stumble across, or back across, my little blog!

Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (artist)

Genre: graphic novel, science-fiction
Pages: 160  
Published: 2012

Synopsis:
When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old universe. 

From bestselling writer Brian K. Vaughan, Saga is the sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the worlds. Fantasy and science fiction are wed like never before in this sexy, subversive drama for adults. 

Note: This review is for volume one, but my opinion of the series has been influenced by the fact that I've just finished volume two.

Review:
Strangely enough, I had harbored a vague desire to start the Saga series ever since it started appearing at the top of "Best New Graphic Novels" and "Best Sci-fi" lists on Goodreads a few years ago.  I think most of my initial hesitation stemmed from the fact that the cover of this first volume is a bit odd; it features alien breast-feeding.  (Admittedly, the cover for the forthcoming Book One collection is even less subway-commute-friendly). 

 In retrospect, I am so glad I overcame my shallow scruples.  Truly, never judge a book by its cover!  Saga is one of the most sophisticated, psychologically complex, ridiculously readable, and funny series that I have read in my long career as a bibliophile.  After finishing this first volume, I returned to the bookstore and splurged on the next four volumes--an unheard-of thing for me, since I tend to avoid buying brand-new books for my library unless I absolutely have to own them.  Well, I absolutely had to purchase the Saga series, because I quickly realized that these are graphic novels I will want to reread and flip through again and again.   

Our protagonists are Marco and Alana, a recently and happily married couple.  Unfortunately, their love is star-crossed to say the least: their two home planets (Marco's home world being a moon, technically-speaking) have long been locked in a fierce war and Marco and Alana, as former soldiers, have both betrayed their respective armies and planets by deserting and running away together.  

At the start of the series, their little family of misfits on-the-run gains a new member when Alana gives birth to a baby girl, Hazel.  I adored the evolving, complex, and genuinely lovely relationship between Marco and Alana and especially their early adventures in parenting the newborn Hazel.  Unfortunately, most of the rest of the cast of Saga are not feeling the love, and so the new family must constantly flee from danger.   

The governments of Marco and Alana's respective planets are eager to kill the lovers before the masses find about their treasonous and interspecies relationship (both sides are indoctrinated from a young age to loathe and dehumanize their enemies), and they are also keen to get their hands on Hazel.  Among the seemingly endless assortment of characters who seek to murder Alana and Marco and kidnap their child are the prince of a robot kingdom (no Prince Charming, he; he has a television monitor for a head, a frightening case of PTSD, and an arm which can transform into a cannon), an assassin (endowed with the strange moniker "The Will" and always accompanied by his beloved Lying Cat, a large feline who can detect when a person is lying), and another fierce contract killer with whom the aforementioned assassin is hopelessly in love.  This anatomically interesting individual (pictured left) is called "The Stalk."  As much as I enjoyed Alana and Marco's storyline, I also loved every panel featuring the two assassins.  Admittedly, intergalactic assassins have been an enduring interest of mine ever since I first saw the sangfroid, awesomely-outfitted Boba Fett in Star Wars.  These two are really well-developed characters, especially The Will, and once Saga is complete, I totally think that Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples should create a spin-off series featuring the assassins, the organization who gives them contracts, and their adventures before they begin hunting Alana and Marco.  

While the series is so original that it largely eludes comparisons, Saga does incorporate some of the same elements which can be found in the immortal Star Wars--morally ambiguous and intensely likable characters, spaceship pursuits across the galaxy, diverse alien species, and, not least, its sense of humor.  

My favorite character--if I must pick just one--is certainly Alana, whose wit also provides much of the comic relief of the series. 

This young woman is fiercely protective of her family and a tough fighter, but also obsessed with this one book where not many things actually happen, but the characters hang out and talk about philosophy and random things.  It sounds a bit like An Imperial Affliction, the book with which Hazel is obsessed in The Fault in Our Stars, only not about cancer and less depressing.  As a book lover, I related to this.  Also, again, Alana is funny.  Her dialogue is riddled with ironic quips and the kind of snarky remarks that everyone else only wishes they were able to think up on the spot.  (Personally, I usually come up with that perfect wry observation or comeback in the middle of the night five days after the occasion in which I might have employed it.  *Sigh.*)   I adored Marco as well, and Hazel--who, despite being only a few days old during the actual action, is the narrator of the story--but Alana and The Will (one of the assassins) were really the stand-out characters among a stand-out cast of characters, for me.

Finally, the art of this series is really spectacular.  While Vaughan's writing brims with sheer humanity and his plot focuses on universal themes of love, warfare, family, and blurred moralities, Fiona Staples depicts a colorful, outlandish galaxy in which few things are familiar or comfortable for the reader.

  While some of the panels may seem bizarre or off-putting to the average reader who flips through the first volume's pages, the story and the characters are such that I feel they will immediately captivate anyone who gives this graphic novel a fair chance. 


Rating:

   

Interview with the Vampire: Claudia's Story by Anne Rice & Ashley Witter

Genre: graphic novel
Pages: 256 (hardcover)
Published: November 2012 by Yen Press

Synopsis: A richly-illustrated adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, told through the eyes of the vampire Claudia, who was just a little girl when she was turned by the vampire Lestat. Though she spends many years of happiness with her two vampire fathers, she gradually grows discontent with their insistence upon treating her like a little girl, even though she has lived as long as any mortal man...and her lust to kill is certainly no less than theirs...

My Take:
I had to have this beautiful graphic novel.  Firstly, because Interview with the Vampire is one of my all-time favorite books and Anne Rice has been one of my favorite authors since I was a pre-teen.  Second, just look at that gorgeous cover!  I had serious cover lust over Claudia's Story, and the pages between the covers are no less beautiful or intriguing.

The art is beyond gorgeous: every illustration is perfectly shaded, with splashes of carefully-placed crimson which perfectly compliment the story's dark feel.  The three main characters-- the doll-like Claudia, sensitive, dark-haired Louis, and of course, the arresting and impulse Lestat-- are portrayed as very similar to their characters in the movie Interview with the Vampire.  Some of the illustrations are gorgeous enough to frame and artist Ashley Marie Witter definitely proves that she's a fantastically-talented artist in this graphic novel, her debut.

Claudia's Story essentially follows the exact same storyline as Interview with the Vampire, examining the conflict and dynamic between Claudia and Louis and Lestat, her two vampiric "fathers", to whom she must cling because she is an eternal little girl and cannot care for herself.  As Claudia, a vampire created as a child, grows mentally and emotionally older, she begins to resent her fellow vampires for creating her, for trapping her inside a child's "doll-like" body forever.  She has no hope of gaining independence, of fulfilling her terrible blood lust on her own, or of becoming the woman she became long ago in her heart and mind. 

Many direct quotes from Interview are used in Claudia's Story, along with some of Claudia's internal monologue, written in the slightly melancholy narrative style typical of Louis's monologue style in Interview.  I don't feel like we readers learn very much about Claudia's character, or a single new thing about the plot, that was not revealed in the original novel.  I didn't really mind, though.  This graphic novel is entertaining and faithful to the original Anne Rice canon.  The art, as I said, is beyond belief.  Anything Ashley Marie Witter illustrates in the future, I will almost certainly be reading.  I really hope this book sells a ton of copies-- at least as many as the Twilight graphic novels have, especially considering that the art of Claudia's Story is about ten times more mature and well-drawn.  And, you know, Claudia and Louis and Lestat do a very minimal amount of sparkling.

Rating:

Review: Kith by Holly Black and Ted Naifeh

(Second Book in The Good Neighbors Trilogy, Sequel to Kin)
Genre: Graphic Novel, YA, urban fantasy
Pages: 128 (Hardcover)
Released: October 2009, by Graphix Scholastic
Overall Rating: 4/5

Synopsis: Rue Silver's life is not what it appears to be. Her mother is a faerie, and has been taken back to the faerie realm. As Rue goes to bring her back, she must travel deep into an inhuman world. At the same time, the faerie realm is venturing into our world too, and taking its toll on those Rue loves. When her grandfather's plans threaten Rue's city, she realizes that she's the only one who can stop him. But is Rue a human or a faerie? Where does she fit? How does she know the difference between love and enchantment? 

Holly Black is one of my all-time favorite authors.  Every book she writes, every short story collection she edits, and, apparently, every graphic novel she collaborates on, is pure gold.  In many ways she has helped invent the urban-faerie-fantasy subgenre whose popularity has recently exploded. 
That said, I didn't enjoy Kith nearly as much as the first book in the trilogy, Kin.  The story unfolds with trademark Holly Black plot twists and rich backstory, held together by a likeable and flawed cast of teen characters.  But it's never the human characters who make this graphic novel series magical-- it's our Good Neighbors themselves, the faeries.  Ted Naifeh's panels bring Holly's story to life as magnificently as they did in Kin, illuminating the eerie and beautiful fey inhabitants of Rue Silver's world while letting the inky darkness creep away in the corners of the pages.  

It's very difficult to mention much about the plot without giving away spoilers from the first book, but I will say that secrets are revealed.  Backstories related.  Romances (unexpected and inevitable) both begun and painfully broken.  Readers get to see more of the twisting underground of the faerie's world and its diverse inhabitants.  And the novel ends with one shocking twist which left me starved for the sequel.  

Kith is definitely one of those graphic novels which lives up to the name graphic novel, considering it is aimed towards a teen audience.  Here we have a little nudity, and more than a little sex considering the book is extremely fast-paced and less than 200 pages to begin with.  It's nothing horrifyingly scandulous, per se, and I'm honestly not one to particularly care whether or not a book is squeaky clean of sex or profanity.  This one's probably not the right fit for a middle grade-reader, though, unless they're very mature.

The downside of these graphic novels is that they are sold at full hardcover price, but can easily be read in an hour or two at the most.  I picked up my copy at the library, since I couldn't seem to find it at either the indie bookstore where I bought Kin, or Barnes & Noble.  Still, I would read these books if only to gaze at the stunning two-page stretches of faerie gatherings and ordinary urban locations packed with partially hidden otherworldly inhabitants, but the story is definitely worth checking out.  I rate Kith 4 out of 5, mostly because the story did not progress as much as I'd hoped.  The third graphic novel in the Good Neighbors trilogy, Kind, was released only a few days ago, so that is yet another book for the mountainous TBR list. :)