This and its predecessor have provided a wealth of information about the events leading up to the end of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Third Reich. I did not realize how much the communists/socialists played into the hands of the fascists. There was a class war going on during the end of t...
I had a difficult time differentiating characters in this graphic novel. I would often have to page back and compare pictures of people to determine who I was reading about. This seriously impeded on my enjoyment of the story, which was otherwise fascinating and compelling. I sought out this book as...
http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2008/10/graphic-novel-monday-best-american.html
I suppose that when I read a book wherein the structure of the story itself reflects the tone, I should be appreciative. In this case, I'm just annoyed. The artwork in Houdini: The Handcuff King is sparse, not very structured, and, honestly, a bit trite. The story is much of the same. It's a little ...
Quick read, not much to it. This seems more like a picture book than a graphic novel to me--I can see a parent reading it with their young kid (say ages 7-9) more easily than I can see a middle schooler picking it up and reading it on their own. I wanted Bess, Houdini's wife, to be more of a person ...
As much as I enjoy other "best of" anthologies for introducing me to short works I wouldn't otherwise read, I didn't enjoy this. I just couldn't find anything I loved and/or that was new and not to short.
Graphic novel. On rereading it, I find that I admire it a lot. The accumulation of heartbreak is not melodramatic, just adds up to melancholy. I thought Lutes' crisp, meticulous graphic style might be too concrete for such a ruminative story, but in fact, he fluidly blends in thoughts and dreams, an...
It’s Berlin, in the years before World War II. We follow a group of characters—including the young art student Marthe, her friends, and a journalist named Kurt Severing—as they live their ordinary lives on what we now know is the brink of a horror. The story sprawls throughout the city, focusing on ...
The artistic influences of Jason Lutes' "picture novel," Jar of Fools, are fairly easy to spot. The drawing style is European, with the clean lines of Herge of Tintin fame, while the storyline is contemporary Americana of such short story writers as Raymond Carver. But Lutes is good enough, and his ...
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