Gaiman, Neil - The Graveyard Book

Nobody Owens' family was killed was he was an infant, and to protect him from the killer, the denizens of the local graveyard adopt him, give him the Freedom of the Graveyard, and raise him. Bod learns important things like Fading and inflicting Night Terrors, he is protected by the mysterious Silas, and he grows into a rather odd, pale boy.

Gaiman says he modeled this after The Jungle Book; having never read it, I don't have much comment. The book itself is relatively episodic, detailing Bod's encounters with assorted graveyard denizens and with those outside of the graveyard. It concludes with Bod finally encountering the killer and venturing outside the graveyard (I don't think this is a spoiler, given that the book is a bildungsroman), and that is when we discover that all the episodic pieces are not so episodic after all.

I haven't read Gaiman for a while, largely for fear that a favorite author would become a former favorite author thanks to my own politics becoming more defined over the years. Graveyard Book wouldn't win the Tiptree or the Carl Brandon awards, but it also isn't offensive, which is really all I ask for sometimes. My standards have been so beaten down by all types of fail that currently, I just don't want to be slapped in the face.

I do wish the women in the book were more active; I liked all of them, especially Liza and Mrs. Lupesco, but I did feel as though they were more side characters when compared to Bod, Silas, and the man Jack. And, as usual, I wish there were more POC. I want a kind of book like this for kids of color, full of spookiness, drawing upon older genres and ghost stories.

I'm really impressed with how Gaiman manages to integrate the timeless graveyard with the modern world; ther's a mention of cell phones and computers, but it never feels jarring (as opposed to McKillip's Solstice Wood, frex).

All in all, this is a wonderfully spooky, mythic-feeling story, and I left feeling as though I had read an old classic rather than a book published last year. It feels ineffably large and has stayed with me for days.

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Tamaki, Mariko, and Steve Rolston - Emiko Superstar

Emiko is an ordinary girl going through an ordinary summer, complete with baby-sitting job, until one day, a chance encounter at the mall leads her to performance artists at The Factory. Eventually, Emi becomes one of the performance artists.

I feel this comic falls into the genre of "ordinary person discovers avant garde stuff and it changes her life, even though the avant garde crowd eventually falls apart." It may be a cousin to the genre of "ordinary guy meets artsy and free girl, and horizons are expanded, though the artsy and free girl is not meant for this world," albeit with a heroine instead of a hero. I am, as you may be able to tell, not a fan of either of these genres. I dislike the portrayal of the radical or avant garde as only able to illuminate "ordinary" people's lives and to not be self-sustaining. I'm also tired of the idea that artsy is good, but only in limited amounts.

On the plus side, I loved having a multiracial heroine in a comic not about her multiracialness. I also liked that the art gives the women in the comic different body shapes.

There's a side plot about a suburban housewife wanting to escape that I wanted to like, but it felt too rote, much like most of the comic for me. Well-intentioned, but ultimately not interesting.