Fables: Legends in Exile, by Bill Willingham

I'm trying to think of reasons why I shouldn't keep reading this series. I was surprised at how fun this was, in the way that comics of my childhood were amusing, except with more swearing. There are actually a bunch of 'extras' at the end of the story that were just as much fun as the main story.

OK, maybe I will keep going with these...

Dante's Divine Comedy, adapted by Seymour Chwast

This reminds me of a mash-up of Guys & Dolls (the movie) and Sunday School at a particularly gloomy church. It's the whole of the Comedy: Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. All the characters look straight out of the 40s and 50s. Very odd.

I guess it's good that I read this, since I've never made it past Hell in the actual printed version. Now I can say I know how it all ends. ;-)

The Exile : An Outlander Graphic Novel, by Diana Gabaldon ; illustrated by Hoang Nguyen

This is only the first third or so of the first book in the Outlander series, but it's quite interesting to see how the story changes a bit when it's told only in pictures, and more from the third-person point of view. Or maybe it's supposed to be Jamie's point of view. Still. Jamie=adorable. Claire=more annoying in pictures than text. Warning: must be able to 'read' tartans to follow the story coherently.

The Book of Genesis Illustrated, by R. Crumb

The graphic novel version of the first book of the Bible. Really interesting, old-school drawings and an older translation (not sure which one, maybe the old RSV?) which combine to show just how human the people in these stories are, and why their 'activities' can still be used as teaching tools today.

Fruits Basket 1, by Natsuki Takaya

I can now say that I've read a manga from beginning to end, from back to front.

I don't think I 'got' the whole story, but at least I have an inkling of what the attraction is now.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick

This is a big, fancier-than-usual graphic novel. The drawings in the book--which is subtitled "a novel in words and pictures"--are phenomenal. The story is nice, though I could care less about French filmmaking history. Actually, scratch that: the story is trite and weird. It focuses on a young boy who lives in the walls of the Paris train station in the 1920s and keeps the clocks running. He is trying to repair a mechanical man he found. And that's the beginning of the story: it only gets stranger.

But the drawings are wonderful.

Blue Pills : A Positive Love Story, by Frederik Peeters

As Beast said when he saw this in The Reading Room, "You're reading graphic novels now??"

Well, here's the thing: this book is about HIV. No superheroes. At least, none in capes. What it is about is learning to live in a relationship that includes that big issue for two of the three in the family.

Lovely book, but I wish it were more fully fleshed-out, something that graphic novels don't do well usually. On the other hand, if it weren't graphic, there wouldn't be the wonderfully visualization of the mammoth. So, I guess...it's a wash. Anyway, it's a good book. The doctor made me laugh.

The Lone and Level Sands, by A. David Lewis

Very good.

If I only read the really good graphic novels, I can continue to convince myself that this is a viable genre. ;-)