jarrahpenguin's reviews
1280 reviews

Afterglow is a short graphic novel with a lot of excitement and heart. Lacey and her giant cat After are surviving in a world that has been devastated by a major radiation event. Lacey and After are both misfits struggling for belonging and a sense of family. Lacey is a funny and inspiring girl protagonist and her story is told with charming and vividly coloured visuals.

Jeff Loveness presents a twist on a well-known part of the Bible - the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot, accompanied by incredible art by Jakub Rebelka. Loveness' story takes us through Judas' motivations for betraying Jesus, imagining his life before he became a disciple, and then takes us into Hell after Judas betrays Jesus and takes his own life. In Hell Judas confronts Satan, who offers twists on Biblical narratives and the narratives that Judas has been telling himself.

In spite of the promising concept, I found the writing a bit plodding, perhaps because it leans so heavily on narration and exposition. The main strength of the book is Rebelka's art. Rebelka's style isn't one seen in many graphic novels and I found it creative, bold, vivid, and engaging.

Jesse Jacobs delivers a highly creative alternative graphic novel about youth, creativity and spirituality. Teen girl Daisy introduces her friend Jeanne-Claude to a portal into a psychedelic world, accessed through her washing machines by those with positive, pure intentions. But everything is put at risk when Jeanne-Claude tells the rest of their classmates, some of whom have less-than-pure intentions. Jacobs' visuals are carefully-planned chaos, perfectly executed. I didn't find the story or themes exceptionally original but very much enjoyed the execution.

A fun romp through multiple realities in the Spider-Verse. It's cute seeing the budding romance between Miles and Gwen and the end gets you right in the feels, but otherwise it's a little light, a lot convoluted, and the change in art styles is a little disruptive.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a woman who has not only dedicated herself to wielding the law for the benefit of gender equality but whose image as a principled, pragmatic, progressive feminist lawmaker is an important touchstone in our society today. In this book, Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik provide what I'd describe as a light biography of RBG, with chapters covering key formative moments, relationships with the other SCOTUS justices, her workout routine, her wardrobe choices, and opinions on some of her most meaningful court decisions. The key takeaway, reinforced at several points, seems to be around RBG's approach to making change: pick your battles, work towards your big goal incrementally, keep it civil and respectful.

I appreciated the way this book helped me better understand the way SCOTUS works, and the way RBG has worked. It provides important food for thought at a time when so much seems at stake and we're having important debates about how best to fight back.

But I wanted the book to be both deeper and more nuanced. As much as I admire RBG, the book almost made it feel like she never made a mistake or a questionable judicial decision in her life, but was always playing a responsible long game for equality. As a Canadian I'm not intimately familiar with every opinion Ginsburg has written but recently the podcast This Land informed me of Ginsburg's opinion in Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation. Reading more about it, I'm convinced that we can't ignore this case in our evaluation of RBG's judicial legacy. It's possible to make a case that her rulings on Indian Law have improved or at least grown more nuanced over time . Either way, RBG deserves the praise for her work on same-sex marriage, gender equality and rights for people of colour but the impacts of her decisions on Native Americans at least deserved a mention.

Count me among the ranks of people who didn't know Anthony Bourdain was a fan of Japanese monster stories and pre-Comics Code horror comics, but was super intrigued when I found out he'd partnered with Joel Rose and some great artists to produce this collection. The premise is interesting: a group of world-renowned chefs are summoned to serve a party hosted by a rich but creepy Russian guy, who decides after dinner to make them play an ancient samurai game called 100 candles. In the game, each participant must tell a ghost story and then when finished, blow out a candle while looking into a mirror - if they can keep up their nerve. The goal is to see who can last the longest without becoming too scared to continue.

Unfortunately, there are some pretty obvious questions off the bat: Why can't the chefs just leave? Why would this guy think they all have awesome ghost stories in their back pockets? I just felt like as a framing MacGuffin it left a little something to be desired. The stories themselves are not just gory in the way of classic horror comics but also feature a lot of sexual violence, which sucked a lot of the fun out for me. That said, the highlight for me was the art by Irene Koh for the story "The Snow Witch."

Actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr truly lived an incredible life, pursuing her dreams in a world that couldn't reconcile the idea of a woman who was both beautiful and brilliant (not to mention of Jewish descent). Nevertheless she persisted, and this graphic novel is a nice introductory tribute to her life and accomplishments. The stylized art is crisp and conveys an appropriate retro vibe. My main issue is that it doesn't tell you very much detail, particularly about her later years. I'm not sure whether rumours were all to go on for that time, but that could've been made clear. It was just a bit of a let down to not learn anything really new or really be drawn into her emotions throughout the book. For instance, what happened to her other children? Did she ever need to interact with her ex-husbands after divorce? I don't feel like I really got a sense of how she felt other than generally stifled yet determined.

Redshirts is a funny, action-packed, meta romp through the lives of a group of random, bit-part ensigns on a Star Trek-like series. The protagonist, Andrew Dahl, arrives on the Intrepid with his friends only to find something very weird going on: everyone seems to be trying to avoid going on away missions after random incidents (including run-ins with alien diseases, land worms and ice sharks) keep killing the other low-ranking crew.

I loved the first two-thirds of this book as Dahl and friends investigate their colleagues' mysterious behaviour and try to survive bizarre away missions. I found myself laughing out loud at the loving fun this book pokes at Trek and other sci-fi tropes. And the story itself was hard to put down. How would Dahl and co. stop the redshirt slaughter?

But I think I would've preferred this as a novella without the three lengthy "Coda" chapters at the end. These only helped to reinforce messages I felt were already pretty clear, answer questions I was fine not knowing the answers to, and round out characters I don't know really needed more dimension. As I listened to the audiobook, this last two hours of the book felt like a slog after what had otherwise been an enjoyable cruise.

I did really enjoy Wil Wheaton as audiobook narrator. His tone reading the dialogue was pitch-perfect, capturing the essence of crewmembers like Hester and Captain Abernathy without needing to do voices.