Random Late Reviews
Jam-Packed FoxTrot, Bill Amend
and really, Welcome to Jasorassic Park and Take Us To Your Mall too
I read three FoxTrot books lately and they're all pretty much the same: very entertaining, rarely monotonous, usually very funny, and make me sympathize with Jason way too much. Bill Amend does pretty well at juggling his cast, so everyone gets their own time in the limelight, though it does seem to me like Jason usually gets it-- probably because Jason is the funniest and in some ways deepest character.
Anyway, I like FoxTrot, it's a fun comic, and if you enjoy it you'll enjoy these books. If you've never read it, but enjoy slice of life that's heavy on the humor and iguanas, you'll probably like this too.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 2--fascists have slight problems. Jason's best friend Marcus is black, and Peter's girlfriend is blind, and neither one is played for humor or as anything more than a fact, although there is one punchline along the lines of "if the intent of your driving is to make me GLAD I can't see..."
Blood Ties - Jango and Boba Fett, Tom Taylor
I'm a fan of Star Wars and I'm a fan of weird dads so this seemed perfect for me.
In this two-part story, Jango Fett is given an assignment by Christopher Lee Count Dooku, (who says he's not going to give Jango parenting advice-- I laughed really hard). I won't say what the assignment was, but he doesn't quite complete it, and that causes trouble for his son Boba, twenty-odd years later when he goes on his own assignment. It's full of violence and some gore and is oddly heartwarming for all that. Plus, the art is oddly realistic, especially given that we only get a little bit of Jango. Very weird to see Boba Fett with his helmet off.
Anyway, violent and oddly sweet tie-in, and Jango Fett is a surprisingly good dad, if prone to throwing his son into dangerous situations without warning. I enjoyed it. So might you.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 3--fascists have problems. Temuera Morrison, the actor who played Jango Fett and all the clones in the prequels, is Maori, which means that both Fetts and the clones (who play a small but important part) are brown men, which means this entire book is about brown men dealing with family.
Foundations of Chinese Civilization: The Yellow Emperor to the Han Dynasty (2697 BCE - 220 CE), Jing Liu
A graphic account of Chinese history, or rather, part one of a four-part series of graphic accounts of Chinese history. If you've been around here for a while, you know that I always wanted to study Chinese history, and got a little bitter because I couldn't ever take a class on it. Well, Jing Liu heard my cries of woe and answered them with this.
The actual series is called Understanding China Through Comics, and so far (I'm halfway through the second book) it's informative and easily understood. I'm really enjoying learning about China so far! Now, this is very outline history-- there's no way you could cover more than two thousand years of history in a hundred and sixty-eight pages otherwise-- but that's exactly what I need, a sort of fleshed-out timeline that will give me a handle on the overall story before I can dive in deeper. If you, like me, are annoyingly ignorant of Chinese history, this book (and by extension this series) is a great place to start.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 5--fascists will froth at the mouth. You're learning about Chinese history with nary a white man in sight, and there are so many good things that the Chinese did and created.
Challenger Deep, Neal Shusterman
I am a certified nutjob. My particular diagnoses are chronic severe major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, and let me tell you they can fuck me up. They're not romantic, they're not fun, and they can't be cured by love, and this is the very first time I have read a young adult novel that represents mental illness as the awful, painful thing it is.
Challenger Deep follows a teenage boy named Caden Bosch as his mental illness begins to take over his life. It's told in a dual narrative: Caden's "real" life, and the increasingly in-control hallucinatory-- or perhaps metaphorical-- life. The parallels between the two grow stronger as Caden grows more ill. The words are surreal and beautiful and languid and lovely and painful. The book almost makes you feel like you're drowning.
Now, as I've said, I don't share Caden's diagnosis, but Shusterman's son apparently does, and the book is based heavily on his experiences. His artwork even appears in the book. It really seems like a labor of love, and one I'd recommend to people who want to know, if only a little bit, what it's like.
Fuck Fascists Factor: 3--fascists have problems. Sympathetic mentally ill people? Say it ain't so.
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