Review of Wonderland #2
Caleb Mozzocco reviews Wonderland #2 at Bam! Kapow! (warning: BRIGHT YELLOW ahead; I looked at that site after accidentally sleeping with my contacts in, and it nearly killed me), giving it a nine (out of ten, I assume).
I seem to always have something to say about reviews of Wonderland, big mouth that I am, and this line caught my eye: "While Kovacs' [sic] story is quite solidly done, this being comics, it's artist Sonny Liew whose work makes the most impression." Why is that so? True, art makes the most immediate impression in comics, but if you see good art but one reads comics, one doesn't just look at them, right? That means story and art should get equal attention.
And art doesn't always make the most impression. Witness the recent hullaballoo about a comic called How to Make Money Like a Porn Star, which seems to be nearly universally despised by those who have read it because of its writing. The writing, in this case, made the most impression, not the art (which many people say is very good). One of my favorite classic SLG comics is Longshot Comics by Shane Simmons, in which the art consists entirely of dots talking to each other.
Of course, I come from a literary background, so from that perspective, story does make the most impression. Once, a classmate of mine wrote a review of the excellent graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, and I pointed out that he never once mentioned what the art looks like. So it isn't "this being comics, the art makes the most impression"; it's "I being the kind of reader I am, the art makes the most impression."
Just thought I'd point that out.
Johanna Draper Carlson posted a review of Wonderland #1 recently at Comics Worth Reading, and while I appreciate one of our comics being deemed "worth reading," I did a double take when I read her assertion that "The story isn't really the point." Excuse me? What is that kind of assertion based on? What a dismissive thing to say! Tommy Kovac has put a great deal of effort and devotion into writing Wonderland, and the fact is that if there were no story, there would be no art. And thank goodness there is story because Sonny Liew's work is beautiful. But it still stands: The story IS the point, and so is the art. The two exist because of and for the other.