Book-It '10! Book #14
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
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Title: Emily the Strange: The Lost Days written and illustrated by Rob Reger, Jessica Gruner, and Buzz Parker
Details: Copyright 2009, HarperCollins
Synopsis (By Way of Official Website Book Listing): "In her first adventure, Emily the Strange: The Lost Days, Emily arrives in the small, sinister town of Blackrock. Armed with only a blank notebook and a slingshot, she has no memory of how she got there, who she is, or even of her own name. The story that follows in Emily’s first-person narrative is part mystery, part adventure, and wholly, delightfully strange."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I was mildly fond of Emily in my teens (at least in button/t-shirt/other Hot Topic apparel form) and this popped up on a graphic novel search.
How I Liked It: Emily the Strange is tricky as she was created essentially as a logo, not a character. Presenting her as a character requires a great deal of stretching and the franchise of Emily the Strange risks looking like it's trying too hard as it is.
I wasn't expecting a terrible lot from the plot, given the character and the fact it's a book for teens, but it managed to even disappoint on that level. I assumed the creators thought by giving pushing Emily from logo into fully fledged fictional character they'd give her some depth. If anything, this book sadly shows how little the creators have to mine.
The plot, predictably shaky, doesn't do much to ground us about Emily, other than the constant reinforcement that she is a goth outside the mainstream (you can almost hear the cash register urging "...So it's okay, nay, necessary, to purchase items with her likeness!"). She loves the odd black cats that take to following her everywhere and finds her nightmares soothing. As required, she detests perkiness and popularity. This book would've been worthwhile had it been more of build-up to Emily's backstory (how did she wind up with her "trademark" bunch of cats? Why is she called "the Strange"?) but given that it's just another piece of the franchise, it's as hollow and empty as the purses emblazoned with Emily's image at Hot Topic.
The art is pretty cheap, too. Say what one will about Emily (the convincing fact that she's a direct rip-off of the character Rosamond from the book Nate the Great and the Lost List), the light and shadow that make her up in the logo image are beautiful. Don't expect more of that in the book. Instead, the reader is given very weak, very poor quality scribbles in what looks like at times the "watercolor" style drawn around what looks like one Xerox of the Emily logo face. Think of an even shoddier quality of Yahoo!Messenger avatars and you get an idea of what the illustrations in The Lost Days are like.
The overriding principle however, is the Emily identity. Except she doesn't really have one, other than aforementioned very hollow, very thin "goth" mentality and even that feels forced. Emily the Strange should be a cautionary example in marketing for the expansion of an image that can't really take an expansion (you can't see the deeper side of a barely two-dimensional character).
Notable: While Emily the Strange (created 1991) and Rosamond from Nate the Great and the Lost List (created 1978):
<
Title: Emily the Strange: The Lost Days written and illustrated by Rob Reger, Jessica Gruner, and Buzz Parker
Details: Copyright 2009, HarperCollins
Synopsis (By Way of Official Website Book Listing): "In her first adventure, Emily the Strange: The Lost Days, Emily arrives in the small, sinister town of Blackrock. Armed with only a blank notebook and a slingshot, she has no memory of how she got there, who she is, or even of her own name. The story that follows in Emily’s first-person narrative is part mystery, part adventure, and wholly, delightfully strange."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I was mildly fond of Emily in my teens (at least in button/t-shirt/other Hot Topic apparel form) and this popped up on a graphic novel search.
How I Liked It: Emily the Strange is tricky as she was created essentially as a logo, not a character. Presenting her as a character requires a great deal of stretching and the franchise of Emily the Strange risks looking like it's trying too hard as it is.
I wasn't expecting a terrible lot from the plot, given the character and the fact it's a book for teens, but it managed to even disappoint on that level. I assumed the creators thought by giving pushing Emily from logo into fully fledged fictional character they'd give her some depth. If anything, this book sadly shows how little the creators have to mine.
The plot, predictably shaky, doesn't do much to ground us about Emily, other than the constant reinforcement that she is a goth outside the mainstream (you can almost hear the cash register urging "...So it's okay, nay, necessary, to purchase items with her likeness!"). She loves the odd black cats that take to following her everywhere and finds her nightmares soothing. As required, she detests perkiness and popularity. This book would've been worthwhile had it been more of build-up to Emily's backstory (how did she wind up with her "trademark" bunch of cats? Why is she called "the Strange"?) but given that it's just another piece of the franchise, it's as hollow and empty as the purses emblazoned with Emily's image at Hot Topic.
The art is pretty cheap, too. Say what one will about Emily (the convincing fact that she's a direct rip-off of the character Rosamond from the book Nate the Great and the Lost List), the light and shadow that make her up in the logo image are beautiful. Don't expect more of that in the book. Instead, the reader is given very weak, very poor quality scribbles in what looks like at times the "watercolor" style drawn around what looks like one Xerox of the Emily logo face. Think of an even shoddier quality of Yahoo!Messenger avatars and you get an idea of what the illustrations in The Lost Days are like.
The overriding principle however, is the Emily identity. Except she doesn't really have one, other than aforementioned very hollow, very thin "goth" mentality and even that feels forced. Emily the Strange should be a cautionary example in marketing for the expansion of an image that can't really take an expansion (you can't see the deeper side of a barely two-dimensional character).
Notable: While Emily the Strange (created 1991) and Rosamond from Nate the Great and the Lost List (created 1978):