Book-It 'o13! Book #1
The Fifty Books Challenge, year four! (Years one, two, three, and four just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln by Noah Van Sciver
Details: Copyright 2012, Fantagraphics
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "The Hypo is the true story of a young Abraham Lincoln, long before he became our most beloved president, suffering from a dark cloud of depression dubbed "The Hypo," which is brought on by a chain of defeats and failures while trying to carve a career as a lawyer and politician, and establish himself as a man. But not before a nervous breakdown threatens his life and family, all the while unknowingly laying the foundation of a character he would be remembered for."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This received favorable attention from The AV Club Comics Panel.
How I Liked It: The book is so uneven, its highs and lows are so stark, it's almost as undecided as its young protagonist.
The story: it succeeds far more in developing the bond Lincoln shares with his roommate than it does with his courtship of the woman who would become his wife. Perhaps Van Sciver was fearful of treading in too-well-worn paths of history, but the relationship with Mary Todd is basically a flip book of situations rather than an evolution. He is infatuated with her. And then he isn't, because her cousin is more attractive. So he breaks the engagement. He's miserable. They tentatively reunite. He is infatuated with her again. They marry.
Even though the book contains a poem from the period attributed to Lincoln himself entitled "Suicide's Soliloquy", the book never seems to really probe Lincoln's inner workings, for what again feels like fear of rehashing well-known history. We get more of an understanding of Lincoln the man nervously propositioning a prostitute than we do in the depths of his sickness, confessing to a friend.
The story ends somewhat awkwardly for what this book is, an examination of a specific period of Lincoln's life. It gives too much of a feel of "continued in the next volume!" which while it very well may be (that is, the author continuing to explore Lincoln's biography), it can't, by nature of the name, be "one of a series."
The art: Perhaps more uneven than the story is the artwork. The author spans from elegant woodcut-esque backgrounds and figures that recall Edward Gorey's style to barely above scribbles on a teen notebook. The articulate musculature in the simple lines of his male forms sharply contrast with the spaghetti arms on his female characters. His faces are too often interchangeable and facial expressions (especially on the women) run woefully crude and amateurish.
Still, this is another impressive venture in graphic novel territory, a largely unexplored era of a well-known, much-studied figure's life, and as such has to be appreciated for its broadening of the medium's horizons and possibilities.
Notable: The book contains paper dolls of Mary Todd Lincoln in the last few pages, after the author's bio.
Title: The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln by Noah Van Sciver
Details: Copyright 2012, Fantagraphics
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "The Hypo is the true story of a young Abraham Lincoln, long before he became our most beloved president, suffering from a dark cloud of depression dubbed "The Hypo," which is brought on by a chain of defeats and failures while trying to carve a career as a lawyer and politician, and establish himself as a man. But not before a nervous breakdown threatens his life and family, all the while unknowingly laying the foundation of a character he would be remembered for."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This received favorable attention from The AV Club Comics Panel.
How I Liked It: The book is so uneven, its highs and lows are so stark, it's almost as undecided as its young protagonist.
The story: it succeeds far more in developing the bond Lincoln shares with his roommate than it does with his courtship of the woman who would become his wife. Perhaps Van Sciver was fearful of treading in too-well-worn paths of history, but the relationship with Mary Todd is basically a flip book of situations rather than an evolution. He is infatuated with her. And then he isn't, because her cousin is more attractive. So he breaks the engagement. He's miserable. They tentatively reunite. He is infatuated with her again. They marry.
Even though the book contains a poem from the period attributed to Lincoln himself entitled "Suicide's Soliloquy", the book never seems to really probe Lincoln's inner workings, for what again feels like fear of rehashing well-known history. We get more of an understanding of Lincoln the man nervously propositioning a prostitute than we do in the depths of his sickness, confessing to a friend.
The story ends somewhat awkwardly for what this book is, an examination of a specific period of Lincoln's life. It gives too much of a feel of "continued in the next volume!" which while it very well may be (that is, the author continuing to explore Lincoln's biography), it can't, by nature of the name, be "one of a series."
The art: Perhaps more uneven than the story is the artwork. The author spans from elegant woodcut-esque backgrounds and figures that recall Edward Gorey's style to barely above scribbles on a teen notebook. The articulate musculature in the simple lines of his male forms sharply contrast with the spaghetti arms on his female characters. His faces are too often interchangeable and facial expressions (especially on the women) run woefully crude and amateurish.
Still, this is another impressive venture in graphic novel territory, a largely unexplored era of a well-known, much-studied figure's life, and as such has to be appreciated for its broadening of the medium's horizons and possibilities.
Notable: The book contains paper dolls of Mary Todd Lincoln in the last few pages, after the author's bio.