Book-It 'o13! Book #27
The Fifty Books Challenge, year four! (Years one, two, three, and four just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: Trickster: Native American Tales: A Graphic Collection compiled and edited by Matt Dembicki
Details: Copyright 2010, Fulcrum Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Meet the Trickster, a crafty creature who disrupts the order of things, often humiliating others and sometimes himself in the process. Whether a coyote or rabbit, raccoon or raven, tricksters use cunnin to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief.
In Trickster, the first graphic anthology of Native American trickster tales, more than twenty Native American tales are cleverly adapted into comic form. An inspired collaboration between Native writers and accomplished artists, these tales bring the trickster back into popular culture in vivid form. From an ego-driven social misstep in "Coyote and the Pebbles" to the hijinks of “How Wildcat Caught a Turkey” and the hilarity of “Rabbit’s Choctaw Tail Tale,” Trickster brings together Native American folklore and the world of graphic novels together for the first time."
Why I Wanted to Read It: After some luckless searches at the library for new graphic novels, I decided to go in the other direction and look at what graphic novels they had. This looked interesting, despite my eye-twitch at the "catch-all" approach to Native culture.
How I Liked It: Compilations like this have been notoriously difficult for me to review. An authenticity check (all authors and artists are credited in the back) proved that it wasn't a bucket of woo, which was promising.
I've been read and told these types of stories since I was a kid and generally they just aren't my thing. I don't know if it's my dislike of the trickster trope or the fact it frequently leaves abrupt endings, but generally I find myself bored by various animals and/or people acting obnoxiously/cluelessly and either getting away with it or being punished in an overly cruel manner (really? The rest of his life he has to look like that?). Cautionary tales tend to bore me, I guess. But the book contains a great many "how nature got that way" types of stories which are always fascinating (how the buzzard lost the features on his head, why the rabbit only has a puff of a tail, et cetera) to me, so it balanced out a bit.
The art styles are all over the place, largely skewing towards the comic, but there are a few that are breathtaking. The first in the collection might be my favorite, as it envisions humans in a kind of animal costume of the animal they represent (it's more understated than it sounds, honestly) and in rich watercolor and penciling. However, that's a personal call because even if the style of art doesn't necessarily appeal, none can be said to be lazily rendered.
This would serve as a decent introduction to some Native myths or to build on study of the Trickster myth. It's also a book with pretty much an art style to suit everyone, if you go through the whole book.
Notable: This book is listed under youth fiction, which I found kinda surprising. There's lots of brutal deaths and "cutting your way out of a body" appears to be a recurring theme along with some "crude" humor (spoiler alert! The buzzard loses the feathers on his head and neck because the old man he tricked tricks him back and traps the bird's head inside his anus; by the time the bird finally frees himself from the old man, he has no more feathers on his neck/head and smells awful, which is why buzzards have no feathers on their heads/necks and smell awful). Maybe I'm relying too strongly on my own memories of elementary school smart-ass kids corrupting anything that could be corrupted, but it just seems an odd choice.
Title: Trickster: Native American Tales: A Graphic Collection compiled and edited by Matt Dembicki
Details: Copyright 2010, Fulcrum Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Meet the Trickster, a crafty creature who disrupts the order of things, often humiliating others and sometimes himself in the process. Whether a coyote or rabbit, raccoon or raven, tricksters use cunnin to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief.
In Trickster, the first graphic anthology of Native American trickster tales, more than twenty Native American tales are cleverly adapted into comic form. An inspired collaboration between Native writers and accomplished artists, these tales bring the trickster back into popular culture in vivid form. From an ego-driven social misstep in "Coyote and the Pebbles" to the hijinks of “How Wildcat Caught a Turkey” and the hilarity of “Rabbit’s Choctaw Tail Tale,” Trickster brings together Native American folklore and the world of graphic novels together for the first time."
Why I Wanted to Read It: After some luckless searches at the library for new graphic novels, I decided to go in the other direction and look at what graphic novels they had. This looked interesting, despite my eye-twitch at the "catch-all" approach to Native culture.
How I Liked It: Compilations like this have been notoriously difficult for me to review. An authenticity check (all authors and artists are credited in the back) proved that it wasn't a bucket of woo, which was promising.
I've been read and told these types of stories since I was a kid and generally they just aren't my thing. I don't know if it's my dislike of the trickster trope or the fact it frequently leaves abrupt endings, but generally I find myself bored by various animals and/or people acting obnoxiously/cluelessly and either getting away with it or being punished in an overly cruel manner (really? The rest of his life he has to look like that?). Cautionary tales tend to bore me, I guess. But the book contains a great many "how nature got that way" types of stories which are always fascinating (how the buzzard lost the features on his head, why the rabbit only has a puff of a tail, et cetera) to me, so it balanced out a bit.
The art styles are all over the place, largely skewing towards the comic, but there are a few that are breathtaking. The first in the collection might be my favorite, as it envisions humans in a kind of animal costume of the animal they represent (it's more understated than it sounds, honestly) and in rich watercolor and penciling. However, that's a personal call because even if the style of art doesn't necessarily appeal, none can be said to be lazily rendered.
This would serve as a decent introduction to some Native myths or to build on study of the Trickster myth. It's also a book with pretty much an art style to suit everyone, if you go through the whole book.
Notable: This book is listed under youth fiction, which I found kinda surprising. There's lots of brutal deaths and "cutting your way out of a body" appears to be a recurring theme along with some "crude" humor (spoiler alert! The buzzard loses the feathers on his head and neck because the old man he tricked tricks him back and traps the bird's head inside his anus; by the time the bird finally frees himself from the old man, he has no more feathers on his neck/head and smells awful, which is why buzzards have no feathers on their heads/necks and smell awful). Maybe I'm relying too strongly on my own memories of elementary school smart-ass kids corrupting anything that could be corrupted, but it just seems an odd choice.