Comic Review: Ghostopolis

Ghostopolis by Doug Tenapel is a very fun, cute and entertaining comic.

The art is cartoony but perfectly suits the story. I really enjoyed the color pallett used. It was bright and interesting without being garish.

The story felt rushed to me. The first half is paced fairly slow and then a TON of stuff happens very quickly all-of-a-sudden at the end. It feels like it was planned to be a longer serial and then got limited to this one volume suddenly.

My favorite character was Benedict Arnold. He is super memorable and fun. The other characters didn't really do much for me.

This comic is clearly written for children and as such it does very well by it's intended audience. It's pretty light for adults though.

I heartily recommend Ghostopolis for kids older than 9 or 10. You can read Angela's review here.

--Abe

Comic Review: Blankets

Blankets by Craig Thompson

Thompson's homepage is here.

Blankets is a critically acclaimed comic. In 2005, Time selected it as one of the 100 best English language graphic novels ever written.

Blankets is certainly worth reading for fans of comics that aren't of the superhero variety and would be excellent for people who have never read a comic before too.

The art in Blankets is appropriate for the story it tells. It's occasionally very beautiful. At other times it's very simple. It uses a beautiful blue, white and black color palette that suits the tone of the story very well.

The story is a brutally honest confession and, while some parts are sweet and funny, others are awkward, terrifying and very sad. It's a wild emotional ride.

The story tries to tie together the author's experiences with his first girlfriend, his realization that he wants to be an artist and his growth from the received faith of his youth to a more personally negotiated adult faith. Sadly, these different threads never came together for me and, at the end of the story, I felt like none of the stories had any sort of resolution and all of them had got less time and development than they deserved.

Blankets is a fantastic example of the power and scope that comics can have even though it fails to deliver on it's promise as fully as it should have.

I highly recommend Blankets. Angela also reviewed Blankets. Go take a look at what she thought.

--Abe