CARNET DE VOYAGE
Written and Drawn by Craig Thompson
Published by Top Shelf Productions

Thompson, the award-winning creator of GOODBYE, CHUNKY RICE and BLANKETS, returns to the graphic novel scene with this outstanding travelogue and sketchbook. For folks who like quality work that plays on a deeply personal level, this is good news, indeed. It’s also a little strange.

To open this 224-page gem, Thompson provides a page titled “Disclaimer” wherein he almost seems to apologize for putting this book out at all. He makes it a point to twice say that this is not his “next book,” as though putting out a travelogue is something that maybe he should be embarrassed or ashamed about. Nonsense. The opportunity to study Thompson as an artist and as a man makes this his most fully realized work to date. Craig, this is your next book, and it’s a damned good one, with only a couple of smallish flaws preventing it from being just about perfect.

CHUNKY RICE was an emotionally rich book, but perhaps too simple in its plotting. I was one of the few people who didn’t quite think that BLANKETS was as great as advertised. By the end, I felt like it had become a bit dishonest to the reader by rushing through some decisions by the main character that should have carried more weight. It was still head and shoulders above most things being published today, but I felt unsatisfied. With CARNET, I think Thompson is drawing closer to, in Olympic parlance, sticking the landing. In fact, had Top Shelf given him another sixteen to twenty-four pages to work with, I think he would have.

CARNET follows Craig as he heads off to Europe to travel and promote BLANKETS. With stops in France, Spain, the Alps, and Morocco, there is a wonderful tapestry to his journey. It is a journey filled with pain, to say the least. When we first see Craig, he is already battling a strained foot that will only get worse. That will pale, however, to Thompson’s broken heart, as he is fresh off a break-up with a girl he can’t let go of in his heart. And in traveling, he will, of course, meet up with a preponderance of couples that will constantly remind him of how lonely he feels. Then, his livelihood will be threatened as his constant drawing in his sketchbook and selling and trading of sketches on the streets of Morocco will begin to take a very physical toll on his hand and wrist.

Let’s talk about that sketchbook aspect here for a moment. Many of the pages in this book are the sketches that Thompson drew in the streets or from his hotel room windows as he progressed along his journey. That adds a depth to this book that was entirely unexpected. We get his words on the page, of course, but seeing the actual results, and actually seeing his interpretation of the people he met… pure gold. I happen to be a huge fan of travelogues in prose form, and reading this book made me wish that they could all be like this. It’s very fulfilling. Plus… if you go to a comic convention like San Diego, you’ll see plenty of artists selling a sketchbook at their table for (usually) ten bucks. They’re usually the size of a mini-comic, have at best thirty-two pages, and extremely variable in production quality. This book: 224 pages, $14.95, awesomely produced. A bargain.

Of the flaws that are here, only one really bothered me, and that is Thompson’s decision to never refer to the ex-girlfriend by name, only “my lover” or “ex-lover.” He does slip and name her once, but it isn’t obvious, and I only know because I asked a friend, the outstanding writer Sean Collins, who is a Craig Thompson “specialist” (if you will) and he pointed it out to me. It further confused me when he mentioned “Raina” at one point and I thought maybe she was the ex, but as Sean reminded me, Raina is the lead female character in BLANKETS.

The ending feels kind of rushed when we get to it, and it actually leaves the reader with perhaps an unintended and simplistic moral to the solution of Thompson’s personal angst, but again, it seems clear from the text that he had a set page count and ran out of room. And that’s okay… it doesn’t take anything away from just how satisfying and enjoyable CARNET DE VOYAGE is. It’s a very personal work, one that feels a lot more honest and rich than anything Thompson has done before. He may not have intended it to be his “next book,” but I have a sneaking suspicion that it will have him back in Europe, sketching, signing autographs, and accepting more awards. I wonder how the people he wrote about in the book will react to it? Grade: A

SIBAM?

There really isn’t anything particularly cinematic or filmable about the contents of CARNET DE VOYAGE, although it would have been interesting to have a documentary film crew following him as he made this three-month trip. In fact, I wish we got a lot more of that sort of thing in comics, as true insight into those who create is very, very lacking. Someday, perhaps.

Moving On…

TEXARKANA
Written by Patrick Neighly and Drawn by Donny Hadiwidjaja
Published by Mad Yak Press

Patrick Neighly has done it again. In defiance of convention, cost, and a market that is stacked against the little guy, he has produced another terrifically entertaining, in-color, glossy original graphic novel. Fresh off the success of last year’s SUBATOMIC, Neighly’s fertile imagination gives us a radically altered future U.S., a U.S. that is now divided in three: New Asia, which encompasses most of the west coast; the Irrelevancies, which make up the majority of the traditional states; and Texarkana, which, as you can imagine, makes up most of the southwest. And in Texarkana, justice is a scary thing.

The courts are replaced by trail on the spot. One of the cops who is pursuing you will also be your immediate lawyer. One will be your judge. One will put a bullet through your head as your executioner. (Let’s get the obvious joke out of the way so we can move on: “How is that different than Texas now?”) It gives a bit of JUDGE DREDD flavor to the American southwest, and it’s kind of freaky.

In this book, one group of Texarkana cops get sent on a mission that isn’t quite as it seems, and they learn a bit too much, setting up what I can only imagine will be a series of graphic novels set in this universe. Still, Neighly resolves this book well enough that my piqued curiosity at the end didn’t piss me off. The well-done action sequences, fascinating world, and intriguing characters made this one another winner. Neighly has another book out, THE SUPERNATURALISTS, that I haven’t seen, but after hitting the daily double with SUBATOMIC and TEXARKANA, now it’s a must. Grade: B+

BAD IDEAS #2
Written by Wayne Chinsang and Drawn by Jim Mahfood and Dave Crosland
Published by Image Comics

I reviewed issue one of this book a couple of months ago, and to be pleasant about it, I panned it soundly. Rarely had so much talent screwed the pooch in such a big way all at once. That makes me pleased to tell you that the concluding issue of this experiment in silly is actually a marked improvement.

Sure, it’s still full of silly and puerile gags at the expense of the comic fanboy (a creature I myself loathe to pieces), but they’re done much smarter this time. BAD IDEAS #2 is a wicked satire of how to eliminate the fanboy altogether, and while the punchline is obvious, the execution still works. Even better (or worse, depending on your point of view) I’ve actually seen the solution work on some of the worst offenders, so even if people want to call the book’s take offensive, it’s still kinda true. BAD IDEAS #1 was a bad idea all the way around; BAD IDEAS #2 is a hoot. Grade: B+

BRIT: RED, WHITE, BLACK, AND BLUE
Written by Robert Kirkman and Drawn by Cliff Rathburn
Published by Image Comics

This is the third BRIT one-shot, but it’s getting increasingly more difficult to view them that way. BRIT, for better or worse, is an on-going series and should probably start being treated as such by its creators and publisher. The first BRIT was an excellent stand-alone tale that introduced the character, re-focused his situation, and felt tidy. The second BRIT followed up that book reasonably well, and was easy enough to follow. But at this point, it’s gotten a bit confusing.

There is a desperate need for a “what happened previously” recap in the front of this book. The last BRIT came out many, many months ago, and frankly, I didn’t remember all of the events being discussed and built upon in this one-shot. Indeed, for a while, I actually questioned myself whether or not I had missed a BRIT in-between that one and this one.

Work past that, and you find another fun action-adventure tale from the busy pen of Robert Kirkman, and some terrific art from Rathburn that measures up to the outstanding work that Tony Moore did on the first two BRITS. But it takes more work than it should to get there. Throw us poor readers a bone, folks. Grade: B

TALES FROM THE BULLY PULPIT
Written by Benito Cereno and drawn by Graeme Macdonald
Published by Image Comics

I have been an unusually drug-free person all my life. As I child, I watched various substances take their toll on those around me and decided that I would find other ways to self-destruct. In some ways, I might be missing out; plenty of people seem to live normal lives while enjoying smoking an enormous amount of marijuana. I can only imagine that the creators of this book are among that group.

BULLY PULPIT has the left-field retard premise of the year: Teddy Roosevelt takes H.G. Wells’ time machine, picks up the ghost of Thomas Edison, and takes off for adventures galore, including battling Hitler on Mars. Savor that for a moment, won’t you? Light up your joint, and then come back to the computer and keep reading.

Some of you might be crying foul at my take on this, but really, I can’t imagine that it was anything but an amazing drug-induced stupor that produced this plot. Please don’t misunderstand: this is not a bad thing: BULLY PULPIT is fabulously entertaining, a real shot in the arm of creativity and originality. It’s funny, unique, and a book that’s just shy of making you question the sanity of its creators. Perfect. If you’re looking for something off the beaten path, this is the best book I’ve seen in a while to take you there. Grade: A-

FANTSTIC ART: THE BEST OF LUIS ROYO
Art by Luis Royo and Text by Antonio Altarriba
Published by NBM Publishing

Wow. Just… wow. This is a stunning treasury of some of the best that the legendary Spanish artist has to offer. Produced in an over-sized hardcover format, it is fit for both the shelf and the coffee table. And for anyone who loves brilliant fantasy art, it is a treasure of high quality.

The print quality is astonishing, using a heavy weight of paper to allow the vivid color and detail present in Royo’s women, swords, and monsters to leap to life from the page. We are also given the added bonus of seeing the development of many of these paintings: some come with their original sketch or sketches, even initial paintings, as we are allowed to see the process of how Royo moves and manipulates his figures in order to achieve the finest possible emotional and dramatic effect in the paintings. It’s instructive.

The text by Altarriba can be a bit overwrought here and there, but at some moments you get gems like this and can’t help but smile: “We are made up of stars and some day we will return to them. Not in cabins of spaceships, but in the cinders of a catastrophe that we ourselves will initiate. Our stupidity will return us to the state that took us so long to escape from: stardust.” Place that text under a painting of a very heroic looking space captain soaring through a duel and there is a nifty irony to the painting that adds to its viewing pleasure. I can think of no higher praise than to tell you that as I paged through this book, I continually kept saying to myself how good this or that painting would look on a particular wall in my house. Grade: A+

THE BOOK OF SCHUITEN
Written by Benoit Peeters and Art by Francois Schuiten
Published by NBM Publishing

As in the Royo book above, this is another perfectly conceived and put together treasury product from NBM. It differs a bit, however, in that it has a much more intensely focused look at Schuiten himself.

Schuiten, the legendary artist, works with his longtime writing collaborator Peeters to discuss his lengthy career and his artistic thought processes as the pages demonstrate exactly what they are speaking of. This book is not so much a showcase of Schuiten’s brilliant art, though it does a tremendous job of displaying his talents on every page, but of his mind. To put it in a way that is easily understood, THE BOOK OF SCHUITEN is the audio commentary track by the director of the film.

However, that is both a strength and a weakness, and it takes the steam out of a couple of lovely moments in the book. Not every moment is one full of brilliant insight into the man and his creative process, and it slows down the reader. I’m not suggesting that those moments should have been edited out, either; when dealing with an artist of Schuiten’s caliber, it is best to have it all, flawed or not. I recognize that the book is better with the flaws, than without. A smidge below perfect is just fine for this book, a wonderful archive of an amazing artist. Grade: A

I’ll see you all in seven.

E-mail me from the link provided. Review materials may be sent to: Marc Mason, P.O. Box 26732, Tempe, AZ, 85285. You can also find me at The Comics Waiting Room and Happy Nonsense.

E-MAIL THE AUTHOR | ARCHIVES