Review: The Monsters' Monster, by Patrick McDonnell

Patrick McDonnell, the cartoonist behind the already-classic comic strip Mutts, has created a picturebook about monsters whose bad behaviors are very much like those of this book's potential audience. "Who could complain the loudest? Who could throw the most terrible tantrum? Who was the most miserable?" Their most fiendish plot of all involves creating another monster, one whom they hope will be the most terrifying of all. But this Monster (a chunky, cartoonified version of Boris Karloff's portrayal of the Frankenstein monster) has other ideas. I won't give it all away, but I will note that jelly donuts play a part.

McDonnell's artwork is, as always, loose and playful and highly expressive. Little two-headed Gloom 'n' Doom is especially hilarious to watch throughout. The text is clever and a bit sing-songy in places, perfect for reading aloud. And the book's gentle lesson will warm the heart of any little (or big) monster.

"Dank you," Patrick McDonnell.

The Monster's Monster

by Patrick McDonnell

Lttle, Brown, 2012

ISBN-10: 0316045470

ISBN-13: 978-0316045476

40 pages, $16.99

Review: Spider-Men, by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli et al.

The reason this book exists is the very reason that so many people find it hard to "get" superhero comics. Briefly? There's another "Marvel Universe"* outside the regular one with all the heroes you probably know (from the movies if nowhere else**). This "Ultimate universe" has the same heroes, mostly, although with sometimes subtle, other times profound differences. Perhaps the biggest difference is that "Ultimate" Spider-Man--a youthful Peter Parker--died. In the Ultimate universe, at least so far, dead means dead (unlike the regular Marvel Universe, where people die and come back to life over and over, like clockwork). But before too long, Miles Morales, a thirteen-year-old mixed-race youth, gained spider-powers and assumed the mantle of Spider-Man. These two universes existed side-by-side on the comics store shelves for a dozen years, but until Spider-Men, there had never been a cross-over story bringing them together.

If you're confused, you probably don't read superhero comics all that regularly. And therefore, Spider-Men might not be the book for you to start with. Writer Brian Michael Bendis (who's scribed Ultimate Spider-Man from day one) does his best to set the stage(s) for this event: we get a very clear idea of who Peter Parker is, and a somewhat less-clear but still revealing portrait of Miles Morales. The first chapter opens with a several-page monologue by Peter/Spider-Man about why he loves New York City; once Peter gets transported to the Ultimate universe and Miles shows up, we see how the young hero is slowly fitting into the super-fabric of his own version of the city.

But the heart of the book--and I do mean heart--lies in the meeting, mid-point in the narrative, between "our" Peter Parker and the Ultimate versions of Peter's Aunt May May and Gwen Stacy (who, in our universe, was Peter's girlfriend until she was killed at the hands of the Green Goblin, in one of the most momentous story lines in the character's history--a death which haunts him only second to that of his Uncle Ben). Clearly, beyond the hook of the first cross-over between these universes, what writer Bendis is most interested in is these characters.

At first, May and Gwen--like everyone else--chides this adult Spider-Man for dressing up in the dead Parker's costume (his identity having been revealed to the world at his death). Once Peter unmasks and, predictably, May faints at the knowledge that her beloved nephew (at least a version of him) is alive and in her life again, the three characters have a lengthy conversation, which moves from tentative outreach and regret to gradual acceptance and, eventually, a kind of joy.

It's pure soap opera. But then, that's really what superhero comics are, when they work well. The costumes and powers and fights are part of the genre, of course, but the serial nature of superhero comic book storytelling has relied on the emotional histrionics of soap opera since at least the birth of the so-called Marvel Age of Comics in the 1960s. Writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four began the trend, but Lee and artist Steve Ditko's Amazing Spider-Man arguably perfected the formula. Bendis and Ultimate Spider-Man artist Sara Pichelli show a lot of comfort working in larger-than-life, character-based psychodrama here.

Pichelli's artwork is lean and clean and very much what good super-hero comic art looks like now, with detailed environments and some very nicely exaggerated spider-poses on our eponymous heroes. But if anything, her depiction of facial expressions is a bit restrained--which would be fine in a literary slice-of-life comic, but super-soap gives you a license to kick up the histrionics. Still, that's a small quibble. I prefer my cartooning a bit more expressive and abstracted (see: Ditko and Kirby again), but as contemporary superhero art goes, this is fine stuff. Layouts are varied but always readable, moving the story forward without much in the way of flashy distractions.

I haven't talked much about the plot or the villain here. But really, beyond the fact that Spider-Man goes to the Ultimate Universe*** and meets not only his replacement but also several other heroes, the plot's incidental to the character interactions. If you haven't read many superhero comics--particularly Spider-Man comics--the character stakes might not mean all that much to you. (Again, serial storytelling means that you get to know these characters in depth; a small verbal aside here can feel freighted with import if you've followed the characters beforehand.) But for regular Spider-Man readers, Spider-Men provides a dose of emotion and a bit of wonder. And Peter's mysterious discovery at the very end ensures that there will be more where this story came from, in some other fashion.

*Actually, there are an infinite number of them, but I'm trying to keep this simple...

**Although the Marvel movies often conflate the "original" and "ultimate" versions of these heroes...

***Where everyone talks in a mixed-case typeface, unlike the all-caps "regular" universe. No, there's no particular reason I placed this footnote in this sentence; I just wanted to shoehorn in a font-nerd reference somewhere...

Spider-Men

by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli et al.

Marvel, 2012

ISBN-10: 0785165339

ISBN-13: 978-0785165330

128 pages, $24.99

Review: Tangles, by Sarah Leavitt

This is a very brave book. In Tangles, Sarah Leavitt recounts how her family lived with, dealt with, and was changed by her mother Midge's early-onset Alzheimer's (she began showing symptoms at only 52 years of age). We see an entire family coming to terms with this terrible illness, all in different ways, yet always out of love. It's not a guidebook for how to deal with Alzheimer's (how could it be?), but it is a record of what can be done, what might be done, and (only a couple of times) what perhaps shouldn't be done.

Tangles is simply awash in tiny details, thanks to Leavitt's coping mechanism of recording, in words and pictures, hundreds (thousands?) of observations of--and quotations from--her rapidly changing mother. The book's first-person narration of these tiny details seems to beg the question, Was this person who talked to broccoli still the mother who raised my sisters and I, the woman so engaged in education, the wife so loving and loved? The answer seems to be "Yes and no," of course. There's still a core of the Midge that we're introduced to in the book's preliminary, historical sections, but there's also a new person, one who sings to herself (no longer with her sisters) while being bathed or who writes ungrammatical notes to her daughter.

As a cartoonist, Leavitt draws in an unadorned, highly simple--even simplistic--style. I at first thought the style too simple but eventually recognized it as direct and honest. The book is a chronicle of Leavitt's feelings and impressions as much as it is a record of specific events, and I think a more highly rendered style would only serve to fetishize the events and overpower her impressions.

The book's large, square pages are generally constructed of five tiers of gutterless panels, leading to a dense reading experience; a lot happens on each page, and Sarah, our narrator, is often at a loss in trying to make sense of it all. How can you make sense of that which so often, by definition, is nonsensical? Such as the note from Midge to Leavitt's partner Donimo, which Leavitt reproduces, isolated in the corner of an otherwise blank page: "Love to Donimo / Hope you like Bmdows. / See you soon / family is / The whole / eags to see you / from Midge" (page 69).

The book is peppered with such large, nearly empty pages, falling in between some of the short, dense chapters. They often highlight quotations from Midge, or simple, striking moments: Actions divorced from time and context, much like Midge's perception of the world around her. Because it is so honest, Tangles is sometimes not an easy book to read. But it is a powerful one.

Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me

by Sarah Leavitt

Skyhorse Publishing, 2012

ISBN-10: 1616086394

ISBN-13: 978-1616086398

128 pages, $14.95

With a Blueberry Hill Lager from Samuel Adams.

Review: Moby Dick (Cozy Classics) by Jack & Holman Wang

Boardbook
Adaptation
Literature
Twelve:
     Words
     Photos
Art
Needle-Felt
Clever
Beautiful
Genius
(website)

Cozy Classics: Moby Dick

by Jack & Holman Wang

Simply Read Books, 2012

ISBN-10: 1927018110

ISBN-13: 978-1927018118

24 pages, $9.95

Review: Daredevil by Mark Waid vols 1 & 2, by Waid, Rivera, Martin, Rios, Kano, Pham et al.

I haven't read a new Daredevil comic book in many years, but I've heard enough about them to know that the character had been put through the wringer time and again, and that the title was known for being psychologically dark. Daredevil's secret identity as blind lawyer Matt Murdock had been made public (more than once?); he had become crime lord of New York (I think); he had been replaced by The Black Panther. In other words, typical high-impact superhero soap opera, though even grittier and more morally ambiguous than most.

But when Marvel Comics re-launched the title (yet again!) in 2011, it was announced that the character was headed in a new direction--or, should I say "old," for this new series, under writer Mark Waid, would be a return to the character's "lighthearted acrobat" roots, albeit one that would somehow not wipe away the character's more recent dark developments. Intrigued, I picked up the first two collected volumes from the library. What I found was a solid superhero comic, often visually innovative, which did indeed rekindle the sense of adventure and fun I recall from my own childhood reading of the character.

The gist of writer Waid's approach is that Murdock has survived being put through hell, and his coping mechanism is to treat life as a laugh (mostly--he is still a lawyer and crime-fighter, after all). While his secret identity was made public, the public's reaction to news is fickle, so while some people still believe that Murdock is Daredevil, others are unsure. Matt sometimes wears an "I'm Not Daredevil" shirt to deflect suspicion (though why that wouldn't just reconfirm said suspicion isn't exactly clear). His reputation makes it difficult for any clients he or his partner Foggy Nelson represent to get a fair trial, so he comes up with a new tactic: Their law firm will take on clients whom no one will represent and then coach them how to act as their own counsel, thereby allowing them to go to court without the distraction of all the "Daredevil" innuendos that follow Murdock wherever he goes. It's a narrative conceit that is as clever as it is utterly ridiculous; thankfully there's enough super-action that we don't see too, too many of these cases.

The artwork is in keeping with this lighter narrative approach. Particularly in the case of artist Paolo Rivera, we get characters composed of clean lines (if often a bit stiff in the staging) and innovative, almost bouncy page layouts. There are some new tricks to represent Daredevil's "radar sense" (often red contour lines over black backgrounds, as well as tiny inset panels which draw our attention to small details, highlighting Murdock's own heightened view of the world) as well. Even Rivera's cover to the first collection (which was also the cover to the first new issue) plays with how Daredevil exists in a world without vision: everything in the background environment is composed of words, representing how his brain "molds" objects out of sound. Examples: birds are built out of the words "flap flap flap," a water tower out of "glug gurgle drip drop," exhaust out of "hsssss." And Daredevil holds one of his billy clubs directly in front of his eyes, emphasizing for the reader the character's sightlessness.

The stories also work thematically with the character's attributes, pitting him against adversaries like Klaw (a being composed of solidified sound) and the nearly blind Mole Man--both, I think, for the first time. He also teams up with Spider-Man (a character with whom he has a long history) and hooks up with The Black Cat (a morally grey acrobat herself). And the macguffin of the OmegaDrive (a quantum hard drive containing information on several crime families and syndicates) ensures that Daredevil is never far from a tussle with any one of Marvel's many mafia surrogates.

All in all, these are solid, well-crafted superhero stories, light-hearted (usually) but not light-weight.

Daredevil by Mark Waid vol. 1

by Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera, Marcos Martin et al.

Marvel, 2012

ISBN-10: 0785152385

ISBN-13: 978-0785152385

152 pages, $15.99

Daredevil by Mark Waid vol. 2

by Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera, Emma Rios, Kano, Khoi Pham et al.

Marvel, 2012

ISBN-10: 0785152407

ISBN-13: 978-0785152408

136 pages, $15.99

Review: The Hypo - The Melancholic Young Lincoln, by Noah Van Sciver

We're so used to seeing Lincoln portrayed as a magisterial president, that we (or at least I) have trouble thinking about him as a person in development, as a youth struggling, as all youth must, to discover who he is. In The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln, Noah Van Sciver gives us a fine portrait of that Lincoln-in-process by focusing on his private, internal struggles. "The Hypo" (Lincoln's term for his sometimes crippling depression) debilitates him, causing doubt and fear to sometimes rule his life. It's a portrait that any sufferer of depression will recognize.

Van Sciver's drawing is assured and highly detailed (backgrounds and environments are often rendered quite specifically, really grounding the story in its time and place), while remaining a bit "cartoony" - his is an engaging, highly readable style. My one complaint, visually, is that early on, Lincoln and his randy roommate, Joshua Speed, look so much alike that sometimes in conversation I became confused as to who was who.

Narratively, you can't help but empathize with young Lincoln in his struggles - his love life is a shambles, for example, although the book's happy ending reveals that he eventually (if perhaps only temporarily) overcame some of "The Hypo."

I understand the desire to focus on the details of Lincoln's personal life over those of his his professional career, but unfortunately this strategy at times makes for some confusing moments. References that other characters make in passing to Lincoln's growing political influence seem to come out of nowhere. I mean, of course we all know that Abraham Lincoln had a political career, but the Lincoln of The Hypo doesn't quite seem capable of sustaining one. We get a few small glimpses, but they're nowhere nearly as finely developed as are the more intimate moments in the young man's life. I would have appreciated a bit of a broader focus on Lincoln's life and work over the course of The Hypo - I can only imagine that in Van Sciver's hands, Lincoln's professional struggles would become as fascinating as his personal ones surely are here.

The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln

by Noah Van Sciver

Fantagraphics, 2012

ISBN-10: 1606996193

ISBN-13: 978-1606996195

192 pages, $24.99

Review: Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm, by Philip Pullman

I've loved the fairy tales as collected by the Brothers Grimm for many, many years, and I found Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy to be one of the best-written fantasy series I've ever read (for younger readers or no), so I was predisposed to enjoy his Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version. I was not disappointed. Pullman begins by providing a short but informative introduction to the book, placing the tales into context for readers unfamiliar with the Grimm brothers' nationalistic project from two hundred years ago. He then offers his new translations of fifty of the Grimms' stories, each followed by a brief afterword explaining that tale's history and analogues as well as what, if any, changes he made to the source material at his disposal.

I was surprised at how straightforward his versions of the tales themselves are; there is little trace of his authorial voice here. However, Pullman is a fan of storytelling, not just of telling stories, and his respect for the tradition behind the tales accounts for his minimal presence here. In some of his afterwords he breaks free a bit and talks about how one might have "improved" a tale in this way or that in a literary sense, but how that generally wouldn't be appropriate because, with rare exceptions, none of these tales were very "literary" to begin with. He does make some changes or add material occasionally to a few of the tales, but these are generally created by importing elements from another, analogous version of the tale, a process well in keeping with tradition.

In fact, as Pullman makes clear to readers unfamiliar with the tales' history, the Grimms themselves often changed the tales quite a bit from the versions received from their sources. In addition, they modified tales from edition to edition of their books, usually removing the more disturbing elements to make them more child-friendly as the years passed.

My only complaint with this book? I wish Pullman's afterwords were longer. I realize that the tales themselves are meant to be the main draw here, but I love reading Pullman's thoughts on the craft of storytelling.

For readers who only know their fairy tales from Disney or other modern popularizers, many of the stories here will be shocking in their brutality or darkness. But make no mistake; fairy- and folktales have always acknowledged the fact that life is harsh. Philip Pullman's new edition of the Grimm tales pays tribute to this fact in a very readable and enjoyable collection.

Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version

by Philip Pullman

Viking, 2012

ISBN-10: 067002497X

ISBN-13: 978-0670024971

406 pages, $27.95

Review: Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows, by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams

It's an unfortunate if oft-repeated scenario: An artist goes unrecognized in his or her lifetime, only to have their work discovered and fêted too late for acclaim or riches. Such is the story of Vivian Maier, who spent her formative years in France, then worked as a nanny for a series of families in the United States, mostly in the Chicago area (for a brief stint, she even worked for Phil Donahue). She always carried a camera, but she never allowed anyone to see her photographs, and by all accounts she lived an extremely private life. So, her genius was never known while she lived. Her work was only discovered when her belongings were auctioned off, and someone who won a container full of undeveloped film examined the contents and discovered Art.

I first learned of her work thanks to a Facebook friend posting a link to the trailer for an upcoming documentary about Maier's life and work. I'm so glad that I took the 2-1/2 minutes to watch that video:


Maier's life story is intriguing, yes, full of secrets and mysteries. But her photographs are magical in their honesty and beauty. Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams provides a wonderful introduction to the artist and her art. After a brief biographical introduction, the bulk of the book is given over to chapters highlighting different aspects of her photography, beginning with snapshots from France and then delving into her chronicles of America in the 1950s and 1960s. (She continued photographing her surroundings well into the 1990s, apparently, and in color, too; but this book focuses on her '50s and '60s black-and-white work.)

She was not afraid to visit, regularly, the toughest, most run-down areas of Chicago, her young charges in tow, to photograph anyone she felt worthy of capturing. The humanity and dignity of her subjects, even those skid-row denizens whom most people might cross the street to avoid, come across vividly in her portraits. Some of these photos seem somewhat posed or at least contemplated, while others were obviously taken on the sly.

Amazingly, Maier almost never took multiple shots of the same subject (apart from the children in her care, and a series of pensive self-portraits, sometimes just of her own shadow): One carefully considered image was enough for her. And the results are stunning. The year 1968 was particularly pivotal for America, and indeed for Maier; there's a whole chapter devoted to her chronicles of that tumultuous time, with special attention paid to the life and death of Robert F. Kennedy. While I loved all of the images in the book, my favorites are the portraits in the chapter "Downtown" (pp. 206-241). Here are young people and old people; the rich, the poor, and the once-rich; characters all. These are only single portraits, but I feel as if I can see into these people's souls; the good and the sad are revealed in equal measure.

For all of the hundreds of images in this book, I realize that this collection only scratches the surface; I look forward to finding more of them to marvel at.

Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows

by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams

CityFiles Press, 2012

ISBN-10: 0978545095

ISBN-13: 978-0978545093

288 pages, $60.00

Review: 100 DIAGRAMS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, by Scott Christianson

Scott Christianson's 100 Diagrams That Changed the World: From the Earliest Cave Paintings to the Innovation of the iPod will be a good book to spur curiosity: it's wide-ranging, both in historical focus (as the subtitle makes plain) and in terms of the types of diagrams it covers, from scientific discoveries (DNA Double Helix by James Watson, Francis Crick, and Odile Crick, 1953 [pages 190-191]) to information display techniques (Exploded-View Diagram, by Mariano Taccola, c. 1450 [pp. 70-71]) to theater design (The Castle of Perseverance, c. 1405-1425 [pp. 68-69]).

However, I'm sure that the title is entirely accurate. Did The Voynich Manuscript (c. 1404-1438, pp. 66-67), an illuminated manuscript written in a still-undecipherable code or invented language, really "change the world"? Did Leonardo da Vinci's unrealized plans for Helicopter and Flying Machine (c. 1493-1505, pp. 76-77)? They're fascinating documents, undoubtedly; but they don't really rise to the level of "world-changing," I don't think. 100 Diagrams and Concepts that are Really Quite Interesting would be a more appropriate title, but it's not as marketable.

For a book that celebrates the importance of visual representations, the book's own design is troubling. Each diagram is given its own two-page spread: One page for the diagram (and caption, although that caption is sometimes on the facing page), and one page for text. So far so good, but: Each text page begins with the title of the diagram, its author (if known), a one-sentence "highlight summary" of the object and its importance, and the date of the diagram; the paper is colored light grey rather than white. The date, in the upper corner of the page, and the highlight summary are printed in a grey that's only slightly darker than the background color of the page. The date is in a very large typeface, but the highlight summary, at perhaps 7-point size, is very hard to read without strong light (or, perhaps, a loupe). What's worse, the highlight summary usually repeats information in the longer essay on the page, which quite often is repeated yet again in the image caption. Thus, you often read the same information three times on the same two-page spread. No one could expect a lot of depth in a book like this - with only a few hundred words per essay, the book serves as an "intellectual sampler," encouraging further research - so repeating content so often in such a small space really seems like a misuse of precious informational real estate.

Still, the book reminded me of a lot of things I have always meant to read more about, and it introduced me to things I simply hadn't considered before (I had never thought about the importance of "Graded Sewing Patterns" [pp. 144-145] before, but Ebeneezer Butterick's 1863 invention made it easier for people [usually women] to make fashionable clothing for their families - no small feat!). As a pupu platter of interesting concepts, this book makes for a few diverting afternoons, and it just might encourage you to dig further and learn more about some of these fascinating - if not always world-changing - drawings.

100 Diagrams That Changed the World:

From the Earliest Cave Paintings to the Innovation of the iPod

by Scott Christianson

Plume, 2012

ISBN-10: 0452298776

ISBN-13: 978-0452298774

224 pages, $25.00

Review: A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Hope Larson and Madeleine L'Engle

My fifth grade teacher, Miss Wocher, read Madeline L'Engle's classic science-fiction children's novel A Wrinkle in Time to our class, one chapter each Friday afternoon. After a few weeks, I bought my own copy so that I could read along with her. It quickly became one of my favorite books; I was enchanted with its fantastic premise (a group of children travel through time and space, guided by three mysterious women, to rescue their father), its quirky characters, and L'Engle's overall way with words. (Although I was devastated when I looked up tesseract in my dictionary only to conclude that, apparently, she had made it up!) I never forgot the book, and, when I taught Children's Literature courses many years later, AWiT was always on my syllabus.

So I approached Hope Larson's adaptation, A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel, with no little trepidation, even though I had liked earlier work of Larson's that I had seen. Could this adaptation possibly compare to my experience with the original? (Even though, as I've written about before, hoping for absolute fidelity to an original work in an adaptation is a sucker's game.) However, my fears were for naught. Larson actually achieves a remarkable amount of fidelity to L'Engle's original novel, and the publisher (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is to be commended for allowing Larson to produce a truly substantial adaptation: At just shy of 400 pages long(!), this book has the room few other adaptations are afforded to really slow down the storytelling and include the smaller, character-enhancing moments that almost always get sacrificed in adaptations for the sake of "just getting the plot across," usually as economically (i.e., briefly) as possible.

We get to see lead character Meg Murray's awkwardness, her hesitancy, her headstrong nature, and her bravery in full measure, and the other characters are also allowed to develop and to shine. For example, during the first and most difficult "tesser" (a sort of space/time dimensional warp), Meg's disconcerting reaction to the process is given about seven full pages to play out, really allowing the reader to experience her disorientation almost as fully as one does in reading the novel itself. If you haven't read many comics adaptations, you cannot imagine how refreshing this luxury of space is. Even most film adaptations of literary works must cut out more detail and texture than Larson needed to here.

The artwork, in black and white with blue tones, manages to be both straightforward and carefully delineated in equal measure. Larson's inkwork is lush and bold, appealingly simple and, yes, cute, but without ever seeming too cloyingly cartoonish. Larson is equally adept at depicting subtle character emotions and otherworldly dimensional realms. Some readers might find the more alien landscapes a bit thinly detailed in places, but I think this is very much in keeping with L'Engle's original book, which excels at creating feeling and mood over intricate technical descriptions. At these books' heart is the emotional arcs of the characters - especially that of Meg, a character with whom I identified a lot as a child - and not thick science-fiction detail.

Is reading the graphic novel the same experience as reading L'Engle's original? Of course not - but then, it's not meant to be. The original novel is still there to thrill and delight young readers. But Hope Larson's A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel is a more-than-worthy companion to L'Engle's classic book. It's a very assured and appealing work in its own right, one which offers readers a new and richly imagined version of a tale which has already endured for more than fifty years.

Madeleine L'Engle's

A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel

adapted and illustrated by Hope Larson

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012

ISBN-10: 0374386153

ISBN-13: 978-0374386153

392 pages, $19.99

Review: X'ed Out and The Hive, by Charles Burns

I first learned of Charles Burns' work in the pages of the anthology RAW, and I've been seeking out his work wherever I could find it ever since. I was curious to see what would follow his magnum opus Black Hole (collected in 2008), as that book seemed to sum up the "Teen love/Horror" themes he'd been exploring for some time.

X'ed Out (2010) and The Hive (2012) are the first two parts of a new trilogy. Love and horror are still there, but they're both... even weirder than they were before. (Those of you already familiar with Burns' work will realize how much weight the word "weirder" carries in this context.) Doug, a young performance-poet ("Hi, I'm Nitwit, also known as Johnny 23") with an ailing father, falls in love with a Patti Smith-loving photographer who forces him to explore some of his family secrets. "Meanwhile" (in some way) in an alien landscape, a simplified version of Doug finds work caring for "future queens" of a hive (even procuring strange romance comic books for one of the women) while constantly being berated by his alien co-workers; his name in this world almost seems to be "Asshole," given the number of times he's called that. His one friend in this world, a homunculus-like grifter, is on his side but also seems untrustworthy. Oh, and there's body-horror everywhere.

It had been about year in between my reading of X'ed Out and The Hive; once I read The Hive, I had to go back and re-read them both in order to try and understand what's going on. I'm not sure I succeeded. Burns' storytelling here takes "non-linearity" to new heights; there are visual and verbal echoes between the two worlds on a number of levels, but two-thirds of the way through this tale, things have yet to come together. That's to be expected in a work like this, but it's still a frustrating experience to be in the middle of. Once the third volume comes out it will be easier (I hope!) to come to terms with the narrative.

Visually, the books are stunning. Burns has occasionally let his love for Hergé's Tintin shine through in his publication designs, but here their influence of informs every inch, from the European album format to the flat colors (amazing to see this much color work from Burns, after decades of mostly black-and-white work) to "alien" Doug's quiff of hair to the endpapers featuring scenes from the books. 

I always thought that black and white perfectly suited Burns' work, so I'm surprised at how much the color really adds to the storytelling here: some scenes play out in heavily-tinted monochrome; the pages of the alien romance comic books pulse with odd printing techniques; and there's a sublime juxtaposition of a green, buggish alien face scowling over a white dress shirt, with a loose necktie flailing in the breeze. What would normally be the half-title page in these books becomes an eighteen-panel page, with panels of two colors in different patterns from book one to book two. I can't help but expect that these patterns will ultimately be revealed to be meaningful once book three, Sugar Skull, is published (this year, I hope).

These books aren't for everyone, perhaps, but I can't wait for Sugar Skull - its answers and, I expect, its further mysteries. 

X'ed Out

by Charles Burns

Pantheon, 2010

ISBN-10: 0307379132

ISBN-13: 978-0307379139

56 pages, $19.95

The Hive

by Charles Burns

Pantheon, 2012

ISBN-10: 0307907880

ISBN-13: 978-0307907882

56 pages, $21.95

Review: The Shark King, by R. Kikuo Johnson

R. Kikuo Johnson's The Shark King is another wonderful comic for younger readers from TOON Books. I'm not sure if this tale is an actual myth or just feels like one, to its credit. Set in old Hawaii, the story concerns a woman who falls in love with and marries a mysterious man, and their child Nanaue who, born with special abilities, goes on adventures and meets his destiny. The cape you can see him wearing on the cover helps conceal the boy's strange and somewhat goofy birthright.

Johnson's art style is deceptively simple in its directness - clean and clear, with a muted palette almost out of the 1950s, the drawings often inhabit relatively complex page designs. Readers encounter lots of angular or jumbled panels along with more fairly standard griddings, giving the pages a real life and kinetic energy. (I'm reminded at times of Stephen R. Bissette's page designs in comics such as Swamp Thing and Tyrant - and coming from me, this is high praise indeed.)

The Shark King is what TOON Books calls a "Level Three" book ("Chapter-book comics for advanced beginners [...] Reader needs to make connections and speculate"), and Johnson's work certainly fits this bill. Parts of the tale are told via suggestion rather than statement, encouraging the child reader to ask questions, to guess what has happened or will happen next. This isn't lazy storytelling; it's exactly the opposite. Johnson knows what to emphasize and what to allude to, in order to engage young readers' imaginations. TOON Books expects that kids will be reading these books with their parents, and a story like this will certainly encourage the active engagement of both older and younger readers that can lead to thoughtful reflection and - that grail of grails - re-reading.

I think kids will really enjoy this book, for its artwork, for its imaginative and evocative setting, and for the impish pluck of young Nanaue. Plus, it will give kids yet another reason to tie a towel around their neck like a cape...

The Shark King

by R. Kikuo Johnson

TOON Books, 2012

ISBN-10: 1935179160

ISBN-13: 978-1935179160

40 pages, $12.95

Review: Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, by Mary M. & Bryan Talbot

Dotter of Her Father's Eyes is a book unlike any other I've read, a combined graphic biography (of Lucia Joyce, daughter of James Joyce) and autobiography (of the graphic novel's writer, Mary M. Talbot, daughter of Joyce scholar James S. Atherton and a respected academic in her own right). Talbot had a pretty big "in" in terms of an artist for her first graphic novel, seeing as her husband is the legendary Bryan Talbot, the award-winning creator of many comics and graphic novels, from the groundbreaking The Adventures of Luther Arkwright to heartbreaking The Tale of One Bad Rat to the genre-busting Alice in Sunderland and more.

Given that I've long been a fan of Bryan Talbot's work and studied (and enjoyed!) a fair bit of Joyce in my undergraduate and graduate student days, I was prepared to love this book. Sadly, I only liked it well enough - usually that's fine, but I had such high hopes, given its subject matter and pedigree. Mary is a fine writer, without question, and Bryan's artwork is top-notch as ever (although this is not the bravura performance he gave in Sunderland), but I just didn't feel that these two stories really needed to be told together, or that they benefited much from their joining. It's true that there are obvious linkages between the two (Joyce, most obviously, plus enigmatic fathers), but those links don't really add up to much in the telling, apart from those basic means of comparison.

Lucia's story is heartbreaking, to be sure. A talented dancer, she found her life choices always constrained and compromised by her parents' constant moving from one country to another, even after Lucia reached adulthood. Her eventual committal to a mental institution in 1932 (her first of what became many stays) is as terrible as it is incomprehensible: After one of many rows, Lucia throws a chair at her mother, and "Her brother made a snap decision. He had her committed" (82). We're not given any hint previously that anyone in her family thought she had mental issue: She fights with her parents and chafes at their control, yes, but who doesn't, really? In this telling, this "snap decision" signals the end of Lucia's active life - the book ends less than ten pages later. It's a tragedy, without question, but an incomprehensible one here. Surely there has to be more to the story than a simple "snap decision" by her brother.

Mary's own story, growing up the only daughter in a postwar British household, is engaging, if sad: Eager to please but also intelligent and headstrong, Mary constantly runs afoul of her father and his snap-temper. Perhaps the book's most powerful and damning observation appears on page 30: "Claims about men being unable to express emotion irritate me to no end. My father did anger very well." The love story between Mary and Bryan charms though suggestion; there's enough tensions here to sustain a much longer, more detailed narrative.

Visually, the book is divided into three portions: The present-day frame story, in clearly inked full color panels; Lucia's story, in borderless blue-grey; and Mary's story, borderless and primarily in sepia. The borderless panels throughout both help to emphasize the flashback nature of the narrative and allow for some beautifully blended page layouts. In Mary's story, the artwork is the least polished, with preliminary pencil lines and paste-up markings visible. I'm guessing this is somehow to make that section feel more "authentic," perhaps, as it is the author's own memories? I don't know - it doesn't look incomplete, exactly, but it is rougher... maybe to mirror Mary's own pain at "becoming" an adult?

The pages also show evidence that it was a couple who created the book. There are several places where Mary inserts a footnote about something that Bryan got "wrong" (the frilly apron that her mother never would have worn, the favorite children's book of Bryan's that he "snuck " into a montage of her favorite children's books), and a place or two where we see "dueling footnotes" from both author and artist. It's a cute personal touch, but it creates a bit of tension when it comes to how the book presents history: If there are factual errors (such as they are) in the Mary sections, might the same be true in the Lucia sections? If the book were Mary's (and, to a lesser extent, Bryan's) story alone, these moments would seem utterly good-natured and fun; but they introduce questions of authenticity that seem strange in a book that's based as much on research as it is on memory.

Still and all, I'm glad I read Dotter of Her Father's Eyes. It's an enjoyable if at times painful set of true tales, of interest to readers of biography and history and literature. I imagine that, seeing as how it was awarded the Costa prize for biography, it will serve to introduce non-comics readers to the graphic novel format, which is a good thing, and I'm looking forward to what both Mary and Bryan have coming next.

 Dotter of Her Father's Eyes

by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot

Dark Horse Books, 2012

ISBN-10: 1595828508

ISBN-13: 978-1595828507

94 pages, $14.99

Review: After the Fall, by Victoria Roberts

If you're even a casual reader of The New Yorker, you're familiar with the cartoons of Victoria Roberts: They usually feature a prominently-beschnozzed couple quipping about some facet of modern urban life. They're almost the prototypical New Yorker cartoons, except that they skew towards the absurd juuuuuust a bit in a way that no one else's manage to do. I was lucky enough to get to meet Roberts at the Ohio State University Festival of Cartoon Art in 1998, where she was one of the guests. As you might expect, she was as funny and engaging in person as she is in print, and personable, to boot.

So I was excited when I learned that she had recently published an illustrated novel, After the Fall. It's the tale of a quirky Manhattan family (the father's an inventor, the mother's a socialite from Buenos Ares, and the children are precocious) who lose their penthouse and are forced to live in Central Park, cut off from (most of) their creature comforts and needing to survive by wits and charity.

I generally enjoyed the story, although it is very slight. This is a small book, and there are at least one or two illustrations on all but maybe three pages. If you removed the illustrations, the remaining text would make for a fairly short story, so if you're looking forward to luxuriating in a novel's prose, this is not the book for you. While Roberts definitely can turn a phrase with élan, the book's prose is nonetheless somewhat too sketchy for my taste. It reads like something between an urban folktale and a story pitch, with the latter dominating quite a bit. There are great small bits throughout, but I found myself wishing there were more meat on these narrative bones.

The black and white cartoon image are charming and playful, as you'd expect from Roberts' New Yorker work and as the tale demands. While they sometimes act as straightforward illustrations, simply replicating a scene or idea that the text has already described, there are plenty of instances where the images expand on the text in interesting ways. For example, when the narration by Alex (the son) states that "It was more disconcerting than anything else to have our parents get along so well" (82), the facing-page illustration shows Mother and Pops engaged in a game of Twister (with a squirrel holding up the spinner board); the parents are fully clothed (Mother in her turtleneck and slacks, Pops in his bathrobe and matching pajamas), but the pose manages to be simultaneously clearly joyful and also slightly suggestive, making the children's discomfort at their parents' happiness understandable.

Such text/image richness does help to flesh out the story beyond the somewhat bare-bones prose, but it isn't done consistently or dynamically enough to really develop the narrative in ways that justify calling the book a "novel." It's an whimsically entertaining, illustrated short story. Perhaps that is enough.

And, a side note to whoever created After the Fall's Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Just because a book contains cartoon images, that does not make it a "graphic novel." This is yet another example of why I dislike the term "graphic novel": Its over- and misuse as a marketing term has rendered it almost utterly meaningless. After the Fall is no more a graphic novel than are the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books - and those books, at least, sometimes contain brief comics narratives (panel-to-panel storytelling, word balloons). Have we really reached a point where publishers are more comfortable calling an illustrated book for adults a "graphic novel" than they are calling it a "story with pictures"? If so, that is a sorry state of affairs.

After the Fall: A Novel

by Victoria Roberts

W. W. Norton & Company, 2012

ISBN-10: 0393073556

ISBN-13: 978-0393073553

188 pages, $24.95

Review: Everything Goes: On Land & In the Air, by Brian Biggs

The first work I saw by Brian Biggs was his poetic short graphic novel Frederick & Eloise, published by Fantagraphics in 1993, followed by the lovely Dear Julia, (1995-1997, 2000). Since that time, he's illustrated many delightful children's books written by various authors (I particularly like the Little Golden Book I'm a T. Rex!). I've been lucky enough to get to know Brian a bit, and I was excited when I learned, a couple of years ago, that he had landed a contract for his own series of picturebooks that he would not only draw but also write.

Even after seeing some preliminary sketches and such, though, I wasn't prepared for just how wonderful his series "Everything Goes" would turn out to be. These are large, beautiful looking books, overstuffed with fun, visual details that will keep young children busy, engaged, and entertained for quite some time.

Narratively, the books are extremely simple. In On Land, young Henry and his father take a car trip to the train station to pick up his mother and bring her home. In In the Air, Henry and his parents go to the airport, get on an airplane, and take off. Simple, right? But these books are all about the details - and they feature details in abundance. Along the way in On Land, Henry's father tells the young boy all about the different types of vehicles that the encounter on their car ride: not just automobiles and trucks, but also buses, RVs, motorcycles, bicycles, trains, and more. The presentation alternates between densely packed double-page spreads filled with vehicles and people, with labels and dialogue balloons pointing out various bits of information, and two-page cut-away views of the various vehicle types, showing and naming the various parts (engines, tires, gas tanks, gear shifts, seats - everything you can think of, as well as some things that you wouldn't, like the motorcyclist's "nice socks"). In the Air finds Henry similarly learning all about air travel from his Mom and Dad, from airplanes to helicopters to balloons and more.

But these aren't just dryly informative texts. The dialogue is often funny, especially that of the dozens (hundreds?) of background characters we encounter. Kids can have fun following the mini-stories of some of the characters who appear on multiple pages, like the man whose care battery dies, or the woman who keeps asking about the opposite of what she's doing, or the TSA agent who wonders why there's a single boot on the conveyor belt (hint: that pirate in the metal detector has a wooden leg!). Plus, there are games in each book: Find the numbers from 1-100 scattered throughout the pages! Spot all the birds wearing hats! Discover the things that don't belong! Even I had a blast examining the pages closely, and I'm a bit older than the "ages 4 and up" target audience.

It doesn't hurt - in fact, it helps tremendously - that Biggs' artwork is incredibly appealing. While his earlier comics work featured often delicate, fragile characters in carefully rendered environments, his picturebook style has become bolder, brighter, and perhaps more confident, boasting thick outlines, quirky colors, and slightly bulbous designs. Everything is cute without being "cutesy." But this style still manages to serve the more technical aspects of the books quite well: Even though the various vehicles have been "cartooned" instead of rendered photo-realistically, you still get lots of good information about how things work. There will be a time and place for older kids who need to see every single nut and bolt; but young readers will appreciate - and learn a lot from - Biggs' clear, direct illustrations.

There are also Everything Goes board books (by Brian) and "I Can Read!" books (by another writer and artist "in the style of Brian Biggs") available, too. I haven't had a chance to see any of them yet, but I think it's great that the series is getting a good push from the publisher. I know that children in the library where I work really enjoy spending time with these books, and I bet the kids you know will, too.

Everything Goes: On Land

by Brian Biggs

Balzer + Bray, 2011

ISBN-10: 0061958093

ISBN-13: 978-0061958090

56 pages, $14.99

Everything Goes: In the Air

by Brian Biggs

Balzer + Bray, 2012

ISBN-10: 0061958107

ISBN-13: 978-0061958106

56 pages, $14.99

Review: The Mighty Avengers - An Origin Story, by Thomas and Olliffe

The Mighty Avengers: An Origin Story is a picturebook re-telling of the story contained in the comic book Avengers #1 (September 1963), by Stan Lee (writer) and Jack Kirby (artist). But even though this book follows that particular comic book very, very closely, you won't see Stan or Jack's names anywhere in the book; instead, on the title page we simply see a credit which reads "Based on the Marvel comic book series The Mighty Avengers." It's corporate boilerplate (Marvel is owned by Disney), which sadly characterizes the book as a whole.

While I'm sure that writer Rich Thomas did his best, the text reads like it had committee fingers all over it. The book is suggested for ages seven and up, but I've seen books aimed at younger readers that had more sophisticated sentences than we find here. The only character who actually demonstrates any real character traits at all is Loki, the villain (and, to a much lesser extent, the Hulk); the rest of the heroes (Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man, and Wasp) are all interchangeable apart from their powers. The original comic book story from 1963 is hokey and simplistic, sure, but across its twenty-two pages we experience actual characterization along with the action. (Plus, we got the bizarre image of the Hulk hiding out with a circus and wearing clown makeup! Here, he just wears a shroud.)

I get the impression that there was a lot of editorial re-jiggering in putting the book together, as some pieces seem like they're out of order, or just not very well explained. A good example is Bifrost, the rainbow bridge that connects Asgard, the home of the Norse gods like Thor and Loki, to the Earth. The first time the word "Bifrost" is used, it isn't explained at all: "Thor raced over the Bifrost as fast as he could" read the only words on the page, as we see a large image of Thor flying through space. There's a rainbow below and to his side, but unless you already know what "Bifrost" is, you won't have any clue what that word might mean. Especially since this is a book for young readers, you'd expect there to be some context to explain this unfamiliar term when it's introduced. How hard would it have been to add "the rainbow bridge" to that sentence? Six pages later, we read "He found him at the Bifrost, which linked Asgard to other realms." Why wasn't this description, or one like it, used the first time the word was introduced? That's just basic writing gone wrong.

The art, by Pat Olliffe "and Hi-Fi Design" (who, I expect, digitally painted over Olliffe's pencils), is a bit stiff in places, but is also colorful and would probably keep young readers' attention. Some pages contain one large image, while other contain several smaller ones - not exactly laid out as comic book panels, but it's certainly comics-esque. I wonder how many committee meetings there were to determine which characters would appear their 60s costumes (Thor, Hulk, Ant-Man, Loki - even though the story doesn't take place in the 1960s in this version) and who would wear newer ones (Iron Man, Wasp). The Wasp has never worn any one costume for very long, so it's somewhat less of an issue, perhaps, but the choice of the red-and-silver Iron Man costume is odd, as that's not a design that was used for very long in the comics at all, nor has it been used in the films (which is arguably where most people will know the character from these days). It also doesn't match the book on Iron Man in this very series.

Speaking of the Marvel films, I find it odd - but somehow comforting - that this book uses the actual, original Avengers team from the comic book instead of the movie version of the team. However, we do get one double-page spread of various heroes which includes, along with these Avengers, Hawkeye and the Black Widow. No Captain America, oddly enough, but we do also get the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Hercules.

I appreciate the nostalgia factor in hearkening back to Avengers #1, but if you're going to use that story as a springboard to introduce these characters to a new generation of readers, I think that paying more attention to the characterization that made these characters famous in the first place would be a good idea - as would more careful attention to detail overall.

The Mighty Avengers: An Origin Story

Based on the Marvel comic book series The Mighty Avengers

Adapted by Rich Thomas

Interior Illustrated by Pat Olliffe and Hi-Fi Design

Marvel Press, 2012

ISBN-10: 142314841X

ISBN-13: 978-1423148418

48 pages, $8.99

Review: The Secret of the Stone Frog, by David Nytra

David Nytra (a cartoonist I'd not heard of before) has the honor of creating the first "graphic novel" to be published by TOON Books, those purveyors of fine, hardcover comics for kids, edited by Françoise Mouly. TOON has made a solid choice. The Secret of the Stone Frog is a beautiful, beautiful book, a fantasy adventure starring a sister and brother who find themselves lost in a confusing, magical world. Sound familiar? Of course; it's the stuff of so much great children's literature. And while Nytra clearly knows his fantasy tropes and tellers, his tale is nevertheless fresh and inventive.

Older readers will recognize nods to John Tenniel's illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (see especially the large-headed woman who keeps giant bees as pets) and to Winsor McCay's seminal comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland (see especially the art nouveau-inspired character design and young Alan's Nemo-esque nightshirt) and many other fantasy favorites. Younger readers will lose themselves in exploring every square inch of the book's hyper-detailed black and white pages, from the ornate corner designs to the amazingly detailed landscapes and architecture. (See the sample pages at the TOON Books website for some examples.)

On their travels the siblings also encounter talking, dandified lions; giant rabbits; deep-sea subway riders; a boistrous huckster; and other equally bizarre characters. But the progression from one to the next follows a dream-like logic that takes you safely (if a bit disorientingly) across the book's eighty pages. And while our heroes eventually find their way home, it's as beautiful as any other place we've just encountered on our readerly journey.

If I have one complaint, though, it's that the book uses typeset text instead of more elegant and expressive hand lettering (or even, as I think their other books do, a typeface made to mimic hand lettering). Nytra's word balloons take non-standard shapes, looking at times to have been rendered almost with french curves; to see them filled with serif text is to experience an aesthetic jolt. Emphasized words are printed in a blocky sans serif typeface, further confusing the visual balance of the page. This is of course a small matter that might very well be of no concern to anyone but me, I realize; still, I found it a jarring misstep in what is otherwise a truly lovely overall package.

I definitely look forward to more work by David Nytra, and to more novel-length books from TOON. I've been a fan of their shorter books of comics from the start, and The Secret of the Stone Frog is a worthy addition to -- and expansion of -- their growing library of classics.

The Secret of the Stone Frog

A TOON Graphic Novel by David Nytra

TOON Books, 2012

ISBN-10: 1935179187

ISBN-13: 978-1935179184

80 pages, $14.95

Review: Goliath, by Tom Gauld

Tom Gauld's Goliath retells the biblical tale of "David and Goliath," as originally recounted in 1 Samuel 17, except that this version is told from the giant's point of view. And a very reluctant giant he is; hardly a warrior ("I mainly do admin"), Goliath of Gath is thrust into his position as the Philistines's representative champion though the machinations of a scheming captain. His confusion is palpable, and understandable, but -- being a good soldier -- he does as he's told, finding a sort of peace in his new lot until the inevitable end. As you'd expect from the title, it's Goliath who has our sympathies in this version of the tale: The Giant as Everyman.

Gauld is a crackerjack cartoonist, and his somewhat geometric art style lends a bit of ancientness and grandeur to his telling, even as his dialogue is often mundane and just-this-side-of-sarcastically humorous. His choice to include biblical narration at various points throughout the tale reminds us that this is an old story, yet it also serves as a foil to his own chosen perspective on events, creating ironic high/low tonal distinctions. He also does amazing things with text, such as chopping off word balloons in unexpected fashions to create mood or utilizing a bizarre "typeface" for an Israelite's speech to highlight the fact that Goliath can't understand a word the other man is saying.

The book is a joy to read, but -- because Gauld is such a master of pacing and the use of silent panels -- it also seemed to be over far too quickly. I find myself in the odd position of wishing that this tale were the anchor story in an anthology of other work by Gauld; Goliath is more of an excellently realized "graphic short story" than a "graphic novel." I know that he has another book in the works, a collection of his Guardian strips, and I'm very much looking forward to that. (You can get a preview of those strips in his excellent Tumblr site, You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack.) I'm also looking forward to seeing him apply his considerable cartooning chops to a really long-form narrative in the future.

Goliath

by Tom Gauld

Drawn and Quarterly, 2012

ISBN-10: 1770460659

ISBN-13: 978-1770460652

96 pages, $19.95

Review: Bruce, by Peter Ames Carlin

Bruce Springsteen is another of my musical heroes. But I don't keep up on the latest music news like I used to, so I wasn't aware that there was a new book about him in the works until I saw a copy of it in a bookstore a few weeks ago. I quickly requested a copy from the library, and once it arrived I dove right in.

Peter Ames Carlin's biography Bruce is advertised on its dust jacket flap as "the first in twenty-five years to be written with the cooperation of Bruce Springsteen himself." That cooperation is apparent throughout: The book can boast original interviews with not just Springsteen himself, but also most of his family; current and former (and, sadly, deceased) members of not only The E Street Band but of pretty much every band Bruce has ever been a part of; management teams; crew members; journalists; childhood and family friends; and more.

However, as Carlin notes in the Acknowledgments section,

This was never an 'authorized' book in the technical sense. (I had no contractual relationship with Bruce, Thrill Hill Productions, or Jon Landau Management; they had no control over what I would eventually write.)

It took until page 472 for him to confirm my suspicions that the book might not be authorized. Beyond the fact that the cover would have proudly announced that fact if it had been, there was simply too much evidence throughout that seemed out of place in an official biography, too many anecdotes where Springsteen, frankly, comes off poorly. These aren't tales of drunken or drug-fueled binges: It seems that Bruce pretty much never did drugs, and his drinking, when it was there, never rose to the level of abuse, or even of public drunkenness. (Quite a change from almost every other rock star biography!) Rather, the book tells tales of Bruce's immaturity (which seemed to last quite a long time, well into adulthood), his anger, and his tendency to manipulate, particularly lovers and bandmates.

Indeed, the line between "lovers and bandmates" is a fuzzy one. Not just in the obvious example of Patti Scialfa, who joined the E Street Band in 1984 for the "Born in the U.S.A." tour (after having first auditioned for one of Bruce's bands back in 1971!) and who later became Bruce's second wife and mother of their three children, but in the example of nearly everyone who's ever played in a band with him. Many of their interviews reveal a similar mixture of fierce dedication to, admiration for, and frustration with Bruce the man (though pretty much everyone can't praise his musicianship and dedication to his craft enough). These relationships are complicated. There is a deep an abiding love between them all, but Bruce also is clearly their employer (their "boss"), as he has occasionally been known to make clear - as when once, on the "Darkness" tour, he discovered two of his band members doing cocaine: he exploded and threaten to fire anyone who would do that again. "'I could replace any of those guys in twenty-four hours.' The he thought for a moment. 'Except for Clarence [Clemons]. Replacing Clarence would take some time'" (262).

And Clemons himself makes a similar point, speaking about the time when Springsteen took a break from / broke up the E Street Band after the "Tunnel of Love" tour:

'It's like being married to someone. You have certain expectations of someone because you love them so much. But the these things happen, and he probably doesn't even notice. So I felt like I put all this out for the situation and didn't get much back.' (433)

Bruce's attitude toward his girlfriends could be equally capricious. As Joyce Hyser reminisced, "'His whole thing in those days was, "When I want to see you, you need to be here, and when I don't, you need to be gone"'" (290). His failed first marriage, to the actress Julianne Phillips, gets a somewhat cursory treatment, apart from generally positive memories for friends; neither Bruce nor Phillips speaks to Carlin on the record about it beyond vaguely complimentary memories of each other, and Carlin does not pry further. Bruce's relationship with Patti is presented as complicated at first (as would be expected), but quite solid once their first child was born. Scialfa did not contribute much of anything to the book (she "stayed out of it for the most part, but was welcoming all the same" [472]).

It's hard to imagine these days, when Springsteen has become something like a national musical treasure, that there was a time, even after fame had begun in earnest after "Born to Run," that the band's fortunes - not to mention its future - were gravely in doubt, due to the lawsuits between Bruce and his manager Mike Appel. Forbidden from recording, the band played gigs to get by - but just barely get by. This ancedote was frighteningly telling:

When [Gary W.] Tallent checked out a Springsteen/E Street tribute band playing in a bar near his apartment in Sea Bright, he learned that the tribute bassist made three times more for playing Tallent's parts than Tallent earned for creating, recording, and then playing them around the country. (230)

What's truly impressive about the book, however, is the insight it gives you into Springsteen's creative process, his dedication to his songwriting, and how hard he and his bands have always worked to get to the sound that he has in his head and that he wishes to create both on record and on stage. You get a good sense of his fanatical dedication in the Thom Zimny-directed documentaries included in the large "Born To Run" and "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" box sets, but the book's career-long span really drives this point home. Which is why this comment from Bruce on the spontaneously recorded "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" album seems so shocking:

'It's fascinating to record a song when the musicians don't know it,' he told USA Today's Edna Gundersen. 'If people learn their parts too well, they consciously perform rather than flat-out play.' (424)

That "perform" is telling, I think. When the E Street Band is on stage, it's a performance. There's lots of spontaneity, of course, perhaps moreso than nearly any other band; but that spontaneity has its bedrock in an excruciating amount of rehearsal, not just of the music, but of the stagecraft. And given some of the information we learn about tensions among the band members (well, really, between individuals and Bruce), particularly at the start of tours after there have been (Bruce-induced) breaks, I have to wonder if at times the camaraderie and good humor they demonstrate on stage ("night after night after night," as their bandleader is fond of intoning) isn't occasionally a bit of performance as well.

But then I read this from Clarence, and I wonder again:

'Bruce is so passionate about what he believes, that if you're around him, you have to feel it. It'll become part of your passion.... I believed in him like I believed in God. That kind of feeling. He was always so straight and so dedicated to what he believes, you become a believer simply by being around him. People see him and think, "This is how it's supposed to be, this is how it's supposed to happen." You dedicate your life to something. And Bruce represents that.' (433)

Bruce is a solid read throughout, interested more in biography than in analyzing lyrics (there are plenty of other books for that purpose). You learn about Springsteen the artist as well as Springsteen the man, from an author who, while clearly admiring his subject (and perhaps even idolizing him, a bit), nevertheless isn't averse to pointing out the lows as well as the highs. The last couple of chapters, on the most recent decade, are generally less enlightening than the rest of the book, but I suppose that's to be expected when writing of a subject who's still alive. The bulk of the book enjoys and exploits the benefits of hindsight, from Bruce, from the other interview subjects, from Carlin himself; the last few years are probably still too recent in everyone's memory to allow for much reflective thought yet.

Overall, Bruce is a nuanced, comprehensive portrait of a vital artist, as well as of his circle of friends and fellow artists. I've been a Springsteen fan for thirty years or so, but I still learned a lot from this book.

Bruce

by Peter Ames Carlin

Touchstone, 2012

ISBN-10: 1439191824

ISBN-13: 978-1439191828

512 pages, $28.00