By Dave Roman

First Second

Hakata Soy’s past life as the leader of a futuristic super team won¹t stay in the past!

The former space hero is doing his best to keep his head down at Astronaut Academy. Things aren¹t going so great, though. The most popular girl in school has it in for him. His best friend won’t return his calls. And his new roommate is a complete jock who only cares about Fireball.

Hakata just wants to make a fresh start. But how will he find time to study Anti-Gravity Gymnastics and Tactical Randomness when he¹s got a robot doppelganger on its way to kill him?

The basic concept of Astronaut Academy really appealed. The plot blurb  really filled me with hope, a concept that seemed funky and charming at the same time, and on quick inspection a look of a junior Bryan Lee O’Malley. Could this really be an all-ages Scott Pilgrim in space?

Well, for a while, it seemed that it might just pull it off. It started off full of quirky fun, introducing the cast in a fast and furious, episodic manner (some of which undoubtedly comes from its webcomic origins). Underneath an impossibly shiny, metallic cover we get a fantastically overblown introduction to the academy from its ridiculously over the top principal (just do your own zany, faux-serious voice-over and it works a treat):

So very quickly we get to meet hero of the piece Hakata Soy, and all the other attendees of this school in space, each one snappily and quickly introduced before the focus moves on to someone else, something else.

And after a while I found myself wondering when the snappy episodic feel would develop into something a little more enjoyable.

What was initially merely charming, a nice, quick way to deliver introductions, just seemed to linger too long, and I found I was losing interest. And I really hated myself for it.

Because I really, really wanted Astronaut Academy to work for me. I had such high hopes for it. But there’s something not right with Astronaut Academy and it’s all to do with the pacing and the dialogue.

Roman has structured it as a series of vignettes, which as I said, work really well to introduce the large cast, but don’t work anywhere near as well in developing the cast once we’ve met them. Instead of creating a multifaceted structure of small tales building up to one cohesive whole, it merely breaks the book down too much. It’s all stop/start stop/start, the rhythm is off all the way through. I do understand that there are definitely times Roman’s going for the weird feel in his pacing, but it’s like he’s had an idea, a theme, a funny gag, but just can’t stop.

After a while it just starts to feel discordant, a song that just feels on the verge of real pop greatness but lacks the certain something to take it from Danni to Kylie. Likewise the dialogue has a habit of coming off as clunky, without real warmth, merely a means to pass on the latest chunk of information about the latest student on display.

Whether this doesn’t work for me because I’m too old for it and can’t truly appreciate the way it will speak to younger children around the nine to early teen age or because it’s just not as well put together as it could have been I’m not sure. Time will tell really, as the children in the school will have a chance with it when it gets added to the library.

By the time it does settle down, and the overarching storylines come to the fore, it was a little too late for me. However, looking at some of the good stuff that did make me smile…. I loved some of the knowing references he threw in; the Voltron doppelganger, the heart storage devices straight out of video game extra life icons, the weird and wonderful lessons – all great. I mean, who wouldn’t want to do the Tactical randomness workshop:

It’s full of gentle weirdness like that, and I have a feeling that the children will appreciate it a lot more than I did, will ignore the clunky pacing and just settle down with the quirky storylines and characters. The artwork will go over really well with them as well, it’s got that Bryan Lee O’Malley US Manga style. Manga very much with any rough edges removed. This is big and bold stuff, rounded, satisfying.

But it looks better than it reads. A disappointment, but part of that surely comes from my expectations for it being just that little too high?

You can find out for yourselves though – the Astronaut Academy webcomic is online and available to read as Astronaut Elementary, a slightly rawer form – tones have been added for this collection, and certain of the narrative sequences lengthened.

Glenn Eichler & Joe Infurnari

First Second

“Venus wants Buddy to quit asking her to “make puppies.” Buddy wants Winston’s help wooing Venus. Winston wants Guy’s respect. Guy wants Dolly’s job. Dolly wants to know the meaning of it all. Nobody knows what Fiddler really wants, not even Fiddler. But mostly . . . these sled dogs just want to run.”

“Sounds simple? It should be, but even dogs have their office politics. Office politics with sharp, sharp teeth.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve read something in comics that’s so obviously set up to be a sit-com, and I certainly wasn’t expecting Mush! to be it, but sit-com it is. And a pretty fine one at that.

It’s got everything a sit-com needs; an ensemble cast kept tied to one specific place, group dynamics, conflict, relationship issues, smart dialogue, wacky characters. It doesn’t matter one whit that the cast of characters happen to be a sled dog team and their master and mistress, far, far North in total isolation – this is essentially the equivalent of a canine Friends or doggy Office. And here’s the cast….

You really get everything you need plot-wise from that little bit of PR above. The main thrust of the episode book is the complex Machiavellian manoeuvring of Guy as he tries to manipulate everyone around him into overthrowing top-dog Dolly.

But essentially, that’s unimportant, because like every good sit-com worth it’s salt, the basic plot is merely a scenario to hang a set of gags off. And Eichler’s tight writing (no doubt developed in his ongoing role as a US TV writer) works the set pieces, the thin plot and the gags almost perfectly. Whilst Infurnari’s art is expressive and fun, although there were moments early on when I wished he’d have done a better job creating truly distinct characters and likenesses – it was all too necessary to have that cast list picture at hand.

Essentially, Mush is at its best when the dogs get talking, when Eichler just lets the dialogue flow, when Infurnari’s art relaxes and when the gags keep coming…. take these few isolated scenes….

(Running. Very important. Very, very important to some….)

(… but then Dolly spends a fair bit of her time wondering just what she’s here for…)

(And Fiddler spends his time messing with everyone’s head….)

(… whilst poor dumb Buddy can only think about his “relationship” with Venus. Venus is not impressed.)

There’s some great, great stuff in here, all playing around with the basic ideas of making the dogs as both recognisably human and obviously canine, working the characters for all their worth and really trying hard to make every single bit of dialogue count, making it all sit in place as one big sit-com episode.

The absolute master (in my eyes at least) for comedy of this kind in comics is Kyle Baker. His masterpiece (criminally out  of print) is Why I Hate Saturn, where Baker plays out a madcap comedy with a deliciously insane cast of characters, perfectly timed dialogue and laughs that keep coming, one after another, building and building until your sides feel like they may just split.

And bless it, Mush! tries very, very hard, but it never really attains the heights Baker reaches. It does get close occasionally, but the timing is never quite right, or at least never quite right in as consistent a fashion as it needs to be to really work. If you want a TV sit-com example Mush! really wants to be Fawlty Towers or The Office, but in the end it’s merely a good episode of Friends. But think back to when Friends first appeared, before we got tired of it, back when it was funny …… see, that’s what I’m talking about. As a good sit-com in comics form, it’s merely guilty of trying a little too hard, nearly but not quite being as funny as it wanted to be. Still damn good fun.

By Sara Varon

First Second

Cupcake’s life is pretty good. He’s got his bakery, and his band, and his best friend, Eggplant. His days are full of cooking, socializing, and playing music. But lately, Cupcake has been struggling in the kitchen. He’s sure the solution to all his problems is out there somewhere. But maybe that solution is hiding closer to home.

Sometimes it’s the little things that stick in your mind when reading something … like “isn’t it weird for a cupcake to own a cake shop making and selling miniature versions of oneself?” That’s what I found oh so difficult to shake off all the way through Bake Sale. But that’s my problem, and although it rather spoilt my enjoyment of Varon’s graphic novel, I’m pretty sure this will go down a storm with the children in the school graphic novel library.

On the face of it, Bake Sale is a simple little story, full of big panels, big figures, and much sweetness, but Varon does work very hard, maybe a little too hard, to introduce conflict into poor Cupcake’s life.

And it doesn’t take all that much to turn content Cupcake, happy running his bakery, happy playing in his band, happy with his best friend, Eggplant into not so content Cupcake. The lure of going to see Eggplant’s Aunt and her partner, the great Turkish Delight, begin eating away at his content little life.

Soon he’s concentrating everything he can into getting the money together for a trip with Eggplant the following year, organising bake sale after inventive bake sale, leaving his beloved band, relying more and more on Eggplant to help out in the bakery. Struggling with too much work, will he be able to keep the bakery running as smoothly as always, will he get the money together in time?

It doesn’t take any kind of genius to work out where it’s going, but that’s not the point really. This is all about gentle storytelling, broad strokes suitable for young children. And Varon’s big, big art suits the story so well, with a really bright palette that’s perfect for the sugary tale she’s telling.

But despite it being enjoyable enough, it felt (oh the irony) just a little too sugary and light, a little lacking in substance. I was hoping for, expecting, just that little more substance from early on, hoping Varon would play on the difficulties the two best friends had, wanting to see her expand just a little on some of the promising ideas of friendship, of striving for that which is simply out of reach. I felt she wanted to get more of that into Bake Sale, and I’d have been more than happy if she had.

But at the end, although a little too sugary sweet and lightweight for me, I’m sure it will hit just the right spot for our younger readers, who’ll enjoy it for all the sweetness and simplicity inside.

Edited by Chris Duffy

Artists (deep breath): Nick Abadzis; Andrew Arnold; Kate Beaton; Vera Brosgol; Nick Bruel; Scott Campbell; Lilli Carre; Roz Chast; JP Coovert; Jordan Crane; Rebecca Dart; Eleanor Davis; Vanessa Davis; Theo Ellsworth; Matt Forsythe; Jules Feiffer; Bob Flynn; Alexis Frederick-Frost; Ben Hatke; Gilbert Hernandez; Jaime Hernandez; Lucy Knisley; David Macaulay; Mark Martin; Patrick McDonnell; Mike Mignola; Tony Millionaire; Tao Nyeu; George O’Connor; Mo Oh; Eric Orchard; Laura Park; Cyril Pedrosa; Lark Pien; Aaron Renier; Dave Roman; Marc Rosenthal; Stan Sakai; Richard Sala; Mark Siegel; James Sturm; Raina Telgemeier; Craig Thompson; Richard Thompson; Sara Varon; Jen Wang; Drew Weing; Gahan Wilson; Gene Luen Yang; Stephanie Yue.

First Second

Nursery Rhyme Comics is something of an extension of the work done several years ago by Raw/ Little Lit; taking alt-comix finest and letting them loose on children’s stories. Sure, with Little Lit it was mostly original work, but its theme, mixing alt-comix artists and children’s comics, is the thing that Nursery Rhyme Comics takes on, and delivers superbly.

As you might expect, it’s 50 comic artists illustrating 50 nursery rhymes. Most you’ll know, a few might be a little America-centric, but it matters not one whit, all of them are simple things; 1-3 pages long, most of them just a double page spread.

Lots of styles on show here, some from familiar, established  names, some from up and coming artists. And each of the fifty artists brings something different to the page. You may not like them all, you’re bound to have your favourites, but so many of them do what they do so very well.

It’s interesting though to see how many comic artists have adjusted their work for the adaptations. A fair number settle on simple illustration, or merely use captions to recount the rhyme. It’s strangely rare to actually see something that feels like a comic, and only maybe half or less had that traditional comic feel, speech bubbles and all. In the end it’s immaterial though, comics now means so many different things to so many people and these are most certainly comics.

Rarest of all, surprisingly so, are the few, like this from James Sturm below that choose to play around slightly with the rhyme itself…

(James Sturm’s take on Jack Be Nimble, from Nursery Rhyme Comics, published by First Second.)

In truth, there’s little to really review here. You and I both know that your enjoyment of this one stands or falls on where you stand on the concept of the piece.

If you fancy the idea of Nursery Rhyme Comics you’ll be simply swayed by the very idea and the list of artists involved. The artwork included here with the review will merely be the icing on the cake.

However, if you’re the sort who thinks this is simply another chance for comic reading literati to get together and backslap a little, praising all these alt-comix folk for doing something so child-friendly, then this is similarly going to simply reinforce your thoughts.

You really don’t need to ask where I stand on it. As a comics fan it’s nice to see the work inside here. I mean, just look… Jaime Hernandez….

(Jaime Hernandez just as beautiful as usual. From Nursery Rhyme Comics, published by First Second.)

Although I’ve got to admit it’s not something I’d have bought to sit on my shelf. Good to look at perhaps, but not to own.

But if this would have been released when Molly was younger, it would have certainly found its way onto her shelf and I imagine it would have been a particular favourite at bedtimes. Every child should really have a nursery rhyme collection, and this is a fine, fine example of them, with a collection of great art to make it something special.

Hopefully it’s going to be a hit in the school library as well, which is where this review copy will find its way in a few days time. It’s a great tool for emerging readers, something really substantial that makes them feel rather more grown up, yet full of easy to read, familiar words for them to enjoy.

All that’s left for me to do is leave you with a couple of my favourites, I could have picked many, many more. And no doubt you, and hopefully whatever child is lucky enough to get their hands on this will have your and their own…..

(Raina Telgemeier – of the staggeringly great, perennial library favourite – and STILL not available from Scholastic UK graphic novel Smile)

(Vera Brosgol, whose wonderful Anya’s Ghost came out earlier this year)

(Finally, here’s Cyril Pedrosa’s This Little Piggy. A completely new name for me, but loving his colours and the wonderfully exaggerated wolf. And a quick look on the First Second website shows me there’s a whole graphic novel of his I really must get around to – Three Shadows)

By Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick

First Second

I love it. But I knew I would. I have Feynman’s books on my shelf, Feynman biographys alongside those. All a Feynman graphic novel biography had to do to make it great in my eyes was to simple tell Feynman’s story, capturing all the genius, the invention, the spirit of the man.

It most definitely does. And it deserves to be widely read, because Ottaviani and Myrick do such a spectacular job of bringing to life the genius that was Richard Feynman, a man and a name well known amongst science folks, but perhaps less so amongst a general readership. Hopefully this beautifully put together graphic novel will change that.

It really felt very apt to be reading Feynman on the day CERN announced that they may (just may) have discovered something that throws everything, absolutely everything about the world, about physics, about the nature of our reality into doubt.

Richard Feynman would have liked that.

Because Richard Feynman exemplified the way science should always be. He was a man who passionately believed that science was the key to understanding the world, and all the beautiful, incredible, fantastical adventures it offered. But he also freely admitteed, indeed he embraced the idea that science was only as good as the latest theory, and the things we couldn’t explain far outnumbered those we could.

Anyone believing in science also believes that the limit to our understanding should be pushed, challenged and often contradicted. Scientific method. Test, check, attempt to disprove. And when science works, it disproves the last theory of scientific fact, and replaces it with the next. This is not a weakness, it is the strongest aspect of science. Question, challenge, think…. just like Feynman.

So when CERN announced that they’ve produced experimental data that seemingly challenges the long held tenet of the impossibility of faster than light travel, the scientists at CERN, instead of declaring this the most important scientific discovery of the age, have practically begged the mass scientific community to come and look at what they’ve done and disprove it, find the mistake. Question, challenge, think.

For those who don’t know; Richard Feynman was one of the greatest minds of any generation. He worked on the Manhattan Project with Oppenheimer and the rest, he created new ways of thinking about the world in his work on Quantum Electro Dynamics (QED). But his real genius was to be more than a scientist. He was a thinker, a dreamer, an imagineer. He had an ability to convey his work, to convey anyone’s ideas in the simplest, purest form.

When the Challenger disaster needed a committee to investigate, it was Feynman who identified the problem and then sat before the cameras to explain the mistakes, the fundamental and simple error that resulted in the tragic loss of life. Others would have talked, would have explained, would have over-complicated. Feynman took one of the offending O-rings and a glass of ice-water and showed, in the simplest, most visual manner just what had caused billions of dollars of spacecraft to explode in the skies above America.

Feynman was a genius. But he was also a man who questioned, who sought to explain and communicate. His passion for understanding never diminished, no matter what strange path it took him down.

This was a man who took up safe-cracking at Los Alamos, breaking into everyone’s safes whilst working on the bomb to end all wars. An artist, a practical joker, a bongo player, a seeker of truth in alll things, a man equally at home in the heady environs of academia or in a downtown strip club where he found he could relax and think more easily. And a man who, when the strip club fell foul of the town council, stood up in court to defend it when others fled the attention.

He epitomised the idea of the trickster, this genius, this man of science, he had something of the Puck about him. He played jokes, he never took himself too seriously, or his science. But this tricker nature was merely a facet of the man, a facet that often disguised the scientist beneath.

There was only one Richard Feynman. Unique. Visionary. Genius.

Which brings me to Ottaviani and Myrick’s Feynman graphic novel. I had to get here eventually after all. You’ll have to forgive the previous few hundred words of ramble. Once I started I just couldn’t stop. Which, not coincidentally is what happened with reading the graphic novel.

Like I said at the start – all Feynman the graphic novel had to do was deliver the essence of the subject, the essence of Feynman, and it would be a huge success in my eyes. And it does. It so does. Reading the graphic novel I knew, more than anything else, that Ottaiani, Myrick and I shared an admiration and a love of the subject, and they got this over on every single page.

It is simply a perfect distillation of everything you need to know about the man. And a very good distillation … it picks and chooses the moments it represents, jumping backwards and forwards in an extraordinarily rich and varied life and by its nature, has to skate over certain times, sometimes a little too quickly. But generally it covers absolutely everything it needs to to deliver what feels a full and rich realisation of one man’s life. So you get everything, from his famous anecdotes, such as this one about the problematic secrecy around the Manhattan Project…

… to page after page of very complex Physics, such as this from his lectures in New Zealand on QED in 1979:

I would imagine a reader experiencing Feynman for the first time would come away just as amazed, just as convinced of the genius, as I brought to the book. But even those of us who are already Feynman devotees will find much to admire and enjoy in Ottaviani’s words and Myrick’s effective and expressive artwork. It casts new light on the topic, capturing the personality of the man, his loves, his passions, his eccentricities,  and there’s a certain fitting feeling to seeing Feynman’s complicated ideas presented in comic form – he was very much a visual thinker after all.

Myrick’s artwork captures everything of the ideas Ottaviani collates and gathers from Feynman’s life and works. His representations of Feynman’s science are always interesting, even those times when we’re deep into hard science, such as the fourteen pages of the New Zealand QED lecture. But he’s equally able to convey the more emotional times in Feynman’s life, such as the death of his first wife, Arline, in 1945 from TB:

In the end, I believe Ottaviani and Myrick’s graphic biography works on every level.

It’s another essential work to sit alongside other books by and about Feynman. But the greatest praise I can give is not that it will sit amongst the other works, but that it succeeds iin bringing a new dimension to the many works on Feynman, a visual representation of the man that will move, amaze, entrance and entertain (and please forgive the religious language) neophyte or acolyte alike.

Saw this story at Robot 6. Well, actually I saw the cover in my news feed and it did the trick. Because that cover just looks great.

Faith Erin Hicks has a new book coming out from First Second in February 2012, but she’s going to be putting the whole 211 page graphic novel online. Five updates a week right until the publication date. Her rationalisation for giving it away before selling it in print comes from this great quote in the Robot 6 story:

“I didn’t have a comic book store to go to, nor did I have friends who were into comics. I had no connection to the comic book industry. But I had a computer, and I could access the internet, and there were comics on the internet. These comics were made by a diverse group of cartoonists, and (at the time) most were done ‘for fun.’ Reading online comics gave me new perspective on comics, and showed me what was possible for the medium, beyond the superhero genre. Later, as my tastes evolved and I gained disposable income, I became a comic consumer. I do not think I would be the hearty purchaser of comics if it wasn’t for the online comics I read while in school.”

Hicks describes Friends With Boys thus:

“Friends With Boys is about Maggie McKay, a teenager entering her first year in public high school. Previously Maggie had been home-schooled, taught by her mom and her only classmates her three (very loud, probably very manly) brothers. Now she’s following her brothers to high school, where she’ll have to deal with something pretty terrifying to a home-schooled kid: her peers. Also Maggie’s stalked by a local ghost, and having a ghost follow you to school on your very first day … very not cool.”

I’ve just sat here and read the first 34 pages. It is very, very good indeed. The first few pages sets it all up so wonderfully well, getting over Maggie’s terrible, yet understandable nerves about heading off to school for the first time. And once she’s there, the alienation, the sense of being utterly out of place is perfectly done, with minimal fuss, just great cartooning.

The only slight issue – the whole ghost thing? Not sure about that. But what I’ve read thus far tells me that I should wait until a full verdict, and trust Hicks to make it work as well as the family and school scenes.

It is slightly ironic though – you wait ages for a quality teen drama about alienation featuring a troublesome ghost friend and then two really great ones come along, from the same publisher, just a year apart. Hicks must have winced when she saw Vera Brosgol’s Anya’s Ghost.

However, based on what I’ve just read, Friends With Boys looks like it may be as brilliant as Brosgol’s book. It’s certainly off to a great start.

Here are the first four pages, but there’s 30+ pages up right now, with a commitment to serialise the whole graphic novel online before publication. Click here for the first page, and here for the latest.

Then, as pointed out by Heidi (thanks Heidi), some coloured pages from Hilary Sycamore:

Which means that maybe, just maybe, say it quietly…. Battling Boy may just be released soon? This year? (probably not) 2012? (Maybe).

I suppose there’s actually the possibility that we’ll see a film before we see the comic. Brad Pitt’s production company have had the rights for a while, leading to recent rumours of Brad and Angelina’s son Maddox being lined up for the role. Heidi reported that story – and also the quick update to tell us, after Pope tweeted, that it was absolutely not true.

I’ve talked about my excitement for the Feynman graphic novel coming out from First Second in August before, but there’s a new trailer up on You Tube for the book, and it’s just great…..

Feynman and comics…. perfect for the science fans out there….. or anyone interested in a fascinating character:

Colleen AF Veneble, the designer on First Second’s forthcoming Feynman Graphic Novel, gives a great interview at That Cover Girl blog detailing some of the decisions involved in her work, that includes that cover above:

The cover for FEYNMAN by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick came to me as a simple line art sketch of Richard Feynman that had so much personality even in its barest form. I won’t say how many color combinations I worked up, though I did spend weeks on variations, finally settling on an unrealistic bold palette, making Feynman look like a force of nature, an explosion of thought. I’m really proud of this one, and I might note that cover quote is the best quote I’ve ever gotten to layout (the inside flap revealed the speaker: Feynman’s Mom!).

(pencil panels from Lewis & Clark by and (c) Nick Bertozzi, published First Second)