Graphic Novel Review

It's time to review some more fun and interesting graphic novels, as well as books. The Books category on the Magnum Arts blog contains posts about graphic novels, books, and issues surrounding books. Today I'm going to review some books from an earlier generation that should not be forgotten. 

Henry Reed, Inc.

The Henry Reed books bring back memories. I used to read these a lot when I was a kid, and out of a sense of nostalgia I checked them out of the library again.

Henry Harris Reed is an intelligent, insightful boy of thirteen or fourteen who goes to stay with his aunt and uncle in New Jersey while his parents are in Italy.

Henry decides to keep a journal (not a diary, diaries are for girls) and writes about the stray dog Agony he adopts and the business he sets up in his mother's barn, with Midge, a girl in the neighborhood. 

First published in 1958, the Henry Reed books are simple, entertaining reads, with illustrations by the great Robert McCloskey. McCloskey's illustrations have a fun, Norman Rockwell look and compliment the story very well. Click on each title to take you to the corresponding Amazon page.

Keith Robertson published several Henry Reed books after Henry Reed Inc, and all are worth reading:

• Henry Reed's Journey
• Henry Reed's Baby-Sitting Service
• Henry Reed's Big Show
• Henry Reed's Think Tank

The books take place in a much more simple time, but despite that the storytelling is timeless. There are no wizards, magic spells, zombies or monsters, and none are needed. 

The re-issues of the books have cheesy, updated covers that look worse than the original covers, obviously painted in the 80's to make the books hip to a new generation.

Homer Price

Robert McCloskey, besides being a talented illustrator, was a children's book author as well, having written eight books he illustrated, including another one of my favorites, Homer Price, first published in 1943.

Homer lives in Centerburg, a small town in Ohio, and is a mild-mannered boy who enjoys fixing radios, and who somehow gets involved in a series of outrageous incidents, such as tending an unstoppable doughnut-making machine in his uncle's diner. Shady merchants and larger-than-life paraphernalia appear in several stories.

McCloskey published an amusing sequel to Homer Price, Centerburg Tales that is a fine follow-up.

The Homer Price and Henry Reed books go well together as entertaining snapshots of small town America, from a age where there was no television, Internet, smart phones or video games. They don't deserve to be forgotten.

Update: A thorough review of the great Robert McCloskey located in a separate blog post. McCloskey is such a talented illustrator and writer, this brief mention does not do him adequate justice. 

Click on the picture on the right for a larger view, an illustration from Homer Price in the chapter called The Doughnuts.

Harriet The Spy

This is a classic by Louise Fitzhugh, who also did all of the illustrations. Harriet considers herself a spy, and wants to be one more than anything when she grows up. She has a route that she patrols after school, spying on people in her neighborhood, and writing her observations in her notebook.

In her notebook, she writes down everything she knows about everyone, even her classmates and her best friends. Then Harriet loses track of her notebook, and it ends up in the wrong hands. Before she can stop them, her friends have read the always truthful, sometimes awful things she’s written about each of them, which turns her world upside down.

Harriet The Spy is an engaging read with a strong female protagonist, and Fitzhugh wrote a sequel staring one of the side characters, called Sport!

A sequel book was published called Harriet Spies Again, written by Helen Ericson, with the permission of the Fitzhugh estate. Judging by the reviews on Amazon, this is a pale and unsatisfying sequel that lacks the charm and spunk of the original book.

There was also a 1996 movie based on the book, which, according to Entertainment Weekly, updates Fitzhugh's deadpan commentary to a frenetic, 90s' pop vibe, to appeal to its target audience.

I'll take the book, thank you very much.

The Great Brain - John D. Fitzgerald

This is another great series of books I really enjoyed when I was a kid, and are still worth reading today. The Great Brain, first published in 1967, is loosely based on childhood memories of the author, set in the fictional town of Adenville, Utah between 1896 and 1898.

The narrator of the books is John D Fitzgerald, younger brother to The Great Brain, Tom, who is always concocting schemes to make money or con both kids and adults, such as the time when Tom charged kids a penny to see the first indoor bathroom ever installed in a house, or plotted a way to get back at a teacher who spanked him in front of the class.

The younger brother John D is in awe of his older brother's brain, and follows him around as Tom gets into one misadventure after another, all the while trying to outsmart those around him.

There were several Great Brain books written, all fun reads:

• More Adventures of the Great Brain
• Me and My Little Brain
• The Great Brain At The Academy
• The Great Brain Reforms
• The Return of the Great Brain
• The Great Brain Does It Again
• The Great Brain Is Back

Like Harriet The Spy, The Great Brain was made into a movie in 1978 starring a young Jimmy Osmond that was mostly forgettable, with hammy, after-school-special acting and a syrupy voice over. If you want to see the first part of it, click HERE.

The Grain Brain books are illustrated by the great Mercer Mayer, who, like Robert McCloskey, has published a number of his own books. 

Mayer's illustration have an antique, Victorian look, and heavily utilize crosshatching to provide shade and depth to his work. He's the perfect choice to provide the illustrations for these books.

Mayer has a gallery on-line where you can view his other work as well; check it out HERE.

Mercer Mayer Amazon page

Best Graphic Novels of 2012
The sci-fi blog io9.com has a great post of the best comics and graphic novels of 2012. Check out this list HERE and discover some new stuff!

Best Web Comics
Readers of the website Ars Technica pick the best web comics out there. Take a look; you might get hooked! Check it out HERE.

Daybreak - Brian Ralph

Zombies are all the rage these days (there were LOTS of zombies at Dragoncon last year, this year, but I came back with all my brains intact). This graphic novel puts the reader in the story, with the protagonist who is missing part of an arm talking directly through the reader throughout the book.

The art is rather primitive, and looks as if the book was rushed in order to take advantage of the zombie craze, but the talking-to-the-reader gimmick is interesting.

Ghostopolis - Doug Tennapel

This is a very charming graphic novel about a boy named Garth who has a terminal illness who gets inadvertently pulled into the ghost world by a washed-up ghost wrangler (kind of like an afterlife version of the Men In Black).

In Ghostopolis, spirits live like the living and are ruled by an evil dictator who wants to use Garth for his own ends.

Ghostopolis has a Monsters, Inc/Tim Burton feel to it that makes for fun reading.

Publishers Have Virtue

Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing editor, writer and graphic novelist, has a great essay on how the publishing industry has virtue, as opposed to the music and movie industry, which rip off artists and deny them royalties at every turn, cram lopsided contracts down their throats, and pummel users with threats and attacks, which only affect the people who have legitimately bought their products not those for whom the threats are intended. 

The publishing industry, in comparison, tends to treat artists with a lot more transparency and fairness, and should be proud of this fact.

Finally, authors’ advances are (usually) only charged to their current books, or sometimes across a single deal. Unlike musicians, who are often required to pay back shortfalls from their last project before they can start earning on their latest one, authors’ balance sheets are zeroed out with each new book. If your last book tanks, your next book usually doesn’t have to pay back its advance. Publishing doesn’t do debt slavery.

LINK

Terrifying Children's Books

Jenny Colgan of The Guardian has a great collection of children's books that are, for some reason, nightmare inducing. She wonders why in the world France would want to scare their children with such creepy imagery.

Good question! 

LINK

The Sketchbook Project

This post is about sketchbooks, specifically an innovative and very cool project called The Sketchbook Project, which is a way to share peoples' sketches and drawings with the world. 

Whether you're an artist or not, keeping a sketchbook is a fun, enriching practice, and one that does not even require you to be an accomplished artist. A sketchbook is a way to express yourself, without judgement or reservation. It is a place for your mind to run free, to unshackle your creative spirit without worrying whether what you put in it is "good enough".

Keep a sketchbook. It's good for you.

     The Sketchbook Project is a six year old project with a very cool mission, one I might participate in. For $25, anyone, artist or not, can fill out a custom sketchbook they send you, return it, and it gets added to the Brooklyn Art Library, where anyone can read through it. The project offers intimate glimpses of people all over the country, and hosts roadshows in various cities where people can see these sketchbooks for themselves. The library has roughly 12,500 sketchbooks on its shelves. For an additional fee, it will scan and digitize your sketchbook, so that anyone with an Internet connection can see what you've created. Pretty cool, huh?

To learn more about this project, click on the banner above, or HERE. This is a short video explaining The Sketchbook Project:




What do people draw in their sketchbooks? Lots of things! Memories of their childhoods, dreams of future plans, images that popped into their heads they want to explore, ideas for a comic strip, drawings of their friends or partner, or a cool building they happened to see while having that double mocha latte frappacino at Starbucks (or whatever the heck one orders there; I hate Starbucks).

The point is, there are no rules, no limits, and no judgments. That's what makes a sketchbook so liberating and special.

Keep a sketchbook. It's good for you.

I recently picked up an excellent book called An Illustrated Life, which is a book about the sketchbooks of artists. I find artists' sketchbooks utterly fascinating. The artists describe how they view their sketchbooks, their creative processes, and and how sketching helps them. Some view it as a form of therapy, others see it as a way to try out ideas and practice their art without worrying about if it's good enough or not.


I highly recommend this book. 






I have kept a sketchbook for years, and after reading this book, and seeing other artists' sketchbooks, I have started a smaller one that I take with me everywhere and sketch in almost daily. Notes, diagrams of costume ideas, funny anecdotes, you name it. Below are some sketches from an earlier sketchbook:

This is a page where I was working out how to arrange the dialogue and panels for a graphic novel I never finished. I find having this work space to figure this stuff out is very helpful and allows me to produce a higher quality page when I create pages for my graphic novel.


[click on pictures for larger size]

This is a charcoal pencil study for a painting I might do; I wanted to see if it was possible to create two worlds, one upside down, the other right side up, with a seamless joining. 


Strictly a design exercise. Note the two figures on the wall on the right, who share the same pair of eyes

Here I'm working out some random concepts to see if they will make good illustrations. Some of the best stuff you will do are doodles that you draw not caring a bit if they are good or not.

The 100 Greatest Children's Books

Ranked by Scholastic's Parent & Child magazine, there is a list of the 100 best books for children of all time. I'm glad to see a few of my favorites on it, such as Where The Sidewalk Ends, A Wrinkle In Time, and The Giving Tree. 

I submit that these books are perfectly acceptable for adults to read as well. Embrace your inner child!

The Magic Art of Disney Artist Claude Coats

As my last blog post of 2011, I'll end with a link to a very interesting blog called Long Forgotten, a blog about Disney's Haunted Mansion, and about Disney artist Claude Coats.

Coats was an unassuming Disney artist who painted backgrounds for Disney films, and later was responsible for the spooky atmosphere of the Haunted Mansion. He had a knack for creating the illusion of huge space inside small attractions. This blog post has lots of interesting pictures and facts about the design of Disney attractions, and Coats' contribution.

Claude Coats: The Lost Deception and the Deception of Art

Mail Order Mysteries - The Trailer

Remember those ads in the back of comic books that looked so enticing? I always wondered what the actual products were like, and if they even came close to matching the ads. I never found out, because I never ordered them, but this author did, and wrote about them in a fun book called Mail Order Mysteries. Here's the trailer for it!

Book Making The Old Fashioned Way

This 1947 instructional video shows what a complicated process it was to make a book before digital typesetting made things quicker, cheaper and easier. I can't believe all the steps that were involved in making a book back then!

1957 Book of Interior Decoration

I picked up this book at a thrift store for the low, low price of $1.90 cents. The Ladies Home Journal Book Of Interior Decoration, published in 1957, was filled with everything the postwar wife would need to know to decorate her household for the go-go fifties. Let's take a tour of our modern decor for a modern age, shall we?

{click all pictures for a larger view}

Let's start in the kitchen, the nerve center of a modern wife's world. The new fashion calls for bright colors, new materials, and stylized cabinetry and appliances. Look at the kitchen below. What was fresh and new in 1957 is now retro. People spend big bucks to make their kitchens look even somewhat like this nowadays.

Men and Kitchens

 

 "A man's gotta eat, but he's not gonna cook, not gonna set foot in the kitchen, except to pop a beer and cut enough salami to hold him until supper. Because the kitchen just ain't his domain. He could have been under a hood all day, fixing the piston rings of a flathead Ford; or in the operating room, performing a spinal tap on a kid who had a relapse of the mumps; or running the controls of a sixty foot crane - all delicate and painstaking jobs, requiring great skill and dexterity. But enter the kitchen, to be confronted with actually lifting a pan or slicing an onion or filling a pot with water, and he loses control of his major muscles, his coordination disappears, the laws of physics cease to function, and he winds up helplessly in the center of the linoleum.

"The one wrinkle, the one culinary ace up his sleeve, was breakfast. Finger to his lips, he wakes the kids on a Saturday morning and quietly leads them tiptoeing downstairs for Saturday breakfast. 'Whataya say, kids? We'll let Mom sleep. I'll make you guys some pancakes.'

"Out from the deepest recesses of the cabinetry emerge pots and pans that have not seen the light of day since the wedding shower. Bowls crusty with dust get a quick rinse. Because every piece of heavy equipment is needed for this invasion. All the big guns. No paltry European-style breakfast this. Dad's making a meal his way. And soon the Formica is littered with broken egg shells, gobs of flour and milk now hardened into glue, half-filled measuring cups and spoons, a Gypsy-family of bowls and pans and pots and somehow, in the one frying pan that made it to the stove, are gathered a small confederacy of pancakes, waiting to be flipped and served to the adoring,. awestruck progeny. And when, later that morning, the wife looks slack-jawed at the carnage in her kitchen, you can say, 'Morning, Honey, did you get some rest?'"

     From A Stiff Drink and A Close Shave - The Lost Art of Manliness by Bob Sloan and Steven Guarnaccia  LINK

And now let's retire to the living room, where today's fun, functional and stylish new look combines comfort and fashion while keeping up with the Joneses, who are undoubtedly reading the same magazine, since the wives are home all day while their husbands are at work! But, I digress...

 

 

 

 

Some of the living rooms look like fun places to spend time in, others look like museums, or the kind of room Grandmom had in her house that you were never allowed to go into when Mom and Dad threw you into the car and hauled you over there for the obligatory visit

Take this room for example. It's the perfect room for receiving heads of state, lobbyists with envelopes stuffed with cash and trusted advisers. As for comfort? Not so much.

This room is an assault on the eyes. Wallpaper like this should not be allowed to exist. I feel like I should be getting ready to choose my ice cream flavor and decide if I want sprinkles.

Note the TV with the tiny screen recessed into the wall unit. How did they see anything seated all the way across the room??

 

Here's another room with a tiny TV, recessed into the wall. This room looks much more lived in

This room has Grandmom written all over it. On one of the tables is a bowl of candies she puts out when she knows the grand kids are coming over. You can practically hear the slow, methodical ticking of a big clock somewhere.

For the occasions when you wanted to entertain in a more casual manner, you had a less formal room, like the ones below. I love the very cool looking TVs in the two pictures below, black and white of course.

 

Another crime against aesthetics;  the window covering is so loud you'd need ear plugs (and blinders) to spend any time at all in this room. And what's with the pink and green furniture??

It's the OPTICAL ILLUSION floor covering! For when normal floors just won't do!

 

And last, but not least, modern bedrooms

This picture demonstrates how to make a small apartment cozy

Grandmom's bedroom, with the faint fragrance of makeup, perfumes and mothballs for those outfits she wears only on Sundays or special occasions