For Next Time!

Hi Everyone, I just wanted to thank everyone for coming last night. We talked about the graphic novels everyone has been reading, and exchanged more books to read. Next time, we'll be meeting on May 24th and talking about "The Swimmer", a short story by John Cheever. Here's a link for the story available online. And don't forget to check out his biography as well. Finally, if you want to listen to the story as well, there is a podcast as well.

Next meeting.

We will have our next meeting next Wednesday , April 26th. We will talk about the graphic novels we read and decide on the last reading for the present school year.

Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis is an exemplary autobiographical graphic novel, in the tradition of Art Spiegelman's classic Maus. Set in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, it follows the young Satrapi, six-year-old daughter of two committed and well-to-do Marxists. As she grows up, she witnesses first-hand the effects that the revolution and the war with Iraq have on her home, family and school.

Like Maus, the main strength of Persepolis is its ability to make the political personal. Told through the eyes of a child (as reflected in Satrapi's simplistic yet expressive black-and-white artwork), the story shows how young Marjane learns about her family history and how it is entwined with the history of Iran, and watches her liberal parents cope with a fundamentalist regime that gets increasingly rigid as it gains more power. Outspoken and intelligent, Marjane chafes at Iran's increasingly conservative interpretation of Islamic law, especially as she grows into a bright and independent teenager.

Amazon.co.uk Review

Watchmen

Has any comic been as lauded as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns but Watchmen remains the critics' favourite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller's fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre's finest creations (Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and recently From Hell, with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to garner praise since.

Amazon.co.uk Review

The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore's characterisation is as sophisticated as any novel's. Importantly the costumes do not get in the way of the storytelling, rather they allow Moore to investigate issues of power and control--indeed it was Watchmen, and to a lesser extent Dark Knight, that propelled the comic genre forward, making "adult" comics a reality. The artwork of Gibbons (best known for 2000AD's Rogue Trooper and DC's Green Lantern) is very fine too, echoing Moore's paranoid mood perfectly throughout. Packed with symbolism, some of the overlying themes (arms control, nuclear threat, vigilantes) have dated but the intelligent social and political commentary, the structure of the story itself, its intertextuality (chapters appended with excerpts from other "works" and "studies" on Moore's characters, or with excerpts from another comic book being read by a child within the story), the fine pace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up--it retains its crown as the best the genre has yet produced. --Mark Thwaite

Maus

"The story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors are in their own way affected by the trials of their parents. A contemporary classic of immeasurable significance."
Amazon review

Nelson

"Nelson is a collaboration, by which I mean that those involved have produced one long novel, rather than a series of short stories. Davis's idea - and it's a good one - was to ask each of those who agreed to take part (they were rounded up via Twitter) to tell the story of a single day in a different year in the life of the character they would create together: a woman named Nelson, after her father's favourite pub, who was, they decided, born in 1968 (there being more artists than years, a couple have done different days in the same year). The result is much more than an elaborate game of consequences. Davis and Phoenix, as editors, obviously kept a close eye on the narrative. Though the vision and style of each artist is different, the baton is respectfully received, the story consistent and knowing. Yes, you will need to concentrate: the physical appearance of Nelson, her friends and family sometimes changes dramatically from year to year. But her essence remains the same. She is a clever, funny, difficult woman and, as she grows up, the reader worries for her. Will she ever be happy? Will she ever allow herself to be loved? Or will the painful legacy of her lost twin and her absent father - who may, she discovers, have ended up on the streets - finally crush her?"
Amazon review

Habibi

"Set in a fictional country in what seems to be the Middle East, a 6 year old girl called Dodola is sold by her poverty-stricken parents to a calligrapher to be his wife. The man is brutally murdered and the girl is stolen and sold into slavery. She saves an infant boy from certain death by claiming him as her own and then later escaping with him to live on an abandoned ship in the middle of the desert. She names him Habibi. The two of them manage to survive for a few years by Dodola prostituting herself to merchants travelling across the desert in exchange for food. Then one day she is stolen once again and taken to join the harem of the Sultan. Habibi does his best to survive but must take himself to the city in order to survive and from there the story begins, the two of them striving to meet one another again.

To say that the book is beautiful is an understatement and an insult to Craig Thompson; the book is sublime."
Amazon review

April is the cruelest month ...(The Waste Land by TS Eliot)

Our pick for the cruelest month of the year is graphic novel.
Maus and Persepolis for those in a blue mood.
Watchmen and Nelson for adventurers and
Habibi for prudish spinsters.
We still have extra copies of Watchmen, Maus and Habibi in the CFR, so if you feel like reading one of them ,come and take it. We are open every day from 10 to 2 and 5 to 9.