by Mark Murphy
Jul 01, 13
A slim collection of short, slice-of-life comics -- not
stories so much as little vignettes, mostly centered on a Seattle coffee
shop and the people who frequent it. Interspersed within these
vignettes are longer stories, some of which work better than others. The
first of these long-form stories, "Rest Stop," seems decidedly out of
place among the low-key everyday kinds of character-driven narratives
that make up the rest of the book. "Rest Stop" feels as though it wanted
to be a kind of psychological thriller but lost interest somewhere
along the way. The rest of the stories, though, are enjoyable. I also
like the loose, sparsely elegant drawing style, which accents the feel
of quick sketches grabbed at the local coffee shop.
by Jim Ottaviani (Goodreads Author), Leland Myrick (Goodreads Author)
Jul 22, 13
I'm becoming quite a fan of Jim Ottaviani's graphic novels,
which focus on notable scientists and scientific achievements. I'd never
heard of Richard Feynman, but this book presents him as an intriguingly
eccentric sort of genius with a fondness for expressing quantum physics
principles using funny little pictures -- making him a natural subject
for a graphic novel.
At times the presentation of his physics lectures gets to be rather dense and hard to navigate. At least, I found it so for a few days when I came to it at the end of a long day and was probably more than a little too tired to wrap my head around these ideas. Feynman, at least as presented here, seems to take a kind of impish delight in accentuating the ways that physical laws at the quantum level simply don't conform to any of our usual expectations and common-sense. The funny little pictures ultimately make it easier to follow, I think, but it is more dense in places than the average comic-book.
At times the presentation of his physics lectures gets to be rather dense and hard to navigate. At least, I found it so for a few days when I came to it at the end of a long day and was probably more than a little too tired to wrap my head around these ideas. Feynman, at least as presented here, seems to take a kind of impish delight in accentuating the ways that physical laws at the quantum level simply don't conform to any of our usual expectations and common-sense. The funny little pictures ultimately make it easier to follow, I think, but it is more dense in places than the average comic-book.
by Cyril Pedrosa
It's difficult to say a lot about this story -- a kind of
allegorical fantasy about a family trying to avoid a dark, threatening
destiny (represented by the titular three shadows).
It shouldn't be much of a spoiler to say that the book is the author's response to the death of a friend's young son (the cover-flap says as much.) I saw where at least one reviewer questioned what exactly the story is saying about destiny and the necessity/futility of trying to change it. But I think it's a mistake to try and pin this story down to a "message". Instead, it should be taken as a kind of meditation, as the author's attempt to come to grips with unacceptable reality, to explain the unexplainable. The two parents in this book have very different responses, and ultimately neither is any better or worse than the other.
The artwork I found particularly engaging. It seems at times deceptively simple, almost haphazard in its loose sketchy quality, but there is a tight precision behind it all. It carries the story well without being distracting.
It shouldn't be much of a spoiler to say that the book is the author's response to the death of a friend's young son (the cover-flap says as much.) I saw where at least one reviewer questioned what exactly the story is saying about destiny and the necessity/futility of trying to change it. But I think it's a mistake to try and pin this story down to a "message". Instead, it should be taken as a kind of meditation, as the author's attempt to come to grips with unacceptable reality, to explain the unexplainable. The two parents in this book have very different responses, and ultimately neither is any better or worse than the other.
The artwork I found particularly engaging. It seems at times deceptively simple, almost haphazard in its loose sketchy quality, but there is a tight precision behind it all. It carries the story well without being distracting.
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