High school freshman Maggie rules as the only girl in a house full of dudes. Her father is the local police chief and he has his hands full with Maggie and her three raucous siblings—eldest brother theater geek Daniel and squabbling twins Zander and Lloyd. Up until this year, Maggie had been home-schooled by her mom. But her mom has recently abandoned the family, and along with being super sad about THAT, Maggie also has to deal with attending public school for the first time. School would be scary enough on it’s own, but Maggie has one more horror to manage—a ghost. Yep, Maggie’s been followed around by a silent, see-thru woman since she was a tot, and the aggravating thing is, she has no idea why. The ghost either can’t or won’t say what her problem is, so all Maggie can do is hope and pray no one else can see her. Just when she thinks she’ll never fit in, Maggie meets Lucy and Alistair, a sister and brother duo who don’t seem to care what anyone thinks of them. Bolstered by their combined confidence, Maggie finally starts to relax in the hallowed halls of grade nine. But Alistair is not who he seems, and soon Maggie is caught up in the high school politics of hard choices, painful secrets and elusive popularity. And surprisingly, her ghost just might have something to say about that…this insightful, smart GN by the illustrator of Brain Camp does a great job of not only telling the real deal about high school but also sensitively exploring the interesting dynamics of  sibling relationships and how brothers and sisters can be your best friends—if you let them. FWB started out as a web comic, so click here to check out Faith Erin Hicks quirky cool art and get a little taste, but I highly recommend nabbing on the paper version and reading the whole thing in one go!
Category: Graphic Fantastic
Great Graphic Reads for Teens
Mush: Sled Dogs With Issues by Glenn Eichler & Joe Infurnari
Dogs have always been known as man’s best friend, but maybe they’re more like men (and women) than we thought! That’s the premise of this hilarious graphic novel that reads like a canine version of The Office by Glenn Eichler, a current writer on the Cobert Report and former producer of one of my fav old animated series, Daria. Dolly is the lead dog of a group of neurotic sled dogs who live with a reclusive trapper and his wife somewhere in the far, far North. Lately she’s been questioning what it actually means to lead, and starts to wonder if she really wants the responsibility of keeping everyone on track. This causes jealous Guy to start angling for Dolly’s job by growling rumors and lies to the other dogs. Meanwhile, dim-witted Buddy keeps trying to have a ‘relationship’ with sleek Venus just because they were mated a few times. Venus couldn’t be less interested, and decides she is NOT going to just be a puppy making machine for the rest of her life. Purebred Winston puts on airs which drives everyone nuts, while sly Fiddler keeps the pack guessing who’s side he’s really on. It all comes to a head when Guy finally challenges Dolly for the lead, and the humans, who are having some serious issues of their own, have to get involved. When it comes to resolving conflict, we can be just like dogs–or maybe dogs are just like us. Joe Infurnari’s sketchy artwork is quirky and expressive–each dog looks and sounds suspiciously like someone you might know, while the often pastel color palette sets readers right down into a cold Northern lanscape with pink and blue sunsets and snow covered pine trees. Surprisingly philosophical, this witty GN uses a rag tag pack of quarreling sled dogs to demonstrate how utterly wacky, banal and complex the human race can be.
Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol
It’s already hard enough for Russian American Anya to fit in at her preppy private school with a last name no one can pronounce (“Borzakovskayaâ€), a clueless mom and a booty that makes her regulation plaid skit a bit too snug. But after she takes a tumble down an abandoned well and discovers the skeleton of a long dead girl, life gets even more complicated. When Anya is finally rescued, she finds that she has brought home a little souvenir of her accident—Emily, the skeleton’s lonely ghost. At first Anya is annoyed with having to explain the modern world to Emily, who died ninety years ago. But soon she sees how having an invisible friend helps when it comes to cheating on tests or sneaking a smoke on school grounds. However, Emily begins wanting more and more of Anya’s attention, and Anya realizes that if she actually wants to make some living, breathing friends, Emily’s got to go. Except Emily has other plans… This gray-scale graphic novel is the kind of creepy treat I revere—a genuinely scary ghost story with a minimum of gore, a few well-placed frights and a bit of humor that turns gasps into giggles. Debut author and illustrator Vera Brosgol’s crisply drawn details convey Anya’s mood and characterization perfectly—down to the Belle and Sebastian and Weezer posters in moody, sarcastic Anya’s room. Besides being a classic ghost yarn and a realistic portrayal of the horror of high school, this is also a terrific story of being true to yourself and your culture while learning how to fit in on your own terms. After whetting your goulish appetite with Anya, try Hope Larson’s Mercury for more good ghostly, teen angst fun.
Habibi by Craig Thompson
One of my favorite books of all time is Craig Thompson’s transcendent adolescent love story Blankets. I feel as though I have preached the gospel of that gorgeous graphic novel to thousands of friends, colleagues and students–probably until they were sick of hearing about it! Thompson’s latest opus is also about love, a fervent love between a girl and a boy that morphs several times during their lifetimes. When Dodola and Zam first meet in a slave market as children in a fantastical Middle Eastern world that includes both oil pipelines and medieval camel caravans, they are lost and afraid. After escaping the slavers and fleeing to the desert, they lead a charmed but lonely existence on a boat that has been mysteriously beached on miles of sand, where Dodola entertains Zam with stories of queens, heroes and warriors from the Quran and the Bible. At first Dodola acts as a mother to toddler Zam, though she is little more than a child herself. But as Zam grows, their relationship becomes more like that of squabbling siblings. Until the day that Zam witnesses the terrible thing that Dodola must trade away in exchange for their food from the brutish men in the caravans. He cannot forget what he has seen, and soon his feelings for Dodola begin to change into something lustful and wild that he doesn’t understand. So he runs away to the bustling city, searching for a way to relieve his forbidden thoughts, while Dodola is left frantically searching for him before she is stolen away by bandits and forced to become a member of the Sultan’s harem. Through their mutual trials and struggles, they never forget their life on the little boat and never stop looking for each other in the faces of strangers that pass by. It is many years before they meet again, and they each have been drastically changed by their circumstances. Will their hearts recognize each other? Is there a possibility that their love can survive under the harsh laws of a judgmental society that condemns them both? This lushly illustrated and deeply felt graphic novel is both hard to read and hard to stop reading. Thompson is clearly in love with Arabic script and design, which dance sinuously through the panels, and his interweaving of Christian and Arabic mythology, showing their ultimate similarities instead of their often harped upon differences is masterful. The story and art took Thompson six years to complete, and it shows on every dazzlingly detailed page. But while it is a beautifully rendered story of love, faith and perseverance, it is also a sad story of sexual abuse, dominance, misogyny and guilt that is probably best for older teens and the adults in their lives. Extraordinary.
Orcs: Forged for War by Stan Nicholls and Joe Flood
Oh, poor orcs. That Tolkien sure sealed their reputation as some of the biggest baddies of all time. But what if orcs aren’t actually that awful? What if they’ve just been…misunderstood all these years? Stan Nicholls has created a world called Maras-Dantia where warlike orcs may crack a few skulls and slice off a few appendages, but they do so only when they’ve been hired for a job. This time the big green guys, led by Captain Stryke, have been ordered to accompany a caravan of goblins who are on a secret mission concerning a mysterious new weapon for the bloodthirsty half-human, half-nyadd Queen Jennesta. However, they don’t get far before the orcs begin to smell something rotten in the state of Maras-Dantia. The goblins refuse to tell the orcs where they’re headed, they force them to do hard manual labor that is beneath them, and they put the orc troop in danger more than once buy ignoring blatant signs of trouble. Soon Stryke begins to suspect a double cross, but he’s bound to follow Jennesta’s command or suffer terrible consequences. The only thing left to do is fight like orcs, and keep each other safe from the goblins’ horrific secret weapon. This incredibly gory GN is an adaptation of Stan Nicholl’s Orcs
Excalibur: The Legend of King Arthur by Tony Lee & Sam Hart
In this lush, graphic novel retelling of the legend of King Arthur, all the familiar characters show up in glowing color on each paneled page: the boy king of myth, his advisor and mentor, Merlin, the loyal Lancelot and beautiful Guinevere, and of course, Arthur’s evil half sister Morgana and her son Mordred, the warrior fated to bring about the fall of Camelot. Who hasn’t seen or read some version of this classic tale, whether it was Disney’s innocent Sword in the Stone or Marion Zimmerman Bradley’s much sexier and way more feminist Mists of Avalon? What makes this adaptation stand out to me is the epic storytelling that feels almost Biblical in nature. As a big fan of the Arthurian legend, I feel like I’ve seen and heard it all when it comes to Excalibur, but Lee and Hart (the team that also created this classic graphic read) have rendered the myth to nearly Christ-like proportions. Arthur, who has pre-knowledge of his own death from the very first page (hmmmm), gathers a group of loyal men around him in a literal circle (knights of the round table or disciples?) and is eventually betrayed by those closest to him seems very Jesus Christ Superstar in these pages. He even rises again to rule in the fairy land of Avalon (i.e. heaven) and is finally reunited with his true love, Vivianne, aka The Lady of the Lake (or maybe Mary Magdalene?) Gorgeous from start to finish, this is one GN that you may want to own so you can page through it again and again. For a truly Holy Grail experience, pair it with Philip Reeve’s gritty Here Lies Arthur.
The Sixth Gun by Cullen Bunn & Brian Hurtt
In a violent, post-Civil War Old West, natty but naughty gunslinger Drake Sinclair is on the hunt for a mythical weapon that shows the future to it’s owner. It’s part of a scary set of six revolvers that some say were forged by the Devil himself, and belonged to a bloodthirsty Confederate general named Hume, now long in his grave. Each gun never has to be reloaded and each one has a sinister power: to strike with the force of a cannon, throw flames, spread disease, raise the dead and provide eternal youth. Sinclair knows that in order to stop Hume’s still living cronies, he will need to overpower them with Hume’s personal weapon, the sixth gun. But when he finally discovers the whereabouts of the prophecy gun, complications arise in the form of a beautiful young farm girl and the frightening fact that Hume is not exactly dead (not quite alive, either) and he will recover his property even if it means releasing hell on Earth to do it. Hume also knows a nasty little secret about Sinclair that could be the gunslinger’s undoing if it comes to light, so it’s even more important that Sinclair gets to the gun before Hume does. It’s a race to the bloody finish, and I was absolutely riveted to each and every full color page of this inventive GN. I’m particularly fond of westerns, and I’m really liking this trend of tucking a little fantasy and horror in between the saloons and gunfights (see also: Cowboys and Aliens and American Vampire). The Sixth Gun has all that and more, including a masterful sequence of panels that pits a zombie army against an army of golems. Brilliant! Brian Hurtt’s full color art is ripe and rich, with blood, bile and steel bursting off every page. A little gory and a lot exciting, The Sixth Gun serves up some hardcore graphic novel gun play.
Chew, Vol. 1: Taster’s Choice by John Layman & Rob Guillory
Special Agent Tony Chu is a cibopath: every time he eats something, he has a psychic vision of where that food came from, whether an orchard or slaughterhouse. As a result, he doesn’t tend to eat very much (except for beets, which as a vegetable seem to have zero background personality). His unfortunate mission? To chase down illegal chicken-traffickers for the Special Crimes Division of the US Food and Drug Administration (poultry have been outlawed since the bird flu that killed 23 million Americans three years ago) and, when necessary, chomp on the living or dead parts of criminals in order to find out their dirty little secrets. Along the way, he manages to lose his partner to a flying meat cleaver, nearly gets his brother killed, and draws the attention of some very nasty crime bosses who put a price on his head. All while being very, very hungry and never able to eat anything that doesn’t give him nightmares. You think your job is hard? Just try being Tony Chu for one day. This wholly original GN earned a rightful place on ALA’s 2011 Great Graphic Novels for Teens list, and a permanent place in my heart for its black humor, snappy dialogue and utterly awesome grossness. This one has everything from projectile vomiting to hamburgers with human finger condiments. It’s not an overstatement to say you’ll laugh ’til you puke–or at least throw up a little in the back of your mouth.
Ghostopolis by Doug TenNapel
When world-weary ghost wrangler Frank Gallows accidentally zaps terminally ill Garth Hale into the in-between dimension of Ghostopolis, the boy finds himself with a new lease on life—or death, as the case may be. As a human being in this spirit world, Garth discovers he has incredible powers that are capable of overthrowing Master Vaugner, the evil Goth dictator of Ghostopolis. But Garth just wants to get back home. Aided by Skinny, his skeletal Nightmare and the friendly ghost of his dead grandfather, Garth almost gets his wish when Frank Gallows and the beautiful ghost mechanic Claire Voyant show up with a machine that can zoom him back into the land of the living. But Vaugner isn’t letting Garth leave until he finds out the secret of his strength and takes it for himself. Soon Garth, Frank and Claire find themselves caught up in the midst of an epic battle for the heart and soul of Ghostopolis. Folks, this is one of those “kitchen sink†books (as in, author and illustrator Doug TenNapel threw in everything but the kitchen sink) that shouldn’t work but it does. There’s action, giant lightning bugs, adventure, a mysterious Tuskegee Airman named Joe, romance, the ghost of Benedict Arnold, side-splitting humor, and a farting werewolf. Somehow, it all comes together and makes perfect sense. I enjoyed every manic moment of it. Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself—it should be widely available at your local library as it was one of ALA’s 2011 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens. You’ll also want to be in the know before the planned feature film hits theaters!
American Vampire by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque & Stephen King
Four Eyes, vol. 1: Forged in Flame by Joe Kelly and Max Fiumara
It’s 1934 in New York City. The country is in the grips of the worst economic depression anyone has ever seen, and everyone is out of work. Enrico’s family is lucky. His father has a steady job providing the city’s thriving illegal underground dragon fighting operation with eggs that trainers grow into dueling monsters for men to bet and lose their hard earned wages on. But when his father comes to a fiery end plying his dangerous trade, Enrico knows he must step up and become the head of his household. That means convincing organized crime boss Christoforo Boccioni that he can take his parent’s place as a stealth dragon egg stealer. Reluctantly, Boccioni lets Enrico take part in a hunt, which is both the most exhilarating and terrifying experience of his short life. He begins to understand his late father’s calling to the brutal business, and what he finds deep in the dragon’s lair has four eyes, two wings and will decide his destiny. This stunningly original GN had me mesmerized from the very first fiery page. I couldn’t have been more tickled by the idea of an alternative Depression-Era New York where instead of cock fights there were wyrm battles. Poor immigrants try to make a buck diving into caves looking for eggs, while rich men take their prizes and let them lose their lives to angry dragon mamas? I’m in! The inky black artwork, richly framed in flame red and deep methane blue, is lush, with several double page spreads that give a bloody panoramic view of the dragon fights and the nightmare descents into the caves. My only complaint is that this collection of issues 1-4 of Four Eyes is only the beginning of Enrico’s dark adventure. I can’t wait to see where the dragon fighting biz takes him next!
The Unsinkable Walker Bean by Aaron Renier
Ahoy, maties! If you’re looking for a top notch adventure with despicable pirates, clever girls, courageous dudes, brave dogs, horrifying sea monsters and cursed skulls, well, you’ve come to the right place. Aaron Renier of Spiral-Bound
Scott Pilgrim: Precious Little Life, vol. 1 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Before you tell me, I KNOW. I know Scott Pilgrim has been around since 2004 and I probably should have covered his precious little life before now. I know tons of you have already read all five volumes (#6 debuts July 2010) of his graphic novel adventures. But for those of you who haven’t yet met the sweetest slacker boy since Rob Gordon in High Fidelity, and want the skinny before Michael Cera makes him famous on the big screen, here ya go. Scott Pilgrim is a happy go lucky dude. He’s living in an apartment almost entirely furnished and kept up by his sardonic gay roommate Wallace Wells and playing gigs with his rock and roll band while waiting for the perfect job to find him. Oh yeah, and he’s dating a high schooler named Knives Chau, (she’s 17, he’s 23) who’s completely adorable and NOT the ninja assassin her name might imply. (BTW, if I even have to leave the country abruptly, I am TOTALLY changing my name to Knives. Don’t tell anyone, k?) Everything’s just peachy until he has a crazy dream about a roller-blading Amazon.com delivery girl and discovers that she’s not just a dream (as in, “Get out of my dreams and into my carâ€) but a real live girl named Ramona Flowers (My fav quote from the book? “I know, it’s so ‘Ramona Quimby, Age 8’ and yet…Flowers.â€). Scott and Ramona feel an instant connection. But what about Knives? How can Scott bear to break her innocent little heart? Then there’s also the small matter of Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends, who Scott will have to fight and conquer if he wants to date her. Sound complicated? It IS. And that’s JUST volume 1! I really dug O’Malley’s rough sketched big-eyed art, his completely realistic portrayal of Scott’s dating drama with both Knives and Ramona, and the hilarious shot of bizarre fantasy at the end as Scott takes on the first of Ramona’s evil ex’s, Matthew Patel and his host of flying demon fireball girls. But the part that warms my heart is how he thanks my fav indie comic girl Hope Larson in the front. Awww! Arm yourself with all 6 paperbacks now, so you’ll be ready to debate about whether the movie does Scott justice when it hits theaters August 2010.
Brain Camp by Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan and Faith Erin Hicks
I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly and illustrated by JM Ken Niimura
Barbara Thorson is not your average fifth grader. Oh, she may look like just another bespectacled, funny-hatted munchkin, but don’t get her mad because she just might smite you with her mighty hammer, Coveleski (named for an obscure left handed Phillies pitcher who single handedly defeated the New York Giants in a 1908 playoff race). Because Barbara, master D & D player and middle school bully buster, is also a secret giant slayer. Few people know about the spells she works in her room or the offerings she leaves on the beach near her Long Island home that keep her home and small town giant-free. But when a nosy school counselor, a well-meaning classmate and a preternaturally large stone cold bully named Taylor start poking around in Barbara’s business, all hell breaks loose and Barbara is forced to face a giant she’s been ignoring for a long time: her mother’s cancer. This b&w GN may be ABOUT a fifth grader, but it’s so not FOR a fifth grade reader. It’s for my middle and high school peeps who struggle against the giants of loneliness, fear, insecurity and pain everyday and don’t feel like they have anyone who will stand by their side and raise a sword. I loved Niimura’s scrappy, rough-hewn style and the ease in which he flips between Barbara’s real and imagined life. Bold, angry and surprisingly sweet, I Kill Giants is the perfect antidote for those days when you feel like the bad guys may be winning and you need a little lift by first lunch.
