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The Review Zone

Graphic Novels

(novels in the form of comic books)

Comics. Love 'em. Hate 'em. They don't seem to be going away. The best thing about comics these days is that you can buy graphic novels now. You don't have to shell out four bucks every week for your favourite title. Now you can shell out thirty bucks every three months. What a savings! At least they're easy to store. Here are a few graphic novels I've read recently.

Love Just Screws Everything Up

Lynn Johnston
Andrews and McMeel

I know. This isn't a graphic novel in the contemporary sense of the word. It's really a collection of comic strips by Johnston that ran in numerous papers back in 1996. And yet Johnston isn't just telling us a joke a day, she's actually giving us a well plotted out story. It's a touching view of a year in the life of the Patterson family. The eldest son is off to school. The eldest daughter is learning about high school. And the family is trying to train their new dog Edgar. Sounds simple, right? But Johnston does a great job of showing us the highs and lows of the life of a typical Canadian family trying to live the good life. It's normal. It's simple and best of all it's touching.

Order online from Amazon.com or Indigo.ca

Astro City: Life in the Big City

Kurt Busiek
Homage Press

Kurt Busiek is probably one of the greatest writers in comics today. He has the ability to tell a powerful, thoughtful story about superheroes and he has the magic. You know the magic we feel when we first saw Superman or Spiderman. The feeling that anything is possible. Well Busiek has that magic and he's bottled it up in this collection of stories set in Astro City. The superheroes are familiar, good do-ers, but all with human characteristics and faults. They are heroes with the moral codes of the fifties trying to live in the grunge world of the nineties. And Alex Ross covers to top it all off. Highly recommended.

Order online from Amazon.com or Indigo.ca