Cristy C. Road and News From Nowhere

Yesterday I got the urge to just jump on a train and land somewhere that wasn't Manchester so I spent an afternoon wandering the streets of Liverpool.

After a few hours wandering I discovered News from Nowhere, a radical, workers co-operative bookshop at the top of Bold Street. They stocked books on a huge range of interesting and important topics from political to personal and back again. I really wish there was somewhere like this in Manchester!

I was super excited to see that they also stocked a large amount of zines on a wide variety of different topics. Most of exciting of all though, was the selection of awesome graphic novels that you probably wouldn't find in most other comic book shops. Amongst the graphic novels I found Spit and Passion by Cristy C. Road. I'd come across Road's work before but had never read any of her books.

Spit and Passion covers Road's early teen years growing up as a working class, Cuban, queer girl raised by her Catholic family in Florida in the early nineties. Her art isn't something I would usually be drawn to but after a few pages I was totally sucked in by it. It suited her story perfectly and I now absolutely love it. It also seemed like more of an illustrated memoir than a graphic novel  but it worked incredibly well. 

It was a really awesome read and made me feel both angry (in a good way!) and inspired. In short this book gave me all the feels.

I also bought Twigs and Apples #6 which I'm really looking forward to reading, it has such a gorgeous cover! I might do a post about some of my favourite zines soon, who knows.

Twigs and Apples 6

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Women and Comics

For my Contextualising Practice summative essay I've chosen to write about 'Feminism and the Fairy Tale', looking at the portrayal of women in traditional folk tales. After spending the last couple of months actively looking for graphic novels / comics either written by / aimed at women or with a female protagonist, I have decided to research this further with the possibility of discussing some of these issues in my essay. I borrowed From Girls to Grrrlz: A History of ♀ Comics from Teens to Zines by Trina Robbins from the library this week as a first point of reference, and I'm aiming to read Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics by Hillary L. Chute afterwards. The culture of comics, especially the more mainstream titles / publishers has always seemed been incredibly male dominated both in terms of producers of comics and the consumers and I would like to explore the various reasons behind this.

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Miss Don't Touch Me / The Metamorphosis

For a change, I've decided to write about two graphic novels that I didn't particularly like.

Miss Don't Touch Me takes place in 1930s Paris and is the story of Blanche, a young woman who begins working in a brothel to track down a serial killer who murdered her sister. What drew me to this was definitely the art, I don't think I'd ever have read this for any other reason as I'm not generally a fan of crime fiction. I especially liked the really rich use of colour and the expressive line drawing, but that for me is one of the books few redeeming factors.

I think the writer could have  explored more the issues of gender, race and class that are so intwined in the story but sadly that didn't happen. It also struck me as being slightly exploitative whilst also commenting on the exploitation of sex workers, which I found very uncomfortable.

The Metamorphosis by Peter Kuper is a graphic adpatation of the novella of the same name by Franz Kafka, originally published in 1915. Having never loved any of Kafka's work I picked this up because I thought it'd be interesting to investigate how an already famous narrative can be adapted visually into a new form and context. In contrast to Miss Don't Touch Me I really hated the art in The Metamorphosis.

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The House That Groaned / Eden / The Nao of Brown

I've been on a major graphic novel binge lately if you hadn't already noticed. I usually read them in one sitting and have recently discovered that the MMU library stock some, which goes someway towards explaining the rate of my reading them!

The House That Groaned by Karrie Fransman is more like six short stories woven into one by detailing a fortnight or so in the lives of the six inhabitants of an old house converted into six flats. I never really warmed to this, I didn't like the art (apart from the front cover!) and the stories would have been more interesting if they weren't quite so far fetched.

Eden by Pablo Holmberg is a surreal collection of mostly unrelated, unchronological 4 panel comics depicting tiny moments within Holmberg's utterly strange and beautiful created universe. One of the most recurring characters is the strange, royal animal depicted on the cover but apart from her there isn't much that ties the stories together apart from their shared world. The art is stunning - simple, dreamlike and gorgeously coloured, whilst the individual stories are at turns mysterious, funny and touching. I absolutely loved this and will none doubt read it again fairly soon.

The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon is the story of a young woman who suffers from the more obsessional and unpleasant side of OCD and her attempts at trying to keep down a job and find love whilst fighting her illness. I really loved this, the book itself is beautiful just as an object with its scarlet edged pages and embossed Japanese 'Ensō' on the hardcover. Both the story and the art are gorgeous. Maybe I'm biased in loving this book so much as I have the same kind of OCD as the protagonist and I haven't before noticed it specifically mentioned in any other fictional narrative. 

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Adrian Tomine

I've just finished reading Adrian Tomine's 32 Stories, a collection of his early work originally published in his Optic Nerve zine that he worked on in the early 90s. This is the first of his earlier stories that I've read and I actually enjoyed reading it more than his later work. The drawing was looser and more spontaneous and some the stories were really funny.

 I read another couple of Tomine's books, Summer Blonde and Sleepwalk, last year and although I enjoyed them, some of the stories were a little too depressing for me. The drawing is also lot more precise and lacks some of the character that I liked in his earlier work.

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Anya's Ghost

I really, really loved this.

Non graphic-novel book I'm currently reading is American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Maus

I recently finished reading The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman for the first time and there's nothing I can really say apart from please read it if you haven't already! It was utterly moving and amazing and heartbreaking and should probably be required reading in secondary school or something.

Birchfield Close / Mercury

I read Birchfield Close by Jon McNaught and Mercury by Hope Larson this week, both graphic novels (although Birchfield Close is so short it's described as a 'graphic novella').

The art in Birchfield Close is very simple but beautifully coloured, although I felt the story (or lack of) could have been expanded on. The premise of this graphic novella is more of a poem than a piece of fiction and attempts to capture one sleepy suburban late afternoon. It does fairly well at this job but I would have liked even one or two more than the zero lines of dialogue in here.

I'm currently halfway through Mercury and lukewarmly keen so far. Will finish this when I've reached the end of the book!

Updated: Although the second half was quicker paced and had a more interesting storyline, I was never grabbed by this and generally wasn't particularly impressed by it. It tells the somewhat intersecting stories of two girls from the same family, one living in the present day and one in the nineteenth century in Nova Scotia.I wasn't overly fond of the art and found both the story and characters to be fairly boring.

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More Books

I'm massively into graphic novels and have read two of them since Christmas, the first being The New Ghost by Robert Hunter. The artwork is absolutely gorgeous and the story (although very short) is wonderfully bittersweet. It's published by NoBrow  as part of their 17x23 series.

 

I also read Fun Home by Alison Bechdel which had been on my to-read list for ages and which I read all 232 pages of in one sitting, the story was excellent.

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