Graphic novels

I can say with some certainty now that I am a huge fan of literary graphic novels and my interest in traditional comics is waning. It is easy to see why the former are easy to fall for, but why am I finding myself bored with superheroes and splatter comics?

I can't get enough of books by Delilsle, Satrapi, and Joe Sacco, I find this is such a striking and pared back way to tell your own story. Delilse and his expat adventures in Asia are fascinating and yet so mundane. Satrapi's simple drawing style and characters enhance her story, and Sacco tells the most horrific yet uplifting stories, making his point in many ways far more effectively than any normal reporter sent into horror zones.

I just finished Paris by Andi Watson and Simon Gane. They really captured the Frenchness of Paris, without sounding too cliched, the market scenes, the street scenes, museums, the expressions, and the drawings themselves, they just dragged me in and I wanted to try drawing so many of the scenes myself. And the story is not typical, other than a foreigner going to Paris to paint and going to a classical painting school, but it is the finer distinctions that make it stand out. I like that she has to paint portraits of rich people to pay for her tuition, because I sense that this is not normal. Granted it is set in the 20' or 30's (I think, maybe a bit later) and there is a sense of cool style throughout.

Alex Robinson, of Box Office Poison fame, followed it up with To Cool to be Forgotten, a cross with a time travel story and therapy trip, really won me over with the honesty of the story. I hate the title and was not expecting much, especially after starting and putting down his first book, but now I want to go back and have another look. The theme of if only I had not made a particular decision is one worked pretty heavily, but I certainly did not see the true purpose of the story coming at all.

Yet, then I started and put down Rex Libris 'I Librarian' by James Turner. Great idea about an near immortal librarian, but in fairly short order I just found it irritating. Maybe it was the drawing style. I don't know, but I have let it go.

So, this then leads to regular comic books. Maybe I don't find them fresh anymore. The drawing is still good, well in so many (I have no examples, I am going to have to go in and do some deeper research here rather than just blather on...) but the stories are just not engaging me... Yeah, I am going to leave this discussion for later...