|
Welcome,
lovers of amateur Internet literary criticism, to the comic
book/graphic novel edition of the Hipster Book Club. Just
in time for summer comic book conventions, we've collected
several reviews of fantastic graphic novels and other funny-books.
We've also all decided to wear our underwear outside of our
pants in celebration of the superheroes of yore, but to be
fair, we did the same thing for the old-school Madonna party
we held last week.
In our
on-going effort to bring to you, via Internet (among countless
lolcats and videos of break dancers accidentally kicking babies),
the things which we love and appreciate, it was only a matter
of time before we did a graphic novels issue (which took us
all of 4 months). It's not that we feel these works are going
unnoticed anywhere else, as comics are steadily gaining ground
as acceptable reading material in the more enlightened circles.
For the most part, we've used this as an excuse to bulk up
the site with reviews of a genre that was severely underrepresented
in our archive. (Well, that, and it has been easier to get
our writers to review "geeky" comic books than it was asking
them to review poetry. Go figure.)
These
days, fewer people are going to groan and stomp off at the
thought of a book review site spotlighting funny picture books—and
really, nobody is going to accuse any of the books we've covered
as being for nerds. In fact, we see the detractors as coming
from two different camps: 1) that our decision to focus on
graphic novels is too narrow or 2) that we're too late
on the trend.
For those
who think we're being too narrow-minded by focusing on graphic
novels, we understand. Lately, it seems as if many in recent
years have praised comics for shedding its superhero tights
in favor of poignant, richly textured slice-of-life storylines
that fit snugly into a one-off or two-part book. We're not
going to disrespect superhero tights like that. (Side note:
Like current comic book trends, Kyle tried to shed his superhero
tights once. He was summarily banned from Supercuts.)
However,
we made a conscious effort not to do long-running serials,
thus eliminating quite a few titles and comic sub-genres,
including our classic superhero stories. The reasoning was
simple: Serialized storylines are a different beast
than single books or short-running serials, and we'd have
to take a different approach to reviewing them. Much as we'd
like to go through 66 years worth of Captain America
comics in order to write a proper review of his recent death,
it's just not going to happen.
As for
being late on the trend, we say, "Big deal." There are still
plenty of people out there who haven't been reading comics
or graphic novels, and the HBC is (and will always be) about
pointing out good literature. Even before this website's existence,
the two of us believed that all types of genre fiction have
quality writers who appeal to the mainstream. Sci-fi has Kurt
Vonnegut, horror has Shirley Jackson, and comic books have
Chris Ware. And Neil Gaiman. And Alan Moore. And we could
go on. The point is that there is nothing astonishing about
quality literature that transcends genre—or the popular
opinion of a genre. So please, if you haven't already, check
out these books, not because they're great graphic novels,
but because they're great novels.
Of course,
if you're completely bored by our graphic novel selection,
there are still plenty of great fiction reviews in this update,
including recent works from faves such as Don DeLillo and
Rick Moody, a two-for-one on Tao Lin's latest books, and a
new one from that one dude who wrote something called Fight
Club (which we hope you'll read even if your opinion of
the author may already be set).
If you're
still not convinced that graphic novels are worth covering,
you're just going to have to put up with it this month because
we're going to do it anyway. Critics be damned. Or didn't
you know geek was the new punk? Seriously. The only thing
more punk than head-butting a dude during the Liverpool vs.
AC Milan game is rushing to the comic book store afterwards
to pick up the latest issue of Madman.
And we
say that from experience.
Hope
you enjoy the issue.
Kyle
and Yennie
(June,
2007)
|
