Difference between revisions of "Newest Graphic Novels Reviews"

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[[Category:Graphic Novels|*]]
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Edel Rodriguez
|title=The Strain Book One
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|title=Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey
|author=Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan, David Lapham and Dan Jackson
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=A liner ends its journey from Europe in a port city, and waits, silently, holding whatever secrets it had with little signs of life.  It is found to contain a heavy box, almost coffin-like, containing mud – and something else.  But this is not the coasts of England, and this is not Bram Stoker.  This is also not a sailing boat, but an airliner – a Boeing 777, stuck at JFK airport with no signs of life.  The CDC and one man – Dr Ephraim Goodweather – are tasked with looking into it.  But he won't like what he finds – and nor should anyone.  The problem is, some ''do…''
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1616555483</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Art of Neil Gaiman
 
|author=Hayley Campbell
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=An early [[:Category:Neil Gaiman|Neil Gaiman]] book was all about Douglas Adams, and came out at the time he had a success with a book of his own regarding definitions of concepts that had previously not had a specific word attachedGaiman himself is one of those concepts.  I know what a polyglot is, and a polymath – but there should be a word for someone like Gaiman, who can write anything and everything he seems to want – a whimsical family-friendly picture book, a behemoth of modern fantasy, an all-ages horror story, something with a soupcon of sci-fi or with a factor of the fableHe can cross genres – and to some extent just leave them behind as unnecessary, as well as cross format – he was mastering the lengthy, literary graphic novel just as 'real' books were festering in his creativity, and songs and poems were just appearing here and thereSo he is pretty much who you think of as regards someone who can turn his hands to anything he wishes.  He is a poly-something, then, or just omni-something else.
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|summary=We're in childhood, and we're in CubaThe revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of as a saviour of the country, has proven himself a Communist, and not done nearly enough to create a level playing field for all.  Well, those hours-long speeches of his were kind of taking his time awayOur narrator's family weren't in the happiest of places here, an uncle refusing to be the good soldier the country demanded (especially as he would probably be shipped off to some minor pro-Communism skirmish, such as Angola) and the father being watched and watched, and not liked for his successful photography business, success being frowned uponThe mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the heat, but in this sultry island country, it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781571392</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1474616720
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Kia Ahankoob
|title=I Was the Cat
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|title=The Gold Lion and the Tournament of Sentinels
|author=Paul Tobin and Benjamin Dewey
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=Meet Burma.  Allison Breaking, blogger and journalist behind the Breaking News website is about to, for she's accepted his giant wage packet to ghost write his memoirs. She's been told to expect the unexpected as regards his looks, but she is shocked to find that Burma is in fact the world's only talking cat, and that he has not one but nine lives to talk about. The past eight were full of a lot of evil, sin and death – but at least he's coming clean now, right?
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|summary= When Myriad created Duniva he endowed his children with different powers, each with its own strength and weakeness, in the hope they would complement each other and collaborate, creating a dynamic and prosperous society. Each power is contained within a magical ring belonging to one of eight countries led by Myriad's children and their descendants. But it didn't quite work out like that. Rivalries developed. Enmities grew out of them and the eight countries went to war. Having fought themselves into an endless and ruinous stalemate and finding the cost of war too high, a solution is proposed. Each of the eight countries will send their greatest warriors, known as sentinels, to a single combat tournament. The winner will take possession of all the rings and become the supreme ruler of Duniva.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1620101394</amazonuk>
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|isbn=B09MMQJFPV
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Pat Grant
|title=Letter 44 Volume 1: Escape Velocity
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|title=The Grot: The Story of the Swamp City Grifters
|author=Charles Soule and Alberto Jimenez Alburquerque
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|rating=4
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=I guess we don't always think of the President of the USA as someone who is thrown into the deep end on day one, given his retinue of advisors and aidesBut this one is – when being inaugurated as the 44th POTUS, Stephen Blades gets a letter from the outgoing premierHe and we – learn that the prior two terms, when America was busy fighting in the eastern hemisphere and not getting her economy into gear, were pretty much just a cover-up.  The military presence and lack of economic benefit at home was purely due to something a long way away – the discovery of ''something'' being manufactured by aliens within our own asteroid beltDue to some cloaking technology little is known about what is up there and that applies to our own response, too – the ultra top secret mission we've sent up, both scientific and military, to have a closer lookWelcome to the job, Mr President.
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|summary=Everything in this world runs on pedal-power, and that includes the punk bands.  There are three pedallers at the front of the Heath Robinson contraption taking our lead characters to the ferry across the swamp to Falter City, where a mother and her two sons aim to set up a yoghurt factoryYou could say that yoghurt would be the only culture around, for this is a really rough-and-ready dump of a place, but everyone is interested in small things that growFor the only money to be had – the only fortunes to be found in Falter City – come from algae, gunk and other crud that well, the use of it is never really made clearOnce there, the two brothers set themselves each up with a guide Lippy, the more forward-thinking, industrious of the two, with a besuited gent, Penn with a ballsy young teenaged girl with bright red hairBut which of the two will come off the worse as they make their own way in this dystopian, semi-Apocalyptic hellhole?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1620101335</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1603094660
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)
|title=Death Sentence
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|title=Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
|author=Montynero and Mike Dowling
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=It's AIDS, Jim, but not as we know itG+ is the new sexually transmitted disease sweeping the nation's reckless youth, and it has even further-reaching consequences.  It boosts your brain activity, and makes you a stronger and more promiscuous carrier of the virus – so you can be beating a supercomputer at chess one moment and rolling around a bed with a host of ladies the next.  But either way, it kills you within six monthsHere it affects three people with more cerebral, supernatural powers – a young female artist in need of confirmation, an egotistical junkie rock star, and a certain highly-rated comic with Russell Brand's hair and Kasabian's wardrobe designer.  It's a combination of the three people and their own G+ that will make sure the world is most certainly aware of their activities – death sentence or no death sentence…
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|summary=I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you know.  I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either sideThis book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782760083</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1684056993
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Leigh Bardugo, Louise Simonson and Kit Seaton
|title=Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For
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|title=Wonder Woman: Warbringer: The Graphic Novel
|author=Frank Miller
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|rating=3
|rating=4.5
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|genre=Teens
|genre=Graphic Novels
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|summary=Diana, being unique on her island, is the victim of a lot of taunts, and claims of nepotismIt's only her unique status, and her mother being Queen, that has her with any standing at all, her naysayers declare – even though she has clearly fought to be a strong young woman.  Perhaps too strong for the island, however – for every Wonder Woman origin story has her quickly leaving home for the World of Men, and this Diana is the heroine of yet another Wonder Woman origin storyA shipwreck disturbs her leading performance in a running race, but the survivor she drags from the waters is only going to disturb a lot more...
|summary=''Ava.  Damn.''  With that repeated refrain we're forcibly given Dwight's viewpoint and made to agree with it.  Ava is quite a woman.  She was Dwight's, but now she's not, and he's forced to ignore his photojournalism career in favour of his night-time job of photographing evidence for adultery cases, and to struggle to stay away from the fags and off the boozeBut now it's all going to be much harder, for Ava has come backShe's stifled in a loveless, violent marriage, trapped in a gated villa with her husband and his man mountain of a bodyguard, and only Dwight has the flutter in her heart and the iron in his fist and gut to make things right for her. Damn Ava?  You bet he's going to…
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|isbn=1401282555
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1616552395</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1401286208
|title=Modesty Blaise - The Young Mistress
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|title=Black Canary: Ignite
|author=Peter O'Donnell and Enric Badia Romero
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|author=Meg Cabot and Cara McGee
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=[[:Category:Peter O'Donnell|Modesty Blaise]] is slowly becoming like an old flame of mine – just popping back into my life every few months to regale an adventure, have a catch-up and be on her way. This latest fleeting visit shows Modesty, the most ironically-named brunette in the world of solving crime, having old flames of her own – although she calls them 'escorts'. They're prevalent in the first and title story, where her doctor lover has a patient with whip marks, which leads into a full-blown action adventure regarding art forgeries. Her American 'escort' wants to replace the doctor, but has to wait for a story all of his own, when his own prize racehorse is a target for criminals.  And in the third story there are a lot of returning characters – but not all are as they might at first appear…
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|summary=Meet Dinah Lance. Frustrated that her policeman father will not allow her to try and follow in his footsteps, and seemingly lumbered with being a cheerleader at school, she is desperate to find her voice. But it's actually more a case of her voice finding her, as when she gets frustrated or plain dissed at school her vocal outcry can shatter glass better than any opera singer. You could almost call it a weapon, or a power. But in order for her to call herself a superhero, there has to be a whole path of steps for her to take – one of which will be into her past…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781167095</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1401280048
|title=Manifest Destiny Volume 1
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|title=Batman: Nightwalker: The Graphic Novel
|author=Chris Dingess, Matthew Roberts and Owen Gieni
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|author=Marie Lu, Stuart Moore and Chris Wildgoose
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=It's 1804 and some newly-American soldiers are expanding the territory to the west, at the orders of President Jefferson – orders which allude to the pioneering party encountering some very unusual thingsAnd they do – first a huge arc of greenery, putting the modern reader in mind of the Missouri landmark arch as bastardised by something along the lines of the Statue of Liberty in the original 'Planet of the Apes'But when that site gets attacked the weirdness certainly starts to show itself…
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|summary=The young man called Bruce Wayne is a very noticeable one – he can hardly go anywhere without people – bystanders, paparazzi, and suchlike – reminding him he's a billionaire at the age of eighteen.  Feeling rather stuck with the legacy he's inherited from his murdered parents, he wants to do charitable deedsBut one night, when he speeds off in his posh new car in pursuit of a criminal, he goes too far as far as the authorities are concerned, and gets given the most unlikely stretch of community service instead – cleaning in the home for violent criminals that is Arkham Asylum.  There he learns of some other people who also allege charitable intent – the Nightwalkers, a gang who steal any ten-figure bank account contents they can, and murder the ownerCan he get close to one of them and get the truth of their schemes, or will the manipulative Madeleine be a step too far for the young do-gooder?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1607069822</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1401283292
|title=Hilda and the Black Hound
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|title=Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass
|author=Luke Pearson
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|author=Mariko Tamaki and Steve Pugh
|rating=4.5
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|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=Hilda and the Black Hound is the fourth book in the “Hildafolk” series, each of which is a self-contained tale about a highly inquisitive little girl and her adventures. This time Hilda joins the Sparrow Scouts and befriends a house spirit whilst in the meantime a mysterious beast stalks the town of Trolberg.
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|summary=Harleen Quinzel is new in town.  She always, to me, seems new in town, even if she's been around a long time, for she always has a very fresh attitude, and seems to look out of those large eyes at everything anew each time.  But here she is new in town, and the town is Gotham City.  Expecting a year-long furlough from life with her mother, she finds her gran dead and herself with no option but to stay with a bunch of drag queens.  She also finds school is a drag, she also finds the whole neighbourhood is being redeveloped by a large and uncaring corporation – but she also finds two characters that will have a big impact on her life. One is a civil-minded lass called Ivy, the other someone she only meets at night – a lad with a singular graffiti tag and a mind for violence and chaos, who calls himself The Joker…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909263184</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=140128339X
|title=The Bojeffries Saga
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|title=Mera: Tidebreaker
|author=Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse
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|author=Danielle Paige and Stephen Byrne
|rating=5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|summary=A very truncated history of comics will start with the idea that they should be funny strips – one jape then you're out; then that they should have more – perhaps a superhero; then that you can have so much more than just a superhero – witness the works of [[:Category:Alan Moore|Alan Moore]].  But you mustn't be too surprised to see the whole thing come around in a full cycle.  Because Alan Moore has, with this volume, concluded his own funny strip japery, and whatever history or greater opinions about the canon of comix might say, it's just about his best ever book.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0861662318</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Secret Service - Kingsman
 
|author=Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|summary=He is Mister London.  Jack London.  He is the longest-serving, most experienced and downright most suave secret agent the country has.  But he now has a problem possibly bigger than even those he's had to face up to before – his nephew.  Gary Unwin, Eggsy to his friends, is stuck in a rut called Peckham, living with his kid brother and his single mum, and her latest bullying, abusive partner.  His life is the X-Box, cheap four-packs and TWOCing the neighbourhood cars.  Reluctantly casting his mind from the problem of someone kidnapping the greats of TV sci-fi history, Jack undergoes his most awkward mission yet – raising his nephew to be a world-saver.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781167036</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Jane, The Fox and Me
 
|author=Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=Bullied at school and lonely because her former friends don't talk to her, Helene loses herself in the pages of ''Jane Eyre''. To a girl who thinks of herself as fat and plain, Jane's story gives her hope - but can she find happiness? And how will a trip to a nature camp affect her? Can it give her the confidence and courage to change the way she sees herself?
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|summary=Meet Mera.  She's the latest in a line of young women intent on fighting against their intended destiny for one only they can see for themselves.  Her father, the king of Xebel, sees some cotton wool and a hunky man in an arranged marriage as her future – after all, Mera's mother, the territory's warrior queen, is long dead.  Mera doesn't fancy the cosseting or the fella involved at all and is, in fact, trying to get Xebel out from under the cosh of Atlantean power, for Xebel's royalty are merely puppets of Atlantean masters. So when she overhears her father request that her intended go to the world of us air-breathing humans, and kill the Atlantis heir, she rushes off to get the quest (and the promised throne) all for herself. But of course, she has no idea what kind of person she will meet, and how hard it will be to get the job done…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1406353043</amazonuk>
 
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1401286399
|title=Nemo: Roses of Berlin
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|title=Super Sons: The PolarShield Project
|author=Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
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|author=Ridley Pearson and Ile Gonzalez
|rating=3.5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=It's all very well having a heroic band of brigands and workers plucked from literature and being able to do the jobs that can't ever even feature in top secret files. Submariners, invisible men, and other individuals of mysterious origin, powers and sometimes intent aren't unique to English, or England. Hence this loose approximation of World War II, when Berlin is turned into a Germania-meets-''Judge-Dredd''-Megacity, and the Indian daughter of Captain Nemo and her very own special Captain Jack have a much more personal mission. The Fuhrer – and the real people and things behind the throne of the Nazi-type superpower – have something they'll fight to the end to get back – their own offspring.
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|summary=It's the near future, and every coastal city – including Metropolis – is in need of a huge flood barrier, built on its coast by Wayne Enterprises. But the rising sea levels have put even those constructions under threat, forcing many people to relocate in America's biggest exodus for decades. Superman is helping out, of course – first, he was patching up the dams, but now he's mining the asteroid belt for a rare dust that's perfect for blocking the solar energy from making further polar ice melt. Inland, in Wyndermere, the refugees from the coast are suffering bigotry and intolerance for being newcomers, but something else is much worse. A major bout of food poisoning is hitting the city. But it can't possibly have anything to do with what looks like sabotage of the flood barriers and the efforts to correct the climate, can it? Four young children begin to piece together clues that it can…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>086166230X</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=168369015X
|title=Snowpiercer Vol.2 - The Explorers
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|title=Manfried the Man: A Graphic Novel
|author=Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette
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|author=Caitlin Major and Kelly Bastow
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=All of humankind is living on a single train.  Oh sorry, as this is the sequel, make that two trains.  Launched on the same tracks as the original Snowpiercer, but clearly at a slight remove, was a second mile-long behemoth of a train, designed with the latest high tech to be completely self-sustaining as it travelled ceaselessly on the tracks encircling a frozen Earth, waiting for the time the world was inhabitable once more.  But the high tech on board, complete with lemon farms, and differing qualities of virtual holidays depending on cost and class of customer, has not put paid to one aspect of society – and in fact the sole aspect of society not featured in [[Snowpiercer Vol.1 - The Escape by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette|the first book]] – religion.  Some people are fearing the end time, when the Icebreaker crashes into the original Snowpiercer.  Some believe they're duped into the whole train idea, and are in fact on a spacecraft.  Some people know something else – the rare few explorers who get to go outside the train into the world beyond, and see glimpses of what came before…
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|summary=In a world where cats stand on two feet, go to work at call centres and have diminutive human beings for pets, is Manfried. He's a typical frisky but shy pet – forever getting into scrapes, demanding more food than he can suitably eat, but at the same time being the perfect companion for his owner, Steve Catson. To such an extent that Steve, who is getting known for his man-oriented thinking, is actually having nightmares about becoming the neighbourhood ''crazy man cat''. But when a window gets left open by mistake, and Manfried goes missing, the only thing for it is a massive and energised man-hunt…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782761365</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Line of Fire : Diary of an Unknown Soldier (August, September 1914)
 
|author=Barroux
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|summary=A scientist can tell a bit about an animal's nature just by observing the beginnings of its life ('it's in water, ergo it's probably a fish'). They don't need to study every ant in the colony to see how ants collaborate and work together, for the detail is pretty much shared from one ant to the next.  So it is with soldiers, at least as far as this book is concerned.  You can pick one soldier from all the battalions and learn something of soldierly life.  You can see the nature of the war from what happens at the outset.  And here all we get is the outset, for this graphic novel is based on a manuscript the artist found purely by chance, of a solitary soldier's diary that covers only a couple of weeks in 1914, and stops obliquely.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907912398</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Hainsworth_Gina
|title=Snowpiercer Vol.1 - The Escape
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|title=Talking to Gina
|author=Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette
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|author=Ottilie Hainsworth
|rating=4
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|summary=All of humankind is living on a single train.  I know British commuters feel that way at times, but this is a much different circumstance – it is a train miles long, running non-stop as a self-contained unit across tracks circling a desolately frozen Earth, moving on endlessly until, perhaps some time in the distant future, the planet can recover from the cataclysm that froze it.  It's certainly been going on long enough for it to have a culture – a hierarchical society from the rich and leisured classes near the front, through the orgiasts, past the useful carriages set aside for producing food, to the underclass at the end.  It's all set in its routine, set in motion.  But there are two fishes out of water – a man from the rear who escaped, and a middle-class woman working with civil rights campaigners.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782761330</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Mouse Guard - the Black Axe
 
|author=David Petersen
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=Long before there can be peace, there is warLong before there is something to believe in, there is empty hopeLong before the legend, there is the truth.  And so, long before the events of the first two collected Mouse Guard volumes came the story in this third, that of how the heroic, mythical character Celanawe became so notoriousOur tale starts with him just a guard mouse and tutor to those who would follow him, but an unlikely connection to an already fabled weapon is about to be shown to him, in the equally unlikely form of a scholarly old female mouse, EmWhen she says the ancient legacy is situated far across unmapped seas, an unusual trio of explorers is pushed to the limit and beyond, in search of the unseekable.
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|summary=''This is what happened.'' An artist decided she needed a dog – so drove the length of the country, Brighton to Grimsby, to pick up an Eastern European immigrant street dog with some mange and one working eyeWhy not?  The first night at home, Gina – the dog – eats something she shouldn't and causes a mess, so it's not a great start, but then begin the tribulations of training, status and behaviour all humans must go through with their dogsAnd then, the life with Gina begins to feel like too much – ''I felt weird about you because you were always there.  My thoughts were taken over by you, and I felt sick, as if I was in love.'' Slowly, however, everyone – our artist/author, her husband, two children and two cats – gets to form the family they and Gina all would have wanted.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857681435</amazonuk>
 
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Colfer_Illegal
|title=Bugsy Malone - Graphic Novel
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|title=Illegal
|author=Alan Parker
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|author=Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin
|rating=3
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=One bunch of wise guys might think they have it all, but they don't.  Another bunch of wise guys want it all and have the splurge guns to help them get it.  Into the middle come a beautiful starlet-in-waiting, and our crafty innocent abroad, Bugsy Malone.  Cue, at some incredibly random time honouring no discernible anniversary whatsoever, this reprint of the long-lost graphic novel version of the story, told for 'all those kids who find it tough reading books with just words'.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007514840</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Asterix and the Picts
 
|author=Jean-Yves Ferri, Rene Goscinny, Albert Uderzo and Didier Conrad
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=I've never been entirely certain if Asterix was written for children or adults. I am quite certain children were the original target audience, but it is equally apparent that many of the jokes are thrown in for adults as well. It does seem as if more adults are buying Asterix than children now, and comics in general have been taken over by the adult consumer, but Asterix still has plenty to offer the younger reader as well. If it is perhaps a bit more sophisticated than the average children's book today, all the better. I'm all for children's books that are light and easy to read, but I think we are doing our children a disservice by filtering out any book with a more complex vocabulary or a fair number of unfamiliar words. My children did find a few words like ''solidarity'', ''fraternise'' and ''diaphanous'' challenging, but if we don't challenge them at all - how will they learn?
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|summary=Ebo is twelve years old and all alone. His sister left for Europe months ago and now he doesn't know where his brother is either but knows that he has probably done the same thing. So Ebo has to attempt the same dangerous journey himself. He must cross the Sahara Desert, get himself to Tripoli, one of the most dangerous cities in the world, and then try to cross the Mediterranean Sea. By himself. At twelve. And, even if he makes it, how will he find his sister?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444011677</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Miller_Batman
|title=Hilda and the Bird Parade
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|title=Batman: Dark Knight III: The Master Race
|author=Luke Pearson
+
|author=Frank Miller and Brian Azzarello
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=Hilda is a young girl who has just moved from the mountainous countryside to the town of Trolberg; a major upheaval in the life of a girl who likes nothing better than to go exploring the woods and mountains and discovering magical creatures. Since moving into town Hilda’s mother is not so keen to allow Hilda out exploring believing a town to be a potentially dangerous place for a child. Soon though Hilda and her new friends manage to convince her mother to allow her out and the new friends give her a guided tour of the area and all the best places in town. Hilda seems to prefer animals to other children though and early on becomes separated from her friends and instead goes exploring with an injured bird she has befriended.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909263060</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=A1 Annual
 
|author=Dave Elliott (editor)
 
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=It's perhaps a little surprising how few comics anthologies there are on the shelves of regular bookstores.  The whole world of sequential art is so fragmented the choices to be made are infinite, everyone who comes into some renown soon wishes for a self-published collection of his favourites or her friends' work, and there definitely is too much out there for anyone in the audience of comix to fully grasp without some kind of editorial spoon-feeding.  One such editor is Dave Elliott, whose A1 Comics has been collating what it deems the world's greatest since 1989, but even with that pedigree it's only now that full hardbacks of their greatest hits are being launched – hardbacks such as this book.
+
|summary=Batman is not playing ball. He's been videoed duffing up Gotham policemen, and not the baddies he usually biffs. But then he's not Batman – he's a she, and she finally comes up with the news that Batman died in her hands. Elsewhere, Lara, the daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman, is encouraging Ray Palmer/The Atom to turn his technologies concerned with shrinking and expanding life to the miniaturised city of Kandor, the last vestige of Kryptonian existence not to fly about in visible blue pants. What with Superman sitting idle in an exposed Fortress of Solitude having gone into a sulk, and Batman dead, there would appear to be little in the way of help for the world should anything nasty happen – but then, of course, something nasty does happen… s
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782760164</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=Weeks_Gritterman
|title=Magic Words: The Extraordinary Life of Alan Moore
+
|title=The Gritterman
|author=Lance Parkin
+
|author=Orlando Weeks
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=I don't think that I ever saw [[:Category:Alan Moore|Alan Moore]] when I lived in Northampton, and I don't think I coincided with the publication of ''Maxwell the Magic Cat'' in the local newspaper.  So I missed out on the memorable frame of someone else who is six foot two, albeit a generation older and looking so hirsute he would seem to be afraid of scissors.  But I certainly would not have been alone in not recognising him for what he is.  How many Northampton housewives flicked past the daily panels of ''Maxwell'' in complete ignorance of who Alan Moore actually is? – With no idea that the years he spent drawing that cartoon for £10 a week – later to be £12.50 – were just him gearing up to be the biggest man of letters in the comic book world?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781310777</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Briony Hatch
 
|author=Ginny Skinner and Penelope Skinner
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
|summary=Meet Briony Hatch. She's a fourteen year old schoolgirl, with a few too many curves for the trendy set, and want-away hair, who is fixated on the ghost who acts as romantic male lead in her favourite series of fantasy books, about a beautiful, feisty female, swashbuckling exorcist. But when the books finish, just at the same time as her parents divorce, it looks like the beginning of the end. Mum and Briony settle into the abandoned bungalow belonging to the latter's great-uncle and aunt, only for the girl to find a horrid malaise come over her.  Has the books' conclusion done so much damage as to leave her wishing to retire from life, or can she find the ghost of a hope somewhere?
+
|summary=There's a man who has an ice cream van. In summer, what there is of summer, he uses it to sell ice creams, That's not his vocation though, but it does keep him going whilst he waits for winter when the van becomes a Gritting Van and our narrator becomes a Gritterman. The fibreglass 99s on the roof light up and rotate, playing a tune, whether the van's gritting or selling ice creams. Tonight - Christmas Eve - will be the van's last trip. The council has sent the letter about his services no longer being required. Global warming. Dying profession, they say. There's even a tarmac now that can de-ice itself, but the Gritterman isn't sure that he wants to live in a world where the B2116 doesn't need gritting.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907536140</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Historical Fiction Reviews]]
|title=Fashion Beast
 
|author=Alan Moore and Malcolm McLaren
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|summary=Meet Doll.  She seems to fit in with the world she aspires to – she has an androgynous look and a sharp tongue, and doesn't seem to hold many of the people around her in much deference.  However, as someone else is very quick to point out, she is only a cloakroom attendant, however swanky and in vogue the nightclub she works at might be.  That same someone else gets her fired, however, yet for every door that shuts…  As she becomes an overnight modelling sensation, and finds her new boss a very singular individual.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1592912117</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Weirdo Years 1981-'91
 
|author=R Crumb
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|summary=Books are better than magazines – discuss.  Certainly for the connoisseur of the contents of culturally important titles from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s it must be a lively debate.  I remember my collection of ''New Worlds'' editions and how often the editors would take us through a long novel over seven or eight parts, then dump a 'sorry, due to space requirements this last part of what you've cherished for months is abridged – but wait for the novel version soon' on us.  Is it better to be a completist, and witness everything the original editors deemed worthy (or just had lying around) or should we cherry-pick and note the best?  This hefty hunk of book goes for the latter, anyway, taking [[:Category:Robert Crumb|R Crumb]]'s output for the ''Weirdo'' comic, as edited by R Crumb, then someone else, then Mrs R Crumb, and giving us everything, warts and all.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0861662253</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=The Hartlepool Monkey
 
|author=Wilfrid Lupano and Jeremie Moreau
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|summary=OK, I'll get the obvious pun over and done with – this graphic novel features a lot of monkeying around.  It focuses on the village of Hartlepool, and the people who populated the small settlement on low cliffs overlooking the North Sea, with its couple of pubs and not much else.  It looks at what might have happened when, as folklore has it, a storm put paid to a French ship and when a monkey washed up ashore afterwards the natives took it for a Napoleonic spy, tried to find invasion plans from it, and hanged it as the enemy.  Here the poor creature is even shaved so it shows respect to the court-martial.  Here too are some lovely choice lines of vernacular delivered in spite about the French and the English, and here too is a guest appearance by someone with a much more modern outlook than the ridiculous Hartlepool residents.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0861662261</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Celtic Warrior: The Legend of Cu Chulainn
 
|author=Will Sliney
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Graphic Novels
 
|summary=Queen Maeve wants the Brown Bull of Cooley and the lands of Ulster. With an army of 10,000 men, she marches to try to take them by force. The only man who stands between her and her goal is Cú Chulainn, the legendary hero. Can he save his country from the evil enchantress?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847173381</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Big Nate Compilation 3 : Genius Mode
 
|author=Lincoln Peirce
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Confident Readers
 
|summary=They say you should live your life like an adventure, and Big Nate certainly does that, even if it is only four panels at a time, meaning the full plot of the story can take a week or more to come out.  For Big Nate is a star of an American newspaper comic strip, and this, believe it or not, is his tenth collection.  We learn from this all about his friendships at school, his relations with his teachers and father, and just what a soppy thing his most unmasculine dog can be.  Here are comics, baseball and laziness, as every American kid knows them.  Luckily for us, though, Big Nate travels well.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007515642</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 10:21, 30 October 2023

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Review of

Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey by Edel Rodriguez

4star.jpg Graphic Novels

We're in childhood, and we're in Cuba. The revolution has happened, and Castro, first thought of as a saviour of the country, has proven himself a Communist, and not done nearly enough to create a level playing field for all. Well, those hours-long speeches of his were kind of taking his time away. Our narrator's family weren't in the happiest of places here, an uncle refusing to be the good soldier the country demanded (especially as he would probably be shipped off to some minor pro-Communism skirmish, such as Angola) and the father being watched and watched, and not liked for his successful photography business, success being frowned upon. The mother gets the couple jobs with the party to ease some of the heat, but in this sultry island country, it remains the kind of heat forcing you out of the kitchen… Full Review

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Review of

The Gold Lion and the Tournament of Sentinels by Kia Ahankoob

4star.jpg Graphic Novels

When Myriad created Duniva he endowed his children with different powers, each with its own strength and weakeness, in the hope they would complement each other and collaborate, creating a dynamic and prosperous society. Each power is contained within a magical ring belonging to one of eight countries led by Myriad's children and their descendants. But it didn't quite work out like that. Rivalries developed. Enmities grew out of them and the eight countries went to war. Having fought themselves into an endless and ruinous stalemate and finding the cost of war too high, a solution is proposed. Each of the eight countries will send their greatest warriors, known as sentinels, to a single combat tournament. The winner will take possession of all the rings and become the supreme ruler of Duniva. Full Review

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Review of

The Grot: The Story of the Swamp City Grifters by Pat Grant

4star.jpg Graphic Novels

Everything in this world runs on pedal-power, and that includes the punk bands. There are three pedallers at the front of the Heath Robinson contraption taking our lead characters to the ferry across the swamp to Falter City, where a mother and her two sons aim to set up a yoghurt factory. You could say that yoghurt would be the only culture around, for this is a really rough-and-ready dump of a place, but everyone is interested in small things that grow. For the only money to be had – the only fortunes to be found in Falter City – come from algae, gunk and other crud that – well, the use of it is never really made clear. Once there, the two brothers set themselves each up with a guide – Lippy, the more forward-thinking, industrious of the two, with a besuited gent, Penn with a ballsy young teenaged girl with bright red hair. But which of the two will come off the worse as they make their own way in this dystopian, semi-Apocalyptic hellhole? Full Review

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Review of

Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes by Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud, Ameziane and Edward Gauvin (translator)

4.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

I never really followed the events of Tiananmen Square with much attention when it was playing out – someone in the second half of their teens has other priorities, you know. I certainly didn't know of the weeks of protests and hunger strikes from the students before the massacre and the birth of the Tank Man image, I didn't know how the area had long been a venue for political protest, and I didn't know more than a spit about the people involved on either side. This book is practically flawless in giving a general browser's context for the whole season of protests back in 1989. Full Review

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Review of

Wonder Woman: Warbringer: The Graphic Novel by Leigh Bardugo, Louise Simonson and Kit Seaton

3star.jpg Teens

Diana, being unique on her island, is the victim of a lot of taunts, and claims of nepotism. It's only her unique status, and her mother being Queen, that has her with any standing at all, her naysayers declare – even though she has clearly fought to be a strong young woman. Perhaps too strong for the island, however – for every Wonder Woman origin story has her quickly leaving home for the World of Men, and this Diana is the heroine of yet another Wonder Woman origin story. A shipwreck disturbs her leading performance in a running race, but the survivor she drags from the waters is only going to disturb a lot more... Full Review

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Review of

Black Canary: Ignite by Meg Cabot and Cara McGee

3.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

Meet Dinah Lance. Frustrated that her policeman father will not allow her to try and follow in his footsteps, and seemingly lumbered with being a cheerleader at school, she is desperate to find her voice. But it's actually more a case of her voice finding her, as when she gets frustrated or plain dissed at school her vocal outcry can shatter glass better than any opera singer. You could almost call it a weapon, or a power. But in order for her to call herself a superhero, there has to be a whole path of steps for her to take – one of which will be into her past… Full Review

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Review of

Batman: Nightwalker: The Graphic Novel by Marie Lu, Stuart Moore and Chris Wildgoose

4star.jpg Graphic Novels

The young man called Bruce Wayne is a very noticeable one – he can hardly go anywhere without people – bystanders, paparazzi, and suchlike – reminding him he's a billionaire at the age of eighteen. Feeling rather stuck with the legacy he's inherited from his murdered parents, he wants to do charitable deeds. But one night, when he speeds off in his posh new car in pursuit of a criminal, he goes too far as far as the authorities are concerned, and gets given the most unlikely stretch of community service instead – cleaning in the home for violent criminals that is Arkham Asylum. There he learns of some other people who also allege charitable intent – the Nightwalkers, a gang who steal any ten-figure bank account contents they can, and murder the owner. Can he get close to one of them and get the truth of their schemes, or will the manipulative Madeleine be a step too far for the young do-gooder? Full Review

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Review of

Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass by Mariko Tamaki and Steve Pugh

3.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

Harleen Quinzel is new in town. She always, to me, seems new in town, even if she's been around a long time, for she always has a very fresh attitude, and seems to look out of those large eyes at everything anew each time. But here she is new in town, and the town is Gotham City. Expecting a year-long furlough from life with her mother, she finds her gran dead and herself with no option but to stay with a bunch of drag queens. She also finds school is a drag, she also finds the whole neighbourhood is being redeveloped by a large and uncaring corporation – but she also finds two characters that will have a big impact on her life. One is a civil-minded lass called Ivy, the other someone she only meets at night – a lad with a singular graffiti tag and a mind for violence and chaos, who calls himself The Joker… Full Review

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Review of

Mera: Tidebreaker by Danielle Paige and Stephen Byrne

4.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

Meet Mera. She's the latest in a line of young women intent on fighting against their intended destiny for one only they can see for themselves. Her father, the king of Xebel, sees some cotton wool and a hunky man in an arranged marriage as her future – after all, Mera's mother, the territory's warrior queen, is long dead. Mera doesn't fancy the cosseting or the fella involved at all and is, in fact, trying to get Xebel out from under the cosh of Atlantean power, for Xebel's royalty are merely puppets of Atlantean masters. So when she overhears her father request that her intended go to the world of us air-breathing humans, and kill the Atlantis heir, she rushes off to get the quest (and the promised throne) all for herself. But of course, she has no idea what kind of person she will meet, and how hard it will be to get the job done… Full Review

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Review of

Super Sons: The PolarShield Project by Ridley Pearson and Ile Gonzalez

4star.jpg Graphic Novels

It's the near future, and every coastal city – including Metropolis – is in need of a huge flood barrier, built on its coast by Wayne Enterprises. But the rising sea levels have put even those constructions under threat, forcing many people to relocate in America's biggest exodus for decades. Superman is helping out, of course – first, he was patching up the dams, but now he's mining the asteroid belt for a rare dust that's perfect for blocking the solar energy from making further polar ice melt. Inland, in Wyndermere, the refugees from the coast are suffering bigotry and intolerance for being newcomers, but something else is much worse. A major bout of food poisoning is hitting the city. But it can't possibly have anything to do with what looks like sabotage of the flood barriers and the efforts to correct the climate, can it? Four young children begin to piece together clues that it can… Full Review

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Review of

Manfried the Man: A Graphic Novel by Caitlin Major and Kelly Bastow

4.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

In a world where cats stand on two feet, go to work at call centres and have diminutive human beings for pets, is Manfried. He's a typical frisky but shy pet – forever getting into scrapes, demanding more food than he can suitably eat, but at the same time being the perfect companion for his owner, Steve Catson. To such an extent that Steve, who is getting known for his man-oriented thinking, is actually having nightmares about becoming the neighbourhood crazy man cat. But when a window gets left open by mistake, and Manfried goes missing, the only thing for it is a massive and energised man-hunt… Full Review

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Review of

Talking to Gina by Ottilie Hainsworth

4.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

This is what happened. An artist decided she needed a dog – so drove the length of the country, Brighton to Grimsby, to pick up an Eastern European immigrant street dog with some mange and one working eye. Why not? The first night at home, Gina – the dog – eats something she shouldn't and causes a mess, so it's not a great start, but then begin the tribulations of training, status and behaviour all humans must go through with their dogs. And then, the life with Gina begins to feel like too much – I felt weird about you because you were always there. My thoughts were taken over by you, and I felt sick, as if I was in love. Slowly, however, everyone – our artist/author, her husband, two children and two cats – gets to form the family they and Gina all would have wanted. Full Review

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Review of

Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin

5star.jpg Graphic Novels

Ebo is twelve years old and all alone. His sister left for Europe months ago and now he doesn't know where his brother is either but knows that he has probably done the same thing. So Ebo has to attempt the same dangerous journey himself. He must cross the Sahara Desert, get himself to Tripoli, one of the most dangerous cities in the world, and then try to cross the Mediterranean Sea. By himself. At twelve. And, even if he makes it, how will he find his sister? Full Review

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Review of

Batman: Dark Knight III: The Master Race by Frank Miller and Brian Azzarello

3.5star.jpg Graphic Novels

Batman is not playing ball. He's been videoed duffing up Gotham policemen, and not the baddies he usually biffs. But then he's not Batman – he's a she, and she finally comes up with the news that Batman died in her hands. Elsewhere, Lara, the daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman, is encouraging Ray Palmer/The Atom to turn his technologies concerned with shrinking and expanding life to the miniaturised city of Kandor, the last vestige of Kryptonian existence not to fly about in visible blue pants. What with Superman sitting idle in an exposed Fortress of Solitude having gone into a sulk, and Batman dead, there would appear to be little in the way of help for the world should anything nasty happen – but then, of course, something nasty does happen… s Full Review

Weeks Gritterman.jpg

Review of

The Gritterman by Orlando Weeks

5star.jpg Graphic Novels

There's a man who has an ice cream van. In summer, what there is of summer, he uses it to sell ice creams, That's not his vocation though, but it does keep him going whilst he waits for winter when the van becomes a Gritting Van and our narrator becomes a Gritterman. The fibreglass 99s on the roof light up and rotate, playing a tune, whether the van's gritting or selling ice creams. Tonight - Christmas Eve - will be the van's last trip. The council has sent the letter about his services no longer being required. Global warming. Dying profession, they say. There's even a tarmac now that can de-ice itself, but the Gritterman isn't sure that he wants to live in a world where the B2116 doesn't need gritting. Full Review

Move on to Newest Historical Fiction Reviews