Comic Quickies: Dial T for Tardy

Comic Quickies are back after a brief hiatus.  I've been so insanely busy with school and other life adventures that I've haven't had much time for blogging.  In fact, this is the first time I've sat down to pound out a blog post in over a week... I've been able to keep the blog semi-regular with updates thanks to a couple blogging binges where I cranked out a load of posts, but that supply is starting to dwindle.  So, even though much of the stuff in this Comic Quickies is a week or more old, it's stuff I've read this month that I think merits mention.

Dial H #1: I knew as soon as I heard about China Mieville's comic debut, Dial H, I would have to pick up the first issue.  However, I did a dumb thing and didn't add it to my pull list, so on the day this one came out, I walked into the store to grab a copy off the shelf, and was sadly denied because the shop had sold out all of their copies.  I had to wait two weeks for the re-order to come in, and then, grabbed one of the last few re-order issues. So, suffice it to say that the "H" stands for "hot".

Keeping with China Mieville's modus operandi, this one is kinda weird.  It starts out as two out of shape friends are having an argument about being out of shape.  One guy leaves in a huff, only to be attacked by street thugs a few blocks down the street.  Nelson, the other friend, hustles to try and help, but catches an epic haymaker for the effort.  Luckily, he gets punched right into a phone booth, and while trying to dial 911, somehow gets magically turned into a strange freakshow of a superhero by the name of Boy Chimney.

As the magical smoke-phantasm producing Boy Chimney, Nelson is able to ward off the attackers and carry his friend to safety.  He then awakes a few hours later on random roof top with a minimal memory of the night's events.  After piecing things back together, Nelson figures out that his buddy has gotten on the wrong side of his sketchy employer.  Hoping to set things straight with his new-found Boy Chimney skills, Nelson returns to the magic phone booth and tries to duplicate the previous night's transformation, which he sorta does, but with vastly different results.  From there things get weird and weirder.

I can't really say I was a fan of this one.  It is just all kindsa strange, and nothing about the first issue made me care about what was going on.  Maybe I'll check out the collected trade sometime down the road, but for now, I'm gonna pass on this one.

The Bulletproof Coffin Disinterred #4: Rounding out the "That Shit Cray" double header for the month is the fourth issue of The Bulletproof Coffin Disinterred.  This one scores high in weirdness for the fact that it is a total non-linear issue comprised of 84 panels printed in random sequence.  Yup.  Weird.


The idea here is that one can just paw through the issue willy-nilly and read the damn thing in any order and achieve some sense of entertainment and enlightenment.  I'm not so sure I was enlightened, but this sure was entertaining.  It was one strange, fucked up issue, but I'm always interested to see how people push the comics medium in new and cool directions.  Shaky Kane's art was awesome and trippy as per usual, so I was hugely entertained by that to say the least.

Though the first Bulletproof Coffin mini series provided a great story, this second mini series appears to be just a collection of one-shots set in the world of BPC.  So far, there is nothing to tie together the four distinctly different narratives that we've seen so far, but I also wouldn't put it past Hine and Kane to tie it all together somehow by the end.  If you wanna get your dose of strange, surreal and off-beat in the same serving, Bulletproof Coffin is your medicine.

Mystery in Space (One-Shot): So, uh, I totally picked this up because it had a short comic in here by Nnedi Okorafor.  Sure, there were a few other draws, like the Ryan Sook cover, and the Mike Allred short, but it was pretty much all about Nnedi.

Her story is pretty cool.  I'm not sure if this is her first foray into comics or not, but she's off to a pretty good start.  The story, The Elgort had Okorafor's stamp all over it as her writerly voice, or whatever you wanna call it, came through loud and clear from the get go.  Her scripting was a little shaky, but the story was assisted by some purely sublime art by Michael Kaluta, who I was familiar with from some Rocketeer Adventures stuff.  Overall, The Elgort was a great fantasy story veiled as an SF tale.  This one stood out as the champ of the collection.

The whole she-bang-a-bang probably wasn't worth the $7.99 price tag, but I enjoyed enough of the various comics to be entertained.  I find that I always get really excited about short comic collections, but am ultimately disappointed by what's between the covers.  Maybe  I should lay off them for a while.

Reaction: Who Fears Death

Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor



I don't think I've ever been more relieved to have finished a book.

Who Fears Death is a tough book. It is tough to read. Okorafor pulls absolutely zero punches in this one and delivers scene after scene of intense moments and delivers them with a clarity that often made me feel a sense of discomfort as I read. Okorafor depicts rapes, female circumcision, death, conception, a woman's menstrual period and genocide in this book, and all these moments occur with a visceral "up close and personal" point of view that takes no prisoners. This stylistic approach gives the novel some extremely powerful moments, moments that will live long in my memory. At the same time, for me at least, it was often too much. There were definitely times when the doors to my comfort zone were completely blown open and I was exposed to the raw winds of Okorafor's literary powers. Through some of these scenes, and others throughout the book, Okorafor makes connections from the novel to our world and through this challenged me engage the raw emotions that the novel brought out of me. This was an exciting and unique reading experience for me, and one that I likely will not soon forget.

The overall style of the book is also "tough", the narrative flow has a swagger about it that gives the book and, it's main character, Onyesonwu a distinct personality. Onyesonwu is a strong female lead character, one that is not seen often enough in fantasy literature these days. Okorafor does a good job of fleshing out Onyesonwu and making her believable and realistic. Unfortunately, the same can not be said about any other character in the book. Onyesonwu's quest companions, were never anything more than names to me, as they had very little that allowed the reader to tell them apart. Even the "Evil Lord" was weak, and was apparently just evil for the sake of being evil. This lack of a strong cast of characters greatly reduced my enjoyment of the book. It was difficult and frustrating to read pages and pages of the quest where things were happening to characters I cared absolutely nothing for due to weak characterization.

Another aspect of the book which was a real hang up for me was the dialog. For me this was the weakest part of the book, and a major detractor from my enjoyment. There were a lot of times while reading that I felt like the dialog was straight out of a YA book. The delivery of how the characters spoke to each other felt very juvenile. Okorafor's writing roots are based in YA, so this may be a reason for the dialog sounding like it was aimed at a younger crowd. However, that dialog, juxtaposed against the very heavy adult themes was jarring and out of place in this novel.

So, to go back to that first sentence of this post, my most basic reaction upon finishing this book was, and still is, relief. Yes, some of that relief is just being happy to have the weak characters and lame dialog behind me, but that's not all. This book sports some of the most intense, moments in fantasy history, and upon finishing it, I feel relieved that those intense moments are beyond me. That's why I titled this post a "reaction" not a "review". Who Fears Death, no matter what my personal gripes with nuts and bolts of the book are, is a powerful novel. It is a novel that for me at least, will take some time to completely digest. I knew as soon as I was done reading that I couldn't give this book a proper review, if I did, it would get a shitty grade, like a D minus or something, because I did not like this book. The characters and the dialog were BIG turn-offs...but that grading bullshit, and my opinion don't do justice to this novel, I feel that it transcended my typical reading experience and maybe changed me a little, and for sure changed the way I think.

Just like how this book evoked a strong reaction from me, it has also has given me lots to reflect on.

Author Event: Nnedi Okorafor

Last night, here in Seattle, I attended an author reading/book signing featuring Nnedi Okorafor. Okorafor and her new book, Who Fears Death popped up on my radar a short while ago when Ken from Neth Space wrote a sweet review of the book. Since then I've had my eye out for this one, and I recently came across a used copy, so I scooped it up. Then, late last week, I discovered the author event and thought it would be worth checking out.

As far as author events go, this one was quite different. Usually, these things go one of two ways: 1) The author reads a bit of his or her novel,maybe discusses the creation process of the book, fields questions from the audience, then signs books. 2) The author is interviewed by someone, often a literature critic, people from the audience ask questions, then the author signs books. However, Okorafor played things differently.

She began by reading the first chapter of Who Fears Death, then proceeded to read other sections from deeper within the novel. I'm sure this was a pleasure for those in the audience who had read the book, as Okorafor's reading covered some pivotal moments in the novel, yet for me it was somewhat torturous as I had not read the novel yet, and her reading was speckled with plot spoilers. Okorafor read for an hour, at which time it was announced the store was closing, so only a few people lined up for autographs, and it was over. No question/answer session and a handful of spoilers for those in the audience who had not had the opportunity to read the novel yet.

I'll admit, after Okorafor's reading I was somewhat frustrated, because I felt that some of the mystery of the novel had been taken away, but then it hit me that I had also been given something pretty special: Okorafor had shared parts of her novel that she felt strongly about, and read them in her voice, the way they were intended to be read, and that is a rare thing for a reader to experience. I began the book today, and I know that having heard Okorafor read the first chapter, that I had a stronger sense of the narrator's voice thanks to her reading. I'm sure this effect will carry through for the other sections I heard, and will hopefully continue to enrich the reading experience.

I was one of the few who stuck around for autographs, and I was rewarded with a cool personalization by Okorafor, so that was a nice cap to an interesting evening.