Couscous Express [Paperback]

Brian Wood (Author), Brett Weldele (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 5, 2001

Love, war, family and the best hummus recipe in New York City Scooter enthusiast and spoiled brat, Olive Yassin, delivers food for her parents' award-winning Middle Eastern restaurant, Couscous Express. She hates it. It's boring. She would much rather be hanging out with her courier-mercenary boyfriend, Moustafa. But when the local branch of the stylish and dangerous Turkish Scooter Mafia make a move against the restaurant, she knows she has to do something, anything, to protect her family. Couscous Express combines delicious food, automatic weapons fire, and scooter culture into a hectic, adrenaline-fueled story of love, family, war, and the best hummus recipe in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Best known for his graphic narrative Channel Zero, Brian Wood also spent a year writing Mutant Teenagers from Marvel Comics' Generation X. He devoted four years previous to studying at the prestigious Parsons School of Design in New York City. A veteran designer from the Internet boom of the late nineties, Wood currently designs for the stylish and much-respected videogame publisher, Rockstar Games.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: AiT/PlanetLar (November 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970936028
• ISBN-13: 978-0970936028
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 6.6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,470,776 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Brian Wood released his first graphic novel, Channel Zero, in 1997 to considerable critical acclaim and has continued to create at a brisk pace ever since. Focusing almost entirely on creator-owned projects, he's become one of the most important indie creators of the last decade. Standout books include his The Couriers and Channel Zero series, Demo, Local and Supermarket. He's earned multiple Eisner Award nominations and editions of his work have been published in close to a dozen foreign markets. Currently under an exclusive contract for DC/Vertigo, Wood continues to write his unique brand of iconoclastic creator-owned work with DMZ, Northlanders, Demo and The New York Four.

Brian lives with his wife and daughter in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars nice suprise..., September 2, 2005

By 

Richard Balmer "ribofunked" (England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Couscous Express (Paperback)

I discovered Brian Wood a few weeks back, starting with Channel Zero (in itself a really impressive book), and it didn't take long to find this. I'm not sure which one impressed me more.

Couscous Express isn't high concept, it has a simple plot, simple artwork, nothing to fancy in the writing... but its the way it comes together which seals the deal - the characterisation is excellent, and the artwork (although a little consistant) always manages to bring it out in a way that more complicated artwork might not.

The later couriers books (the two i've read, at any rate) are fun reads, but they don't really live up to this - there isn't nearly as much to draw the reader in, or make the reader care what happens to the characters in those books then there is here. The story has more nuances, the artwork is much less consistant but works just as well, if not better, for its simplicity and seemingly random style changes, and its nice to have such a flawed protagonist. No-one will ever look up to Olive Yassin, she certainly isn't a role model, but everyone will recognise her personality...

Anyway, my largest complaint is that the story is perhaps a little too short, but then maybe thats just wishful thinking - I can't see what you'd add to it, and you certainly couldn't take anything away from it. Take a look... you might be pleasantly suprised.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great one in Brian Wood's NYC, February 12, 2007

By 

Matthew Senne "literate fellow" (Columbus, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Couscous Express (Paperback)

It's fun, fast and exciting. You get a quick adventure with Special and Mustafa from Wood's The Couriers series helping out Mustafa' girlfriend Olive's family. It's a good popcorn movie in comic book form. Enjoy it!

5.0 out of 5 stars COUSCOUS EXPRESS by BRIAN WOOD and BRETT WELDELE, July 14, 2009

By 

Cai Yixin Jeremy - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Couscous Express (Paperback)

This is the prequel to THE COURIERS, a series of graphic novels, written by Brian Wood, about a pair of hotshot, free-riding freelancers who take up package deliveries and other miscellaneous jobs. Moustafa and Special deal with anything from cash money transfers to gunrunning. They are mercenary couriers and COUSCOUS EXPRESS introduces them for the first time.

But this 74 page graphic novel's main focus isn't them; it focuses instead on Olive Yassin, Moustafa's girlfriend, scooter enthusiast and spoiled brat. She works for her parents at the Couscous Express, a Middle Eastern take-out restaurant. But she doesn't like it there, she'd much rather do other things. That contributes to the friction she has with her parents, but we see that is just the tip of the iceberg; turns out her parents are under the protection of a Turkish Mafia gang who collects money from them on a regular basis.

Interjected with plenty of action scenes, this story moves at a pace THE COURIERS series are known for: fast and exciting at every turn. It feels and reads like an action movie, with a tinge of urban touch to it. Brian balances the silent scenes, the narrative scenes and the dialogue scenes very nicely, giving it a flow like few action comics I've read, a page turner. The dialogue feels natural as well. The sequences have a good rhythm to them and the street language-like language is what pushes them forward.

It didn't need outlandish art to shine. Not Greg Land's or Alex Ross' ultra realistic pictures, but Brett Weldele's stripped down style. This graphic novel shows that you don't need outstanding art to produce a good story. Get this and get the entire series of THE COURIERS along with it. Although I didn't like the main series as much as COUSCOUS EXPRESS, you will be much poorer in your literary experience not to pick them up along with this one.