Customer Reviews

Mail Order Bride

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I loved every page of this book up to the great climax, which in my opinion strikes a false note to say the least. the character development is carefully done and plausible up to that point, where two genres seem to collide to the benefit of neither; I'm not familiar with Mark Kalesniko's previous work, but can imagine it to be in a more traditional "comic" style, where such scenes are somewhat more commonplace.

After reading this through I hasten to add that I was deeply impressed and moved by the rest of the book, the artwork as well as the story, and wouldn't want to put anyone off buying it; on the contrary, I seldom got such good value (in terms of time spent reading and re-reading) out of a graphic novel. Great book!

Complex, believable characters and an unusual, well-conceived plot make this one of my favorite graphic novels. The conflict between the comic book store owner with an Asian fetish and his new Korean mail-order bride is beautifully told in a series of small, telling vignettes, developing slowly as it takes a series of unpredictable turns. Kalesniko's art is, as always, both incisive and gorgeous, and his use of panels and pacing are just brilliant. He obviously has a lot to teach others in the medium of comics. He apparently did work on The Lion King and Mulan, but his wonderfully cinematic storytelling skills have been evident since long before that. I'll admit the ending of the story goes a bit over the top for my taste, but what remains is a dense and fascinating look at a very poignant, very real relationship. I've read it 3 times now and continue to linger over the captivating way Kalesniko tells the story. If you're looking for a graphic novel for people who say they'll never like "comic books," this is one to buy.

I bought this book quite a while back, but it was only recently I read it. It is the story of a lonely 39 year old comic and toy store owner Monty Wheeler. Who is so desperate for companionship that he gets a mail order bride from Korea. However, the woman he gets, Kyung Seo, is not the petite,deferent Asian girl that he was hoping for, and this is where the story takes off into chaos. The art style is very unique in this book, and the sory telling is top-notch. There is never a trace of love in Monty and Kyung's relationship: Monty has a case of "Yellow Fever" and Kyung was hoping for a better life. They are both met with bitter disappointment that explodes in pure hatred at the end. . .

This book has a unique, expressive style to the artwork and the dialogue is believable but where it really excels is the realism of the characters. Both of the main characters are at times pitiable and at others really easy to hate, you can side with neither character if you're being fair and honest and thus the book ends, leaving one feeling a touch unsatisfied. Which seems right as the characters in the book also are left unsatisfied. long story short, awesome book, well worth the read.

'Mail order bride' is a graphic novel focusing on the story of 39 year old comic book store owner Morris Wheeler, and a young Korean woman called Kyung who desires to move to Canada for a freer life, but the only way to do so is to marry a native man in a so called 'greencard' marriage.

Wheeler is a awkward and shy man, and lacks the self-confidence to ask women to date him. As a result, he is desperately lonely and sexually frustrated, and spends much of his time using pornographic movies and magazines, especially those of Asian women.

Wheeler seems to get the image Asian women are more docile, compliant, and obedient than native Canadian women, and less likely to reject him as inadequate. Seizing the opportunity, Wheeler takes the plunge and meets up with Kyung. The two soon marry, and their relationship begins.

It is soon obvious the marriage is a bad one. Loveless, and badly marred by Wheeler's severe lack of self esteem (even on his wedding night he can't consumate the marriage without the initiative of Kyung) and Kyung's growing desire for freedom, the couple soon start to drift apart. Kyung meets a native Chinese Canadian photographer, Ms Wong, who introduces her to a more liberal and relaxed attitude to life than she finds at home with Wheeler. Wong takes a number of nude photos of Kyung and introduces her to a Art history teacher and photographer, who encourages Kyung to develop her natural artistic gifts and to study. This Kyung all does, much to Wheeler's rage, which erupts into poisonous jealousy, envy, and irrational suspicion which destroys his fragile trust in Kyung, leading him to falsely accuse her of having affairs.

Things go downhill for the couple, with Kyung becoming increasingly rebellious against Wheeler's attempts to control her and stop her being 'unfaithful' (which she never is) and his pathetic attempts at emotional blackmail and manipulation. Sadly, Kyung's friends including Wong, blast him as pathetic, weak and 'balless', badly damaging Wheeler's already fragile psyche and self esteem, and accelerating the slide to disintegration.

Things come to a head when Kyung finds Wheeler's extensive asian pornography collection. Accusing him of never loving her and only wanting an object to gratify his lust, the two engage in a final conflict which tears both apart.

The story is a darkly tragic one, but very well told. The illustrations and characters are powerful and effective, and afterwards one is haunted by the destructive forces of self-hate, lust, selfishness, and manipulation which affect us all. The story is a disturbing indictment on relationships where the main aim of both people is not love and kindness but selfish ends to another means, achieved through using people as objects.

Kyung seems to come through as the hero of the story, though the ending is not a happy one by any means. Certainly in the end she turns out to be anything but what Wheeler desired and expected her to be, and shows Asian women are just as human and capable of independence and strength, as their Caucasian sisters. The story is also a stark warning to anyone who thinks cultural boundaries in a relationship can be easily overcome.

most of the others reviewers here have told you all you'll need to know about the story of "Mail Order Bride" so I'll leave those details to them.
I'd like to talk about how good the art is in this 200+ page graphic novel. Mark first got my attention back with a mini-series he did called "Alex" which may or may not be available in trade paperback form. His expressive and economical art made me a fan from that first issue, and I eagerly await each new project.
"MOB" shows his skills with sequential art growing even more precise and detailed. He uses many repeated images and wordless panels to great effect, and captures more emotion in a look from his characters than the dialogue ever could.
I'm a big fan of fellow indie creator Andi Watson, and both he and Mark have an economy of line that is so refreshing in today's comics field. Andi's line is thick and minimalist, while Mark's is thin and detailed, but both pack so much feeling into their work that you'll soon be a fan too.
"MOB" is the best $$ I've spent in a comics shop in some time.

I had hopes when I ordered this comic from Amazon --- it had a lot of positive reviews, and the premise seemed like the sort of thing that would make a good story.

I was, however, sorely disappointed by Mail Order Bride. Its premise is certainly interesting, but the treatment is crude, stilted, and heavy-handed. There are long sequences of panels with no dialogue, just showing static scenes of the characters doing things. I've never been a fan of this technique, and it's especially bothersome here, where the panels are often small and the actions unremarkable. Plus, even when there is dialogue, it's often laboriously stretched over a bunch of tiny panels, so that a whole page can pass with almost nothing happening.

The dialogue itself is melodramatic, and the characters overall are irritatingly one-dimensional.

I should note here that, in general, I LIKE one-dimensional characters, when they're done right. Done right means that the characters have a single dimension which is parallel to the direction in which the stories moves; they are thin slices of people, revealing only what is relevant to the story. This leads to efficient, satisfying, writing.

Not so in Mail Order Bride. The characters are established quickly, and characteristics which were obvious to begin with are hammered home through dozens and dozens of pages. When the characters do change, the changes too are delivered with all the subtlety of an artillery bombardment.

And, as I've alluded to above, the book is simply too long. There isn't enough story to fill 261 pages, and large sections are boring, overextended, and predictable.

The book is not a total loss -- that's why I'm giving it 2 stars instead of 1. It has a few good moments, and several places that COULD have been good moments had they not been stretched to the breaking point. And although the pacing from panel to panel is plodding, the art itself is clear and appealing. Still, I don't recommend this book; it's not worth the money.

You know it's a good book when you start reading it and you cannot for the life of you put it down ... even though it's all in black and white with no color... even though there's no super-hero action or science fiction or fantasy or any of the other "staples" of graphic novels (warning... if you like graphic novels like "strangers in paradise" or "criminal" ... non super hero "real life" type settings... you'll probably like this, but if this isn't your cup of tea then you'd be best off taking a pass on this book) ... it still made an impact on me to the point where the ending was like a punch in the gut - not to mention DEPRESSING as all hell so if you need a happy ending to your books then avoid this one... I can see how a lot of people would like it and I can see how a lot of people would hate it .... if you're on the fence and you're not lucky enough to grab a used copy at one fourth of the "normal" amazon price like I did... at most spend half the suggested amazon price on it , as impressed as I was by the book I might have felt a bit cheated if I'd paid full price for it in comparison to say Alan Moore's " Watchmen", Neil Gaiman's " Sandman" et cet - books well worth the full recommended "retail" price... I really, really felt for the poor "mail order bride" , the heroine of the story so to speak , in a sympathetic way - her plight reaches out and touches you... the "bad guy" of the story if you will (not so much evil and more so .. well, a jerk basically) ... clever twist on the writer/artist's part... he's the comic book geek that most people reading this probably already are :P .. but he's that geek taken to it's worst possible level, someone who is , on an emotional level, incredibly damaging to both himself and others... more than that I cannot say without throwing some real spoilers in there, something I am loathe to do.... if you can snag this for one half the suggested retail price or less and you fit the criteria I mentioned above do so, you'll enjoy... no, enjoy is the wrong word (did I mention DEPRESSING ending?) ... you'll be struck ...impacted... by this book.

Mark Kalesniko's third graphic novel is undoubtedly his most ambitious work to date, much longer than either the original six-issue format of 'Alex' or the 87-page graphic novel 'Why Did Pete Duel Kill Himself?'. Here Kalesniko not only moves away from the episodic nature of his previous two works towards a longer 261-page sustained narrative, but he also refines and adapts his drawing style towards the demands of the storyline. Some of the themes that the novel deals with have been touched on in his other works - the fascination of a nerdy white middle-aged man for a younger Asian woman crops up in 'Alex', and an Asian woman learning to be self-sufficient and getting naked in the process is also evident in Kalesniko's first one-shot comic-book 'S.O.S' - but despite the ambitions of the author, the characterisation here in the larger work appears comparatively rather one-dimensional and development of the storyline rather prosaic and predictable. There are however other qualities that can be found in Mail Order Bride.

The storyline and characterisation however, it has to be said, are indeed rather predictable and one-dimensional. Monty is the owner of a comic-book store in Bandini, Canada - thin, white, geeky, wearing spectacles and in his late thirties, he has never had a relationship with a woman, but is on intimate terms with his collectible toys and his pornographic magazines of Asian women. Looking for a woman just as compliant and unthreatening, one moreover that fits his idealised fantasy as a demure and precious domesticated china-doll ornament, Monty has used one of the advertisements in one of his magazines to get himself a mail order bride. Kyung comes over from Korea and, fresh off the boat, has little option but to let herself be moulded into the sexually-alluring exotic domestic goddess image that Monty has fantasised about.

Eventually however, Kyung begins to rebel, finding inspiration in another young Canadian-born Asian woman and joining in with a bohemian group of artists, dancers and photographers in a nearby small community. As Kyung asserts her own independence, in secret from Monty - too obsessed with his own little fantasies to consider that she might have feelings and a personality of her own - the relationship between the couple runs into serious difficulties. The incidents that occur are much as you would imagine, and relating to family situations, to life in a comic book store, and to smalltown life in general, they are all fairly mundane. The gulf between Monty and Kyung over his weakness, lack of assertiveness and ambition and her search for independence and self-expression inevitably resulting in predictable disputes that fail to reveal any greater depth to the characters than these broad definitions.

In contrast to the flowing looseness of line in 'Alex' and the sense of fluid animated movement in the rather more tightly-drawn 'Why Did Pete Duel Kill Himself?', the artwork moreover is initially disappointing for fans of Kalesniko's earlier drawing styles. In Mail Order Bride, the drawings are rather more conventional, the line-work scratchy in an Eddie Campbell manner, the panels smaller, tightly framed, with more of them to the page, and the sense of movement and fluidity seems correspondingly restricted. While it takes some getting used to, the style however proves to be appropriate to the content, the length and the pace of the graphic novel, with there being a surprising amount of detail provided in the now-familiar setting of Bandini, with its dark, satanic smelting mill dominating the small town and its inhabitants. If there's any greater depth to be found in Mail Order Bride then, it's in the artwork, in the flows and curves of Kyung's body that provide an inspiration to other artists and in the movement of the naked dancer who seems to express her situation and her deeper feelings. As banal as the situation might seem to be however, it's at least treated realistically by Kalesniko - as ever - with no idealisation or unwarranted optimism.

A great piece of graphic storytelling. I'm a lifelong comic fan and take pride in keeping apprised of independent, critically acclaimed works (even if I don't read them all), and I was surprised when I never heard of Mail Order Bride. This book completely flew under many people's radars, I believe, and my opinion is that it would have sold much better with more attention.

The story and artwork are truly beautiful. Mark Kalesniko takes on a subject matter that is rife with stereotypes and cliches, and lends them depth and humanity. The story is moving, the individual panels are rich and emotion-invoking, and Kalesniko makes good use of the sequential panel structure to tell a story without words at many junctures. Most importantly, no character is two-dimensional. True, the premises surrounding each character are stereotypical, but Kalesniko eventually proves that he treasures his creations as individuals and not as plot devices.

Here, the reader is invited into the world of Monty Wheeler, a comic book store owner and lonely man, and Kyung Seo, his mail order bride from Korea. The reader accompanies them from their first meeting through their first awkward months together as husband and wife, observing as they initially try to do nothing but make the other happy. Slowly, their expectations of each other are not met and unhappiness and dissastisfaction results, because their expectations were artificially inflated by preconceived notions of each other.

Ultimately, the star of the book is Kyung, who comes into her own and discovers within herself a strong and independent woman, only to ultimately discover that this is not who she is. A tragic, if curious ending.

The only complaint I had about this book is that the author glosses over details that if included, would lend realism to his story, but inconvenience the plot. For example, Kyung speaks perfect English upon arrival in Canada. She chalks this up to always being good with languages. That's preposterous. Also, there's virtually no culture shock. Although her character is one that is trying to leave her past behind, I don't think that anyone completely can do that without feeling some longing or regret for their home culture. Especially in the case of an immigrant from East Asia to the U.S., the cultural differences are so vast, I don't see anyone adjusting as well as Kyung did. I don't know that the author appreciates this.

However, these small details were easy to overlook because of the touching story and rich characterization.