Customer Reviews

Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean

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

 

 

This is rather a difficult book to review. While I definitely appreciate the fact that comics are being treated seriously as a scholarly work, I'm not really sure that this book is, in fact, what it claims to be. The first third of the book is ostensibly dedicated to a discussion of the format of comics and he potential of the medium, but Wolk constantly peppers the book with condescending commentary on mainstream books even as he purports to love them, going so far at one point as to suggest that there's something developmentally wrong with an adult who still enjoys a character he enjoyed as a child. While there's certainly nothing wrong with the heavy bias towards independent comics this book displays, he often paints most superhero comics with the same brush (except, of course, for perennial exceptions Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns and a few others). In other words, he does quite a bit to perpetuate the same primitive attitudes about comics that this book supposedly works to dispel.

The rest of the book is essentially a recommended reading list, with chapters devoted to different comic creators and their work. This section, honestly, is rather predictable. He gushes over the work of Alan Moore (even the total derailment of Promethea), pretentiously assures us that it's "okay" to read Dave Sim and Steve Ditko though they display (horrors!) conservative ideas in their work, and talks about the mastery of Maus. Not to say this section is all bad. Even in his predictability, he provides a very strong analysis of the Hernandez brothers' work, that of Chris Ware, of Chester Brown, and several other names that a mainstream reader may never have heard of. Perhaps the best chapter in the book is his analysis of Grant Morrison's work, which has actually convinced me to give The Invisibles another try. (I was put off by the anarchist tone of the first volume, something that doesn't appeal to me, but the idea in the analysis that the intended readers of the comic are actually people who have already read it makes me think that it's worth trying again).

This isn't a bad book - there are a lot of interesting ideas and thoughtful insights into comics as a whole and several comics in particular. But in the end, Wolk suffers the same fate as a lot of people who have tried to analyze comics as an artform. Simply put, the book thinks it's more important than it actually is.

There's a lot to recommend this book. No matter how versed you are in comics (I'm not), you're sure to find something new here about an amazingly complex medium.

But it's got some annoying flaws. Particularly in the first third of the book, it can be seriously geeky when it should be introductory and welcoming. You may find yourself stumbling on what seems like fan jargon or expert knowledge. I didn't(and still don't) understand the stylistic differences between Jack Kirby's early and late work. But that's the kind of thing Wolk more or less assumes at times.

At best, the book has some wonderful visual analyses of comic panels and styles. That's good, because most of the arguments require you to trust the visual descriptions. For a book about comics there aren't nearly enough illustrations, and none in color. How about a companion website where readers could look at more than a few low-quality black and white reproductions?

But Wolk's writing style gets annoying at this length. The book's trying to be academic and authoritative, but do it with a casual writing style. It doesn't work. Wolk often writes like a smart blogger; in other words, like someone who *really* needs an editor with a sharp red pencil. For example, he'll use annoying terms like "wave at" or "poke at" to mean "show" and "examine." He has a short "interview" between himself and Mr. Straw Man which feels like a clumsy way of avoiding constructing actual prose. Or he'll discover a new ten-dollar word (like "somatic") and use it two or three times in as many pages. He uses cliched writing (calling someone "a god-awful hack") constantly.

Worst, nearly every page has at least two or three parenthetical phrases, which makes following arguments clunky. An editor would have deleted these as either truly side comments, or else rewritten them to be part of the argument.

You might not be bothered by these things, though I was. They get in the way of reading and following what's actually a pretty subtle and worked-out argument.

As a childhood comics fan returned to the medium as an adult in search of meaningful entertainment, I appreciated Wolk's book as timely for comics' present moment, perhaps even overdue. Few corners of American comics aren't discussed and none go unmentioned. Wolk's book provides adequately theoretical, satisfying discussions of both "mainstream" superhero comics and "art comics", mapping them in the constellation of American popular culture. It helps that Wolk is a music critic as well; Wolk writes accessibly, like a reviewer or critic, and is unapologetic about comics as pleasure-reading first, with enormous artistic potential behind them. He discusses a serious American comic fan's range of work in a thought-provoking manner (from Ware and Bechdel to Moore and Miller), but informs readers enough to avoid sounding like the snooty "you-haven't-read-that?" comics junkie expounding arcane comics references. Not perfect, but plenty good for a reader like me.

Having read other books on comics, like "How to Read Superhero Comics and Why," I wanted to like Wolk's book more than those I've read before it. What I found most compelling about Wolk's book was his introduction where he talks about what makes comics different from other works of art is their unique deployment of metaphor. Yes, it's in that Straw Man argument (god, that is annoying, as other reviewers here suggest). What I found disappointing is that Wolk doesn't really deliver on giving us a coherent argument about that. Instead of giving us Comics, he gives us comics.

That being said, Wolk chooses some good, some bad, some interesting comics to talk about. I found his later chapters on individual authors interesting. Particularly on Starlin's Warlock, Ditko's Spider-Man and Mr. A, Sim's Cerebus, and finally Morrison's Invisibles.

You should look at the table of contents and see if Wolk writes about any comics (or creators) you have read and then pick up this book if there are enough of them. Note that Wolk will often spoil the endings of books so be careful.

Why I see Wolk failing to deliver on his promise to talk about metaphors in comics is that he spends way too much time telling us what the text in those comics mean (can't we figure a lot of this out for ourselves? -- exception: his take on Morrison's Invisibles is passionate and fairly coherent). I was hoping he'd be able to present a consistent view on the language of the comics medium (the art), and instead I got a lot of more of regurgitation of storylines (I already knew).

This book has been a long time coming. In the big question regarding how comics can start getting talked about more seriously, the simplest answer is for people to actually just talk about them seriously. Douglas Wolk gets that started. While the first 1/3 may have an air of "well, duh" to long-time comics readers and professionals, it's still great to read how Wolk contextualizes the fundamentals, and many of his ideas may challenge you to consider why you have the conceptions about this artform that you have.

Once the author starts dissecting other people's work, however, we're off to the races. Even books I didn't rate on my own or haven't read come alive when Wolk writes about them. He proves that comics aren't as simplistic as their reputation often implies, and as with any passionate critic, his enthusiasm is infectious.

I'm a casual comic reader and bought this book to learn more about comic culture and classics.

The author does a great job of talking about classic comics, authors, and illustrators. The first two chapters are also very interesting as they talk about the economics of comic distribution and how it has changed as more independent publishers have entered the market at various times in history.

The last half of the book is made of reviews of prominent authors and illustrators. It's hard for me to read reviews of music, movies, or comics since 15 pages of prose about Will Eisner or Frank Miller isn't a substitute for just reading their works.

Although they are very different, I would recommend buying Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art first, which does a much better job of explaining how comics work and what they mean. I would then read this book if you appreciate a prose-driven history of comics.

Reading Comics is a wonderfully informative book that delivers on every level. It's fun to read b/c Douglas Wolk is a talented writer. He's smart and passionate and his understanding of comics/graphic novels is impressive. He's funny too, which doesn't hurt! I breezed right through it and really enjoyed the ride. He has a very conversational tone, but he's not your know-it-all friend who's pretending to know more than he does - he's just explaining everything to you the way a friend would, and I can't think of a better way to learn than that. I picked this up because I'm familiar with Wolk's work (his 33 1/3 on James Brown's Live at the Apollo is undeniably one of the best in the series) and was curious what he had to say about graphic novels and I recommend it to anyone in need of an intelligent book on the subject. It would be the coolest text book ever.

I picked this book up on a whim from the new book section of our local library. Expecting it to be a dry and boring treatise on the "comics medium", I was pleasantly surprised to find a rather interesting book that brought new perspective to a medium I've been enjoying for over 4 decades. The first section of the book discussing the history and theory of comics was enjoyable, though somewhat familiar (to anyone who has read other comics 'meta-literature'). The second section of the book (a series of reviews of creators of interest) was notable for the fresh perspective it brought to familiar material. It was also a good introduction to creators that I did not know or had ignored in the past. This was in no small measure due to the skill of the author in homing in on the essential aspects of the creators that made them unique and noteworthy. This was a much better and informative approach for me than the biographical resumes with pictures and plot synopses I've encountered in other works of the same sort. I found myself going back and rereading comics on my bookshelf based on comments made by Wolk to catch things I missed the first time through. I can recommend this book both for readers familiar with comics as well as those who are not but want to learn more. I would also note that this book is clearly written by an adult for adults, so might not be appropriate for younger readers.

The problem with reviewing a book of criticism is the endless path it can lead you on. After all, my review itself can be critiqued in the comments area below, and those comments can be analyzed, and so on. Eventually, the main topic may be lost in all the reviews of reviews of reviews. Such is the peril that I am undertaking with Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics.

Plenty of people view comics rather negatively as shallow entertainment for children. Certainly, if you look at the standard comics page in a newspaper, the few quality strips are islands in a sea of mediocrity. As Wolk points out, however (and what many comics fans already know), comics are just a medium like television or books, and there's a lot more to it than kid stuff.

The first portion of Reading Comics looks at the medium as a whole: its history, its fan culture, what it does well and not so well and what makes the comic form unique. Actually, the term "comics" is not really that great as many comics are actually quite serious; on the other hand, other terms - including the often-used "graphic novels" - have their own problems, typically either also being descriptively inadequate or overly pretentious. When one thinks of comic books (or, as Wolk annoyingly calls them, "pamphlets"), the one genre that stands out is the superhero comic. Wolk gives superheroes some acknowledgement, but wants to look beyond that limited area.

The second part of the book looks at various comic artists and writers; often times, one person serves both functions. Among the more well-known writers/artists discussed are Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Marv Wolfman, Art Spiegelman and Steve Ditko. Other less commonly known names are also reviewed such as Hope Larson and Kevin Huezinga. Wolk's choices are of generally significant works, but he is up front about his own biases in selecting material.

Wolk sometimes come off a bit snobby in his discussions, but he usually keeps any elitism toned down. If you're reading this book, chances are you are familiar with much of the work that's reviewed and will not always agree with Wolk's opinions. Overall, however, even when I disagreed with him, he provided good arguments for his views. If you're a comics fan, and you want to start looking critically at the medium, your best introduction would probably be Scott McCloud, particularly with Understanding Comics and Drawing Comics. McCloud, however, focuses more on the "mechanics" of comics rather than particular artists. If you want to delve into comics more in depth - especially as a form of literature - Reading Comics does the job well.

I don't know where to begin. This book is a mess. The writing is awash with redundancy, questionable grammar, and an annoying love of parenthesis. Too often he touches upon ideas in earlier chapters only to say that he will clear up any questions in later chapters, rather than clearly expressing his thoughts. An earlier review states that an editor should have cleaned the book up a little. I agree 100%. There are better books out there. Search them out.