Graphic Novel Reviews

Fables: Animal Farm is the second volume in the graphic novel series that tells the story of what happened to all the fairy tale characters after they got run out of their kingdoms by the mysterious 'Other.'

In this edition of the ongoing Fables saga we find out that the animals from all the famous fairy tales now live on a magically protected farm in upstate New York. But all is not well on that farm. Some of the animals resent having to be cooped up forever on a farm never to interact with humans out side it's borders ever again, because after all if talking animals were discovered then it might blow it for all the other fairy tale people who do live among humans. So the disaffected animals decide to revolt and they stage a revolution.

Into this this atmosphere step the feuding sisters Snow White and Rose Red. One of the sisters chooses to help the animals and the other chooses to try and stop them. One wins, the other doesn't. You'll have to read the novel to find out which one wins and which sister loses.

This edition of the Fables saga is just as good as the first one. It's a story well told with top notch art. If your local library doesn't carry this title like mine does then go buy it at your local comic book store, it's well worth the price you'll pay for it.

Some of you will be familiar with Ghost World from it cinematic adaption.

For those of you who aren't the bottom line on this graphic novel is that is tells the story of a couple of teen age girls on the cusp of graduating high school. That's it. I know, it sounds boring but honestly it's not. It's an amazing 'slice of life graphic novel.' It's even more amazing that a story about the lives of two teenage girls was written and drawn by a man, Daniel Clowes.

Clowes delves deep into their lives and he shows some funny bits, some futile bits, some fumbling bits, and at times the most disconcerting bits of these two girls lives. His graphic novel is very different from the film they made of it, which is actually a good thing. It's good because if they had made a film version of this novel with out changing anything then the film would have been a huge downer that nobody would have seen. They took the best bit out of the book and they expanded some others to get the movie version and in this case I liked the movie version a little better than the book.

I recommend both highly though.

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I got both of these at my local library and I want to give a special shout out to the folks at the Johnson City Public Library, especially the new head of that august institution. I know he's been instrumental in bringing more and more graphic novels to our library and for that he deserves a high amount of praise. And I'd say that even if he wasn't a friend.