Comic-Con 2008 kicks off today down in San Diego...And while the culture of Comic-Con facinates me, I have no intention of going. And I also have no intention to make this a blog entry about Comic-Con. But I did think that it would be a great time to post a graphic novel book review!
SIDE NOTE:
For those of you who have been living in a pop-culture bubble, Comic-Con is short for Comic Book Convention, and this particular convention has become the MOTHER OF ALL COMICS CONVENTIONS drawing over 100,000 visitors! If you want to find out info about Comic-Con... I won't be talking about it... Instead you can go here - iFanboy ComicCon episode - or - ComicCon website
So here's my review of the "Abadazad" series:
Abadazad: The Road to Inconceivable (Book 1)
and Abadazad: The Dream Theif (Book 2)
written by J.M. DeMatteis and illustrated by Mike Ploog.
I must say that I was initially quite skeptical of this series. My wife purchased the first book after hearing an interview with the author on NPR almost 2 years ago. She read it quickly and recommended it to me, but "I don't read comics" and the whole thing seemed so young, so I never really paid much attention... A year and a half later, I have finally picked it up... and I could hardly set the books down! Not that they have the intense page-turning allure of a great thriller, but they have an enchanting fun quality that is utterly captivating.
The Abadazad series is a strange beast, very difficult to cleanly categorize, and therefore also very difficult to describe (not that it will keep me from trying).
The primary narrative is based around a contemporary character (14 year old Kate) in something of a fantasy/mystery/adventure story; and while the book is self-purported to be wholly the published diary entries of our heroine, the format in truth is a melding of styles. The traditional diary text flows into and out of more conventional graphic-novel/comic-book styles, and just to make things really interesting we are also introduced to pages "extracted" from a fictional 19th Century fantasy series also written about Abadazad. While all of this sounds incredibly complex (and it is), DeMatteis and Ploog make the labyrinthine interwoven narratives feel seamlessly united in an easy read.
Aside from the unique format of the storytelling itself, it is just as difficult to pin down the intended audience. The writing style is very simple and easy to read (as would be appropriate for the diary entries of a teenage girl) and the author so well captures the point of view of our protagonist, that it seems likely female readers of a similar age and temperament (angsty teen girls) would most strongly connect with her telling of this story. But by the same token, the book is so rich with cultural and literary references that I can't image such a young reader having the breadth of experience to pick up on all the allusions made by our culture savvy author (from Barney, Botox, and The Beatles; to C.S. Lewis, L. Frank Baum, and Tolkien; and from Disney movies to The Matrix; and more)! The result: a book likely targeted and marketed to a younger audience, but one that is no less enjoyable for adult readers.
Now for the bad news...
As of now the story is left unfinished... at least in the United States (more books have been published in the UK). The original story arc was planned for three books with the hope of many more stories to come, but only two books have been published in the US so far, and it is my understanding that no announcement has been made for a pending publication stateside. So... I have been left hanging... just as the adventure was really getting moving!
For the moment, I am trying to get my Abadazad fix through imports (books 3 and 4 have been published in the UK), but even that is proving difficult to find. I am hoping that as word spreads about this smart little series, we can encourage quicker action on the part of our American publishers!
p.s. - For any of you ComicCon nerds who are still hangin' on hoping for more about the convention... I still can't help you. But I will throw out this little nugget: both J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Ploog are in fact bonafide comics artists... DeMatteis has written for Captain America, Justice League, and several Spider-Man series; and Ploog has drawn for several Marvel comics. So there.
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