I read the one volume edition of Bone yesterday/night; kept me up til 1 AM.
I enjoyed it but I think I overdid it by trying to take it all in at once. I’ll have to go through it again and make sure I get the whole story, as some of it seems to be disjointed in my mind.
I liked the art enormously: I wish I had a glimmer of an idea how to achieve those effects. I see how the pencil and ink strokes go but I could never imagine getting from a blank page to what I see, nor could I do even a rough approximation of it with the book open next to me. (My kids still think I know how to draw, but the day will come when they take a look at what I’ve done and come back with their own version, asking “is this what you meant to do?”)
I read a note on a site I usually find to be pretty sensible dismissing graphic novels as comic books and their fans as immature. I was surprised, especially given the quality of work by someone like Marjane Satrapi[*].
I’ve been dismissive of SF as a genre before and perhaps defending one genre that is similarly ghettoized seems contradictory.
What I’m really opposed to is genres, period. When SF and fantasy are shelved together, what sense does that make? Is Ulysses not a fantasy? But it’s shelved with Literature. China Miéville is likewise in the SF section: I don’t get that at all. Perhaps what’s needed is a section of books that don’t fit anywhere: I’ll start there, when I hit the library, if that happens.
Maybe that’s the pleasure of browsing the graphic book section: there’s no division within that classification. Bone is next to Classics Illustrated which is next to some Eisner books which are next to Love and Rockets.
A pox on anything that keeps readers from finding good books, regardless of what they think they like
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[composed and posted with ecto]
