Finally.  Two of my favorite superheroes in one comic book!  Green Arrow Green Lantern, Vol 1 by Dennis O’Neil was a nice break from the Green Arrow-as-lead-hero graphic novels that I’ve been reading.  While each newer edition keeps improving on Green Arrow’s cannon, it is nice to have something new thrown into the mix.  In this edition, Green Lantern and Arrow join forces to find out what it means to be American and fight evil a long the way.  What’s not made clear is why […]

Love, Volume 1: The Tiger by Frederic Brremaud; No, this isn’t some erotic shifter paranormal romance.  It’s a graphic novel about literal tigers in the Southern Asian jungle.  I wasn’t sure what it was going to be about actually.  The front cover has a tiger attacking a panther.  And it is titled “Love”.  So I figured maybe it was going to show that love in the jungle was vicious and ultimately didn’t exist.  I was wrong. Basically tiger wakes up.  Tiger spots Tapir.  Tiger spends […]

There’s been a lot of talk about Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.  It was a finalist for the National Book Award and a bestseller.  It’s been on display at bookstores and libraries.  So it just so happened to be my book club’s latest pick.  I had high hopes for this book.  I like dystopian/apocalyptic novels, whether they be young adult based or adult based.  But I’m always interested in novels that aren’t made-for-film type young adult novels. Launching into the book, I brought […]

Wow.  So things just got dark for Green Arrow.  In Hunter’s Moon by Mike Grell, Green Arrow is in Seattle in the late 1980’s.  The crimes that he fights are a HUGE shift from the petty crimes he tackled in the collection from the 50’s and 60’s I’ve read previously.  In this collection it spans, kidnapping, bioterrorism, and gay-bashing.  But what I appreciate about the crimes and the way Green Arrow handles them is that the superhero becomes the vehicle for the reader to “fight […]

Continuing my quest to read more Spanish literature, La Dama del Alba (The Lady of Dawn) by Alejandro Casona is my second read.  I had a third one but I had to abandon it because it just wasn’t grabbing my attention.  This time, however, I was into the book from page one.  I should clarify, this is a play, but it was still interesting. So the gist of the plot is that there’s this family in provincial Asturias (Northern Spain, along the Atlantic coast), who’s […]

This was a tough read.  Partly because it was a collection of comics spanning several decades, authors, and traditions, and partly because it’s comic books written in a very elementary style.  It felt like reading Dick and Jane but substituting Green Arrow and Speedy.  After finishing the collection, I realized that this just proves the important distinction between comic books and graphic novels.  Comic books, at least these, are all about telling not showing and wrapping everything up in a nice candy coated four page […]