Mouse Guard Fall 1152 // Lost at Sea
At work Monday I managed to get through two of the comic books I picked up at Comic-Con on Friday, [amazonify]1932386572::text::::Mouse Guard Fall 1152[/amazonify], and [amazonify]1932664165::text::::Lost at Sea[/amazonify].
I had heard a lot of good stuff about [amazonify]1932386572::text::::Mouse Guard[/amazonify] (by David Peterson,) especially about the setting, so since the author was at Comic-Con I decided to pick it up. Having read it I can say that its very good, it feels to me a little like a children’s book, in that there isn’t a lot of dialog and its fairly straight forward. It also tends to sort of skip forward in panels, in that it won’t focus on every little thing in an action sequence, but rather the whole thing moves forward at a good brisk pace.
Now the setting of the world I think is really the selling point here since its a very interesting take on sort of mice in a fantasy story. It’s not just mice with human type weapons and armor, but rather their equipment and world makes sense with the fact that they are mice. For example one of the mouse’s uses a fishing hook, their cities are built hidden within trees, and such.
I would definitely recommend picking it up if you like fantasy stuff, or cute animals, which seems like an odd combination of people to recommend it to. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the next book, I curious to see how the story will develop over time, since the story of this book could have potentially been a whole series by itself.
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Now the other book I picked up was [amazonify]1932664165::text::::Lost at Sea[/amazonify] by Bryan Lee O’Malley, who is most famous for the [amazonify]1932664084::text::::Scott Pilgrim[/amazonify] series of comic books. This is really very different from Scott Pilgrim, and I think that it is far better then it, and I love Scott Pilgrim so I think that means a lot.
The story follows a high school girl named Raleigh who is on a drive back from California to Canada with some kids from her school. It’s really interesting, because most of the story is basically Raleigh trying to piece together her life, and sort of try and understand it all, interspersed with stops they have to make on the trip for food, sleep, or whatnot.
It’s really brilliantly written, since I think it manages to capture basically what it can be like as a teenager where you really don’t understand yourself, or how people see you, or that those two things are completely different. It somehow manages to be sort of angsty, comedic, and endearing all at the same time.
From what I understand this was his first comic book before doing Scott Pilgrim, and if this is the kind of stuff he was writing before Scott Pilgrim I can’t wait to see the rest of Scott Pilgrim let alone what comes after it. So if you’re a fan of Scott Pilgrim, or, to quote the back of the book, “If you’ve ever been eighteen, or confused, or both, maybe you should read this book.” I don’t think I could recommend this enough.