Digest.

I got quite a bit of reading done today.

We headed up to Tanja's folks' place for Mother's Day. Since CityRail bosses seemingly do not have mothers, they scheduled trackwork from Blacktown up to the mountains. I, imagining a long trip, grabbed several digest-sized books from Oni Press that I had purchased in a 50% off sale at Kinokuniya. Later, after gorging myself on steak, cheese, potatoes, bread, crackers, wine, beer, and cake (and then unceremoniously falling asleep in a recliner), I got to read again on the way back. Then, once home, I went back to the sale-pile and read some more. This is what I read:

Hopeless Savage, Vol 2: Ground Zero (By Jen Van Meter & Bryan Lee O'Malley, with 3 other artists helping out)
A really fun and well-written story of a child of two rock stars, her interactions with her family, her friends, the trash newsmedia, and a guy at school. Very sharp and funny (though I was glad the use of made-up slang mostly dropped away after the first few chapters), and using a lot of the teen romance tropes while subverting them at the same time. Like in my other favourite book, Scott Pilgrim, O'Malley's simple art and fantastic facial expressions tell so much with just a few lines. One thing I want to comment on in this book was the strong relationship Zero (the main girl) has with her siblings. It's so nice to see a family of siblings that seemed to genuinely like one another, help one another out, and are supportive. The only disfunctional family relationship is Zero and her mother, and that's treated as an odd occurance. As someone who's read about the Weasleys in the Harry Potter books and the Stantons in the Dark Is Rising Series, I'm wholeheartedly sick of large families that seemingly destroy each other's lives on a day to day basis, only to band together in the end. I don't know, I just don't seem to have patience for that. Fred and George Weasley, for example, drove me mental in the Potter books. But back to Zero's story. Something else interesting is that flashbacks, television and chapter breaks are done by the guest artists, providing a clear shift from the day-to-day lives/art-style. Very cool, and I want the 1st and 3rd volumes now.

Moped Army, vol 1 (By Paul Sizer)
This book makes me a) want to get a moped, and b) make a tshirt/get a patch for my backpack and show Moped Army solidarity. Rich girl forsakes life in upscale super-suburban futuristic city to hang out with the nicest biker gang on the planet. These aren't your Bandidos, though. They're essentially nerds and outsiders of various stripes, a "survivor clique", as coined by one of the characters: punks, hackers, hippies, gearheads, (there's a girl named Chu Toi, pronounced Chew Toy, but she'll freakin' end you if you comment) riding kitbashed mopeds and trying to cobble together a sense of community in a world that's mostly forgotten them. I REALLY liked this. That t-shirt might be in the making soon.They own the skies, but we own the streets!

One Bad Day
Zero character development, flying-by-the-seat-of-your-butt-because-you've-lost-your-pants storyingtelling. It's pretty much a Run-Lola-Run-style action movie in comic book form. Girl sees old acquaintance. Old acquaintance. is hit by car. Girl suddenly being chased. People get hurt. Things get scary. Bad birthday parties are attended. Riveting stuff.

Clockwork Angels: Texas Steampunk Vol. 2
And the big disappointment of the day... I just can't get into manga art. It's the comic-book equivalent of the Wii controller.There are people who adore it and worship it, but if you can't get past the controls, you won't dig the games. I couldn't get past the art style, so found myself unable to pay attention to the story. Everyone looks alike,speech bubble don't point to the right characters, they seem to say things out of the blue and without reason, like an avant-garde French film. And I was really looking forward to this! I love steampunk, and the story that combined mysticism, parlour magic, intrigue and mystery seemed really cool. Too bad I only made it about 15 pages in.

So yeah. Books, huh?