By far the best work I have read by J.Torres, illustrated by David Namisato, about how the Canadian government--in addition to the US--"interned" JapaBy far the best work I have read by J.Torres, illustrated by David Namisato, about how the Canadian government--in addition to the US--"interned" Japanese families after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I did not know that Canada also participated in these shameful acts. Families lost their belongings and their homes. The story is set in British Columbia, focused on Sandy Saito, who was obsessed with baseball, mainly BC's Vancouver Asahi team. I have also read two or three picture books that focus on how interned (imprisoned) Japanese families created baseball leagues as a way of creating some form of escape.
Because it focuses on how the process impacted one family--Sandy's Dad is a doctor--it is pretty moving....more
This book opens very much like an Agatha Christie closed-set mystery: in a Quebec snowstorm, a variety of folks including Gamache get invitations to vThis book opens very much like an Agatha Christie closed-set mystery: in a Quebec snowstorm, a variety of folks including Gamache get invitations to visit a kind of old house where they find they are mentioned in a will, but none of them seem to know her? And she’s. . . . dead?! And maybe rich? Is she just some crazy recluse miser, or is she also some Countess from another country??! See what I mean? Agatha Christie! Possibly my least favorite Gamache series opening, though.
Then more storm, people almost die, there's a rescue, and in related news, we bring in a financial expert to the Surete to look at the will and look into potential financial crime, ehhhhhhhh.
Almost the whole time I am reading this book I am thinking that it may be time for me to take a wee break from this mad rush to read all of the Louise Penny series in one year. This book made me a little grumpy, but it may be me, Louise! It so often is! Though in the end, there are a couple interesting things that happen.
Besides the woman-with-the-will thread, this book continues the Grand Scale opiod crisisthread from the last book, where Gamache had allowed some drugs to hit the streets, leading to his suspension, and this all needs to get resolved. So this book is both slow (with respect to the wills, ho hum) and then later action-packed, in that we get out of Three Pines (where hard core noir fans are critical how escapist the stories often are) to get to the streets--fentanyl, addiction, prostitution, killing but in this down and dirty gutter location and in all the grand scheme turmoil, some of the intimacy and depth of earlier volumes gets lost. In both threads the ultimate resolutions are not surprising, unlike in Christie books, but they are pretty well done, just fine.
In many ways this is a loose-ends book in the series:
Will Gamache get indicted for lying under oath? Will the new and controversial Goth girl recruit, now kicked out of the academy by Gamache for apparent involvement in the very drugs Gamache has allowed on the streets, be able help Gamache get said drugs off the streets? (I guess this is the piece that underscores the "In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king" point, in that Gamache, working in the blind kingdom of the opioid crisis, has "one eye" as he operates with continuing ethical compromises.) Will Isabel Lacoste recover from her injuries?
I’ll admit I like it that Beavoir’s kid’s first word is taught by Rosa, Ruth’s duck (that would be “fuck”). I like the drama surrounding Gamache and his goth recruit that occurs. But this is my least favorite volume thus far in the series....more
A Girl Called Echo comics series is a middle grades tale of Echo Desjardins, a Métis 14-year-old in a new home, learning about Métis history, the taleA Girl Called Echo comics series is a middle grades tale of Echo Desjardins, a Métis 14-year-old in a new home, learning about Métis history, the tale written by a Métis author as part of a First Peoples (#OurVoices) series. In the first volume Echo sort of time-travels (through dreams, mainly) to the late nineteenth-century, to the Red River in the summer of 1869, a time of resistance to Canada Firsters (yes, they actually called themselves that, I’m not poking at Trump’s America First approach) who intend to steal their land. The Métis families have lived there for generations, it's their land, and so a Resistance, The Red River Resistance, is formed against the colonial authority.
We need to support these educational efforts to remember important moments in North American history, Canadian history, in this case the story of the Métis who share both indigenous and European backgrounds. The history here, which we at times see through the lens of a history class (where they admit some kids fall asleep! It’s history class!), is introductory, but touches on figures such as Louis Riel and others. (I read Chet Brown’s Louis Riel: A Comics biography, too. It’s a a chance to help kids visualize these events and make them real, maybe help them find a basis to resist further oppression. ...more
“Save the people. Free the north. Save the land. Save the world.”
Little Bird is the first volume of a dystopian science fiction/fantasy comics series “Save the people. Free the north. Save the land. Save the world.”
Little Bird is the first volume of a dystopian science fiction/fantasy comics series by Darcy Van Poelgeest, his first comics series, and Ian Bertram, with colorist Matt Hollingsworth. Little Bird is a young, small, girl, indigenous, bird-like, born into war, her mother kidnapped by the opposition, and so she works to find her mother, join the resistance and find out who she is. The setting is Canada, at war with the United Nations of America, a theocracy called The New Vatican based in what appears to be something suspiciously like The Roman Catholic Church.
In case you’re wondering about the level of criticism leveled against said Church here, the first image we see of The Bishop is of him bathing in a tub filled not with water, not even with milk, but blood. You ask where the rage is in the arts about the current rise of fascism in the world? Well, in this one there is a lot of rage. No Gandhian non-violence in this imagined future.
“I was lost in the thickening shadows of civilization, in the vacuum that hope had left behind. But I had to keep going, if not for myself, but for you.”
The US-Canada conflict in this book reminds me of Brian Vaughn’s one-off science fiction volume We Stand Guard, where the USA is at war with Canada over water rights, but this is deeper, more serious, less Vaughn-style jokey. More righteous wrath. It bears closest comparison to Monstress, with its strong girl character, a search for parents, war, ultra-violence, the peripheral presence of strange creatures, that fantasy feel that you are living within its dream-state. With all the blood, and the surprising loss of favorite characters (hey, I didn’t tell you whom!) it also reminded me of Game of Thrones (I’m just warning you), but without the sex.
“A story about my mother, father, and everyone else who tried to kill me”--Little Bird
In its take on how children are inculcated into the Church/Nation State, taken from their parents, there are direct references to the hideous history in the US and Canada of first stealing indigenous land and then stealing Indigenous children from the parents, imprisoning them in school settings to attempt to make them into white people, non-Indian. something addressed in the recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in Canada (not in the US; we don’t apologize for anything we do). In its resistance to government and church control of bodies and minds, it also reminded me of both The Handmaid’s Tale and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.
“Right now it’s up to us to save the world. . . Save yourself first and then maybe you can save the world.”
Is it relevant to today? We see in this story the insistence by the state in dark (theology-based)-“science.” We may be able to see some reflection in the tale on the rise of theocracy as we observe with shock and horror at the nearly unified agreement by American evangelical Christians (81% of those identified as evangelical voted for Trump), that Trump is Chosen, like the Pope, by God; the most recent to claim this is one of 45’s Holy Men, Rick Perry.
“Life itself is not enough. We want a life worth living.”
I have been waiting for an explosion of comics/literature about climate change, and this is one where the land and its desecration figures in importantly. With massive sci-fi Star Wars-style battles, though with tentacles everywhere and dream art.
“There is a world within me. I am the land”—Little Bird
So: Little Bird, Tantoo, Axe, part of a fledgling, ragtag band of Canadian resistance. And if Monstress is into cats, Little Bird is into owls. Why? Because owls are cool:
I like it a lot and will read the next one for sure. It’s bloody, though, so be warned! But not bad for your first comics series volume, Darcy! :)...more
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