Otaku Ink

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to rate the novels we’ve read this year. Drum roll please…

	Dr. Wall’s Ratings:	The Chief’s Ratings
12	Death ValleyFor most of the reasons the chief hated Wanted ,I disliked Death valley. A way to obvious story, with lack luster artwork, left Me hoping the zombies did kill them all.	WantedI just felt that this was probably the most lacking of all our books. Horrible writing, mediocre artwork, and a transparent storyline with adolescent characters. Not my cup of tea, but hey, it still made our reading list.
11	WantedLike most things at the bottom of our list, the artwork and story just didn’t stand out. The writing was atrocious(which means it sucked fucking donkey balls – *translated for the writers of wanted*). so why didn’t it make last place? Because the story wasn’t as transparent. And I have a secret love for swearing.	Death ValleyAlthough I love my Zombie comics – I had to put this one on the bottom of the list just because it was much too repetitive in it’s main story (which is the one we really focused on). Compared to the others on this list, it doesn’t really deserve to be any higher.
10	AmuletDecent art work, but the story just let me down too much. It starts off with a cool idea, but never uses it to it’s full potential. It just feels like a watered down version of Locke & Key(further down the list). Maybe that’s because it’s more of a childrens story.	Exit WoundsAlthough I loved the ‘Tin-tin’-like art style in this story, I felt the plot (was there a plot?) was lacking. Felt like I had to trudge through a soap-opera most of the time. Fantastic cover design though – still one of my favorites for that.
9	Exit WoundsEvery once and a while, I delve into the Indie-comic scene, and am reminded why I don’t read a lot of them. The artwork was beautiful, but the story was slow and depressing in parts. It’s just not something I’m inclined to pick up and read over, and over again.	Redwall I’ve been a Redwall fan for a long time – thus have waited impatiently for someone to do a graphic novel. Unfortunately, beyond the story being well-transposed into graphic novel form – the artwork was horrible. With no color where there should be (if you talk about it, you should have it) and the anapomorphic animal cast looks like it was drawn by a 14 year old.
8	RedwallI’ve never read a Redwall book, But I did find this one to be an adequately Interesting story. Its biggest problem though was that it was clearly made in color, and then converted into black-and-white. Why they didn’t just print it in its original format doesn’t make any sense. Because of this format problem, I was really aware of reading a comic, and could never fully get into the story.	Amulet As an indie-comic this was a fun little read. Somewhat original story-line, pockets of fantastic pieces of artwork (the last page with the statuesque robot would look great in a large size poster)… the only thing lacking was pacing. It seemed to have the action pacing down, but needs to work on developing a slightly faster pace for the more low-key, dramatic moments in the story.
7	League of E.G.The book is a beautiful piece of artwork in its own right. I can’t believe they convinced the publisher to create a book with such a wide variety of papers and formats. And the word “book” is the best description of this. It seems graphical only in the loosest of sense, because it has more pictures than a standard book would. At times it’s ridiculously dense; I felt I needed a literature degree just too fully enjoy it.	League of E.G. Great story – though it’s Alan Moore so I wouldn’t expect any less; too much novella action – though it’s Alan Moore so I wouldn’t expect any less. I plan to go back and read through this again. Only going through it one time just doesn’t seem to give you all the nitty-gritty details and connections that you know you’re flying by. Oh – and the 3D glasses part was pretty damn cool.
6	Queen & Country Vol. 3Chiefs right on this one. The one thing that I might add, is that it is a well written spy novel. It would most likely be higher on my list if the others weren’t so great.	Queen & Country Vol. 3Loved it overall – wasn’t happy that there was a HUGE change in artistic style (minimalist manga style vs. frank miller-like realism). Really felt the whiplash on this one.
5	FrayIt was a tough decision between Fray and Queen & country. Queen & Country had an art style problem. While Fray’s main problem, was that it was so closely related to the Buffy the vampire hunter story. In the end I was really looking more for a continuation of Fray.	ArrivalBeautiful. There was a lot of love put into this novel. Not positive I would put it under the Graphic Novel category though. Since it was bereft of dialogue, and the artwork was so detrimental to the story I really think this would belong more in a Children’s Book section than a Graphic Novel section. Nevertheless, all in all a great read.
4	Locke & KeyGreat concept, with limitless possibilities that I hope to see a continuation of. Only thing that kept it out of my top three, was that the artwork. I swear, on some pages, the characters chin would elongate and shrink, and mouth would change position, from panel to panel.	Fray Still near the top of my list. Absolutely love the art style. Having females that aren’t drawn by a horny pre-teen is always a major plus in my book. Although the story-line is no where near original, I really love this take on the Buffy series much better than the Buffy angle. Though – I’m a sucker for strong, hardcore female leads so what can I say?
3	WatchmenClearly, it deserves to be one of the greatest comics of all time. Though, I did find myself nearly falling asleep due to its relentless banter.I just hope they don’t screw up the movie.	Batman: The Dark Knight Returns One of the best Batman novels hands-down. The characters were extremely well-developed and the fight with the Joker was one of the best stories I’ve ever seen.
2	The ArrivalEvery page was a beautifully drawn piece of artwork. And while it didn’t have any text, I do consider it a graphic novel. I think this may be so high on my list because I sympathize with the main character; Having been in a foreign country where you can’t use language understand each other. It’s just a simple beautiful book.	Watchmen Although on the long side with the book-inside-a-book setting, it’s really hard to find flaws. This is regarded as one of the best graphic novels of all time and has every right to be called so.
1	Batman: The Dark Knight ReturnsRarely do I ever read a graphic novel want to read immediately after I’ve just read it. Definitely, for me, the best comic we read this year.	Locke & Key I can hear the “WHAT?!” right now… yes. Locke & Key is my #1 choice of the year. To me, it deserves to be called the best just for the hoops that it’s flying through. It’s an indie release that has a fantastic original story-line, great artwork, and encompasses all of the aspects a graphic novel should have – pacing, writing, layout, etc. I had been waiting a while to read this one and was hesitant about forking over the money for a hard-backed piece that I barely knew anything about. My money was well spent as I continue to read through it. Not to mention that the presentation of the book itself (the cover, the red ribbon bookmark) is excellent.

Best Break-out Novel of the Year

We’d like to give out an honorable mention to The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite. Although this novel never made it on our ‘official’ read list, we both had read it and discussed it in our meeting. We both agreed that this was a fantastic break-out novel and look forward to seeing more development with that great set of anti-heroes. Good On Ya.

By the way – we’d love to hear what your list would be so don’t be shy with the comments!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 3:28 am and is filed under Things I'm Watching, art, comics, graphic novel, meeting update, monthly read. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.