As Mike Mignola (author of Hellboy) says, the artwork is beautiful. It is dark, gritty, and relatively unique (and, apparently, water-color, which I would not have guessed, but this is what the author page on Amazon states). I've seen something like it before, probably many years ago, I'm guessing on the pages of Heavy Metal magazine. I found the world interesting, and some of the characters were interesting.
That's pretty much where my enjoyment ended. When I first saw this book, I did notice the mixed reviews. But, there has been very little graphic work I've read recently that I haven't enjoyed on some level, so I took a risk. In this case, it didn't pay off for me.
While I enjoyed the artwork, in the end the story just didn't work for me. The main problem was in trying to understand just what exactly is going on. A few times, I felt that I was starting to understand it, and then another curve ball would be thrown. By the time I reached the end, I had no idea what had happened.
I have to say, this was one of the more disappointing reads this year, but I have to assume that the point of the story just slipped past me. I did not make it through this particularly quickly - I had to take several breaks from the story, and in the end that may have contributed. But, the story was not engaging enough to keep me reading through it in larger chunks.
No comments:
Post a Comment