How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way
Stan Lee and John Buscema
Simon & Schuster
Nonfiction, Art
****
DESCRIPTION: From the Fantastic Four to Spider Man, from Doctor Doom to Magneto, nobody does comic book heroes and villains like Marvel does. This book offers examples, instructions, and pointers for aspiring comic book artists hoping to create their own Marvel-worthy graphic novels. Everything from tools and terminology to "camera" angles and shading is covered.
REVIEW: Like Christopher Hart's Manga Mania, this book works best if you have already gained a good grasp of anatomy, perspective and form from other sources - or if you plan to gain a good grasp of them from other sources. A page at the back lists sources that will help further the artist's abilities and interest, a list which could've been a little longer. Lee and Buscema cover basic anatomy and perspective, but focus on action and exaggeration to create the Marvel, larger-than-life comic book feel. On the whole, it's a wonderful visual exploration of how to make comic books and comic book characters interesting and dynamic. It also makes a decent starting point for those who want to dip their toes in the deeper waters of art with anatomy and such, but find traditional books on the subject overly intimidating; having fun usually makes learning easier, and books like this can help one build up the nerve to tackle the subject full-force.
You might also enjoy:
Drawing & Painting Fantasy Figures (Finlay Cowan, Art - Designing and drawing fantasy characters)
Anatomy for Fantasy Artists (Glenn Fabry, Art - How to adapt the rules of anatomy for larger-than-life fantasy archetypes)
Drawing the Head and Figure (Jack Hamm, Art - A book on drawing humans)
DragonArt: Fantasy Characters (J. "NeonDragon" Peffer, YA? Art - How to draw fantasy humans, elves, and relations)
Fantastic Realms (V. Shane, YA? Art - Drawing fantasy characters, creatures, and worlds)
Figure Drawing Without a Model (Ron Tiner, Art - Learning to draw convincing humans from memory)
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Piratica
(Piratica series, Book 1)
Tanith Lee
Dutton
Fiction, YA Fantasy
*****
DESCRIPTION: In a world roughly parallel to our own nineteenth century, sixteen-year-old girl Artemesia suddenly recovers from six years of amnesia while in an English school of deportment for young ladies. She remembers, with shocking suddenness, her mother Molly Faith, better known to the world as the pirate queen Piratica, who stole through trickery and never through bloodshed. Art also remembers the Golden Goliath, the fiercest pirate of the seven seas. It was in a battle with his ships that Molly died, the same battle that took her own memory. Determined to live up to her mother's reputation and escape the meaningless and shallow life laid out for her by her well-bred but disdainful father, Art escapes from boarding school and makes for the city of Lundon, where she finds Molly's old crew reduced to living advertisements for Pirate Coffee. They seem oddly reluctant to head back out to sea, and Art's memories may not quite be what they seem, but before long the clever, gutsy girl has claimed the title Piratica for herself and won the crew's loyalty as her mother had before her. The seas are not a friendly place for a pirate queen, even a pirate queen with a unique code of honor. The dreaded Golden Goliath, long since deceased, also had a daughter, just as much like him as Art is like Molly, and it won't be long before the pirate ladies meet, in conflict over a treasure map that may be more than the worthless piece of singed paper that it appears to be. Somewhere in the middle of this lies the mysterious Felix Phoenix, a man with peculiar luck and an unknown agenda who first crosses paths with Art as she flees the boarding school and somehow ends up on her ship, the Unfortunate Stranger, as a captive, guest, and observer all in one.
REVIEW: Very few books start moving on the first page, to my recollection, at quite the pace Piratica does. The pace hardly lets up throughout the book, either, with a constantly turning plot that never resorts to cheap gimmicks or audience-insulting tricks. Every character has more to them than initially revealed, and it all ties together in a nice ending that leaves the story open for a sequel, but doesn't need one. The parallel universe Lee creates (the reason I call it Fantasy) has some intriguing variations from our history, such as "Free" England being a Republic after casting out its own monarchy some thirty years previous. Piratica was a very enjoyable book which I had great trouble putting down. I've read rumors that there is at least one sequel on the way; I await it eagerly.
You might also enjoy:
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (Avi, YA Fiction - A highborn 18th century girl, lone passenger on a trans-Atlantic voyage, is accused of murder)
The Dragonslayer's Apprentice (David Calder, YA Fiction - A girl is determined to learn the art of dragonslaying)
The Liveship Traders trilogy (Robin Hobb, Fiction - Living ships, a scheming would-be pirate king, man-eating sea serpents... an excellent fantasy trilogy!)
Whale Rider (Witi Ihimaera, Fiction - A young Maori girl must prove to her grandfather that she is fit to be the next village leader)
The Hero and the Crown (Robin McKinley, YA? Fiction - Denied her rightful crown due to prejudices about her foreign mother, a bold princess discovers a talent for slaying dragons)
The Bloody Jack adventures (L. A. Meyer, YA Fiction - To escape certain death on the streets, an 18th century London girl poses as a boy aboard a pirate-hunting warship)
Trading in Danger (Elizabeth Moon, Fiction - The disgraced daughter of a trading dynasty is given a simple interstellar trade route... and winds up in a galactic powder keg)
Sabriel (Garth Nix, YA Fiction - Receiving an urgent message from beyond Death, a girl sets out on a dangerous journey to find her necromancer father)
The Song of the Lioness quartet (Tamora Pierce, YA Fiction - In the magical kingdom of Tortall, a girl poses as a boy to become a knight)
The Protector of the Small quartet (Tamora Pierce, YA Fiction - A generation after the Lioness changed the rules forever, young Keladry becomes the first girl to attempt knighthood)
Ghost Ship (Deitlof Reiche, YA Fiction - A girl discovers a mystery tied to an old figurehead and a lost treasure)
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia Wrede, YA Fiction - Tired of being a proper princess in a fairy tale kingdom, a headstrong girl runs off to live with dragons)
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Piratica II: Return to Parrot Isle
(Piratica series, Book 2)
Tanith Lee
Dutton
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***
DESCRIPTION: Art Blastside, better known in story and song as Piratica, the Queen of the Seas, narrowly escaped the hangman's noose after taking to the seas as a pirate - albeit a pirate who never took a life or fired a cannon, stealing by trickery - in an adventure that ended with her facing down Little Goldie, evil daughter of the brutal pirate known as the Golden Goliath. Now married to Felix Phoenix, the mysterious painter who came to love her during their adventures, Art is a national hero of Free England, living a life of luxury in a stately mansion on vast grounds overlooking the seas she once ruled aboard the Unfortunate Stranger. She, and the rest of her actor-turned-pirate crew, have fortune and fame rained upon them by a fawning populace that has gone completely pirate-crazy, to the point of dressing up as flamboyant pirates and carrying parrots and monkeys about in the streets. Art has everything a girl could possibly want... and she has never been more miserable. When the Admiralty offers her a chance to return to sea with her old crew as a privateer - a pirate in the employ of Free Britain, sent to harry the ships of France and Franco-Spain - she jumps at the chance. After all, she proved before that she was indeed the Queen of the Seas, pistol-proof and charmed, with the luck of sixteen devils, and her first love was and always will be the open waves. But Felix, ever-disapproving of even her nonviolent piracy, sees only disaster in the making; she was lucky before, but this is war, and Art's policy of never taking a life can only last so long in the face of openly hostile enemies. With her new marriage crumbling about her and her old confidence quickly shaken, Art nevertheless has no choice but to press on. Besides, there is an unwritten subtext to her recruitment. It was Art, after all, who discovered the legendary Treasured Isle and its prize, the maps to the buried plunder of nearly every pirate to ever sail the seven seas, and Free England could certainly use a bit of treasure to fuel its ongoing war with monarchist France. Art isn't the only one who dreams of returning to see what the tide washed in to that treacherous island. Her old nemesis, Little Goldie, also charmed her way free of the hangman's noose, and she hasn't forgotten who humiliated her and cost her her crew and her freedom. If there's one thing Goldie excels at, it's exacting revenge, no matter how far she has to go to get it.
REVIEW: Yes, it's a bit of a drop in the ratings from the last book to this one. While Piratica ripped along at a fine clip, this sequel drifts and meanders more often than not, with more than one long and ultimately pointless sidetrack. The fun alternate universe Lee crafted for these stories became silly and occasionally tedious, as people began acting like absurd caricatures rather than living, breathing human beings. The same world that has alcohol- and caffiene-hating "teatotallers" so addicted to tea that they lick drops off the cobblestones in desperation shouldn't contain vicious sea battles and wanton death and destruction, as this one does. Lee also seemed to take too much pleasure in the illogical resurrection of characters. At some point, resurrections read less like a clever plot twist and more like an indifferent shrug of the shoulders by an author who couldn't come up with anything else to "surprise" me with at the time. Not only did this make the already crowded cast of names (usually attached to little more than a vague detail or personality quirk) even more crowded, but it made me less inclined to care when characters faced down "certain" death; I know there's at least one more book in this series, so everyone who was theoretically killed very, very dead, even in front of witnesses, will probably walk back onstage in future installments, as Lee considers death an entirely curable condition in Piratica's world. The parrot Plunquette, who contributed so much to the riddle of the Treasured Isle in the first book, returns again, but mostly to poo on people; Lee must have decided that this was the height of humor from the first book, and so most every bird in the book manages to splatter almost everyone and everything repeatedly. I didn't hate this book, but I definitely felt my attention wander more than it did in the first Piratica, and it was a much longer slog to the end, which wasn't so much an ending as a brief, unresolved pause before the next book. If I do read Piratica III, I'll wait for the paperback. Better yet, I'll just look for it a library, so I'm not out any money.
You might also enjoy:
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (Avi, YA Fiction - A highborn 18th century girl, lone passenger on a trans-Atlantic voyage, is accused of murder)
The Dragonslayer's Apprentice (David Calder, YA Fiction - A girl is determined to learn the art of dragonslaying)
The Liveship Traders trilogy (Robin Hobb, Fiction - Living ships, a scheming would-be pirate king, man-eating sea serpents... an excellent fantasy trilogy!)
Whale Rider (Witi Ihimaera, Fiction - A young Maori girl must prove to her grandfather that she is fit to be the next village leader)
The Hero and the Crown (Robin McKinley, YA? Fiction - Denied her rightful crown due to prejudices about her foreign mother, a bold princess discovers a talent for slaying dragons)
The Bloody Jack adventures (L. A. Meyer, YA Fiction - To escape certain death on the streets, an 18th century London girl poses as a boy aboard a pirate-hunting warship)
Trading in Danger (Elizabeth Moon, Fiction - The disgraced daughter of a trading dynasty is given a simple interstellar trade route... and winds up in a galactic powder keg)
Sabriel (Garth Nix, YA Fiction - Receiving an urgent message from beyond Death, a girl sets out on a dangerous journey to find her necromancer father)
The Song of the Lioness quartet (Tamora Pierce, YA Fiction - In the magical kingdom of Tortall, a girl poses as a boy to become a knight)
The Protector of the Small quartet (Tamora Pierce, YA Fiction - A generation after the Lioness changed the rules forever, young Keladry becomes the first girl to attempt knighthood)
Ghost Ship (Deitlof Reiche, YA Fiction - A girl discovers a mystery tied to an old figurehead and a lost treasure)
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia Wrede, YA Fiction - Tired of being a proper princess in a fairy tale kingdom, a headstrong girl runs off to live with dragons)
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