Graphic Novels > S Graphic Novels

Advantages: Thought provoking
Disadvantages: Very US centric, Could be misconstrued as patriotic or anti-US, Very complex and wordy

...JFK’s words and twisting history Uncle Sam is a bizarre and thought provoking trip through American history taking in some of the countries most notorious events and putting a new perspective on them. Steve Darnell’s Uncle Sam never quite lets you in on what is happening, the story involves a ragged old man dressed in red and white striped trousers and a battered waistcoat and long jacket. He could be any old tramp, couldn’t he?? ...
...a dumpster. Is it really Uncle Sam or a madman? We get a confusing insight as he has a flashback to an earlier incarnation, Sam and his wife, “this is not my beautiful wife?” and he is about to go off to war with the English redcoats. The story is convoluted and deliberately so, it’s the nature of history after all and to be honest it isn’t the story that makes this book important, it’s the idea behind it. Uncle Sam ... Read review

Advantages: Unique story-telling; brilliant artwork; allegorical themes
Disadvantages: Minimalist and not to everyone's taste

"In the future we will send all the fat people to the moon and they will be as light as a feather" - the protagonist, Amazing Rain Sam Brown's unassuming talent has captivated me ever since I was first introduced to his work on homepage explodingdog.com. The reason for our introduction was slightly cringe-worthy - I had seen his delightful stick figures used in various emo avatars and icons - but I was pleasantly surprised to find that his art ...
...works like so: visitors email him a phrase, any phrase at all, and he draws his interpretation of these on a computer using a tablet. The results are sometimes bizarre, but always entertaining. A phrase may be anything from "i like hotdogs" to "these daisies are overcooked" and the resultant doodles tend to feature adorable stick figures sometimes accompanied by small birds, stars, monsters or angular dogs and robots. Amazing Rain is Mr Brown's ... Read review

Advantages: Impressive debut with some fantastic art.
Disadvantages: A bit of a copy-cat, falling for some of the Sandman's pitfalls.

...issue mini-series 'The Sandman Presents Lucifer: The Morningstar Option' from 1999 and the first four issues of the regular comic which began a year later, forming another three-part serial and a final, separate short story. It's clear even from this first collection that the recognisable Sandman style is being followed diligently, allocating a finite number of issues to a particular story before moving on to the next and filling the spaces with ...
...the titular protagonist, Lucifer (or whatever name your culture bestows him) is much more prominent in these plots than Gaiman's Sandman was in the long run, though like Dream his role is pushed to the background in the short stories, presuming this book is going to be reflective of the series as a whole. In a further, clearly intentional homage to Sandman, the series would conclude after seventy-five issues in 2006, but now we're getting ahead of ... Read review

Advantages: First half is a surprisingly good ending.
Disadvantages: Second half of unrelated stories is a disappointing waste of time.

...that Neil Gaiman's saga of The Sandman came to a satisfactory close eight years after its first issue hit the shelves. This final paperback collects the three issues comprising 'The Wake' epilogue and three supplementary, independent stories tying up some of the more obscure loose ends before the series is finally put to rest... you know, aside from the other couple of Sandman books Gaiman has written since, and the numerous spin-off comics continuing ...
...The previous book 'The Kindly Ones' was a long and winding road to the Sandman's inevitable death, and 'The Wake' deals with its consequences while also providing a sentimental farewell for the comic series itself. Fortunately, this amounts to more than just a bittersweet parade of favourite characters saying their goodbyes (though it is partly that), with Gaiman and returning artist Michael Zulli working to create something original and distinctive ... Read review

Advantages: Draws old plot threads to a close.
Disadvantages: Tedious length, pointless distractions and bad jokes.

...notion that Gaiman had left the stretched plotting of his earlier 'Season of Mists' era behind him, 'Brief Lives' instead acts as a rough sequel to some of its events, and puts any and all remaining questions about the Endless to a conclusive rest, with the sole exception of the rather glaring omission: "what exactly are they, then?" There was some valid criticism that my last Sandman review dumped readers in at the deep end without much explanation ...
...overview. Introduced gradually over the course of the comic series, which had by now been in print for three mostly enjoyable years, the seven Endless are not gods, that much is made clear, but are rather seemingly immortal and powerful beings whose function is to oversee seven vital aspects of the universe. The titular Sandman is Dream, though he is rarely referred to as the Sandman, and is known by a multitude of names by different cultures, as ... Read review