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A review by surlyseahag
Trickster: Native American Tales by Matt Dembicki
3.0
Trickster is a collection of Native American folktales told through comic form.
Each story has a different writer and artist. I loved this because you got new eye candy in each story. Hurray for being visually appealing! I hate when a graphic novel or comic book is full of classic, boring comic book art. It's so blah. But Trickster isn't visually boring at all. Points for that. It loses points for some of its artist choices though. Most stories were done by amazingly talented artists, but a select few look like they were done by 4-year-olds. I understand wanting different styles, and this book totally has that, but I think some poor choices were made. As for the great ones, my favorites were Micah Farritor and Jacob Warrenfeltz. Both are super impressive.
Now, the reason this collections gets 3 stars is because of the atrocious writing. Clearly most of the writers have never written for a comic before because the flow and language in many of the stories was way off. There's a certain way to write a comic and many of these tales missed the mark. But that's not where the bad writing ends...
I loved the art in "Coyote and the Pebbles" but the writing was not ok. The big issue with this one was the use of the phrase "Indian time." It's an offensive and ignorant term that should NOT have been used in a book supposedly praising Native Americans. According to my anthropology professor, the term "Indian time" was created by white folk who considered the inferior Natives lazy and inconsiderate because they were "late" all the time. The truth is that the Natives didn't measure time in the way that the white settlers did. They had no concept of time in that manner. Sure they had seasons, but the concept of measuring time by minutes, hours...etc. did not exist. So if you told one of them to meet you at 1pm, they would not arrive on time because 1pm meant nothing to them. The phrase was created by ignorant, ethnocentric white men. It shouldn't have been used in this book. My second writing issue is a minor one - the use of "maestro" in describing an artist.
A maestro is an excellent musician, not an artist.
Another nit-picky issue was on page 20. This writer started a sentence with "Anyway..."
"So the raven continued down the beach kicking a deq every time he came upon one." (image of raven kicking deq) "Anyway, farther down a particular deq saw what he was doing."
No! That was so unnecessary! It's writing 101. That one word drives me crazy! I am tempted to grab some whiteout and remove the "anyway." Why did the editor even allow that? Sure, "anyway" works as a segue in writing, but not at all in this particular circumstance.
Ugh! I will stop there, because I could rip the writing apart in many of these stories.
Overall - loved the art, hated the writing.
Each story has a different writer and artist. I loved this because you got new eye candy in each story. Hurray for being visually appealing! I hate when a graphic novel or comic book is full of classic, boring comic book art. It's so blah. But Trickster isn't visually boring at all. Points for that. It loses points for some of its artist choices though. Most stories were done by amazingly talented artists, but a select few look like they were done by 4-year-olds. I understand wanting different styles, and this book totally has that, but I think some poor choices were made. As for the great ones, my favorites were Micah Farritor and Jacob Warrenfeltz. Both are super impressive.
Now, the reason this collections gets 3 stars is because of the atrocious writing. Clearly most of the writers have never written for a comic before because the flow and language in many of the stories was way off. There's a certain way to write a comic and many of these tales missed the mark. But that's not where the bad writing ends...
I loved the art in "Coyote and the Pebbles" but the writing was not ok. The big issue with this one was the use of the phrase "Indian time." It's an offensive and ignorant term that should NOT have been used in a book supposedly praising Native Americans. According to my anthropology professor, the term "Indian time" was created by white folk who considered the inferior Natives lazy and inconsiderate because they were "late" all the time. The truth is that the Natives didn't measure time in the way that the white settlers did. They had no concept of time in that manner. Sure they had seasons, but the concept of measuring time by minutes, hours...etc. did not exist. So if you told one of them to meet you at 1pm, they would not arrive on time because 1pm meant nothing to them. The phrase was created by ignorant, ethnocentric white men. It shouldn't have been used in this book. My second writing issue is a minor one - the use of "maestro" in describing an artist.
A maestro is an excellent musician, not an artist.
Another nit-picky issue was on page 20. This writer started a sentence with "Anyway..."
"So the raven continued down the beach kicking a deq every time he came upon one." (image of raven kicking deq) "Anyway, farther down a particular deq saw what he was doing."
No! That was so unnecessary! It's writing 101. That one word drives me crazy! I am tempted to grab some whiteout and remove the "anyway." Why did the editor even allow that? Sure, "anyway" works as a segue in writing, but not at all in this particular circumstance.
Ugh! I will stop there, because I could rip the writing apart in many of these stories.
Overall - loved the art, hated the writing.