Comic Book Review: Amulet series

Amulet
Written and illustrated by Kazu Kibuishi

I picked this one up at the library, in the kid's comic book section (there's some good stuff in there). The story concerns a girl named Emily, and her discovery of a magic amulet. Having lost her father in a car accident, Emily, her mother, and her brother Navin move into their great-grandfather Silas's home. When Emily's mother is kidnapped by a tentacled creature in the basement, Emily and Navin set off in search of her. Their journey takes them to the home of Silas and his robotic assistants; it is his dying wish that Emily take the stone and save the strange parallel earth from the wicked Elf King and his army. Along the way, they are menaced by the Elf Prince, Elf soldiers, various strange creatures, and the seductive power of the Amulet.

Kazu Kibuishi delivers a solid series, illustrated in a loose cartoon style. The story is kid-friendly, but engaging enough that any comics reader will find it satisfying; there are no pretensions here, no high concept, just a diverting adventure. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Comments

The Problem with Reconstructing Deinonychus

So as you may know, I am partly obsessed with dinosaurs. Scratch that - there's a small lobe of my brain devoted to dinosaurs. I love em, God help me. I even have a super-double-plus-top-secret dinosaur comic maybe in the works...but you didn't hear it from me. Anywho... Part of my problem is in the reconstruction of said prehistoric beasties, namely those icons of American dino-obsession, Deinonychus ( Velociraptor to you Jurassic Park aficionados...it's not just a Hollywood bastardization, there's a complicated story behind it which I covered in this old post ). Now, we all know what Deinonychus looked like: wolf-size, sleek, toothsome head balanced by a long tail, grasping front claws and of course the eponymous "terrible claw" on its hind foot. The shape is burned into our collective unconscious; you could construct the most fantastic amalgam of different bits and pieces, but as long as you include the sickle-claw, you're golden. The devil, of...

Artist Spotlight: Tom Eaton

I wanted to do a quick artist spotlight on Tom Eaton, best known for his work in Boy's Life Magazine. I used to have a subscription to Boy's Life when I was a kid; unfortunately I didn't keep any of them, as they just weren't...I don't know, not really worth keeping. I just remember it as being 90% toy advertisements, some "how to get along with others" advice, the same camping article reprinted 20 million times, and some half-funny comics. As the years went on, the advertisements got bigger and louder, the articles became less interesting, and the comics section got shorter and shorter. But there was one gem hidden in the midst of the mediocrity: artist Tom Eaton. He wrote and illustrated "The Wacky Adventures of Pedro" ( BL's burro mascot), "Dink & Duff", and myriad other comics, crossword puzzles, games, and short pieces. He was the magazine's resident cartoonist, and about the only reason I actually read the magazi...

Raptors II: I might owe Luis V. Rey an apology...

Hello, patient readers. I've blogged about Raptors before, specifically Deinonychus and the problems of depicting dinosaurs in general. In an earlier post, I was wrestling with the then newly-popular preponderance of plumage on our favorite Terrible Lizards, and while I finally conceded that Deinonychus and Co. were probably fully feathered, I whined and hemmed about the amount of feathers and griped about how dinosaur lineages with no evidence for feathers at all were now being given fabulous coats. In the midst of this, I decried the new crop of bad paleo-art, using this image as my piéce de resistance: Credit: Luis V. Rey, from his blog . Essentially my big scientific argument ran along the lines of, "Looks dumb, therefore wrong". It seems now that I might have to eat that argument, slathered in Nelson Muntz' Gourmet Ha-Ha Sauce ...with one important caveat, which I'll get to later. Since writing that blog post - in fact, several years later - I'...

The Penguin

Search This Blog