First, a few disclosures:
1) I met Bill Rubin on my way to Comic Con 2005
2) Bill has kept me up-to-date with the progress of the book
3) He bought me lunch and
4) was kind enough to find a place for my name on HOMELAND’s Acknowledgements page
I lay all this out so there is no misunderstanding, no whiff of malfeasance or calls for my impeachment. Especially on my first review for this site.
Another disclosure: I’ve had a tough time writing this review.
I like the book. It’s well executed; it’s ambitious; it reads well; I enjoyed it and learned a lot. Still, I have pages of false starts. It wasn’t until today that I realized the problem: my expectations were in the way.
Despite having followed the project for nearly two years, having seen advance artwork and heard Bill’s stories about the book, I was still expecting a non-fiction graphic novel — a character-driven, historical narrative told with boxes and balloons.
Boy, was I wrong.
HOMELAND is exactly what it says it is: “the illustrated history of the state of Israel.” And while the book employs numerous aspects of sequential art storytelling, it manages to transcend them in some way.
[Read more…] about Homeland: The Illustrated History Of The State Of Israel (Book Review)
