Reviews and Comments

Will Sargent

[email protected]

Joined 9 months, 4 weeks ago

I like books.

This link opens in a pop-up window

Dylan Horrocks: Sam Zabel and the magic pen (2014, Fantagraphics Books, Fantagraphics) 3 stars

"Cartoonist Sam Zabel hasn't drawn a comic in years. Stuck in a nightmare of creative …

Review of 'Sam Zabel and the magic pen' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

I thought this would be something a little darker and x rated than it turned out to be. It’s very clearly a way to draw fantasy and talk about imagination, but frankly this was done in promethea and in Scott McLeod’s stuff. I wanted to see what cartoonists don’t talk about: the power and idealization of comics and how much makes it in there that they don’t admit, and the different viewpoints there. I feel like simply pointing to a harem or hentai and saying “oh noes” isn’t even scratching the surface.


I felt like Alice and Miki were far more interesting than Sam here, because they are literally living in male fantasy and have to subvert or reject their assigned roles and we never really see a from scratch point of view of what they want.

Max Gladstone, Natalie Naudus: Empress of Forever (AudiobookFormat, Dreamscape Media) 2 stars

Review of 'Empress of Forever' on 'Storygraph'

2 stars

I really wanted to like this, but I didn’t. This isn’t a science fiction novel, it’s fantasy. Everything is magic and nothing works according to any rules. It frankly would have been better that way,but waving galaxies and neutrinos and tech words around just make it feel like a tinfoil universe.