The Sculptor by Scott McCloud
This one is a mixed bag, unfortunately. I was never the biggest fan of McClouds rather generic art-style. It was fine for his non-narrative books, but here, I just don't feel it. It's not that he can't tell a story, because he totally can, the pace and the rhythm are really top notch, still... And then the story... The whole faustian angle of the book is such a tired cliché, I really was expecting McCloud to somehow turn it around towards the end, to make the whole supernatural/magical realism thing into something psychological or at least novel and interesting. And he kind of did, but also kind of failed at it. The relationship with Meg... seen it a thousand times before, pretty much exactly like this. Seems like the standard-graphic-novel-"sweet-but-complicated"-kind-of-love. But some of the other characters were really well written. Also, the whole artist spin was VERY much believable and authentic. The way they talked about art, especially given that the protagonists are still very young and not really formed in their taste and artistic abilities, this seemed very much authentic. I also liked the fact, that our hero's works (view spoiler)This could have been the graphic novel version of "Inside Llewyn Davis. It's not. It's something different, less nuanced, a bit childish, much more mainstream and also somehow dated in it's depiction of modern relationships and male (the obsessed undersexed artist) and female (the happy-go-lucky-manic-magic-girl) main characters. But should you read it? Hell yes. This write-up sounds way harsher than intended. It's just that it could have been so much more, during it's first half it came very close to a masterpiece, but then.... It's still a 3.5-4.0 graphic novel. A "pretty good" one. Definitely better than it's peer group (Blankets, Daytripper...).
3.5/5
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