RaveComics BookcaseThis book is relatable from its foundation up due to its subject matter ... It’s a very specific book, loaded with far more life details than not only the average graphic novel, but of any graphic novel from recent memory (at least to my mind). There are procedural pages that delve deeply into the process of the work Guy is doing here, into pushing pulp away while averting safety hazards. There are also characters whose lone surface significance to the plot is to enrichen the fabric of everyday life. This all heightens the experience, though ... a graphic novel that finds that rarified air of going so deep into the details that it transcends, becoming universal ... his cartooning style lends itself well to complex projection, to seeing yourself in the pages and in the people, to affixing these visuals in your own mind\'s eye. It all adds up to one of the most engaging graphic novels of the year, a patient and melancholic look back at a formative—if outwardly unremarkable—time in many readers’ lives.
Barry Windsor-Smith
RaveComics Bookcase... a massive feat of a graphic novel ... a disturbing tour de force of a book, as rich as any novel, moving and poetic in a way that ultimately asks far more questions than it answers, which is the mark of great fiction, at least as far as I’m concerned. Monsters is a book that lays out its people and plot in compelling fashion, subtly forcing readers to contemplate ugly questions about their own role in the world, an activity would most certainly otherwise avoid ... Monsters feels like a masterpiece for an increasingly insular audience (an audience that I am very much apart of), one that will rank as an all-time favorite for certain veteran readers, even if its wider spiderweb of impact never spreads too far. It is, essentially, a lost masterpiece that after being rumored and whispered about for so long, we finally have a chance to read and experience. And we should count ourselves very lucky for it.
Tian Veasna, Trans. by Helge Dasche
RaveComics Bookcase[A] new graphic novel from writer/artist Tian Veasna, based on a harrowing true story he lived through as a child ... it reads as a tense and harrowing story of escape, dotted with devastating-yet-important notes from a history largely unknown to many in the United States ... It’s a lot, and it’s a heavy story throughout. Heavy yet compelling ... These infographics are brief and occasional, yet they so thoroughly enhance the experience of reading Year of the Rabbit, adding such a fascinating and informative layer to the book. The tense narrative (a family must survive) pulls readers through like rope thrown as a lifeline ... Skillfully told and masterfully depicted, Year of the Rabbit will entertain and inform all at once ... vital.
