March, Book Three, masterfully completes the trilogy, but perhaps because of its awards and popularity and its timeliness, maybe they will just go on March, Book Three, masterfully completes the trilogy, but perhaps because of its awards and popularity and its timeliness, maybe they will just go on with the project. And now that Senator Lewis has passed, maybe a companion volume at least can happen. These three volumes represent 7 years of work, well spent for historians and comics lovers and tose of us committed to racial justice. So put this series on your list.
March, designed maybe primarily for teens, for a new generation of activists, as background to the present, and Black Lives Matter, through yet another spate of white cops killing black kids, is a must read. To those, like me, who lived through the sixties, it is a chance to revisit the events of yesterday in the light of the events of today. The series is important, a comics trip back to (RIP, July 2020) Senator John Lewis’s personal experiences with the civil rights movement here in the U.S.. Is this just churning up old soil, digging at a scab that seemed to heal a long time ago? Do you think racism is dead, something we took care of back then? Well, look at the black kids being killed on the streets today and see if we don’t need to revisit the Civil Rights movement of the twentieth century.
A couple weeks ago several students in my class chose to read the first volume of this series, after we had all read All American Boys, which is also a novel about police brutality, and they remarked to me that while they had known of some of the brutality that had taken place then, some of the specifics of this history was shocking to them. The first volume of March is kind of background, focusing on Lewis’s early life as it emerges into activism; the second is almost full blown, non-stop action, just horrifyingly engaging, but this third volume for me rises even further to greatness, extending the scope of the action and deepening the effect of the story with excerpts from various speeches and sermons and testimonies from the time.
Senator Lewis has written much of his experiences in other formats. It was his aide, Andrew Aydin, who adapted his story, working with amazing graphic novelist Nate Powell to create what has already become a staple in school curricula. It is--you may be surprised to hear--not a cleaned up, Golden Book version of the events for the kiddies. The language, the actual events, are not sugar-coated. Terrible things happened in this country, and they are shared here. The fact that some terrible things are happening to black people still in this country makes this book important.
Some important revelations that counter some of the reported history:
*A lot of people think of the Kennedys and LBJ as important white civil rights leaders, but as Lewis reminds us, they had to be educated and pushed to act, they were initially opposed to civil rights legislation.
*Sometimes you get the feeling from recent civil rights history that the Reverend Martin Luther King just sort of led a unified charge. Nope, he and Malcolm X battled on some issues, SNCC (The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that Lewis led) battled with King and people they viewed as more centrist, finally, like Lewis himself. Some people were sick of non-violence. They wanted a war.
*You might know Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girls, a documentary about the 4 little girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing, on Youth Day, when 21 other children were injured. What you may know is that that was one moment that shifted the tide in attitudes about racial relations and equity in those days. And there had been many people killed and many churches bombed before this one bombing. But white America began to hesitate in their opposition to racial equality when they saw children deliberately being killed. . . and in this historic black church. And why did the bombings take place? Among other things, to resist black people voting or even being registered to vote. 2% of African Americans eligible to vote were actually allowed to be registered to vote in Mississippi in 1963. And why do you guess that was? And does that resonate with anything you hear today about the suppression of voter registration among the poor and people of color? What you may not know is that after the deaths of those 4 little girls, Lewis reminds us, white teens roamed the streets beating up and shooting black folks in celebration of those deaths. And, in one anecdote I had forgotten, he relates the story of two KKK Eagle Scout teens who gunned down a black kid on the streets of Birmingham just because they had been riled up by the rally. Most of those crimes were never prosecuted; it took decades for even one of the murderers to come to trial.
If any of this interests you, it might be useful to order from your library Eyes on the Prize, the celebrated documentary series. Invaluable. Or view Lee’s 4 Little Girls. Or read some of Taylor Branch’s works on those days.
What many whites today know about civil rights history are white guy hero books like To Kill a Mockingbird, which I do think is great, but still, from a white perspective. We know MLK’s I have a Dream speech, which is great, too, yes. But we celebrate Rosa Parks as a little old lady who was too tired to sit in the back of the bus, rather than see her as the trained and passionate activist she was.
This book touched a nerve for me. I think there are more elaborate stories to read in Lewis’s own work and in other great civil rights histories. But this series, designed for young people and really all ages, finally, will work to help us/young people have discussions about Black Lives Matter and police brutality and racism and poverty. I had given 4 stars to the first two books in the series, but this one sparked something more in me. It suffers from having to tell too much history in too short a time; I am sure it proved a challenge to subtle Powell, too, who would not ordinarily use so many words in his own work, but you can see they just had to include excerpts from the great speeches of the time, all the rich and outraged and grieving language just has to be present, from Fannie Lou Hamer, from Dr. King, from Lewis himself. These speeches and sermons compose a very moving reflection on the past and present.
Today, as I write, there's another cop killing a kid in Tulsa, and in Charlotte. And Minneapolis. More than 120 this year already. It reminds me of Alan Moore’s American gothic horror tour of the U.S. in the sixties in Swamp Thing. Where’s the next stop, folks? Spin the dial . . . what fresh hell will we experience? And I live in Chicago, which is a different but related story. Read this series. It might be your way--or your kids's way--into the issues of today. Highly recommend....more
Powell worked for several years with young people with developmental disabilities, something I also did for a shorter time. HRevision of review 4/9/17
Powell worked for several years with young people with developmental disabilities, something I also did for a shorter time. He also ran a punk record label and performed in several bands. . . and oh, yeah, does these amazing, detailed graphic novels and stories, including the series that took him and his co-authors to The National Book Award in 2016, March, the graphic memoir from Sen. John Lewis of the Civil Rights movement in the US, which Powell illustrated. But Swallow was my very first encounter with him, a story about a family dealing with a dying grandmother who is losing it, and a brother and sister dealing with early onset schizophrenia, something that statistics tell me is something much more common than I had imagined.
The focus in Whole is on the two kids, with primary focus on the girl's more serious, less able to hide, experiences, her visual hallucinations and obsessions. I read this initially and again as a parent whose son has been hospitalized for related issues, so it was scary for me, in the sense that it felt a little more real to me than just any graphic story, of course. In my late teens and twenties, too, I worked in a psych ward with teens who were, among other things, schizophrenic, hallucinating, paranoid, what they then called manic-depressive, so I have had some powerful experiences with this stuff. Powell wants us to experience what it may feel like to live in two worlds, the "real" world and this hallucinatory one that is unfortunately just as real, and with some folks, this secondary world takes over your “other” life. Sad, and frightening, though Powell also captures the anguish (and some attractions/fascinations associated with it beautifully, I think. Reminds me a bit of David B's attempt to depict what he imagines his brother's epilepsy to be, which is of course another sad and anguished story, and also Craig Thompson's Blankets, where he tries to mostly visually capture the swirling, romantic falling of first love. What I’m pointing to here is the way comics can attempt to “capture” the emotional aspects of experience, through metaphor.
I've now taught/read this book several times. I had the occasion to meet Powell, who said it this was his favorite, his most personal book. Some students don't like it for the very reason I do like it: his almost indecipherable hand lettering, which I think helps you understand auditory hallucinations in a way as happening sometimes just on the edge of “normal” hearing, and also helps you recall the mumbling of quiet, alienated young people, their sometimes disjointed, fanatical and unexplained experiences, which are told here to help us understand the experience of hallucinations.
Some of the images are very scary, the stuff of horror, which is what schizophrenics must regularly wrestle with. It's not fun to read, but there's a kind tenderness to the relationship between the brother and sister, who both suffer from the disorder in different ways. The fear, and the coming to terms (in part) with themselves as humans possessing these unwanted perceptions, that's heart wrenching. Powerful, I thought. Not for everyone, maybe. But as I said, I connect with it in part for family and work reasons. As a teacher, you know you have kids in your classrooms that hear voices and have hallucinations, and are medicated, but you don't always know this. Oliver Sacks in Hallucinations makes it clear that what we think of as misperception (think: mirages, and so on) is much more common than most people think.
This last reading, completed April 9, 2017, feels like the grimmest time I have read this book, because in part the future seems scary for my now 17 year old son. It's like looking deeply into the heart of darkness, into madness itself. It’s terrifying, really, though. I’m also reading Ron Powers’s book No One Cares About Crazy People, and sometimes ride the trains to work here in Chicago with plenty of homeless people, some of whom I see are having psychotic episodes, who used to be better protected in and by institutions. The world seems like a meaner, less supportive place to me for people that Powell writes about, for people like my son, than when I worked in the psych hospital in the seventies. ...more
I have read Hatchet a few times and listened to it with the fam a couple times in the car, and taught it and each tRIP, Gary Paulson, October 16, 2021
I have read Hatchet a few times and listened to it with the fam a couple times in the car, and taught it and each time it reads better and better. Just listened to Peter Coyote read it while riding back from Yellowstone, and loved it. Great story, well told, well read.
An adventure story in part based on tough guy (with a big heart) Paulson's own survival of a plane crash and other near death experiences. When I think of that kid there finding ways to survive at a lake in Nowhere, Canada, miles from civilization, I see it precisely, I have been there, in the way of the best books. And some genuine heart-pumping moments.
Paulsen's great achievement. How is it it rates only 3.61 from GR readers?! Read it, or read it again, in honor of this great book, probably written for middle grades, but really all-ages in the way of classics. Great book!!...more
This ends so powerfully, with possibly Rowling's best writing ever. This was my second time through this book, reading it with 8 year old so Harry, anThis ends so powerfully, with possibly Rowling's best writing ever. This was my second time through this book, reading it with 8 year old so Harry, and I thought much of it was better than I had remembered. Unlike what I usually do, won't write in detail so as not to include too many spoilers. Terrific book, just a classic for all times. On to the finish!
Just finished my third reading of the book on February 25, 2014, with the family. Better than ever....more
Walter Dean Myers (RIP!) was one of the most prolific and successful children's and YA authors ever, but this book, that I have taught many times and Walter Dean Myers (RIP!) was one of the most prolific and successful children's and YA authors ever, but this book, that I have taught many times and is a staple especially in urban schools, may be his best known, in print since it came out in 1999. I read it again in a Growing Up course recently, and some students also read Bad Boy, his memoir, but some students instead/also read the graphic adaptation of the book, which I will review in a minute. The story involves a (black) teenager who is indicted for being an accessory to a robbery and murder. He's a very good student, attending one of Manhattan's premier high schools, interested in film.
A prosecutor lumps them all together: Monsters. Issues of race and representation and moral responsibility abound. Just as in 12 Angry Men, this is a story young people like to debate. And write from: Largely told in screenplay fashion, from the boy's point of view, and through journal excerpts, it provides a model for multi-genre presentation of reality. And a nudge for students to investigate the juvenile justice system....more
I just read this, July 2015, but wrote this review a couple years ago, and pretty much hold to my views then, in spite of the fact that after first reI just read this, July 2015, but wrote this review a couple years ago, and pretty much hold to my views then, in spite of the fact that after first reading this book and loving it, I read each of his previous books and liked them less and less. I basically think he is a pretty good technical writer, smart, loves language, but until this book did not find an important subject to write about. Before this book he was mostly just clever without a real important purpose. His characters all sound like Green himself, smart, literary, and sarcastic, though he can be touching, too. Gus and Hazel sound alike, but they still seem compelling to me. They are smarter than teenagers typically are, by far, prep school kids, but I like what they have to say still.
Another thing: I think Green's main influence in his writing of this story is Peter DeVries's masterpiece about pediatric cancer, The Blood of the Lamb, which is better than Fault, but has that same mashup of bitterness and sardonic humor and vulnerability. I highly recommend that one, too.
This is the October 29, 2012 review:
How do you write a book about kids with cancer and not fall into certain traps? For instance, how do you avoid sentimentality, being maudlin, being "inspirational," etc? Of course, most people LOVE these aspects of books about stories of death, they like to weep, they need hope, etc. I don't want to dismiss those human tendencies, of course. And for some, the sappier the better! But what if you gag on that sickly sweet sap? A host of books attempt to answer this question from a more literary and philosophical point of view, (and a problem not easily solved). Dave Eggers took on the problem in his memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, about the sudden and completely out-of-the-blue deaths (from cancer) of his two parents, that left him, a college student, to raise his younger brother alone. Do you cry? Sure, but in the process he grapples seriously with the issue of how to tell the tale without becoming the hero he does not feel he really is. How do you avoid this? Well, he goes meta on us, he talks about the issue with us frankly, and he undermines his own potential heroism (so courageous! How could he possibly live with so much grief and responsibility at such a young age?!!) by making himself out to (also) be a selfish jerk at times, bitter, clueless. He laughs at himself, he gets angry at himself and the world, and everything. Greg Michie's story of his urban teaching, Holler if You Hear Me, works in a similar way to show us how he fails all the time as a teacher... which ironically for both Michie and Eggers actually increases our sympathy for them as heroes....they GET points for being courageous by undermining this very claim about fearful and uncourageous they really are! But I like the move, and their honesty and UNsentimentality increases their credibility.
Green is an often very very good writer, who takes on Eggers's charge to try at all costs to avoid sentimentality, in the service of TRUE sentiment, to get at the core of the really important emotions and ideas working this enterprise we all have to face and face again and again in various ways: death. How does he pull it off? With many strategies; one is wit (which is also the title of a one woman play about a woman with cancer), where the choice of to laugh or to cry is an easy one for Green. He does rage as his characters rage, but he is inclined to find a way to laugh when he can, and the darker the joke, the better, though these jokes also sometimes set up tender scenes, too. He creates teen (and adult) characters who are so smart and so witty and so cynical and so deeply insightful that the sap dries up (almost) everywhere (well, not everywhere, but give him a break, the death from cancer of teens is a tough challenge for even a cynical writer and he is not that cynical, finally).
There are other books like this: Cancer Vixen, Cancer Made Me Shallower, others... I heard a comic with cancer talking on NPR about how she did stand-up the night she had gotten a diagnosis that her cancer had returned... tough, and funny. And the mainstream stories are really about faith, about not giving up, about courage, and while all cancer books do deal with these issues in one way or the other, most of Green's characters are agnostic, existentialist, sometimes (but rarely) bitter, and usually accepting of death as just part of life. They hate the idea of being "inspired" by their cancer. They hate "cancer perks" and false hopes. One central and dearly lovable character, Augustus, does seem to believe in Something, and hopes to come back to visit his funeral, but Green is not taking a position on that, he is himself smart-assedly existentialist, though not a grim one; he admires his kid characters for their commitment to just going on. As Beckett says it, through [I think] Molloy: "I can't go on, I'll go on." Maybe some folks won't like Green as much as Beckett, and I don't, but they have similar purposes: How to face oblivion and the short time we have on the planet usefully.
So yes, spoiler alert, people do die in this book, and you do cry, and yes, you admire the courage and wit and smart assed humor and insight of him and his characters, but you also admire Green himself for writing so beautifully. He really is a good writer, and he supports great human beings over terrible ones. This is YA at its very best, and deserves all the accolades it can get, in my opinion. As he has Augustus, one of the central characters say, "The real heroes aren't the people doing things, they real heroes are the people NOTICING things, the ones paying attention." He's talking about Hazel Grace, our main character, but he's also talking about writers, artists, human beings at their best. Here is Green talking in a meta way to other writers what writing can and must do. I cried reading this book, but sometimes it was just because his writing was so deft, so wonderful, it occasionally took my breath away. That last book that did for me (for me to cry about great writing) was also YA, Okay for Now, by Gary Schmidt, which also very much endorses the importance of art in teen (and generally, human) identity and sense-making. I think Schmidt's book is better, actually, more affecting, even, but I still like Green in this book.
One thing Hazel Grace, the agnostic, says, hanging in a park with her family, reconsidering Augustus's possible view of faith against a favorite writer Peter VanHouten's cynical despair: "Who am I to say that these things might not be forever? Who is Peter VanHouten to assert as fact the conjecture that our labor is temporary? All I know of heaven and all I know of earth is in this park: an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children." Green throughout the book also uses the playing of video games (one kind of storytelling) to mirror his view of what uses fiction and storytelling can contribute to a good life: paying attention. I cried when Hazel Grace recited poetry to Augustus, even the spare William Carlos Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow": "so much depends/upon/a red wheel/barrow/glazed with rain/water/beside the white/chickens." You are only on the planet so long; pay attention, pay attention, take care of each other....more
For this time of book censorship and actual book-burning and defunding libraries in the US of A:
This is a 550 page book, but it was (perhaps) was writFor this time of book censorship and actual book-burning and defunding libraries in the US of A:
This is a 550 page book, but it was (perhaps) was written for a middle grades audience, and it reads fast. I would call it an "all ages book" which means that tweens and up can read and appreciate it. And I really think it is a classic, something everyone should consider reading. The book focuses on Liesel, a middle grades German girl who also as it turns out is a book thief. I'll explain.
The (fictional) story is set in Munich during WWII; Liesel's (non-Jewish and non-Nazi) family is hiding Max, a Jew and an artist, in their basement during the war. (No, it's not only Anne Frank and those from other countries who sheltered Jews and other potential victims of the Third Reich during that war as people learned to, their horror, that the Nazis were actually killing literally millions deemed less than fully human in ovens; some non-Jewish Germans were also part of these efforts to save/protect their fellow Germans).
The book is also about Liesel's friendship with Rudy and her relationships with her foster parents Rosa and Hans. I had a little struggle with the kind of quirky style early on, and was distracted just briefly by the fact that this was yet another book marketed to librarians and teachers. . . oh, it's about the power of books, duh, and reading, art, writing, expression, among many others, though finally I got over this, of course, and learned to celebrate all this as we should. The Nazis burned books, which is part of how this book thieving got started, in a way.
One of the most remarkable things about the book is that the story is narrated by Death, which at first I thought was a little corny/children's lit, then I really, really liked it, because it worked against sentimentality, which of course you expect with a Holocaust book. There was a lot of work Death was doing during WWII, including the Holocaust, of course. I like the way Death, knowing what he does and not being a particularly sentimental storyteller, reveals important plot information before it happens (because why should he care what we think about spoilers!?), and then we experience all he has told us will unfold. That's a narrative risk Zusak takes and it pays off wonderfully, I thought.
Zusak has said he hoped people would find at least one writerly "gem" on each page, that he loved to write metaphors and I thought as writing it was well done. Of course you notice the language when it is striking and insightful, but Zusak makes sure the lyricism doesn't take away the focus on the actual horrors and suffering that are central to the tale. As I said, it took a bit for me to adjust to his style, but ultimately I found it very entertaining, and moving, and lovely, within the important story it tells.
Zusak wanted to tell about the Holocaust from a different angle, so he researched the resistance to Hitler within Nazi Germany. And as it turns out there were actually Germans who hated the fear- and hate-mongering Hitler (imagine this, a populist leader who hates people of color--anyone not classic blue-eyed, blond-haired German), gays, people with disabilities--but didn't know how to organize to respond to the shitstorm that was happening there. It shows a little bit of German resistance. And it's not sympathetic in the least about the something like 90% support--tens of millions of votes, for sure--for Hitler.
Liesel becomes who she is because she is encouraged to "steal" books (like a library itself in some ways?!) from a woman's library and (passionately) read them. She rescues books from the fire and cherishes them, though she could be executed for these acts. And in the process she comes to understand through her reading the richness of human diversity and art such is represented in the Jewish artist they shelter in their basement.
I read this first in November, 2013, and again in March, 2014 for my YA class, and again in July, 2015 for my summer YA class. It's great stuff....more
I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the Sympathy Paul Laurence Dunbar
I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, And the river flows like a stream of glass; When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; For he must fly back to his perch and cling When he fain would be on the bough a-swing; And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars And they pulse again with a keener sting— I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!
Reread most recently on the cusp of the twentieth anniversary of the book's publication, for my fall 2018 YA class, also with Anderson's graphic novel version of the book, illustrated impressively by Emily Carroll.
If you haven't read this book and don;t know why it is Melinda doesn't speak (much, except in the journal of her ninth grade year, which is the novel Speak, you may not want to continue reading this review.
Perennial fave in my YA course, and an important moment in the history of Young Adult Literature. Published in 1999, it features a girl, Melinda, who was raped at a party by an upperclassman in the month before her ninth grade year at Merryweather High School. She calls 911 but then, traumatized by what has happened to her, something she was too young to fully understand, she largely stops talking about what happened, which gets most people in school to hate her. Many books on (teen) rape now exist but few are also witty, filled with snarky teen humor, and so alive with a real vibrant central character, and so well written, with such great insights into teen experiences of adolescence. Should a book on this topic also be funny? Well, this one is, and you will laugh out loud at many observations the darkly acerbic Melinda makes about her school and the teachers and students in the school. And underneath that surface humor is the Act that can never be Un-Acted, the horror compounded by social isolation and misunderstanding.
Melinda rarely actually speaks in this first year, because she is resented for calling that cops at that party. They don't know why she called the cops, though, and no one seems to really care to ask. She loses friends and is bullied. Another issue? "It" (the rapist) is a student at her school, and still a threat to her and others. Her parents's marriage is in trouble, so they have no time to ask her what is going on.
One resource for her is Art class, and the cool art teacher, Mr. Freeman, who doesn't intrude but makes space for her to explore her obvious experiences. Her year project, the topic of which she pulls out of a hat,is a tree. It's a cliche, maybe, but Melinda is urged throughout the year to try and try again to express herself through that simple image. The power of art to redeem is important in this story, as is the power of telling one's story. This is not a perfect story (I have some small issues with the resolution of the story, which conveniently involves a field hockey team in the right place at the right time), but it is an important one for schools and those who work with young people, and teens---both boys and girls--who need to know what rape is and what speaking truth to power is all about. ...more
7/21/21: Reread for summer YA graphic Novels and comics course. Always on Goodreads and in courses there are readers who HATE these two girls, but I c7/21/21: Reread for summer YA graphic Novels and comics course. Always on Goodreads and in courses there are readers who HATE these two girls, but I continue to defend them as lost, alienated, vulnerable. One student in my class said that identity is usually defined in positive terms, as what you embrace and know about yourself and the world, and he notes that both of the main characters react to themselves,, each other and the world in negative terms, rejecting everything they face. It's anti-identity.
6/27/17 Reread for my YA GN/Comics summer class, discussed with clips from the movie (including Thora Birch, Steve Buscemi, and Scarlett Johannson at 16!), which more and more seems like a light rom-com version of the much deeper and richer (and grittier, nastier) book. One dimension of this book that seems clearer to me in this reading is that one of the things they are struggling with in this summer after high school graduation is sexuality, including some Q (of the GLTQ) moments. Who are they, and who do they want to become? Enid may be going to college; Rebecca just wants things to stay the same between them forever. Many people find these girls too nasty, but Clowes, an alt comix/underground guy, didn't write them for everybody. They are two sort of punkish/art crowd cynics that seem very familiar to me.
6/19/16 Ghost World is Clowes's comics masterpiece, his first work to cross over from alternative comics into mainstream success, with a film adaptation. One of the first alt comics ever to do that, actually. The text features two recent girls, Enid Coleslaw and Rebecca Doppelmeyer, recent graduates of high school, both disaffected and cynical. They seem to hate everything, and pretty humorously so. One of my favorite moments is when Rebecca makes the claim that Enid hates all men. Enid says, no, there's one guy, David Clowes, he's like this cartoonist, he's pretty cool. . . :). Coleslaw is a rough version of Clowes, but it is my understanding he modeled Enid on a classmate with whom he went to high school in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.
Enid and Rebecca go to yard sales, they go to coffee shops and restaurants, they try on different costumes as they try to find a place to NOT fit in with the horrors of modern urban society. The dialogue is spot on, sometimes acid, usually rude and crude, though if you scratch just below the surface, there is a kind of vulnerability, even fragility, there. They are friends, anti-social as they seem. They have as interesting a collection of acquaintances as exist in any teen novel: The quiet Josh, who they talk into going with them into a porn store; budding actress Melorra; Bob Skeetes the astrologer, the morbidly hilarious John Ellis, Johnny Apeshit. . .
They seem a little post-punk, all these urban kids, and if sometimes mean to others and each other, they do seem to care about each other, and they do want love. The art is comics genius, and has been recognized at recent years by the art world, on a par with Chris Ware and Seth. Clowes was featured in a huge Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) exhibit....more