Koren ShadmiRezensionen

Though I would have appreciated more info on the creative process from album 2 on, this was a tremendously enjoyable read. Framed around Lou Reed and John Cale's reunion at Andy Warhol's funeral, and magnificently portraying the arty scenes of Boston and NYC in the 1960s, this graphic history of The Velvet Underground is totally worth a look.

A pretty straightforward biography of Lou Reed, John Cale, and their band, The Velvet Underground. (There are other people in the band, but they get glossed over for the most part.) The end of the tale is pretty standard, with drug abuse and and infighting breaking up the band, but the beginning of the group is a little unusual thanks to the intervention of Andy Warhol, who drafted them as the house band for his pop art experience.

I like maybe six Velvet Underground songs and perhaps a dozen Lou Reed songs, mostly from his New York album, so I don't consider myself a big fan, but I was still entertained and informed by this look at the group's history.

If you cannot stand finding out that the person behind songs you like is an asshole, you'd best avoid this book.

More well-written than I expected for what is essentially a behind-the-scenes summary of the various types of work done to make Paranorman come to life on screen. This type of animation is so fascinating to see made, even though it’s stated in here that the intent is for you not to notice all the work involved. To the contrary, part of what’s attractive to me about the medium is how tangible that artist’s fingerprint is on every bit of the frame.

There is a lot of goofy dramatization in a framing sequence set in a surreal video game environment, but this remains a fun and informative history of the professional careers of and rivalry between a buttoned-down video game engineer, Ralph Baer, and the roguish founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell.

The light tone helps one fly past low-key corporate shenanigans and patent infringement lawsuits, keeping focus on two intriguing men and their very different approaches to life and work.

“You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.”

I grew up in the 1960s, so I clearly remember huddling around our black & white TV and watching the Twilight Zone. Of course, everyone remembers the cool, well-dressed host, with the smooth, somewhat sinister delivery- Rod Serling. Prior to reading this wonderful graphic bio, if you would have asked me if I knew anything else about Serling, other than being a writer, I would have been clueless. I had no idea that he was a paratrooper in the Pacific during WWII and was at the forefront of the Golden Age of Televison era. I cannot praise this graphic bio enough. Well-written and beautifully illustrated.½

Rod Serling is one of those names that everyone who had ever cared about classic SF TV would recognize (although I would admit that it took me forever to stop reading his name as Sterling). If they don't, they may recognize his most popular show - The Twilight Zone - and the name had become so popular in the modern world that I suspect that even people who never cared about SF had heard of.

Koren Shadmi decided to tell the story of Serling in graphic form. And what better way to do it than to frame it inside of a story -- with a twist at the end, so reminiscent of the show that even if you expect it, you still smile when it comes.

On a long plane ride, Serling's seatmate asks him to tell her a story - and he decides to tell his own life story - from the WWII to finding fame in Tinsel Town. Science fiction was not where he started - he tried to be a serious writer first but it soon became clear that the censors won't allow a lot of what he wanted to say. So he moved his stories to the future, to Mars - seemingly away from the now and here. And yet, as any reader of the genre will tell you, they were the stories of today, of the here and now. At around the same time, the science fiction authors of the Warsaw Pact countries were using the same methods to hide their stories of subversion and critique -- and just as it happened there, the US censors ignored the genre (in a lot of ways, being considered a sub-par genre and something for children and not a serious helped).

Looking back, The Twilight Zone was a phenomenon. Back at the time it aired? It almost killed its creator and its ratings were not where they should have been.

Shadmi does not shy from the serious topics - Serling is Jewish and this did not sit very well with a lot of people. He neglected his family and his health during long stretches of his career and he was always chasing the next thing - more fame, the better review, the next best thing. And yet, he comes out of the story as a human - maybe a bit more talented than most but a hard working man who achieved what he set his eyes on... or almost did.

The art (again by Koren Shadmi) is functional and clean - it supports the narrative without distracting from it. It is mostly black and white - slightly different between the two timelines (the plane ride (where the black/grey turns into blue/grey) and the story the storytellers tells).

Even if you do not care about SF, this may be worth reading. It encapsulates a time that is long gone - the story of Hollywood and the modern television, the story of censors and the birth of a cultural phenomenon. And even if you think you know all about it, there will probably be some surprises.½

The Twilight Man (2020) by Koren Shadmi. This biography is subtitled Rod Serling and the Birth of Television. Normally I do not read bios that might come my way. The reasons are not relevant in that I did read this one. It was done in a very similar manner as to the bio I read about Pablo Picasso not so long ago. This is the telling of Rod Serling’s adult life ala the graphic novel.
We open with a long air journey where Mr. Serling is persuaded by the unnamed woman sitting next to him to talk him about his life. She points out the bracelet he wears, Army Parachute wings, so he starts with his entry to the military and the 511th Parachute Regiment at the start of the war.
Serling, due to his smaller stature, is called to the C.O.’s office and told he wasn’t going to be part of the regiment. Undeterred, Serling works hard and manages to get a berth in the training regiment. The physical training is very difficult and there is high rate of drop outs even before the first jump, but Serling won’t quit and eventually earns his jump wings.
Then comes an entire section on his time during WWII and the South Pacific theater of operations. This is yet another grueling test for the young man, one which so many of his comrades didn’t survive. And it nearly killed him.
After the war there is college and an internship at a radio station in New York City. There are years of struggle, bouncing between a couple of markets, then on to television. The entire time he wrote radio scripts by the dozens.
Then comes the rest of the story including the rise and fall of Rod Serling. We know his big successes, but the dips between them are fleshed out. Then, in June of 1975, Rod Serling died during surgery for a heart attack. The pressure he had placed upon himself his whole life finally killed him in the end.
The graphics done in black and white and gray-scale, mimic the many hours of television he brought to us. The panels capture not only what was happening, but the feel of the times and Mr. Serling’s thought, to a degree. The dialog is crisp, moving the telling of this gifted man’s life in a cadence he himself might have learned as a young man.
Mr. Shsdmi presents Rod Serling’s adult life story with dignity and respect. And, just as Mr. Serling himself might have done, it is served with a twist.

Not bad, but pretty heavy on tropes. Manic pixie dream girl, geeky outsider boy who fixates on said dream girl, that whole thing. That said, it still made me think, and made me feel a bit for the characters. It's not breaking new ground, but might be a great fit for someone who is into the style and theme.

I picked this up because I had read 'In the Flesh' by the same author. This one is a glorious full-colour comic about first love, with science-fictional elements. Victor is a nerdy teenager who yearns for a seemingly unattainable beautiful, rich, popular girl named Patty, who sits next to him in History class. One day Patty has an accident which destroys half of her body. Her father, a robotocist, replaces the broken parts with cybernetics. Patty is restored, but changed. She begins a self-destructive spiral of behaviour, and Victor is caught in it. The tale is about teenage angst and feelings of exclusion, and how being beautiful and rich doesn't necessarily make you happy. The science-fictional elements are secondary.

K. (Koren ?) vit avec un colloc bien porté sur le cul, mais il se met en couple avec une copine. Six mois plus tard : rupture et retour en colloc.

Dépité et un peu déprimé, il suit les conseils de son colloc et s’inscrit sur LoveBug, un site de rencontre. Et bim, une, deux, trois… il enchaine rapidement les coups d’un soir.

Et la machine s’emballe…

Une fable sympa au dessin très soigné sur la vacuité du donjuanisme en ligne, son machisme et la marchandisation des individus (des proies comme des chasseuses-eurs)

Steeped in existential angst, melancholy, and dystopic despair, this study of a wandering immortal watching the tail end of human history still managed to pull me in instead of repel. Go figure.

Word of the day: anisocoria.

A well-done biography of yet another Hollywood star whose success is followed by a fall into substance abuse and living paycheck to paycheck. Lugosi's story is engaging enough, but he is an arrogant womanizer who marries repeatedly, cheats repeatedly, and is shown sexually assaulting and harassing the women around him. Not a nice guy.

I was disappointed that, following Shadmi's imaginative The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television, this was just a pretty straightforward telling of the events in Lugosi's life, outlining all his marriages and a good chunk of his filmography. The parts with Ed Wood near the end had the most life and might have been a better anchor for the book than Lugosi's late-life trip to rehab.

Patricia Partzlaus is a beautiful and rich girl, all but unattainable to the geeky high school boy, Victor Steiner, who has a crush on her, until the day she is struck by a car and has an experimental procedure replacing a large portion of her body with the bionic parts her dad happens to be developing at his tech company. She then spends the rest of the book being moody about her new condition while Victor follows her around like a puppy that she has no problem occasionally kicking.

Instead of exploring any of the science fiction aspects of the change, the story is content to wallow in teen angst with underage drinking, nudity, sexting, smoking and all the other things I didn't do as a teen.

Way too long and dull. A very disappointing follow-up to the author's excellent The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television.

This is a biography, in graphic novel format, of Rod Serling, from his traumatic experiences in WWII, through his television career and struggles for creative control over his material, to the stressful price of his success. It's all told by means of a framing story in which Serling is sharing a long plane flight with a stranger and telling her his life story... but, of course, there's a twist at the end. It's a conceit that works well enough, as does the black-and-white artwork that captures a distinctly Twilight Zone-y sort of feel. I don't know that it goes quite as deep into Serling's creative imagination as I personally would be happy to go, but it's a nice biographical overview that gives you a good feel for the man, and I'd recommend it for fans of his work.

Loved the ending where he's trapped in purgatory. It's what he would have wanted.

My review of this book can be found on my Youtube Vlog at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i26xDYCgco4

Enjoy!

A well-illustrated, entertainingly-written story about the creation and impact of Dungeons & Dragons. I loved that the narrative read like a DM guiding me through an evening of D&D.

An informative and engaging biography of Rod Serling told as if it were an episode of "The Twilight Zone." It delves deeply into the influence that World War II, PTSD, and boxing had on Serling's writing, while touching more lightly on personal problems like infidelity, plagiarism, and the price of fame.

I've taken quite an interest in Rod Serling. I've always been attracted to The Twilight Zone, and the more I learned about Serling, the more I felt that I had some kind of otherworldly connection with him. His work ethic and his unparalleled stance on issues of social justice and consumerism made him stand out amongst a cast of unremarkable Hollywood stars. Yet, Serling was human: he battled his demons, even selling out to the same corporations he railed against when his career began to wane. I knew all this, but I wanted more.

I hoped The Twilight Man would provide me more of the picture. Here are the details I already knew of Serling, now illustrated. I learned a little about some of the secondary characters in the business: the executives, the writers. I learned a bit about Serling's struggles in the business, particularly about his involvement in Planet of the Apes and Night Gallery. I would've liked to have seen more of Serling's personal life after fame presented here, but that's largely left out. What was included were several allusions to extramarital affairs I hadn't encountered in my previous study, and this cracked my image of Serling some. I had the impression of a strong family man who was overworked, but resilient. This new bit of information, assuming its veracity, paints the picture of someone who gave in under pressure (and not just to the corporations).

There really isn't anything here that probably isn't in other Serling bios (I just haven't read all of them). What this book does is present the story in a format that may allow new or less interested fans a gateway into Serling's story. The presentation, the illustrations—all these elements were fine. In fact, I'd say the graphic style was perfect for the atmosphere and tempo of The Twilight Zone. The story itself wasn't told in the most interesting or dramatic way, and the attempt to encapsulate the whole thing as an episode of The Twilight Zone felt off to me: it was a good concept, but the implementation was a bit cloying and ill-conceived. Still, anyone with an interest in Serling's life would be advised to add this text to their reading list.

The author and artist of this work, took Rod Sterling’s life and presented it as an episode of The Twilight Zone. And it was AMAZING. The reader is hoooked right from the start. We are on a plane with a long time before landing, and horror of all horrors no one brought a book. So Rod starts telling his story. I had no idea he was a paratrooper, or how hard he fought to control his stories. I knew he wrote with amazing people and sci-fi juggernauts, but everything else was new to this reader. The story is a bit sad, but so were most TTZ episodes. But they made you think. The team behind this book did such an amazing job, a reader hears Rod in their head as they go panel to panel, they picture his iconic black and white works, and evoke the same emotions we get from revisiting the zone. A masterwork of graphic biography for graphic novel readers and everyone else.

An informative--but also somehow not--look at the creature of Dungeons and Dragons. It's billed as a biography of Gary Gygax, the co-creator of the game, but delivers a light (and somewhat inaccurate) history of his life while also looking at the story of the game as a whole. Dave Arneson, the other co-creator of the game, also features prominently.

I LIKED it, but didn't love it. The art had a warm and welcoming vibe, and the final chapter really hit me. But some other segments felt...tossed off, I guess? I've been a D&D fan (and an RPG fan in general) for years and I never fell into any Gygax-ian hero-worship, so it was nice to actually learn a bit about the man and the game's creation. Still, so much of it felt light. I don't know if this was because of the format or, maybe, because it was intentional.

I was surprised at how engaging I found this biography, especially since I have never played Dungeons & Dragons in my life. But I can see the game's influence in other games I have enjoyed, especially the old Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord game I played on my first Macintosh back in college and Minecraft today.

The book is laid out like the storyboards of a well-done documentary with talking heads giving insight into the dramatic re-enactments. I was initially put off on the use dungeon master narration to describe the setting of new scenes, but it really fit the material and won me over.

That said, the story boils down to a fairly common dispute between creators of who created what when and how much those contributions added to the final product. Rather than having any big dramatic moments, this minor conflict peters out into basically a shrug of the shoulders. Regardless, it drew me along far more effectively than a story about nerds sitting in a basement playing games should.

I read this in one sitting while at the dentist. :) When I bought it I had no idea it was a graphic novel, and even though I read a lot of graphic novels, I was disappointed because this is the kind of information I would like to learn about in book form. When it started it seemed like it was going to a really bad fictional story that included Gary Gygax as the main character. Instead it turned into the true story of Gary Gygax (and others).

The perspective change was often confusing. They tried to use the "you're in a room, it's 20 x 20" style of a DM speaking, but then they were quoting people, and putting the reader in the place of the characters (I think).

It was kind of like reading a bullet-pointed list of facts and quotes with pictures attached. Luckily I was interested in the facts and I didn't know some of them, so I enjoyed it. I still think this kind of thing would be better in a full book format with a lot more information/details.

I knew Koren Shadmi was a fantastic illustrator, but he is also a fantastic writer. His stories in this graphic short story collection are strange and bizarre, but ultimately, underneath that surreal surface are some very intelligent stories about people's difficulty in communicating with other people, especially about their odd feelings - those they think they are the only ones in the world to have. Shadmi's lost souls may be a little sick and sometimes perverted, but I think we have to admit that they are in no way the only ones.½

An interesting collection of graphical short stories about strange relationships and hangups. I found the form enhanced the stories -- they were well told in the graphic format.