My first taste of Doug TenNapel's work came in the graphic novel Creature Tech. Well, that's not exactly true, I had seen TenNapel's work years earlier when I played the Earthworm Jim games on SNES, but Creature Tech was my first knowing sample. TenNapel's mind is a wonderful thing. Each of his ideas whether graphic novels, games, or tv shows is pretty wonderfully crazy. There are parts of each of his graphic novels where I have to stop, shake my head, and just chuckle at the things I've just read.
This is not a bad thing at all. Quite the contrary, I love TenNapel's ability to combine the weirdest things (robots, the old west, and sasquatch for one example) and yet they all flow together in this goofy, completely acceptable way. Iron West (which I reread last night) is probably my favorite of TenNapel's graphic novels that I have read so far. Not that the plot is really anything different or unpredictable, but because of the way it comes together. Plus, TenNapel does his own art for his books and (obviously) this suits his writing style extremely well.
If I have to push one complaint through about the graphic novels of TenNapel, it has to go to a bit of Creature Tech. Although it's still my second favorite book of his, the Christian overtones are a bit thick and overbearing at times, which hampers the story a bit. Part of this goes back to that Religion Friday post about the Christian subculture, but to a much lesser degree. In Creature Tech, the story is perfectly fine and the moral lessons are easy enough to obtain, but when the Christianity aspect is placed within, it sort of falls flat.
From what I understand, Nickelodeon plays a show called Catscratch, which was created by TenNapel and is at least partially connected to one of his earlier graphic novels, Gear - which is (albeit difficult to understand) really good in its own right. Also, a non-TV show internet phenomenon known as SockBaby is another of his works, and definitely needs to be watched for you to have a better life.
I really love reading TenNapel's works, but the problem is finding them all. I've had to wind up buying it all from amazon because my local libraries hardly carry graphic novels, much less independent ones like this. So, if you ever see a TenNapel work in the wild, I would suggest you at least give it a glance, if not taking it home with you and sharing with your family and friends.
This is not a bad thing at all. Quite the contrary, I love TenNapel's ability to combine the weirdest things (robots, the old west, and sasquatch for one example) and yet they all flow together in this goofy, completely acceptable way. Iron West (which I reread last night) is probably my favorite of TenNapel's graphic novels that I have read so far. Not that the plot is really anything different or unpredictable, but because of the way it comes together. Plus, TenNapel does his own art for his books and (obviously) this suits his writing style extremely well.
If I have to push one complaint through about the graphic novels of TenNapel, it has to go to a bit of Creature Tech. Although it's still my second favorite book of his, the Christian overtones are a bit thick and overbearing at times, which hampers the story a bit. Part of this goes back to that Religion Friday post about the Christian subculture, but to a much lesser degree. In Creature Tech, the story is perfectly fine and the moral lessons are easy enough to obtain, but when the Christianity aspect is placed within, it sort of falls flat.
From what I understand, Nickelodeon plays a show called Catscratch, which was created by TenNapel and is at least partially connected to one of his earlier graphic novels, Gear - which is (albeit difficult to understand) really good in its own right. Also, a non-TV show internet phenomenon known as SockBaby is another of his works, and definitely needs to be watched for you to have a better life.
I really love reading TenNapel's works, but the problem is finding them all. I've had to wind up buying it all from amazon because my local libraries hardly carry graphic novels, much less independent ones like this. So, if you ever see a TenNapel work in the wild, I would suggest you at least give it a glance, if not taking it home with you and sharing with your family and friends.
1 comment:
I've never read this graphic novel (and probably never will), but just a thought about the Christian overtones. By faith we claim a "meta-narrative" as the TRUTH of life. Therefore, won't the themes and truth of this "meta-narrative" appear in every story?
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