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sevenworlds's review against another edition
5.0
This started out as a magical little adventure tale that weaves together the dull horrors of getting older with the evolution of comics and entertainment. By the end it is a beautiful rumination on creativity, imagination, getting unstuck and loving this life. I'm a sucker for stories within stories, and Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen quite delivered on that front.
I enjoyed the earnest examples of how comics can benefit from more progressive views and how Horrocks was able to incorporate that philosophy into the book's action. The discussion of the morality of desire was thought-provoking and fascinating. I'll probably be thinking about that for a long time.
4 stars for Miki and Alice alone. One extra for a surprisingly lovely and touching ending.
I enjoyed the earnest examples of how comics can benefit from more progressive views and how Horrocks was able to incorporate that philosophy into the book's action. The discussion of the morality of desire was thought-provoking and fascinating. I'll probably be thinking about that for a long time.
4 stars for Miki and Alice alone. One extra for a surprisingly lovely and touching ending.
robin_dh's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
piapoyopi's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
zellm's review against another edition
2.0
This doesn't really have much plot or resolution.... I was underwhelmed.
magnetgrrl's review against another edition
3.0
Hicksville, the first comic novel by Dylan Horrocks, I recall fondly as being unique in its meta-ness, important in its place in comics canon, daring in attempting so much more than even the big authors like Moore and Ennis and Gaiman were doing in comics at that moment, and kind of life-changing for me. I read it during a time when I was trying to write comics criticism before comics kinda really blew up, but I'd already read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and knew that the genre was ready for that kind of serious attention, and no one was doing it yet. I loved loved loved Hicksville. Then I think I loaned it to someone and never got it back and then 20 years went by before I thought about reading it again. I happened to think of it the other day and couldn't find it on my shelves. I wanted to reread it to find what I had originally thought was so magical about it, and in buying myself a new copy I also realized Dylan Horrocks hadn't really done much else since Hicksville (very surprising) except this very new comic novel, so I bought that, too.
Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen explores some of the same themes as the Hicksville that I remember, getting very meta, dipping in and outside the boundaries of the story being told and the story behind that of the storyteller telling the story. This one seems more personal though, autobiographical probably. I vaguely remember Hicksville as being a bit mysterious and as being one of those stories where part of the way through you realize something bigger and sort of predestined is going on - it has a very hero's myth destiny kind of world-building in it, I think. (Although I don't recall that there is an actual hero, just that it sets itself in a world where big things are meant to be and meaning exists - like, not existentialist, not real life.)
I'm particularly interested in the parts of this new book that are Horrock's explorations of the responsibility creators have to their creations, and whether or not creating a fantasy world you want to live in (maybe) is selfish. That idea touches on something I remember debating in college about Iris Murdoch's ideas on what it takes to be a good novelist; how the same thing that allows you to create characters and give them autonomy rather than making them be puppets for your authorial voice is the same piece of your humanity that allows you to see the "other" in other people, and allow them to exist separately from you without being weighed down by your desires and expectations. That's a theme I'm always interested in exploring.
Halfway into the second section of the book, we're dropped with this bomb: Are we morally responsible for our fantasies? How? To who? To who it's about, even if they never know? To the fantasy itself? To what it allows us to think and make for ourselves - shouldn't we want to be better than our basest desires? Then again, isn't it natural and not shameful?
It's the most interesting question posed by this graphic novel, rambling as it is - touching on mid-life crisis, imposter syndrome, sex-based shame, seven-year-itch issues, nascent wonderings about BDSM, and like 20 other things, but it's not answered. (I'm not sure it can be? But still, it's a bit odd to bring up so much shit and just, kinda leave it hanging all out there.) And that's just, randomly, in the middle of the book, very bluntly, too.
Then the gang skips to a pirate world for like, 3 pages, and then into a medieval manuscript illustration one character name-drops is "like a Jess Franco movie" while she films monks and nuns fucking on her phone, and no one seems to notice. They visit a sketchy fantasy "world" from a postcard mailed to a German soldier. ? That doesn't last long. This whole tour is orchestrated by a mysteriously knowledgeable figure Miki (who seems to have a lot of erotic and female-centric comics in her collection) and she leads Sam and this other figure who I'm not sure I like much called Alice, through various comic worlds. They blast through a ton of them as she explains what she knows about the magic pen and its history. Seems like just a whirlwind tour of genres, but at least it's not like one of those gimmicky things where it's all recognizable famous comics, and the art style changes every panel to match the original. Then we blunder onto something meaningful - the idea that things have an order or prescribed meaning is the biggest fantasy of all, and that "all pens are magic" meaning, creativity is its own magic, and the artist in crisis finds his joy and inspiration again. These are themes we've seen before - they especially seem to come up in comics (Gaiman, again, The Unwritten, Adrian Tomine, etc.)
Chapter 13 goes somewhere very weird, very briefly, and is never explained. There's a moment when saying goodbye to Sam in the real world that Miki with a contented smile on her face tells him to hug her "tighter..." that's... very weird. The bit where Sam gives Alice (who, honestly, has been on and off a self-absorbed shit to him the entire book) the magic pen, as if to say "we need your words more than mine" ? or at least "I don't need this but you do" which is... sigh, I guess that's nice, but it's also kind of tiresome. Maybe if I had liked the Alice character more I would feel better about it. I think Miki is the only character I wanted to see more of or that I cared what happened to her. (It's maybe a little f*d up that it's implied that she might "be written this way" aka, to secretly enjoy being ravished by hundreds of tentacles like in hentai, but then like, just glossed over.) Also, the whole "Rice was my grandfather! Here's a super cute story about him and his wife and my mom as a kid!" was sweet but wholly unnecessary, unless just to explain sort of where the magic pen comes from.
This book was kind of all over the place. It touches on things I love but doesn't give me anything new about any of them. I really do need to reread Hicksville to see what the heck I saw in that book again - if it's still there.
This is more 2.5 stars for me, but I'm being generous here at the end of the year.
Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen explores some of the same themes as the Hicksville that I remember, getting very meta, dipping in and outside the boundaries of the story being told and the story behind that of the storyteller telling the story. This one seems more personal though, autobiographical probably. I vaguely remember Hicksville as being a bit mysterious and as being one of those stories where part of the way through you realize something bigger and sort of predestined is going on - it has a very hero's myth destiny kind of world-building in it, I think. (Although I don't recall that there is an actual hero, just that it sets itself in a world where big things are meant to be and meaning exists - like, not existentialist, not real life.)
I'm particularly interested in the parts of this new book that are Horrock's explorations of the responsibility creators have to their creations, and whether or not creating a fantasy world you want to live in (maybe) is selfish. That idea touches on something I remember debating in college about Iris Murdoch's ideas on what it takes to be a good novelist; how the same thing that allows you to create characters and give them autonomy rather than making them be puppets for your authorial voice is the same piece of your humanity that allows you to see the "other" in other people, and allow them to exist separately from you without being weighed down by your desires and expectations. That's a theme I'm always interested in exploring.
Halfway into the second section of the book, we're dropped with this bomb: Are we morally responsible for our fantasies? How? To who? To who it's about, even if they never know? To the fantasy itself? To what it allows us to think and make for ourselves - shouldn't we want to be better than our basest desires? Then again, isn't it natural and not shameful?
It's the most interesting question posed by this graphic novel, rambling as it is - touching on mid-life crisis, imposter syndrome, sex-based shame, seven-year-itch issues, nascent wonderings about BDSM, and like 20 other things, but it's not answered. (I'm not sure it can be? But still, it's a bit odd to bring up so much shit and just, kinda leave it hanging all out there.) And that's just, randomly, in the middle of the book, very bluntly, too.
Then the gang skips to a pirate world for like, 3 pages, and then into a medieval manuscript illustration one character name-drops is "like a Jess Franco movie" while she films monks and nuns fucking on her phone, and no one seems to notice. They visit a sketchy fantasy "world" from a postcard mailed to a German soldier. ? That doesn't last long. This whole tour is orchestrated by a mysteriously knowledgeable figure Miki (who seems to have a lot of erotic and female-centric comics in her collection) and she leads Sam and this other figure who I'm not sure I like much called Alice, through various comic worlds. They blast through a ton of them as she explains what she knows about the magic pen and its history. Seems like just a whirlwind tour of genres, but at least it's not like one of those gimmicky things where it's all recognizable famous comics, and the art style changes every panel to match the original. Then we blunder onto something meaningful - the idea that things have an order or prescribed meaning is the biggest fantasy of all, and that "all pens are magic" meaning, creativity is its own magic, and the artist in crisis finds his joy and inspiration again. These are themes we've seen before - they especially seem to come up in comics (Gaiman, again, The Unwritten, Adrian Tomine, etc.)
Chapter 13 goes somewhere very weird, very briefly, and is never explained. There's a moment when saying goodbye to Sam in the real world that Miki with a contented smile on her face tells him to hug her "tighter..." that's... very weird. The bit where Sam gives Alice (who, honestly, has been on and off a self-absorbed shit to him the entire book) the magic pen, as if to say "we need your words more than mine" ? or at least "I don't need this but you do" which is... sigh, I guess that's nice, but it's also kind of tiresome. Maybe if I had liked the Alice character more I would feel better about it. I think Miki is the only character I wanted to see more of or that I cared what happened to her. (It's maybe a little f*d up that it's implied that she might "be written this way" aka, to secretly enjoy being ravished by hundreds of tentacles like in hentai, but then like, just glossed over.) Also, the whole "Rice was my grandfather! Here's a super cute story about him and his wife and my mom as a kid!" was sweet but wholly unnecessary, unless just to explain sort of where the magic pen comes from.
This book was kind of all over the place. It touches on things I love but doesn't give me anything new about any of them. I really do need to reread Hicksville to see what the heck I saw in that book again - if it's still there.
This is more 2.5 stars for me, but I'm being generous here at the end of the year.
mikethepysch's review against another edition
4.0
It's an interesting premise and a relatively thoughtful reflection on wish fulfillment. The story overall is creative enough. The art style is minimally tolerable. But nothing truly specular out of this work.
sizrobe's review against another edition
4.0
An author with writer's block discovers that he can travel into stories written with a magic pen. He goes on some adventures, meet some new friends, and overcomes his writer's block. Not bad.
chelseamartinez's review against another edition
2.0
This is the first Dylan Horrocks book I have read, and I am interested to read more. I read this right after reading Joe Ollmann's "Mid-Life," which are both "family dude cartoonist mid-life crisis" graphic novels. Although this one is not autobiographical it definitely has the air of "I'm in a rut and out of ideas, let that be my idea". I don't often get into fantasy, and this is no exception; the idea of a magic pen whose markings can "take you there if you breathe on them" is a good one that's just not for me. The "team effort" story and the "just drawn that way" character are nods to trying to shake the male gaze. There is an orgy-type scene that is interesting to look at, but overall I'm more interested now in the stories that Horrocks is apparently most known for.
zogg's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
alliix's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
2.5