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vampirehelpdesk's review
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.5
This is what I wanted Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to be like, but it’s better.
dkai's review
4.0
Love this approach to the "journey" story, where it shows everything plain for you and lets you interpret what's going on. Largely avoids traps of the genre, such as making it sound like huge personal growth was happening quickly or glamorizing the pain. This is likely because it was drawn on the journey itself, so it's all fresh in mind without too much post-processing bias.
blackbird27's review
5.0
A few months back I reviewed Norwegian cartoonist Jason's On the Camino, a faintly tedious portrait of his hike over a traditional pilgrimage route across northern Spain as something to do to mark his fiftieth birthday. He keeps everything, from the theological resonance of the journey to his own stumbling attempts at human connection, at arm's length, with his dry, self-regarding wit and careful clear-line depictions of interesting landmarks. By contrast, in this book, a documentation of her 2016 bike trip from Tucson, AZ to Athens, GA, Eleanor Davis throws herself passionately into everything she encounters, from despair and anger at the physical limitations of her body, to astonished joy at the kindness of strangers, to a kind of hopeless paralysis at the sleepless injustice of the border patrol. The result is a much more complete, vivid, and truthful work of art. Jason may have walked the Camino, but he never gets out of his own head: Davis is always engaged with the world around her, to her great joy and great sorrow.
Her fluid, organic artwork, drawn directly onto paper using pen or pencil as a sort of journal during the trip itself, is a testament to the ever-changing, endlessly-yawning landscape of the American Southwest and South, where cities sprawl like cancers because there are no natural borders. There are no panel borders, but her brilliant sense of flow and composition means that following the thread of the page, where the eye should fall next, is never in doubt: she's a master cartoonist working at the top of her game, striking off casual images that lesser artists could slave for weeks at and never master.
Eleanor Davis is in my estimation one of the top five cartoonists working in the world today, and on most days I'd be comfortable putting her squarely at #1. This book is a beautiful, human, even necessary document. I didn't read enough new comics in 2017 to have a best-of list, but I've kept my eyes open, and it's hard to conceive of any that would come near toppling it as my favorite.
Her fluid, organic artwork, drawn directly onto paper using pen or pencil as a sort of journal during the trip itself, is a testament to the ever-changing, endlessly-yawning landscape of the American Southwest and South, where cities sprawl like cancers because there are no natural borders. There are no panel borders, but her brilliant sense of flow and composition means that following the thread of the page, where the eye should fall next, is never in doubt: she's a master cartoonist working at the top of her game, striking off casual images that lesser artists could slave for weeks at and never master.
Eleanor Davis is in my estimation one of the top five cartoonists working in the world today, and on most days I'd be comfortable putting her squarely at #1. This book is a beautiful, human, even necessary document. I didn't read enough new comics in 2017 to have a best-of list, but I've kept my eyes open, and it's hard to conceive of any that would come near toppling it as my favorite.
aetherthedino's review
really cool art!! if you like the hourlies day for comic artists youll love this book, was really cool!!
carly_mckenna's review
When Eleanor Davis set out on an ambitious cross-country bicycle trip from Arizona to Georgia, she documented her journey with rough sketches and thoughts. This graphic novel is a collection of the vignettes that Davis created in real time throughout the course of that journey.
I didn't love Davis' sparse sketches on an aesthetic level, but they give this graphic novel a sense of immediacy and reveal a lot about how she felt from day to day.
Although short and simple, this graphic novel explores a range of issues, from the political to the intensely personal. It is a subtle yet surprisingly powerful exploration of the human spirit, in both its strength and fragility.
I didn't love Davis' sparse sketches on an aesthetic level, but they give this graphic novel a sense of immediacy and reveal a lot about how she felt from day to day.
Although short and simple, this graphic novel explores a range of issues, from the political to the intensely personal. It is a subtle yet surprisingly powerful exploration of the human spirit, in both its strength and fragility.
spiringempress's review
3.0
The author/illustrator, Eleanor Davis, documents her cross-country bike tour from Arizona to her hometown in Georgia. Her illustrations capture a sense of the changing landscape and various experiences as she fights against the limitation of her knees to accomplish her goal.