A review by biscuitcrux
Elmer by Gerry Alanguilan

5.0

My boyfriend reads a lot of superhero comics, which he insists are good but which sound crappy. He also has a thing for chickens, which is obvious in the amount of chicken knicknacks he has. One day, he showed me this graphic novel he bought at the comic book store. "Look at this," he said. "A comic about what would happen if chickens gained human intelligence and speech." "Cool." I said, secretly thinking it sounded lame. Later on, he brought this silly book to my house and told me I should read it because it was good and he thought I would like it. Whatever. At least it looked short.

So I read it. And I will say, I was totally wrong about it. This book was amazing. This is played totally straight, with all the seriousness of a book about the holocaust. And it works. Boy howdy, does it work.

The story focuses on a second-generation setient chicken who is given his father's diary, which he started keeping as soon as he learned to speak and write. The book describes the terrible ordeal his father, a fighting cock on a farm in the Phillipines, went through when every chicken suddenly became intelligent, being hidden from frightened and murderous humans by a sympathetic farmer, and the whole chicken civil rights movement.

Sounds silly, I know. But it was amazing. I would highly recommend it to people like me who love serious graphic novels. And I can't wait to read more by this author!