Amulet

Kazu Kibuishi is one of my favorite comic artists, so when I heard he was doing a color graphic novel, I was naturally excited. I awaited it with anticipation.

Well, I got my copy a while ago, and...what can I say? I was disappointed. I expected more of Kazu than the standard "fantasy adventure with kids" plot. It reads almost like a computer game, mostly consisting of a succession of perils that have to be overcome, with a little Harry Potter magical destiny drama thrown in. Besides the not-very-intriguing plot, I also found the characters flat. The main heroine, for example: we barely know her. All we find out from the story is that 1) she suffered a great personal loss a few years ago, and 2) she's more daring than her little brother (who doesn't have much defining him except that he is his sister's less-daring counterpart.)

Now normally I'd put this down to expecting too much of a short (well, relatively short) little comic book. But this is Kazu Kibuishi. His prior work has led me to expect more, not just another Harry Potter knock-off.

There is no doubt that there is a great deal of artistry and polished craft at work here. Part of the reason he I was anticipating this book so much was reading what Kazu was saying about the thoroughness with which he was constructing it. He had a number of very interesting things to say about comics in general, which you can read on his blog. I wouldn't have imagined that he would've ended up putting all of this skill at the service of such a cookie-cutter plot. More so since Kazu is not a cookie-cutter plot person--his stories are always thought-provoking, even deep, and certainly never genre-typical. Except this one.

This book is, of course, just the first volume of a two-volume book. Hopefully the second volume will pack a bigger punch. First chapters are often the dullest in a book, since they have to introduce everything. This one could've used to have spent more time introducing everything, but hopefully Kibuishi has something big planned for the second chapter, one that will put the first in a new light, thus making this review meaningless and shortsighted. I'm not such a cynic that I don't actually want that to happen.