Was

Was by Geoff Ryman                     371 pages

This is a story about Oz.  We are introduced to Dorothy Gael, a little girl with a dog named Toto, going to live with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry in Kansas.  We also find out about Frances Gumm, who became Judy Garland, who starred in The Wizard Of Oz movie.  We find out about the making of the movie and we meet several other people along the way, who in various ways become connected to either Dorothy or the movie.  This book spans the decades between the 1870s and the 1980s and tells several stories that come together in the end.  There were parts of the book that I liked a lot because some of the story was really interesting but I’m not sure that overall I really liked this book.  Because I like the Oz stories so much, maybe, and because this book is unsettling it’s hard to reconcile this book with the Oz series.  I’m not sure that I would recommend this book to people generally and I’m honestly not sure who would like it. (Except Ed)

7 Miles A Second

7 Miles a Second- text: David Wojnarowicz, art: James Romberger, color: Marguerite VanCook, 67 pages.
2012, originally published in 1996

      I love Fantagraphics Books.  They consistently publish high quality graphic novels and comics, along with other fine art/illustration books.  I do not think I have come across anything they have put out that fall short of the mark.  I wanted to talk about this graphic novel because to read it is to challenge yourself to appreciate something that can be at times rewarding to look at but whose subject matter can be hard to take in.
  
       David Wojnarowicz was an artist and AIDS activist who passed away in 1992 from complications from AIDS.  7 Miles A Second is a gritty depiction of his life as a hustler in New York, his reflections on living with a terminal disease, and his anger at the health care system and a largely indifferent government.  The illustration of the book is wonderfully horrific and dream-like, offering the viewer a world of highly saturated color, with beautiful watercolor in place of today's all too common computer generated illustration.  The book reads like a poetic hallucination masquerading as a comic book, which asks the reader to respond differently. 7 Miles A Second invites us to respond emotionally to a period of time that is fading from our cultural memory.  It is a work of art, a manifesto, something wholly personal, and still relevant today. Wojnarowicz refused to be silent about his homosexuality, his history, and his status as someone living with AIDS, and used his gifts as an artist to leave something behind.