Amazing AmézianeBesprekingen

Pelas mãos talentosas de Sybille Titeux de la Croix e com as ilustrações brilhantes de Amazing Ameziane, você será levado em uma jornada épica, desde a infância de Davis no Alabama, marcada pela segregação racial e pelos horrores da Ku Klux Klan, até sua libertação da prisão na Califórnia em 1972, após uma mobilização mundial sem precedentes.

Esta graphic novel é a oportunidade perfeita para leitoras e leitores mergulharem na inspiradora história de Angela Davis, uma figura icônica do movimento negro e do feminismo.

Além disso, a filósofa e escritora Djamila Ribeiro assina o texto de orelha, enriquecendo ainda mais essa obra única.

Prepare-se para uma leitura envolvente e emocionante que irá cativar sua mente e seu coração.

Miss Davis é uma jornada que não pode ser perdida, uma celebração da coragem e da determinação de uma mulher que moldou a história dos direitos civis. Garanta seu exemplar agora e faça parte dessa viagem extraordinária.

A ballsy biography of Quentin Tarantino that presumes to have the filmmaker narrate the book in the first person. So we have Tarantino walking us through his life and filmography, praising his own genius and casually dismissing any criticism of his techniques or attitude. And just as Tarantino likes to play around with film structure and tropes, the Amazing Ameziane plays around with his page layouts mixing up original sequential panels and photo-referenced portraits, word balloons and captions, character studies and behind-the-scenes antics.

It's crammed with insights, trivia, and cameos sure to please long-time fans like me.

It's a pretty long and dense graphic novel, but I was always eager to pick it up every chance I had.

Quentin by Tarantino (2024) by Quentin Tarantino. This graphic, I suppose “autobiography” is the word to use, is QT talking about the genius of QT. QT is a divider although he wouldn’t want to be thought that way if it were possible. You either hate or love, or at least like, his work. The movies have become so much a part of main stream cinema that you don’t even have to watch them anymore, They are that well known.
This book takes us through the thought, virtues and vices of the man’s view into his writing and directing, and acting world. I would say he brags here, a lot, but I would be wrong. It isn’t bragging if it is true. He did seemingly come of nowhere and took the movie world in an easy romp. His films have a distinct style about them that is an amalgam of many styles. He doesn’t necessarily take this from that genre, he aims at a certain type of movie and melts elements of many disparate films into something that seems brand new yet strangely familiar.
His films are a fever dream of American history, morality, avarice and violence. Lots of violence. You might say it is too much, but watch the news feed from any platform and you will see much worse EVERY day. It is just that he builds characters you can get involved with, know and even like, rather than the anonymous shooters and victims who populate our schools, supermarkets, shopping centers and public rallies. So when the figures on the screen in his film act in a discordant fashion, you can get outraged. In the news feeds there are only impersonal blobs imitating humans doing immoral things.
It is always harder to take when someone you think you know dies than when a hundred people far away die. You care, but ultimately it doesn’t affect you personally.
But back to the book. It is mostly in a straight line format, youth to latest movie, but some times it deviates. Personal things are kept that way throughout. QT’s thoughts and opinions flourish from front to back herein. He isn’t afraid to boast about his ability to bring stars that other directors ignore back into the spotlight. In short, I liked so much about this book. It makes me want to see the several films I haven’t seen and revisit the rest.
By the way, I like True Romance in the manner it was released. But as QT keeps telling us, his version would have been superior. Perhaps QT, you can put your money, and editing skills, where your mouth is and give us a truer True Romance, one for the ages.
The art work and colors were great acting as a dark mirror for the expression of the “quirky” expressions and visions of the director. They helped bring substance to the realm QT lives in and thrives in and, lets just say, riles.
I liked the director’s wide open yet limited look into his world. Now I have to get some discs lined up and pop me some corn. It’s going to be a long rough ride.

Second volume suffers from same issues as the first one. Again we have wise-crackers fighting against the narco cartel but again story is presented in over bombastic way that Michael Bay would say "this might need some editing".

Art is very good again but this was never the issue with the series. I truly hope story moves away from every possible action movie clichés in follow up volumes.

This book proves that writing high octane action comics is not a simple thing. Take for example "The Losers" or maybe "Black Powder Red Earth" comics. They are more or less similar in subject but unlike these comics, "Cash Cowboys" look like something Michael Bay might create.

There is action, hard ass characters and mercenaries, witty commentaries and lots of machismo - everything "Strike Back" fans might want (guilty as charged :-)) but presented in such a convoluted way that it gets tiresome after a while.

Art is very good, I just wish story was more developed because I truly like comics like this and this one was a little bit of the letdown.

graphic nonfiction, orig. published in France (some characters have been combined into composites) - history; political activist and icon Angela Davis

eye-catching illustrations, and would make a nice addition to any library, but I had a much easier time following (and learning from) Davis' print autobiography. If I weren't already vaguely familiar with her life, I might have had an even harder time understanding the sequences on these pages, so I'm not sure it does her story justice, but her strong, resilient spirit does come through here.

A fictionalized biography of Angela Davis is told from the perspective of two made-up characters.

The first chapter of the book is told by a little girl named Linda Peters who knew Angela Davis growing up. It's not entirely clear from the story, but Davis is five years older than the character. I found it in poor taste that the author chose to use Linda to write over the life of Cynthia Wesley, one of the four victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. The other three victims appear as themselves in the story, but Wesley only gets mentioned on a memorial page after we watch Linda get blown up in her place.

Frankly, this tainted my attitude toward the rest of the book.

The remaining chapters are from the perspective of June Seymour, a white reporter from Sacramento. For some reason, her editor is depicted with the likeness of actor Al Molinaro -- Big Al from TV's Happy Days -- straight off the top hits on a Google image search. Check it out. (Oh, and California governor Ronald Reagan is depicted with the likeness of Bedtime for Bonzo actor Ronald Reagan.) Meanwhile, Seymour's personality and character is pretty non-existent -- she simply idolizes Davis -- and does not deserve all the panels devoted to her through the rest of the book that simply distract from Davis. Mostly she seems to serve as a device to allow the story of a Black woman to be told through a white perspective. Of course, the whole story may be filtered through a white perspective as I'm not sure if either of the French creators is BIPOC from a cursory search on the internet.

The facts that can be gleaned about Davis are interesting, but lots of details are skimmed over, making some of the sequences more than a bit confusing. Real people who surrounded Davis are barely introduced, sacrificed to more time with the fictional characters.

Dubious and unsatisfying.

graphic nonfiction (176 pp) history: Attica Prison uprising, 1971, New York State. TW/CW: torture, traumatic violence and brutality, mass murder of prisoners and guards, systemic racism in the justice and political system, racial slurs, nudity.

One of those important chapters that doesn't get taught in the history books, skillfully told in graphic format in the words of a man tortured and beaten for being seen as a leader in a prisoner uprising that he didn't start or participate in (though he did take steps to save a friendly guard from being killed, and he did try to negotiate on behalf of the prisoners and keep order during the events); in the end the prisoners are blamed for the deaths of the hostages (actually shot by the police forces) and the civil lawsuit against NY governor Nelson Rockefeller (who had ordered the violent retaking of the prison directly resulting in a massacre) went to settlement. Bibliography included, as well as a list of those murdered.

see also: Steve Sheinkin's The Port Chicago 50½

I had no idea about what went down at Attica. It's hard to read about it knowing that prison systems haven't changed that much since then.

I wanted to like this, but I got worried as soon as I saw the secondary author's Poetic and Randomly Capitalized dedication. (Smith himself died in 2004, so I'm curious about the nature of his collaboration with a guy who is the step-son of his lawyer. This seems Green Book-y.)

And indeed, the writing was a bit of a mess with dozens of character names thrown out with little or no introduction and random changes between an old-fashioned comic-book vibe and Very Serious business. I appreciate the message being presented, but it sort of gets lost in the static.

As a work of nonfiction it does not sate, serving more to simply whet my appetite on the subject.

The art was okay, but randomly switched between single-page layouts and double-page spreads without much signal, leading me to read panels out of order several times.

This book managed to be decent in spite of itself, and that is mostly due to the charisma of Ali and the power of his words. When Ali speaks, the book soars, when the writer fills caption after caption with awkward second-person narration it slumps.

I actually had trouble reading this book for technical reasons. The print is tiny and the color is a dark sepia murk obscuring the artist's quite impressive linework.

biography, sports, boxing, religion, racism. prejudice, segregation, civil rights. Malcolm X, Islam, Nation of Islam, Parkinson's Disease, role model, fame, history, diverse, blacks, African American, graphic novel, young adult