Helpful Score: 1
A wonderful graphic-novel version of the Neil Gaiman short story. A young English man in Los Angeles meets an old homeless man who tells him a story about heaven and angels, love and the first murder in the history of the universe. Magical!
**I received a copy of this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**
This was a Meh all round. It's the first time I've ever been less then impressed with a product carrying Neil Gaiman's name.
When it comes to graphic novels, I don't mind a bad story too much if the artwork is outstanding, or vice versa. This title fell short on both. I didn't feel one way or the other about any of the characters. Not one of them had any personality trait to make them individuals. This was one of the big fails in the story for me. If everyone is a cardboard cut out, why should I care what happened to them? Each Angel is given one Function. Their Function is the only thing that really differentiates one Angel from another. A few do finally show a little individualism at the end, but it was too little too late. I will say I was pleasantly surprised when the murderer was named. It did manage to completely catch me off guard.
The artwork was less was less then impressive. I didn't find the characters designs or settings to be very pleasing to look at. The colors used for the Los Angeles and Hall scenes were beautiful. Most the other Heaven backgrounds were either flat pastel, or pastel fading to white.
At the end of the copy I read, there is an amazing Behind the Scenes section I would highly recommend reading. This was a lot more engaging then the book itself and I genuinely enjoyed it
This was a Meh all round. It's the first time I've ever been less then impressed with a product carrying Neil Gaiman's name.
When it comes to graphic novels, I don't mind a bad story too much if the artwork is outstanding, or vice versa. This title fell short on both. I didn't feel one way or the other about any of the characters. Not one of them had any personality trait to make them individuals. This was one of the big fails in the story for me. If everyone is a cardboard cut out, why should I care what happened to them? Each Angel is given one Function. Their Function is the only thing that really differentiates one Angel from another. A few do finally show a little individualism at the end, but it was too little too late. I will say I was pleasantly surprised when the murderer was named. It did manage to completely catch me off guard.
The artwork was less was less then impressive. I didn't find the characters designs or settings to be very pleasing to look at. The colors used for the Los Angeles and Hall scenes were beautiful. Most the other Heaven backgrounds were either flat pastel, or pastel fading to white.
At the end of the copy I read, there is an amazing Behind the Scenes section I would highly recommend reading. This was a lot more engaging then the book itself and I genuinely enjoyed it
I got a copy of this book to review in e-book format from NetGalley. Thanks to Netgalley and Dark Horse for the chance to read this book. I am a huge Gaiman fan and was excited to read something new by him. While this definitely wasnt the strongest book I have read by him, it was decent and made you think.
This was an interesting and somewhat ambiguous tale about a man who loses time and ends up with the story of an angel of vengeance. Little does he know that he may have been the one the angel was seeking vengeance on and his blank times may not be as blank as he thinks.
This is one of those stories where you arent quite sure what is going on. For the first part of the story you are following around a young man who is visiting an old friend. The young man has blank spots where he cant remember how he got places. He finds himself on a bench with an older man who wants to tell him a story. What follows is the story of the angel of vengeance created to find out who committed a murder in Heaven.
The whole thing is cleverly done and has that whole story in a story thing going on. There is a wonderful twist at the end, that is fairly predictable but still darkly ironic. I enjoyed the dark irony to the story.
The actual story portion of this was very brief maybe 70 pages, the rest was all the extras. There is a very detailed appendix where the authors talk about transitioning this from a radioplay to a graphic novel. There is also a section of sketches.
I thought the illustration was just so so. Some frames are beautifully illustrated, while others lacked detail. Many of the illustrations were lacking in facial detail. I wish that the flights of angels had actually been illustrated rather than shown as rectangular blocks in the distance. The illustration is very similar in style to the Sandman books, but I found it to be not quite as detailed and refined.
Overall this was a decent read. I enjoyed the irony behind the story and love the whole idea of stories in stories. It is a dark story with language and sex, so for adults only. The illustration was only so-so however, and the story portion was very short. Definitely not the best Gaiman graphic novel I have read, but interesting.
This was an interesting and somewhat ambiguous tale about a man who loses time and ends up with the story of an angel of vengeance. Little does he know that he may have been the one the angel was seeking vengeance on and his blank times may not be as blank as he thinks.
This is one of those stories where you arent quite sure what is going on. For the first part of the story you are following around a young man who is visiting an old friend. The young man has blank spots where he cant remember how he got places. He finds himself on a bench with an older man who wants to tell him a story. What follows is the story of the angel of vengeance created to find out who committed a murder in Heaven.
The whole thing is cleverly done and has that whole story in a story thing going on. There is a wonderful twist at the end, that is fairly predictable but still darkly ironic. I enjoyed the dark irony to the story.
The actual story portion of this was very brief maybe 70 pages, the rest was all the extras. There is a very detailed appendix where the authors talk about transitioning this from a radioplay to a graphic novel. There is also a section of sketches.
I thought the illustration was just so so. Some frames are beautifully illustrated, while others lacked detail. Many of the illustrations were lacking in facial detail. I wish that the flights of angels had actually been illustrated rather than shown as rectangular blocks in the distance. The illustration is very similar in style to the Sandman books, but I found it to be not quite as detailed and refined.
Overall this was a decent read. I enjoyed the irony behind the story and love the whole idea of stories in stories. It is a dark story with language and sex, so for adults only. The illustration was only so-so however, and the story portion was very short. Definitely not the best Gaiman graphic novel I have read, but interesting.
