10 September 2016

Angel Catbird, Volume 1 by Margaret Atwood, Tamra Bonvillain, and Johnnie Christmas

Summary from Goodreads:
Lauded novelist Margaret Atwood and acclaimed artist Johnnie Christmas collaborate on one of the most highly anticipated comic book and literary events of the year!

On a dark night, young genetic engineer Strig Feleedus is accidentally mutated by his own experiment and merges with the DNA of a cat and an owl. What follows is a humorous, action-driven, pulp-inspired superhero adventure-- with a lot of cat puns.

Published in over thirty-five countries, Margaret Atwood is one of the most important living writers of our day and is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her work has won the Man Booker Prize, the Giller Prize, Premio Mondello, and more. Angel Catbird is her first graphic novel series.

Atwood's The Blind Assassin was named one of Time magazine's 100 best English-language novels published since 1923 and her recent MaddAddam Trilogy is currently being adapted into an HBO television show by Darren Aronofsky.

Now before you get all "Angel Catbird is super-weird and pulpy, whateven is this?" I'm going to recommend that you check out In Other Worlds where Margaret Atwood talks about her early childhood literary influences.  Angel Catbird is definitely from an earlier genre of comic.

1) The introduction is absolutely perfect.

2) This is weird, and pulpy, and feels very mid-century B-horror movie (in the "mad scientist" vein) with strange body horror.  I thought it worked really well. There are half-cat people and cat people and rat-people and sentient rats and a cat-bat-vampire (?) and, of course, the owl-cat-man Angel Catbird.

3) It felt too short - was there a way to maybe split it into two volumes instead of three?

4) The cat vs. bird facts/statistics were nice but felt out of place.

Dear FTC: I bought my copy of this book.

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