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Dramacon, Vol. 1
Author: Svetlana Chmakova
Publisher: TOKYOPOP
ISBN 10: 1-59816-129-8
ISBN 13: 978-1-59816-129-8

Christie Leroux is a high school student and anime fan attending her first anime convention, with her boyfriend Derek, to sell their amateur comic book – she writes it, he draws it. This 172-page young teen comic tells what happens to Christie during the three days at her first convention; but it is less about the chaos and traditions of big fan conventions – although that is certainly captured here authentically and hilariously – as it is about the emotional turbulence experienced by a sensitive teenager on her first solo outing from home.

How will she and Derek react in the “artists’ alley” to the fan public’s response, and to the criticism of professional cartoonists, to their amateur comic book? Is Derek just being friendly and a good salesman to attractive girls who look at their comic, or is he flirting with them? What should she and Derek do when their school roommates/chaperones stay out all night, leaving the two alone? Christie realizes that both she and Derek are immature, but how much self-centeredness should she tolerate from him? When Christie meets Matt, a sophisticated college student from across the country, she is torn between an instant attraction (is this just adolescent hormones or True Love?) and loyalty to Derek – but does he deserve it? “My first anime convention… did not go smoothly. But all things considered… I can’t wait to go back.”

Svetlana Chmakova is the young Russian-born commercial artist and anime fan who is one of the leading creators of what fans call “American manga” or “OEL (original English language) manga” – original American comic books written/drawn/published in the traditional Japanese manga style. DRAMACON reads front to back and left to right like standard American books; otherwise it is almost indistinguishable from a Japanese comic book. The art is black-&-white, presented in a thick paperback format. The style varies sharply from realistic when the characters are acting seriously to grotesquely “squashed” when they are acting silly. The art is heavily shaded and toned to compensate for the lack of color, and romantic scenes are full of the “shojo sprinkles” such as hearts & stars that Japanese romance cartoonists put into their art. The dialogue is full of fan slang such as “cosplay” and “J-Pop” .

DRAMACON Vol. 1 was published in 2005, and is currently in its fourth printing. Each volume takes place at the fictitious annual anime con, and shows Christie a year older with both her personal and creative relationships more advanced. It is a success both as a romance comic book, and as a primer for what to expect at your first anime convention. Vol. 3 will be published this December 10th.

The Game
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Publisher: Firebird/Penguin Group
ISBN: 10: 0-14-240718-6
ISBN: 13: 978-0-14-240718-9

Hayley is a young girl living in London with her grandparents since her parents disappeared when she was a baby. Her overly strict grandmother keeps her virtually a prisoner at home, especially denying her knowledge of the mysteriously beautiful “mythosphere” which her grandfather studies on his computers. Finally she is banished in disgrace (but without being told why) to the home of relatives in Ireland.

Glumly expecting an even harsher household, Hayley is pleasantly bewildered to find that “the Castle” is a lively place overflowing with friendly aunts and young cousins her own age who seem to have been expecting her for ages.

The children eagerly introduce her into their secret game, a scavenger hunt for objects like a scale from the dragon that circles the zodiac, Sleeping Beauty’s spindle, a drinking horn used by Beowulf, and a hair from Prester John’s beard. Since Hayley has grown up uneducated, she does not realize how rare these are; but she is delighted when the search takes them into the forbidden mythosphere:

“They could see the strand they were on now, a silvery, slithery path, coiling away up ahead. The worst part, to Hayley’s mind, was the way it didn’t seem to be fastened to anything at the sides. Her feet, in their one pink boot and one black boot, kept slipping. She was quite afraid that she was going to pitch off the edge. It was like trying to climb a strip of tinsel. She hung on hard to Troy’s warmer, larger hand and wished it were not so cold. The deep chilliness made the scrapes on the front of her ache.

To take her mind off it, she stared around. The rest of the mythosphere was coming into view overhead and far away, in dim, feathery streaks. Some parts of it were starry swirls, like the Milky Way, only white, green, and pale pink, and other more distant parts flickered and waved like curtains of light blowing in the wind. Hayley found her chest filling with great admiring breaths at its beauty, and she stared and stared as more and more streaks and strands came into view.”

It is obvious almost from the start that Hayley is a special child. Just how special is revealed slowly as the story progresses and Hayley learns who she and her parents really are. Jones has used the plot device of walking between worlds in previous novels, but The Game is separate from her other books.

A knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology may help the reader recognize some of the characters whom Hayley does not know, but Jones introduces them all in a curtain-call endnote. This short novel or novella is in the Firebird series for young readers, although it, like Jones’ other novels, will charm readers of all ages.

Mouse Guard, Fall 1152

Author: David Petersen

Publisher: Archaia Studios Press

ISBN 10: 1-932386-57-2

ISBN 13: 978-1-932386-57-8

This little gem of an art-book was serialized last year in the form of six small bimonthly “comic books” of 24 8” x 8” pages each. Each page is painted in a detailed realistic art style reminiscent of Arthur Rackham or Brian Froud. The collected complete work, plus bonus artwork, is a squarish hardcover of 192 pages; more of a fine-art graphic novel than an illustrated picture book.

The story is an adventure fantasy set in a medieval world of anthropomorphized mice, although they are drawn realistically, without clothes. (It is hard to tell the main characters apart except for the colors of their fur: red, gray, and brown.) Lieam, Kenzie, and Saxon, three young Guardsmice whose duties include the protecting of mice from the predators of northern European forests, are assigned to find out what happened to a peddler-mouse traveling between the towns of Rootwallow and Barkstone. They learn that he was eaten by a giant (to mice) snake, which they track down and kill in the first of the six chapters. But hidden in the peddler’s wares is a map showing the secret defenses of the Mouse Guard’s headquarters, indicating that the peddler was a traitor. The three Guardsmice set out to learn to whom the peddler was going to deliver the map. They discover a full-sized plot to take over the forest mouse nation, which leads to a civil war and the dramatic siege of the Mouse Guard’s castle in Lockhaven.

Mouse Guard has been receiving rave reviews throughout last year and this from critics ranging from comics-shop owners to librarians and Publishers Weekly. There have many comparisons of the story with the animated fantasy movie The Secret of NIMH, and Mouse Guard would make an excellent movie of the same type. The adventure, although rather shallow and stereotypical, is suitable for young fans of Tolkienish heroic fantasy, with lots of swordplay against huge predatory beasts and mouse traitors. The quality of Petersen’s artwork and the adult art-book presentation elevate Mouse Guard from a children’s book to one suitable for all ages. The appurtances of a media hit are already being planned; a first sequel, Mouse Guard, Winter 1152, will begin serialization this July, and PVC action figures of Lieam, Kenzie and Saxon will follow a month later. Read the first story now in what is sure to become a successful series.

Dreamscape Author: Paul Kidd
Publisher: Kitsune Press/Lulu.com
ISBN 10: 1-84753-242-X
ISBN 13: 978-1-84753-242-8

“Perfection.
The bookstore grew first one detailed neighbour, and then two: a record store owned by a beautiful creature like a sea snail, and a thing like a shaggy, six-legged Afghan hound that slept lazily beside the bookshop door. The girl called the dog-creature ‘the Floop’, and it thumped its tail against the pavement whenever she came by.

The foxes who ran the bookshop were very much in love.

A whole world – each part of it utterly precious. Each part of it unfolding for her as she walked into the world and cared. There was a beautiful infinity of places waiting to be explored…”


In this s-f novel, a young girl has the power to create a detailed fantasy dreamworld of butterfly-filled flowery meadows, old-fashioned seaside resort towns of friendly funny-animal shopkeepers, of soaring ancient griffin statues. She has the ability to invite other people to share her paradise, to add to it with their own dreams. But strangers begin arriving who are not invited, who do not believe in sharing; they must dominate and hurt others. They are followed by men in grey suits who claim that the dreamworld is their stolen virtual amusement park, manufactured by their patented quantum neural gates, and they have the right to take it back from her.

The young girl, Steel, and her friends including Squeee the unicorn, Liz the lizard-woman warrior, and Silk, the debonair falcon-man, are faced with a dilemma: how do you fight to protect a gentle dreamworld without turning it into a nightmare?

Dreamscape is filled with striking fantasy imagery that cries out to be made into an animated movie. The plot is both simplistic – the young girl and her fantasy companions explore, and later must defend their world -- and confusingly solipsistic.

Is the dreamer a goddess or a ghost creating her own world? A woman locked inside her own imagination? A role-player misusing (or trapped in) Dreamscape, Inc.’s new gaming program? Does Dreamscape have the right to “kill” her to gain control of what they claim is their “intellectual property”; and if they do, will she awaken or die in the “real” world? The climactic battle seems overdone and overly ugly; too close to the Biblical description of Armageddon.

Allegory is fine, but Dreamscape the company has been too strongly established with futuristic computer imagery by this point to switch to a vast horde of demonic archaic warriors for the final assault. Still, the novel right up to the climax depicts a lovely fantasy landscape that any of us could wish to escape to, and it is worth reading for that.