Tamra Bonvillain

Warning: You have to be in a very specific mood for this. If you are here for a sophisticated, complex, artistic graphic novels, you will roll your eyes and go "OMG, this is so dumb."

This comic is very campy, very corny, and very old school. It is at the same breakneck, hasty pace of yesteryear in which an origin story is a couple pages or a couple panels rather than its own series. The characters are very flat, often outright announce how they feel (the dialogue is equally direct and show more no-nonsense), and have exaggerated mannerisms. The villain is exceptionally cartoonish and over-the-top. And there are so many cat puns. Including 'Count Catula.'

If you go in seeing this as a punny homage, its enjoyable. I found myself smiling a lot through this volume, even if I never felt much in the way of fear, suspense, etc. The art is fantastic and there is a lot of care put into the character designs.

To put it simply, its more silly than smart. And that's okay.

I appreciated the additional information about cat ownership scattered in the margins throughout. Its accurate, its helpful, its interesting, it lends more context to the story, and hopefully, it helps readers be better cat owners.

Also, just FYI - multiple domestic cats die realistically "on screen." Its not terribly graphic but it made the first half an exceptionally hard read - this is the one thing that bothers me most in books, and I want you to be duly warned. I wish I knew going in. show less

This book was not what I expected at all. I was expecting some super-literary graphic novel, but what I got was a cheesy throwback to pulp comics, with lots of winking and costumes and goofy names. Don't get me wrong, I did like it, but it took more than a couple of moments to adjust my expectations so that I could appreciate this book for what it is.

What it is is bonkers. But in a mostly good way. Campy and punny, filled with half-cats (who can transform to human to cat and back), one Count show more (half-bat), and of course, Angel Catbird himself (half cat-owl). In human form, they share attributes with their animal selves -- contemplating eating baby birds, craving fish, and thinking about going into heat.

Not sure how far I'll follow this comic, but it certainly was interesting! show less

Okay, here's the thing.
If you pick up this comic expecting it to have the emotional gravitas and depth of most of Margaret Atwood's work, you're going to be disappointed. I completely understand all the low reviews.
But that's not the point of this story. This story is *fun*. It's silly and it doesn't make much sense. The main character falls in love with a woman he's literally spoken like 6 words to. It's absolutely ridiculous, and I love it.

I wanted this to be amazing. I thought the title/main character name was just plain stupid, but with Margaret Atwood at the helm of the story it would be recover. It didn't. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a crazy fun read...just probably not in the way it was intended. Yes, it was so utterly absurd that I was thoroughly amused through the entire thing despite the fact that the story is flimsy at best and the characters are beyond ridiculous.

Underneath my amusement of just how awful the show more whole thing is, however, is the tiniest whiff of discomfort. Haven't comic audiences been begging the industry to cool it with the blatant over-sexualization of characters, especially female characters? Yet here we have (from the celebrated author of The Handmaid's Tale, no less) characters whose only value to each other is how hot they look with tails. There is no heroism going on, just defense from a stereotypical bad guy, and zero attempt to even get ahead of the impending tragedy. Ultimately, it's as if Atwood decided to see just how many tired of comic book cliches she could cram into one story because that's all there is here--cliche. There is not a shred of plot, character, or even setting that is not derivative. And I have never seen such super-nerdy scientists be so painfully oblivious of how technology works.

In the end, I enjoyed the comic in a very Mystery Science Theater 3000 kind of way, which is why I decided to be generous with a second star. I'm glad Atwood was able to fulfill a little dream of hers, but I'm also very glad I got this at the library and didn't fork over my hard-earned cash for it. show less