Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender: North and South by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru

Comic hardcover, 236 pages
Published 2017 (contents: 2016-17)
Borrowed from my wife
Read November 2017

Avatar: The Last Airbender: North and South

Script: Gene Luen Yang

Art: Gurihiru
Lettering: Michael Heisler

This is the last of the Avatar: The Last Airbender comics by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru; up until this point, I've found the Zuko-focused ones more successful than the other ones, leaving one wondering if Yang and Gurihiru can really do "typical" Avatar adventures, or if they really only soar when given they have the angst and epicness of Zuko to work with. This would be shame if so, because Avatar's success as a tv show included Zuko, but went so much beyond him.

Well, North and South has Yang and Gurihiru exiting the series on a strong note, with a highly entertaining adventure about Sokka and Katara returning to the South Pole to find that you never can go home again because it changes and so do you. Like a lot of Yang's Avatar comics (and also Legend of Korra), this deals with issues of modernization and industrialization and globalization, exploring the tensions that arise in a society under such circumstances, in a surprisingly nuanced way. Lots of good jokes, nice moments for all the characters but especially my favorite, Sokka, and tying up of some loose ends from the television show. I really enjoyed this, and I hope the new creative team's first volume is able to pick up the baton. (I also hope that first Korra comic comes out in a collected edition soon!)

Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender: Smoke and Shadow by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru

Comic hardcover, 236 pages
Published 2016 (contents: 2015-16)
Borrowed from my wife
Read December 2016

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Smoke and Shadow

Script: Gene Luen Yang

Art: Gurihiru
Lettering: Michael Heisler

The Avatar television series always had the most emotional heft when dealing with Prince Zuko and his family, and thus far, the same seem to be true of the comic books, as the two Zuko-focused ones, The Search and Smoke and Shadow, have felt more substantive than the two Aang-focused ones, The Promise and The Rift. Smoke and Shadow shows what Zuko was doing during The Rift, as Zuko contends with factions in the Fire Nation dissatisfied with his leadership, factions led by Zuko's girlfriend's Mai's father. Yang and Gurihiru invent a new faction of the Fire Nation, the mysterious Kemurikage, who may or may not be spirits. There's also some surprisingly touching stuff about Zuko's long-lost mom trying to reintegrate into the life she lost and the nation she left behind even as her own daughter pulls away from her.

It's fun at the same time that it's serious: Mai has a new boyfriend, and that causes a lot of friction and a lot of jokes; it's great to see Mai uncharacteristically call him "babe," and even better to see Aang irritated by it. (I do hope that what happens with the new boyfriend at the end is just misdirection, because it seems like a misstep if not.) Plus, Uncle Iroh gets all the best jokes, including one about how Zuko has an angsty wave. There's also a good part-two cliffhanger. Overall, this is just a really solid, well-done Avatar adventure, recapturing what made the television series so enjoyable, the best of the comics so far other than The Search. I'm definitely looking forward to North and South.

Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Rift by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru

My reviews of Series Four of the Fourth Doctor Adventures come to an end over at Unreality SF with Jonathan Morris's The Cloisters of Terror, and I go off on a bit of a tangent about the writers lineup.

Comic hardcover, 238 pages
Published 2015 (contents: 2014)
Borrowed from my wife
Read May 2015

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Rift

Script: Gene Luen Yang

Art: Gurihiru
Lettering: Michael Heisler

Like the first Avatar graphic novel, The Promise, The Rift deals with weighty stuff but still somehow feels light. Yang does a good job of capturing the characters' voices, but doesn't always peg their essences, I think. Part of the problem is that these stories meander a little bit too much (aside from The Search), diluting their potential emotional heft. I feel like the television story could have done this in 25 minutes, and yet The Rift is 238 pages long. It's not terrible by any means, but it's hard to shake the feeling that it ought to be better than it is. Still, time spent with these characters is always well spent, and I look forward to spending more of it with them in future volumes.

Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Search by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru

Comic hardcover, 238 pages
Published 2014 (contents: 2013)
Borrowed from my wife
Read July 2014

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Search

Script: Gene Luen Yang

Art: Gurihiru
Lettering: Michael Heisler

Now this is more like it! The Search takes the potential that Yang and Gurihiru demonstrated in The Promise and really capitalizes on it-- this book really captures the characters and gives us a compelling, emotional story. Zuko was always one of the best parts of Avatar, and The Promise explores his mother's history with some heart-wrenching twists; some stuff that was in plain sight in the television series but I never put together is combined with new information to great effect. I also liked his reaction to some of the key revelations in the series. Azula is well-used, too, and the trip into the world of the spirits is really well done, too. The Mother of Faces is creepy and awesome, one of Avatar's best renditions of a spirit. This is great stuff, and I am really looking forward both to the next volume (The Rift) and finally starting Legend of Korra.

Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru

Comic hardcover, 238 pages
Published 2013 (contents: 2012)
Borrowed from my wife
Read July 2014

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise

Script: Gene Luen Yang

Art: Gurihiru
Lettering: Michael Heisler

My wife has spent the past seven months or so forcing me to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender with her (she had just watched the series through with a friend). Well, I say "forcing," but what began as skepticism soon transformed into enthusiasm. Avatar is a great television series, of exactly the kind I like: a scrappy group of outcasts having adventures. I loved the story, I loved the worldbuilding, I loved the characters, especially Sokka and Iroh. So I was excited to read the sequel comics as preparation for proceeding on to The Legend of Korra.

What struck me pretty quickly is the more complicated political backdrop of this series: though the show has some nuanced Fire Nation characters, most of them are out-and-out villains. Here, though, we see that decolonization is not a simple thing, no matter how laudable its goals are, and even though the Fire Nation may have invaded the Earth Kingdom, that was a century ago, and time has changed things more than most people realize. I appreciate these additional complexities to the world of Avatar.

The story, though, is a little haphazard. I like the central idea of Aang's promise to Zuko, but it doesn't quite come off in the execution, and it feels like things fizzle out. For Aang to thing of actually fulfilling his promise would require a desperate situation, but I don't think the comic quite succeeds in making the situation seem that desperate. The characters feel too reactive, as well, especially Katara, who mostly is there as Aang's girlfriend, not the outspoken idealist she was from the beginning of the show, and Sokka is not quite the leader he became by the end.

That said, Yang and Gurihiru capture the characters' voices perfectly: it's easy to imagine the voice cast delivering the lines given here to Aang, Sokka, Zuko, Toph, et al., and Gurihuri's art is a dead match for the art used on the show. Perhaps the funnest part (and the book at its most Avatarish) is Sokka's attempts to upskill Toph's metalbenders in their showdown with the firebenders. It's fun stuff, and it bodes well for the next Avatar comic if it can get itself more focused.

(The "library edition" we own contains marginal commentary from writer Yang and artist Gurihiru. It's often interesting, moreso Yang's than Gurihiru's. I like knowing Yang's thoughts on colonialism; it's less interesting to hear Gurihiru observe that it's easier to draw scenes without backgrounds.)