Sunday 1 March 2020

Nothing novel about this book's art



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


I've always found Weegee's photos fascinating so I've collected a few books about him. A graphic novel could provide an alternative look at his creativity. Unfortunately it turns out to be a rather dull and bland look at the man, a sort of 'A day in the life of Weegee' treatment and it can easily be read in less than an hour. One of the great things about graphic novels is the opportunity to present a story in all sorts of exciting visual ways so that even though you've read the story the art is worth looking at again and again.

This book's cartoon treatment falls short in every way. It's not in colour (not always essential, Will Eisener did some brilliant work in black and white) the six square frames a page are just repeated on most pages with no graphics breaking out of the frame for a change of pace, even the speech bubbles typeface is a poor choice and capital letters would have worked better. Lastly Wauter Mannaert's drawing style is rather poor and scrappy, more suited to cartoons rather than an illustrator for a complete book.

This is really a few hundred cartoons strung together in a book. Weegee the Famous deserves better.

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