Skip to main content

Midnight Nation by J. Michael Straczynski


I went to the Annville Free Library's book sale last night. Unfortunately I didn't find any books to buy, but I did find a couple items to borrow. One item was the graphic novel Midnight Nation by J. Michael Straczynski. Try saying that last name three times fast. I had a strange sense of deja vu when I started reading the first couple pages of this novel before I realized that, yes, I did already read it. So I decided to reread it, and after I was finished, I found out that I still don't quite "get" what the author meant by the ending. I don't want to say much more than that because I don't want to spoil the story for those who haven't read it yet.

David Grey is a homicide detective for the LAPD, and the latest murders he's caught are some seriously nasty news. Grey starts poking around and a witness points him in the direction of "the men" a.k.a "the Walkers" (not a surname). He tracks down an ex-con who may be connected to the murders and nearly ends up a murder victim himself. Instead his soul is stolen by the leader of the Walkers. Grey eventually meets up with a woman named Laurel who will act as his guide on a cross country trek to New York City where he will meet up with the man who holds his soul. Once in New York the two will face an impossible battle in order for Grey to redeem his soul. They only have a year to walk all the way from L.A. to New York City (that's right--walk) before Grey will turn into a Walker, and Laurel vows to kill Grey before that happens. Grey and Laurel have to walk because they exist in an "in-between" zone where people and things that have been lost, abandoned and discarded go. The people in "in-between" can only touch and use items that have also been lost, abandoned and discarded. That's why Grey and Laurel must walk across the country because the only vehicles that work in "in-between" belong to the Walkers.

This novel is very well-written and drawn and in the end it presents some issues that will make you think, especially in the end, which is open to interpretation. The one thing that bothered me were the typos that I picked up as I read. Every once in a while I read a book that has some obvious typos or some lapses in editing, and it's always frustrating because then you have to tease out exactly what the author means. And sometimes this can be very difficult because in the end you don't know for sure if you're reading it right because of the mistakes in the print.

I highly recommend this graphic novel. It is available upon request from the Annville Free Library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Comments

Anonymous said…
This is my favorite graphic novel. The one volume I recommend to my friends who have never read a graphic novel. It's deeply moving, and quite romantic. The only other graphic novel on par with Midnight Nation is The Preacher series, my favorite multi-volume graphic novels. Read these two, and I challenge any graphic novel novice to not fall in love with the genre.

Popular posts from this blog

How To Be A Heroine: Or What I've Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis

I feel as if I could write a book subtitled "What I've Learned From Reading Too Much" except all my lessons would be culled from Greek mythology, the Babysitters' Club, the lives of British queens, crime mysteries, suspense thrillers and celebrity and entertainment gossip.  I first ran across How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis in an ad in BookPage.  The title sounded intriguing and once I looked it up on Amazon, I was in for reading it.  It reminds me of the literacy autobiography writing assignment that I had in one of my English composition classes in college--except this is the literacy autobiography on steroids. The premise of this book is that the author revisits the seminal texts that she read in her youth by examining the lessons and impressions of the novels that she had upon her first readings when she was younger.  Ellis has then re-read the novels as an adult specifically for the writing of her own book to see if the novels hold up to her original i

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

I'd previously read John Sandford's first Virgil Flowers novel, Dark of the Moon , a few years back and found it to be a quick, well written read.  Recently I discovered he has since written three more Flowers titles and decided to start with the second title and read through to the fourth and most recent one.   Heat Lightning is the second Flowers installment.  The darkness of the crimes committed that must be solved in the novel are leavened by the lighter presentation of Flowers and the story.  It works well together--a dark crime doesn't always need dark prose to back it up. Virgil Flowers is Lucas Davenport's go to man in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension when there's a sensitive, tough or otherwise puzzling case to solve.  Flowers has a high clearance rate and can often turn around a case in about a week.  This  particular case is especially perplexing with quite a few red herrings thrown into the mix to throw everyone--Flowers and the reader in

The Whisperers by John Connolly

If there was one thing Jimmy didn't care for, it was competition, ... There were some exceptions to that rule: he was rumored to have a sweet deal with the Mexicans, but he wasn't about to try to reason with the Dominicans, or the Columbians, or the bikers, or even the Mohawks. If they wanted to avail themselves of his services, as they sometimes did, that was fine, but if Jimmy Jewel started questioning their right to move product he and Earle would end up tied to chairs in the [bar] with pieces of themselves scattered by their feet, assuming their feet weren't among the scattered pieces, while the bar burned down around their ears, assuming they still had ears. from page 86 The Whisperers is John Connolly's newest Charlie Parker installment in which some beloved characters reappear and in which previous characters from another Parker installment reappear to shed further light on the big baddie that may or may not be coming for Parker in the future. This newest inst