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alivemagdolene) wrote2010-11-02 06:36 am
alivemagdolene) wrote2010-11-02 06:36 am
Entry tags:
Book-It '10! Book #69
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography by Rick Geary
Details: Copyright 2008, Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing Inc
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Crime-fighter, commie-buster, and moral crusader, J. edgar Hoover certainly saw himself as the FBI's own action hero. In the hands of the gifted cartoonist Rick Geary, his life becomes a timely and pointed guide to eight presidents-- from Calvin Coolidge to Richard Nixon-- and everything from Prohibition to Cold War espionage. From a nascent FBI's headline-grabbing pursuit of John Dillinger and George 'Machine Gun' Kelly in the 1930s to Hoover's increasingly paranoid post-World War II authoring of illegal wiretaps, blackmail, and circumvention of Supreme Court decisions, J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography provides a special window into the life on an outsized American and a bird's eye-view on the twentieth century."
Why I Wanted to Read It: Geary's work had gotten positive notice from The Onion AV Club.
How I Liked It: This is the first Geary book I've read that isn't under the "murder" series (which are mostly mysteries).
Geary generally keeps to the known facts about Hoover rather than speculation or assumption about some of the more interesting rumors (Hoover's possible sexual/romantic relationships with men, his possible transvestism). He presents them as such, but generally leaves the reader to decide what's true and what isn't. It's an almost cipher of a biography.
As for the artwork, Geary is eschews his usual scale of John Held Jr versus R. Crumb and manages to offer something almost entirely different with faces coming across occasionally as so precise as to be a scan and more lines than I've ever seen him apply before.
A genuinely interesting read and a good primer for those unfamiliar with the much mythologized FBI founder.
Notable: Geary attempts Marilyn Monroe again, with much better results than last time:
Title: J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography by Rick Geary
Details: Copyright 2008, Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing Inc
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Crime-fighter, commie-buster, and moral crusader, J. edgar Hoover certainly saw himself as the FBI's own action hero. In the hands of the gifted cartoonist Rick Geary, his life becomes a timely and pointed guide to eight presidents-- from Calvin Coolidge to Richard Nixon-- and everything from Prohibition to Cold War espionage. From a nascent FBI's headline-grabbing pursuit of John Dillinger and George 'Machine Gun' Kelly in the 1930s to Hoover's increasingly paranoid post-World War II authoring of illegal wiretaps, blackmail, and circumvention of Supreme Court decisions, J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography provides a special window into the life on an outsized American and a bird's eye-view on the twentieth century."
Why I Wanted to Read It: Geary's work had gotten positive notice from The Onion AV Club.
How I Liked It: This is the first Geary book I've read that isn't under the "murder" series (which are mostly mysteries).
Geary generally keeps to the known facts about Hoover rather than speculation or assumption about some of the more interesting rumors (Hoover's possible sexual/romantic relationships with men, his possible transvestism). He presents them as such, but generally leaves the reader to decide what's true and what isn't. It's an almost cipher of a biography.
As for the artwork, Geary is eschews his usual scale of John Held Jr versus R. Crumb and manages to offer something almost entirely different with faces coming across occasionally as so precise as to be a scan and more lines than I've ever seen him apply before.
A genuinely interesting read and a good primer for those unfamiliar with the much mythologized FBI founder.
Notable: Geary attempts Marilyn Monroe again, with much better results than last time: