Escape from "Special"

Escape from Special
Author: Miss Lasko-Gross
Publisher: Fantagraphics
ISBN-10: 156097804X
ISBN-13: 978-1560978046


Escape from "Special" is a witty, funny and gorgeously illustrated graphic novel about a young girl named Melissa from the time she’s about four or five till just before she enters high school. I loved Melissa because she was smart, opinionated, irreverent and sarcastic.

Her story is told in anecdotal snapshots of the memories of her life as she remembers it. There’s no glossing over or making it pretty, this is raw. Her hippie type parents Jaqui and Todd put her in one school after another and the story makes great fun of the new agey types of schools as well as those schools that do their level best at trying to compartmentalize children. Melissa’s intelligence and her disdain for the attempted pigeonholing shine through the book even when she is put in a so-called “special” school for children with learning disabilities.

Melissa wants to escape from it all. She challenges everything and as I read each wonderful little chapter, I agreed with her. I loved it when she challenged her parents as they try to cram religion into her. Melissa’s response is great. She says it’s too late now, that they should have tried that crap on her while she was still young enough to fall for it. That had me laughing out loud.

There’s great stuff in this story and a lot of struggling going on. There’s the struggle to rise above the crowd, not fall into the trap of conforming, being part of the herd while still trying to find a place to belong. There’s the struggle to be herself while fighting her own insecurities. Melissa’s struggles reflect the deeply confusing interior life of a teenaged girl trying to find herself and be herself while doing her level best not to stand out. She wants to fit in and not be noticed as much as she disdains those to do fit in.

The gorgeous illustrations have a quiet and intense depth to them and seem to reflect the inner Melissa as much as the wonderful chapter titles like Cheese Steak of the Damned. At times the illustration is moody and bored, at others scared of the dark black and white and others angry with washes of color to reflect her emotions. It's an intense palette and a fascinating technique. Text and art intertwine and emote with a particular poignancy.

Escape from "Special " is highly recommended with a word of caution for those averse to a little strong language. The language fits and is even funny but some may have a problem with it. I personally thought the use of the word “cuntiness” entirely appropriate and side splittingly funny.

Book Description from the publisher:
A moving debut graphic novel about the pain of childhood.Fantagraphics Books is proud to follow up our launch of rising star R. Kikuo Johnson (author of the acclaimed Night Fisher) by showcasing Miss Lasko-Gross in her graphic-novel debut. Escape from "Special" is the coming-of-age story of Melissa, who we first meet as a small child and depart from at the end of the book just before she enters high school. Willful, funny, and perceptive, Melissa unsentimentally questions religion, identity formation, and treacherous female "friendships" as she tours with her parent's band, battles with her therapist, and bounces from school to school. Subjected to the whims of her bemused parents and, as the years pass, rejected by her peers, the opinionated Melissa copes by watching horror movies, psychosomatically vomiting to get out of temple, and making comics.Escape from "Special" recalls a not-too-distant time when girls flaunted their knock-off Esprit and shared best-friends necklaces broken in half.

The semi-autobiographical story unfolds in a series of brief anecdotes, expressionistically dredged as if from memory, without self-regarding exposition and uncorrupted by a nostalgic haze. Drawn in black and white and washed in moody blues and full spectrum grays, Lasko-Gross's art, with its detailed backgrounds and expressive, clean-line characters, exquisitely conveys the story's blend of humor (sometimes of the gross-out variety) and keenly observed insights. Miss Lasko-Gross, who has the sensibility of a love child of Linda Barry and David B. midwifed by Judy Blume, has created a graphic novel that should appeal not only to the growing readers of graphic novels, but to teens grappling with similar unresolved questions.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation
by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Ernie Colón
Based on the Final Report of the National Commission of Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
With a foreward by the Chair and Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton
Publisher: Hill and Wang (a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13: 9780809057399
ISBN 10: 0809057395

On December 5, 2005, the 9/11 Commission issued its final report card on the government’s fulfillment of the recommendations issued in July 2004: one A, twelve Bs, nine Cs, twelve Ds, three Fs, and four incompletes.

Que, que! I was stunned to read that! Only one A! Twelve D’s! Three F’s! If it had me at school back in the day, I would have been scared to come home with a report card like that. My mom would have given me a hell of a chanclaso. I literally would have been grounded for life. My grandparents would have cried. This isn’t a teenager’s report card, it’s our government’s report card.

I had meant to read the 9/11 report when it first came out, but was too busy trying to hold my life together at the time. I had lost my job right after 9/11 and had a hell of a time finding a new one, I’d moved because I couldn’t afford my old place anymore, my son was shipped off to the Middle East, my boyfriend was sent to Iraq and my family was just struggling to re-establish our pre-9/11 sense of security. Reading an 600 page report in the middle of it all seemed to make no sense. I retreated into the lovely and enchanted world of children’s literature. This was too deep for me to deal with.

Three years after the report came out, I still hadn’t read it. Life was back to normal (kind of) and I was busier than ever with writing, reviewing, helping out with the grandkids, working and just life in general. The 9/11 Report completely slipped my mind. Then I volunteered to be on a nominating panel for The Cybils (http://dadtalk.typepad.com/cybils/) in the graphic novel category and one of the nominated books was The 9/11 Report, A Graphic Adaptation.

I read this amazing report and was completely astounded by how well the graphic novel format suited it. Sid Jacobson’s text comes directly from the original report in a condensed and intelligent version and frequently follows it word for word. It’s extremely accessible to anyone without “dumbing down” the subject matter.


There are four separate timelines for each of the four flights that brilliantly illustrate what was going on with each. Each page is illustrated beautifully with a moody, dark feel which fits in perfectly. Ernie Colón's stunning artwork is highly detailed and captures the emotions and terror of the day as well as what followed. The book gives background on each of the terrorists as well as the events that led up to that horrible morning.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation captured me with it’s arresting story and art. Each detail was engraved on my mind in a way that no plain text would have done. The comic book format truly created an impact for me in a way that words alone would not have done. I, like many I suppose was put off by what I had perceived to be a dry story. I was wrong. The story of the four planes and of what happened both before and after 9/11 was absolutely riveting and painful to read. It brought back that horror that I felt watching my television that morning and of the dark times that followed. I felt everything all over again and I was reminded in a way that I needed to be reminded. I had become far too complacent and settled.

I think that the graphic novel and comic book mediums are excellent ways to present certain subjects to those who wouldn’t normally read them The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation belongs in every library.


About the Author:
Sid Jacobson was the managing editor and editor in chief for Harvey Comics, where he created several characters, among them Richie Rich, and was executive editor at Marvel Comics. He is the author of two novels.

About the Illustrator:
The artist, Ernie Colón, has worked at Harvey, Marvel, and DC Comics. At DC, he oversaw the production of Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Blackhawk, and the Flash; at Marvel, Spider-Man.