SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
SLJ Blog Network +
  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About/Contact
  • Previews
  • Reviews
  • Manga
  • All Ages
  • Young Adult
  • Interviews
  • News

April 3, 2014 by J. Caleb Mozzocco

Review: Monsters & Titans: Battling Boy On Tour

April 3, 2014 by J. Caleb Mozzocco   Leave a Comment

Monsters & Titans: Battling Boy On Tour
By Paul Pope
Image Comics; $24.99

The first volume of Paul Pope’s Battling Boy, the artist’s long-awaited, long-in-the-works graphic novel series for young readers from publisher First Second, was one of the most anticipated works of 2013. The book itself was just one way for fans of Pope’s to see his new work on the new series, however; original, uncolored pages and various design materials were assembled into art shows that toured the U.S. and Europe.

If you didn’t get to see one of those shows, and/or if you find yourself awaiting the second volume of Battling Boy as much as you did the first, Image Comics has a new art book that should serve as a nice consolation prize and/or stopgap. Monsters & Titans: Battling Boy On  Tour is a big 12-by-9-inch book filled with pages from the exhibit.

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

The book features 63 pages from the comic, photographed from the original drawings, allowing one to see every delicate brush stroke, every heavy black patch of ink, every tiny line, every little splattered dot of ink on the pages. Additionally, there are several super close-ups of many pages, giving readers the sort of view of the work that would be rare to anyone other than the artist, hunched over the page himself.

Of perhaps greater interest to fans of Battling Boy specifically as opposed to fans of Pope’s work in general (a distinction that will likely sound strange to adults, but no so much to younger readers for whom this comic is their only access point to Pope), the book also contains a very short, two-paragraph introduction by Charles Brownstein, and occasional prose insights from the author himself, assembled by Brownstein from a conversation with Pope.

These appear in aesthetically appealing little towers of three paragraphs per page; one in black type in English, one in blue type in French, the third in red type in Italian (which reflects the truly international audience of Pope’s work, earned in part by the fact that Pope is himself influenced by manga and European comics artists as much as American comics; as he says himself at one point, he sees comics “not as a single language, but as international languages”).

The insights offered in these passages from Pope are pretty fascinating, particularly in the way they reveal a great deal of thought that went into the design of characters and the staging of scenes that a reader likely felt without recognizing upon reading the comic.

Brownstein writes of the comic that it was Pope’s attempt to use the adventure strip tradition to “reconcile his personal pantheon of art history with the aspiration to create a fresh, credible, heroic legend for audiences born in the 21st century.”

Pope himself variously states his intentions, stating at one point that he wanted to try and do a Jack Kirby superhero comic had Jack Kirby had access to the tradition and techniques of manga available to Pope (“That was my mission going into it,” Pope says, “I want to do the best Jack Kirby manga”), and to make a comic for kids by making a comic for himself as a kid.

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

In other words, part of the creative process was an attempt to speak to kids by using himself as he was as a child as a sort of representative of kids, and then for the current Paul Pope to try and speak to that young Paul Pope, but with a skillset and experience of the adult Pope, one earned by years of experience reading and making comics and art.

Was he successful? He seems to think so. Certainly the existence of this book in addition to Battling Boy itself seems like a pretty good indication that he was. Battling Boy, as he reveals here, has a sort of dual purpose, or at least a secondary purpose, beyond being a fun, engaging super-comic for kids of all ages (and traditions of comics).

The story is about a pair of children, the title character, the teenage son of a Kirby-esque super-god sent to Earth as a sort of hero test/rite of passage, and Aurora Haggard, the daughter of her city’s Batman/Doc Savage-style adventurer hero, who has fallen in battle and is trying to take his place.

In other words, it’s about kids joining the world of adults and trying to figure out how they can do it. With Battling Boy, the man who made the comic is addressing those in his audience that want to follow him into his adult arena—not being a superhero or modern mythological figure, but telling their stories. Here’s one way they can do it.

Filed under: Reviews

SHARE:

Read or Leave Comments
Battling BoyFirst SecondImage ComicsPaul PopeTitans & MonstersTitans & Monsters: Battling Boy On Tour

About J. Caleb Mozzocco

J. Caleb Mozzocco is a way-too-busy freelance writer who has written about comics for online and print venues for a rather long time now. He currently contributes to Comic Book Resources' Robot 6 blog and ComicsAlliance, and maintains his own daily-ish blog at EveryDayIsLikeWednesday.blogspot.com. He lives in northeast Ohio, where he works as a circulation clerk at a public library by day.

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

January 2023

Monkey Prince Vol. 1: Enter the Monkey | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

January 2023

Young Agatha Christie | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

January 2023

Andy Warner's Oddball Histories: Pests and Pets | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

January 2023

My Sister, the Cat, vol. 1 | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

January 2023

Star Wars: Tales from the Rancor Pit | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

ADVERTISEMENT

SLJ Blog Network

100 Scope Notes

One Star Review, Guess Who? (#181)

by Travis Jonker

A Fuse #8 Production

That Flag: An Interview with Tameka Fryer Brown

by Betsy Bird

Good Comics for Kids

Monkey Prince Vol. 1: Enter the Monkey | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

Heavy Medal

Heavy Medal Mock Newbery Readers’ Poll Results

by Steven Engelfried

Teen Librarian Toolbox

The Value of Innocence for BIPOC Students, a guest post by David Mura

by Amanda MacGregor

The Classroom Bookshelf

The Classroom Bookshelf is Moving

by Erika Thulin Dawes

The Yarn

Looking Ahead: Our 2023 Preview

by Travis Jonker

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Articles on SLJ

Best Graphic Novels 2021 | SLJ Best Books

18 Superb Graphic Novel Adaptations for Kids and Teens

Seven Titles with Censorship Themes

First-Person Graphic Memoirs Bring Events to Life for Students

Eight Graphic Works that Offer Fresh Perspectives on the Past | Stellar Panels

Commenting for all posts is disabled after 30 days.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Follow This Blog

Enter your email address below to receive notifications of new blog posts by email.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News & Features
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • School Libraries
  • Public Libraries
  • Age Level
  • Ideas
  • Blogs
  • Classroom
  • Diversity
  • People
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Book Lists
  • Best Books
  • Media
  • Reference
  • Series Made Simple
  • Tech
  • Review for SLJ
  • Review Submissions

SLJ Blog Network

  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal
  • Neverending Search
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn

Resources

  • 2022 Youth Media Awards
  • The Newbery at 100: SLJ Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Award
  • Special Report | School Libraries 2021
  • Summer Reading 2021
  • Series Made Simple Spring 2021
  • SLJ Diverse Books Survey
  • Summer Programming Survey
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies
  • School Librarian of the Year
  • Mathical Book Prize Collection Development Awards
  • Librarian/Teacher Collaboration Award

Events & PD

  • In-Person Events
  • Online Courses
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Content Submissions
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Diversity Policy
  • Careers at MSI


COPYRIGHT © 2023


COPYRIGHT © 2023