Marble Season
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- £8.49
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- £8.49
Publisher Description
In his first book with Faber, Hernandez tells the untold stories of these American comics legends' youth, and portrays the reality of life in a large family in suburban 1960s California. Told largely from the point of view of middle child Huey - who stages Captain America plays and treasures his older brother's comic book collection almost as much as his approval - Marble Season deftly follows these boys as they navigate their cultural and neighborhood norms.
Set against the golden age of the American dream and the silver age of comics, and awash with pop-culture references - TV shows, comic books, super-heroes and music -Marble Season subtly details how their innocent, joyfully creative play changes as they grow older and encounter name-calling, abusive bullies, and the value judgments of others. A coming-of-age story both comic and moving, it will have timeless resonance for children and adults alike.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Someday they're going to run out of superlatives to heap upon the lap of Hernandez (co-creator of Love and Rockets), but not yet. This graphic novel is a sublime and soulful portrait of childhood through the eyes of Huey, a middle child (like Hernandez). The book follows him and his brothers, friends, and the various cliques and clubs of neighborhood kids from toddlerhood to teenage years. This is the pure stuff. Hernandez captures the joy and obsession of childhood days comic books and trading cards; baseball and "let's pretend"; the terror of big kids, scary neighbors, and girls; superstition and ritual; television and pop music; and parents (forever offscreen, like in Peanuts) who rein in the fun for no discernible reason. As usual, Hernandez's artwork adeptly highlights his skill infusing seemingly simple and open panels with intense memory and meaning. Proust had his madeleines, but Hernandez's inspirations are the smell of newsprint comic books, the sound of a tinny AM transistor radio playing the Beatles, and the taste of a marble on his tongue. This lyrical, memorable book stands alongside the sequential work of Stanley's Little Lulu, Fitzgerald's Dennis the Menace comic books, and Schulz's Peanuts as a masterful, involving, funny, and real portrait of kids and their wide world, unlimited by reality until, at least, it's time to go home for dinner.
