A review by tiamatq
Comic Book Tattoo, by Rantz A. Hoseley
2.0
First, I am a Tori Amos fan. I grew up listening to her and she's always been one of my favorite artists. As someone who's also a Sandman nut and enjoyed Tori's appearances in those stories, I had some high expectations for this collection. And I did not like this book.
This felt too scattered. I don't think many of the stories were well-told... I would've rather that a few songs had been cherry-picked for this book, and then given more depth. It's all very pretty to look at, for the most part, and there are some good stories mixed in there. But they really begin to blur, even when I tried to space out reading the book. I didn't care about the majority of the stories, and several felt very conventional and basic (Precious Things, Beauty of Speed, or Siren for example). Some explore the stories within the songs, and others just go for surface meaning (Boo to Bouncing Off Clouds!). And others are just plain confusing (Toast, Sugar, Leather, Ribbons Undone).
Stories I liked were Take To The Sky, Little Amsterdam, The Waitress (this is a great example of a story that actually took some time to be told and it worked out for the better), Winter, Baker Baker, I Can't See New York, and Cornflake Cirl. Pandora's Aquarium was one of the funnier, more literal translations of a song and its goofiness worked.
And cheers for Paul Maybury's story for Crucify. A personal story with the song as background really worked... at least to me!
This felt too scattered. I don't think many of the stories were well-told... I would've rather that a few songs had been cherry-picked for this book, and then given more depth. It's all very pretty to look at, for the most part, and there are some good stories mixed in there. But they really begin to blur, even when I tried to space out reading the book. I didn't care about the majority of the stories, and several felt very conventional and basic (Precious Things, Beauty of Speed, or Siren for example). Some explore the stories within the songs, and others just go for surface meaning (Boo to Bouncing Off Clouds!). And others are just plain confusing (Toast, Sugar, Leather, Ribbons Undone).
Stories I liked were Take To The Sky, Little Amsterdam, The Waitress (this is a great example of a story that actually took some time to be told and it worked out for the better), Winter, Baker Baker, I Can't See New York, and Cornflake Cirl. Pandora's Aquarium was one of the funnier, more literal translations of a song and its goofiness worked.
And cheers for Paul Maybury's story for Crucify. A personal story with the song as background really worked... at least to me!