Garage Band + Moonshadow

"Garage Band" is a comic book and it is one of my topics of discussion today. I believe the writer/artist is French, the topic is basically music and friendship, the art is subdued watercolors, and therefore I pretty much love it. One of the guys in the band manged to get use of an old airplane hanger  his father owns. They have use of it so long as no one gets in trouble. They want to take things to the next level and get signed so naturally they steal a whole sound setup from a bunch of badass bikers. They manage not to get killed with a little help from the main guy's dad, but they lose use of the hangar. The drummer then manages to get ahold of an abandoned factory and the story begins anew. Basically this story is a nice little nod to my punk rock years. Music ruled my life and I very much wanted to be in a band and put my voice to use. While I am the target audience for this, I really do not know how much others would enjoy it.

And the second book is the trade paperback "The Compleat Moonshadow." It is an extremely verbose sci-fi story about a human boy who is the product of a human woman and an omniscient silver orb in the sky. He is on a journey to learn about his father and himself and he has the help of a black cat, a flute, and a vulgar teddy bear of which may or may not hate him. As they shoot about space, the main character learns more about himself with each issue. That is very much the simple version of this book. Basically the end and the punchline is that the boy is actually now an old man telling the tale of his life which may or may not be an exaggeration or a fabrication. The writing is very good though it reaches a point near the middle where it seems to be too much. But the real gem is an epilogue story titled "Farewell Moonshadow" which recounts the story of the boy as he grew into old age. The writing is a lot more sparse and relies more heavily on the art. Many pages are basically a novel with the writing on one page with the adjacent page containing the illustration. The final pages are probably one of the most awesome things to come out of a comic book I have ever read. The old man is in a wheelchair and is in town for a large birthday party. A man brings him a cake with a candle to blow out. The old man does but dies after. Immediately he then becomes a silver orb in the sky while the town celebrates his life. I loved this book as well for its oddities and fantastic art. The epilogue almost topped the rest of the story.