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Graphic Novel Review: The Glass Scientists, Volume 1 by S.H. Cotugno

Cover art for The Glass Scientists, Volume 1

The Glass Scientists, Volume 1 by S. H. Cotugno

Razorbill, 2023

ISBN-13: 978593524442

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

The Glass Scientists is a webcomic created by S. H. Cotugno. Set in 19th Century London, Dr. Henry Jekyll founds The Society for Arcane Sciences, a place where mad scientists prove they are more than just that. They can thrive in an accepting environment where they can conduct their experiments without fear of interruption, defy laws of nature while in a safe area, and make friends while doing it. London isn’t the ideal environment for these eccentrics, with officers of the law and other officials concerned about their practices after the Frankenstein incident. With mobs taking it into their own hands, or pitchforks and torches, to hunt down what they don’t understand, Dr. Jekyll has his work cut out for him in trying to improve public opinion, as well as keeping up the morale of the scientists within the walls of the Society. There is also the new play debuting right across the street, allegedly based on the “very real” story of Dr. Frankenstein and his Creature, just as Dr. Jekyll is about to show everyone the value of the Society within London.

 

So many things are against the good doctor. His own alter ego, Edward Hyde, is hellbent on running amok, and nearly causes the complete dissolution of the Society for Arcane Sciences. The Creature arrives, carrying the very doctor who created him, Dr. Frankenstein: both prove to be quite different from the little play going on across the street. Things spiral further out of Dr. Jekyll’s control, and his once loyal friends and colleagues begin to turn against him. Their search for the mysterious and dangerous Mr. Hyde is yielding no results: Dr. Jekyll, having shut him into the deepest corners of his mind, thinks them both safe. He is terribly wrong.

 

I enjoyed this interpretation of the Jekyll and Hyde tale. Rather than being fully separate from each other, each knew the other was present. They could hold conversations together and understand each other’s thoughts and motivations. The transitions between Jekyll and Hyde’s dialogue were easy to follow, as the text was white against a black field when Hyde was communicating in the doctor’s head. Dr. Jekyll could also allow Hyde to take over for a time, with Jekyll’s tall brunette gentlemanly figure turned into the green-eyed, blond-haired, unkempt Hyde. You know mischief will ensue with Hyde around. The Society’s lodgers are a great addition to the story. Newly discovered werewolf Jasper Kaylock, manager and cook of the Society Rachel Pidgley, and Dr. Frankenstein are fantastic characters. A few examples of the Society’s scientists are Miss Lavendar, a Junior Extremofaunic Zoologist; Dr. Ranjit Helsby, Exploratory Bathynaut; and Dr. Maijabi, Ectoplasmic Pathologist. I loved all of them, but I won’t list them all here.

 

The artwork in The Glass Scientists is crisp and the colours are wonderful. Volume One collects Chapters 1-7 of the webcomic and includes a short story, “The Creature and the Coffeehouse”,  as well as“The Vault,” which includes a brief history of Cotugno’s creative process, and additional materials. The story contains LGBTQ+ themes and characters, making this an inclusive title. The creator recommends the comic for ages 13 and up. The creator of one of my favourite shows, The Owl House, wrote a blurb for the first volume, which gave me a hint that I would enjoy it. Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

 

Posted on November 20, 2023 by , Reply

The Invisible Man @ your library

No, not Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. This one. I understand that it can get confusing. Certainly, the reviewers on Amazon seem confused.

Why yes, I do love this picture.

The Invisible Man is often overlooked, and he’s not only important culturally, but has morphed in some pretty cool ways (link). So I thought I’d shine a light on him, so to speak, and share some information, and some resources, about this unusual monster. Note, if you’re going to be making a homemade Halloween costume for an 8 year old boy who loves monsters, as I am, this is an easy one.

Every single one of the items pictured below is related in some way to the Invisible Man. Want to find out how?

                                    

What with Teen Read Week’s theme this year of “Seek the Unseen” it seems like the perfect time to give some visibility to a human monster often lost in the crowd: the Invisible Man. While the Invisible Man doesn’t have the iconic status of vampires, zombies, man-made creatures, and werewolves, he has, in his invisible way, insinuated himself into popular culture.

As with Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the Invisible Man has literary origins, first appearing in a novella of the same name by the famed H.G. Wells. And as with Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Invisible Man is a cautionary tale about the perils of pride, in taking science just a step too far in the direction of a nightmare. In the novel, Griffin, a scientist who has discovered the secret of invisibility, and tested it on himself, arrives in a small town hoping to complete experiments that will allow him to reverse the process. Obsessed and ambitious even at the beginning, he becomes more and more detached from humanity and willing to commit destructive and amoral acts, until finally he is killed and becomes visible again. The novella was made into a Universal horror film in the 1930s, and since then he has been represented in a number of different ways: as an increasingly psychopathic and violent monster(in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, for instance); as a redemptive figure unrelated to the Wells novel except for possessing the power of invisibility(such as the one in the Sci-Fi channel series The Invisible Man); and as an entertaining member of ensemble-related monster movies such as Mad Monster Party and Hotel Transylvania. Queen even introduced him into the world of music with their song “The Invisible Man”. Yet, while he continues to resurface, it doesn’t seem to me that he is especially noticeable (par for the course, I suppose). Many of the tropes of invisibility that appear throughout popular culture (including Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility) can be attributed to The Invisible Man, though, including tween and teen novels (a few are pictured above)  and media (Out of Sight, Out of Mind is a favorite Buffy episode of mine)  I will take a moment to note that the original movie has really awesome special effects– here’s a link— so this is also an opportunity to pull out books on that topic!  As you prepare to seek the unknown for Teen Reed Week you might consider him, and ask teens to consider this: if you had the power of invisibility, what would you do? Where would you go? What kind of person would you want to be?

 

 

 

 

Posted on October 4, 2013 by , Reply

Back to School: Robert Louis Stevenson– Yet Another Reason to Read the Classics

When you think of classics in the horror genre– and by classics here I mean mostly horror titles that are no longer under copyright– there are names that come easily to mind. Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley, or at least the movies based on their books, are surely familiar to most people. H.P. Lovecraft, in spite of his influence, is a little more obscure to the general public, but most people with even a passing knowledge of horror fiction probably recognize his name. Chances are you can find their works easily, if not actually in the high school classroom, at least in the high school library… and certainly, you should be able to get them at the local public library!

But there are also authors that might surprise you, at least a little. My introduction to Robert Louis Stevenson was A Child’s Garden of Verses. You know,

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

That the author of idyllic children’s verse and such boys’ adventure novels (yes, I know girls read them and love them, too) as Treasure Island and Kidnapped could take the turn of imagination he did to write “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” intrigues me, but as with many other iconic monsters that have taken hold in our own imaginations, Jekyll and Hyde have taken on life of their own, and I suspect the average person hasn’t noticed the author is the same, if they’ve read the original story at all. Stevenson’s imagination turned in this direction more than once, though, and I thought I’d share a story today that the folks at HorrorHomework.com posted online, which illustrates the perils and horrors of trying to impress the wrong teacher, and of bowing to peer pressure. And so I present to you Robert Louis Stevenson’s gruesome and disturbing “The Bodysnatcher”(It’s possible that you may have to listen to Christopher Walken reading “The Raven” as well, but, while it distracts from the reading experience, it’s definitely worth a listen).

Enjoy!

 

Posted on January 8, 2013 by , Reply
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