| Title | : | They're Not Like Us, Vol. 1: Black Holes for the Young |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1632153149 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781632153142 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 144 |
| Publication | : | First published July 1, 2015 |
We all have advantages over one another, but what if you were capable of things most of us can only imagine? What would you do – and who would you be? A doctor? An athlete? A soldier? A hero? Everyone has to make a choice about how to use the abilities they're born with... but they're not like us.
Collecting: They're Not Like Us 1-6
They're Not Like Us, Vol. 1: Black Holes for the Young Reviews
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I really liked the premise but I don't see the storyline being able to keep up this pace
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Another disappointment, unfortunately.
I just didn't get what the point of this graphic novel was. There's a bunch of "special" adults with different abilities that weren't explained nor did they have specific rules and they take on normals because other people always treated them as freaks.
Uhm, okay but what is the point of it all?!
And then obviously comes the new entry who questions everything (which the others hadn't previously done) but nothing really happens.
I don't know, I felt like this graphic novel wasn't going anywhere, the art wasn't anything special and the whole story was pretty dull despite featuring peculiar characters.
I'm not going to continue on with this. -
3.5-stars
Teenage-me would've LOVED this. The art by Simon Gane is fantastic, focusing on the characters, who are distinct and interesting.
I'm personally a little jaded, having encountered this kind of story in a multitude of different forms. That said, I enjoyed the ambiguity of the characters being both good and bad. And the story itself drew me in and I flew through all 6 issues, eager to find out more about this super-powered crew. I think it's a fun read and I look forward to checking out the next volume. -
*Disclaimer: An ARC of They're Not Like Us by Eric Stephenson was provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not effect my opinion in any way.
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So let me just start this off by saying that I have had this ARC for so long now and I'm really not sure why it took me this long to pick it up. I had seen some mixed reviews and I guess I was just never in the mood, but I'm so glad that I finally decided to pick it up!
Initially, when I first pick this up and started reading, it felt a lot like a knock-off X-Men. People with special abilities get drafted by a mysterious telepath and brought to a giant house where the other people with special abilities live where they are given nicknames/new identities. The difference here though is that these people don't really seem to be using their abilities for good. There's something more sinister about them and especially their leader.
Throughout the story, we get to learn the backstories of a few characters, but the one that intrigued me the most was that of the leader, The Voice. I was super intrigued by his tragic past as it probably has a lot to do with the way he is today.
Overall, while the story did have a few similarities to something like X-Men, I'm still intrigued and I think I will be continuing with this story in the near future!
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#ARCAugust -
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This graphic novel was following me around. I even saw it in physical book stores, where I seldom see graphic novels that are also on Netgalley at the time. So, as I kept coming across it my interest grew and I decided to give it a try even though I didn't really know what it was about and I passed on it when I first saw it.
A bunch of special kids live together being special. That's basically what it is.
It was not for me. I was actually disappointed by the story. There wasn't a single likeable character between them and I couldn't feel any sympathy either. There was a lot of self pity though, how nobody liked them because they were different. I still don't know where the story is going, but frankly I don't really care. The best part for sure was the title. The art was good but didn't blow me away.
Black Holes For The Young is the first volume of They're Not Like Us.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! -
DNF at 41 pages. Didn‘t like the artwork. The story didn‘t do anything for me, could not be bothered to continue for long or pick it up again after putting it down. It took too long to get interesting. Teens with psychic powers?
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This comic ran a little stale for me, but I think it's because I've come out the other side of my emo-teenage years.
This story is quite X-Men in the initial conceit: a group of young kids with special snowflake powers. Then it goes all emo, because no one ever loved them because they were special snowflakes.
So of course now they have to be total assholes to everyone in the world and terrorize them like they were terrorized. And have an awesome music room with hipster records.
The art though is so pretty. I love it when artists get creative with the basics of comics (like above with the newspaper style text overlay).
Or here where the idea of Syd having all those voices in her head and then not being there is visualized but the subtle change in background.
From here...
To here...
So lovely.
All that being said, the plot itself is pretty see through. It's not surprising where we end up at the end, though I am still interested enough in the narrative to see where it goes from there.
Copy courtesy of Diamond Book Distributors/Image Comics, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. -
I wasn't sure what to expect from this series, and I ended up liking it the more I got into it. I can see connections between this and Stephenson's other series, Nowhere Men: both deal with exceptional groups of people, both derive narrative force through the dissent within those communities, and both are progressive mysteries in which new questions are raised every several issues of the series.
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While I wasn't blown away with this story, I will say I think it would make a good tv series. Just an average Psychic ability story. Okay but not great to me.
I recieved an advanced copy of this from Netgalley.com and the publisher. -
This may be one of the worst things I have ever read. Full of selfish, self-centred characters with no redeeming qualities with back stories designed to make you feel for them and to justify there mindless violent acts and superior attitudes.
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A more violent twist on what people might do if they had superpowers. Good stuff.
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I liked the artwork in this one. It was bold and colourful. Not sure if I want to continue reading this though. It was a bit shouty to me and lacked any hints to an underlying intrigue forcing me to read the whole series. This makes it very likely that I will simply forget to read the other parts, which is never a good sign at all!
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A little too preachy for my liking. Great bunch of misfits though. Always great to read such subversion in characters that don't seek to conform.
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More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog
Nowhere Men had topped my list of best graphic novels last year and author Stephenson's newest, They're Not Like Us, is equally engrossing. Where Nowhere men took an interesting and grounded look at superheroes, They're Not Like Us does with the X-men generation. The characters intrigue and the tale never goes where one would expect.
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Story: A young girl stands on top of a high rise hospital roof - ready to throw herself off if only to end the constant noise in her head. When an odd man appears in front of her, she jumps. Waking later, injured, he takes her out of the hospital to join a group of misfits all with odd powers like she has (she's telepathic). But they are no heroes - they take what they want and blame society for making them who they are. The girl, codenamed Syd, will have to make some very hard decisions about what she wants and what they represent - because the first order after joining them is to kill her parents.
The entire crew that Syd meets up with at the house are nuanced and interesting, with fully realized backgrounds and history. Stephenson makes smart choices in the writing, giving just enough information to intrigue but never so much that we are bored. Because answers are given at such a smart rate, we race to find out the truths just as Syd does. The dialogue builds the world but also feels very authentic.
A hallmark of Stephenson's writing is a grounded realism. With characters who are so different (psychokinetic, telekinetic, etc.), none are likely to have lived normal lives. But it's still a thoughtful moment when one of them observes, "If our abilities were a handicap instead of a gift, we would have been doted on, cared for. Instead, we were feared and reviled -- treated like burdens and freaks and made to feel inadequate." That seems to be the heart of the novel - how some overcome their upbringing and others did not. Syd is the moral compass they've been missing and a catalyst for change for several.
The art is well done and the characters are expressive and complement the storytelling well. There's always a little something subversive in Stephenson's work and artists Gane and Bellaire capture it well - from the odd Dali-meets-Picasso artwork on the walls of the house to the characters themselves: Maisie's quiet fatalism, BlurGirl's sweetness covering despair, Moon's ambivalence, to The Voice's inscrutability. With main character Syd, we're given a quirky and cute pixie who packs quite a punch in her emotional scenes.
Collecting 6 comics, this ended abruptly and left me wanting more. Once I had started reading I didn't want to stop, it was that good a ride. And while perhaps not the tour de force that was Nowhere Men, this is still an extremely well written and nicely illustrated graphic novel well worth a read. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher. -
There's one profoundly fucked-up early X-Men story in which Professor Xavier wipes Beast's existence from his parents' memories so that Hank can go to his new life with his fellow mutants and not have the worry of his family. And, more generally, there's a degree to which some eras of the X-Men's comics can be understood as metaphors for the generational divide - a settled human world which hates and fears its own strange offspring. Strip that alienation story of its decades of baggage and superhero trappings, and you have an idea of how They're Not Like Us feels. Kids with strange powers and unpleasant backstories are assembled by a charismatic but morally ambiguous leader, encouraged to sever all ties with their old lives, and embark on a career of vigilante action (though the X-Men were definitely less prone to nicking vintage headphones off anyone they beat up). With intergenerational tensions once again bubbling over at the realisation of how much of everything the baby boomers are hogging, it feels like a very timely book. The beautiful, Paul Pope-styled art helps establish its world as a solid place, possessed of a certain shabby grandeur.
(Full disclosure: a Netgalley freebie) -
I had SO much fun reading this. I love super power stories so so much and anything reminiscent of X-Men is immediately going to grab my attention but this was good enough to keep it as well. The art style was slightly busy at first and kind of overwhelming to look at but once I got used to it I started to appreciate the detail put into it, especially in the beautiful house that they're living in. The story itself was interesting right from the start and really sucked me in. I don't love Syd as a main character but all of the other characters are so mysterious and interesting that I'm invested anyway. The story gives just enough of the background characters without giving everyone's full back story so there's plenty of room for this story to grow as we learn more about who these people are and where they come from. The ending, especially the last line, were such a good cliffhanger that I can't wait to see where this story goes next!
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No he terminado de verle la gracia al cómic. Quizá se deba a que es un tomo de presentación de personajes, pero con esa premisa esperaba algo más.
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This feels like someone took one of Morrison's anarchic ideas and made it work in fashion that does more than raise a middle finger to mainstream western culture. There's some anarchic violence here, and Stephenson carefully justifies it--to an extent. But he also challenges it and demonstrates how all violence is ultimately empty, a point that Morrison's weirder indulgences never seem to quite understand--placing an anarchic personal freedom as the highest of all possible goods. This book uses the character of Syd to challenge such assumptions, and so it deftly avoids throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
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Yet another kids with powers alienated from the rest of the world origin story (see also X-Men, Runaways, etc., etc.). This version has a particularly nasty streak to it with our telepaths and variously super-powered youths using their powers to beat up and steal from people they don't like. They justify their amorality as the right response to a society which would probably reject them if they found out about them. It's all a little unpleasant. Eventually it becomes a story about some of the team rejecting that philosophy but it was touch and go there for a while. Not very interesting.
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A mix between X Men and Runaways. Telephats children's in a house used like Institute, desconected from their old lives, without cellphones, computers and other track devices. A girl with depression wanted to commit suicide when a strange save her (this relationship reminds me to Rogue and Logan).
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I am making my way through all the graphic novels I have. This was next in the pile. Interesting concept but I found the other characters very unlikeable. It didn't really keep me hooked to want to finish what happens next.
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This was quite interesting. The story kept me engaged and i wanted to see what happened next. The art was also quite interesting. I can't wait to see where this series goes
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So bad. Just so, so, so bad. Every single teenage superhero cliche you’ve ever seen all crammed into issue one. Embarrassing for all concerned.
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E' davvero particolare, sono rimasta un po' confusa ma voglio continuare a leggere
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This is a great book. The creative team is top-notch. The story is an absolute page-turner. Read it immediately.
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Disclaimer: I requested this volume as an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
2nd Disclaimer: This is going to be less of a review and more of a post full of a gushing praise but I absolutely love it, this is probably one of my favourite trade paperbacks/graphic novels I've read this year.
I had seen this cover around a lot and hadn't gotten around to reading an issue, despite reading and enjoying a couple of volumes of Nowhere Men (Eric Stephenson's other award winning series which I would recommend if you like science and rock and roll).
The Premise of this book sounded a little generic at first: "We all have advantages over one another, but what if you were capable of things most of us can only imagine? What would you do – and who would you be? A doctor? An athlete? A soldier? A hero? Everyone has to make a choice about how to use the abilities they're born with... but they're not like us." How I would describe this comic as this is a Image Comic Series around a morally grey team of young people who all possess different types of telepathic powers helmed by an enigmatic and controlling leader. We follow Syd as she joins the group and learns to control her powers.
I really don't want to spoil this book so I'm going to talk vaguely about the tone. In many ways this volume reminded me of some of the smaller, darker, more human stories in the x-men canon which I love so much. There was a great building sense of quiet dread which combined with the pacing left me gripped. Combine all this with characters that are both compelling to read about and sympathetic but at the same time fundamentally dislikeable.
I also want to talk about how gorgeous the art itself, it is phenomenally gorgeous, I would love to fill my room with prints of the full page spreads in this book. I feel like the artist (Simon Gane) interpreted telepathy in really interesting way. The characters are very distinctive (and diverse) which can be a problem in some comics about a big team of characters who are all around the same age/build. I am sorry to say that I'm normally quite ignorant about the rest of the art team on a comic but I noticed how vibrant and expressive the colouring is(done by Jordie Bellaire).
No spoilers but at the end of this volume there was a moment of air punching great character development, which just made me itch to see where the next issues take this series. As soon as I finished the pdf from Netgalley I went and ordered the paperback so I could lend it to my dad.
Seriously if you were thinking about reading this just do. -
Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC.
Not bad, not my cup of tea, but probably someone else's.
This was interesting in a few different ways, but I didn't particularly like it, and I don't feel compelled to read more when it comes out. However, I think that the exploration of troubled, dislocated youth, would resonate with others.
As others have mentioned, it's a bit of a "realistic" X-Men story about a bunch of young people with powers of some sort who band together. All of them have suffered due to their childhoods, and have been united under "The Voice" a royally messed up guy who has convinced them that every "normal" is a mindless drone, and that they should do whatever they have to do to maintain their secrets and the rich lifestyle that they prefer, including killing, and take whatever they want because they "can."
This attempted deconstruction of the now-familiar mutant story didn't add much for me. I found the dialog unconvincing, like it contained "revelations" that an angsty person had in their 20s that he would've written in his journal, or confided in some pixie girl while on some deep hipster walk at night. I found myself yelling in my head that the fact that these characters had tough childhoods didn't entitle them to feel justified in murder, theft, and just acting like self-absorbed preteens. It seems to allude to the theme of young people suffering mental illness merely wanting people to let them be themselves and "feel" instead of trying to "fix" them. However, I wasn't moved or impressed with the job that this comic did with those themes, especially since Sex Criminals and Garden State do a much better job.
The art is somewhat interesting, and reminded me of a cross between manga by Ai Yazawa (Paradise Kiss, Nana) who has a "high fashion" drawing style, except in color, and the art of Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are). It was refreshing to see art that was a little bit different, but I'm not sure I like it. I would've preferred it in black and white, or with thinner linework, maybe. Oh, and it was kind of cheesy that Stephenson knew that it might seem suspicious that everyone was super fashionable just to have a more interesting aesthetic, and put in a comment about how one of the group's "rules" was to always dress well >< -
'The Devil's Only Friend' by Dan Wells is the 4th book in the John Cleaver. This book falls into the urban fantasy genre with lots of monster
John Wayne Cleaver hunts down demons, but to the outside world, he appears to be a monster himself. The demons he's been hunting have killed most of the people in his life. Now, he finds himself on a special government team. Along with that, he finds himself with a new roommate, which is against John's wishes. John's got a gift for finding the demons and the FBI needs him, but he's not so sure he needs or wants the FBI. When a bunch of children in hospitals start to get sick and die and when a demon calling himself the Hunter shows up, John finds he is the only person able to find and stop them.
This book starts a new trilogy in the series. I like the character and I like that no character is safe (except probably our strange hero). The humor and gore are balanced right, and the writing is pretty good. I'll be looking to read more in this series.
I received a review copy of this ebook from Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook. -
Another entry into the "Would people with powers really choose to be heroes?" sub-genre of comics, but a particularly good and interesting one, and a little more realistic than some. The first three-quarters of this are essentially a philosophical examination of human beings' capacity for good and evil without resorting to blacks and whites, which I found refreshing after having not really intellectually stimulated myself in a couple of GNs and a J-FIC. The last bit is kind of a justification for balancing towards "bad" as a rephrase of the Law of the Jungle, but it falls flat, and you're kind of glad to see it go before the book sets itself up to be far more interesting than a cloistered little group of picked on people with powers. I'm very interested to read more of this.
