| Title | : | Pawn Shop |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1940878047 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781940878041 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 100 |
| Publication | : | First published September 22, 2015 |
Written by Joey Esposito (Footprints) and drawn by Sean Von Gorman (Toe Tag Riot), Pawn Shop is a slice-of-life tale that weaves together separate lives to celebrate the ever-changing nature of New York City and the people that make it the greatest city in the world.
Pawn Shop Reviews
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A very touching story that intersects four peoples lives in New York. We meet 4 individuals who are all dealing with their own struggle but happen to cross each others path over the coarse of a few days. The story is really well done, its humanistic and very emotional, but not in a sad or desperate way. I thought the writing was wonderful and sweet, it resonated with me in a way most graphic novels only try to attempt. Highly recommended.
Some of my favorite lines:
" I guess I moved to try and leave the ghosts of this city behind. Funny I never realized I was the one haunting it all along"
"Growing up in t he city, you ride trains your entire life, On a rail from one place to the next. At a certain point you realize that those tracks aren't going ever going to change. Ride them forever and you'll stop at the same places"
" I think of New York as a giant pinball machine...We're all our own metal ball and everyone else is a bumper. You start out on a narrow track. headed in one direction. but the people you meet..they spin you in a different direction that you never planned on going. ( my favorite) -
I love stories that capture the idea of multiple lives overlapping. Not just a group of friends, or family, but those random encounters that you have on a daily basis. They might not mean much to you, but those other people have their own stories and things they are going through that you won't even know about.
Love it.
Pawn Shop perfectly captures that idea, and tells several stories with a common theme of living for yourself and the way that will bring you happiness.
Would definitely recommend picking this one up.
Copy courtesy of Diamond Book Distributors/Z2 Comics, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review -
[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]
Four people in New York, whose lives intersect, briefly connect, are more or less related to each other, through a common denominator: a simple pawn shop, in which old memories come to life, long-lost items surface again, from one hand to the other, for various reasons. Some honest, some not. Some out of need, some just by chance.
Harold, Arthur, Jen and Samantha all live different lives, coming from different backgrounds, but all marred with regrets. Regrets about not proposing sooner to a wife who died too soon after the wedding. About not daring confessing to the person who matters most. About letting someone else control your life because of just one bit of leverage. About trying to do what's best for your family, to the point of neglecting your own life—yet you cannot let go, and if you do, guilt is only waiting at the corner.
I didn't enjoy the art, I admit, but the stories were interesting, as well as the way they connected: through just enough little coincidences, but not enough to look as if they were too many or too unbelievable. For instance, it wasn't illogical for Samantha to meet or at least see those people who always travelled the same subway line at the same time every day. For Arthur to see her, since he worked as a nurse to help her ailing brother. Or even for Jen to bump into Harold upon exiting the pawn shop.
I may have liked to see a little more about their lives, especially Jen's, as her boyfriend implied that one word from him could destroy her life (in the end, we won't know if he did or not). Or maybe there'll be a second volume to tell us more about these characters? I don't know. It both feels pretty complete as is it, with this "want" more a whim on my part than out of any fault of the book.
Fairly interesting, in any case, and very touching when it came to human feelings and how even little things can cause a lot of changes to happen. Changes that are life-altering, though not necessarily in a grand way: subtlety can have just as much weight, after all.
3.5 stars. -
Pretty cool book with four different stories all connected via a Pawn Shop. And an accompanying Spotify playlist too. Would be great to have more background on the Pawn Shop in question.
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Any story that starts out with a playlist of its own soundtrack will immediately endear itself to me. It demonstrates an author's attention to detail in creating an experience for his or her reader. A purposefulness that rounds out the visual storytelling with a distinct sense of time and place.
And the songs picked by Joey Esposito to accompany his book Pawn Shop served to heighten the feelings of reflection and nostalgia and connectedness that are so lovingly woven into the story itself. It seems to be such a simple story of individuals whose paths cross within the hustle and bustle of New York City. But in its simplicity, Esposito creates real people who are at turning points in their lives. The story captures the intersection of lives in the city, whose comings and goings are well-embodied in the physicality of the Pawn Shop, and is imbued with meaning as we see the impact a simple conversation with a stranger can have on one another's lives, if we are present in the moment.
A great reading experience that made my heart happy.
I originally encountered this graphic novel through NetGalley, who gave me a copy in exchange for an honest review. -
This was AMAZING. I won't be surprised if it wins some awards next year.
Told in four chapters, each chapter is from the perspective of a different person in NYC, and while the four characters are strangers (well, two of them know each other but that's it) they all cross paths with each other, and all of the stories can be tied to a single Pawn Shop.
It was absolutely beautifully written, and I couldn't put it down. The characters had amazing backstories, and it was all just so real. I could easily imagine this happening in NYC - you just never know what's going on with that old man you bump into on the subway!
The other piece I found brilliant was the playlist listed at the beginning that is meant to be played while you read. While I didn't get the chance to do that (I read this at work), I'll have to re-read in the future with the musical selections. I recognized a few of the songs listed and I can just imagine how the music will take the experience to the next level! -
I received a copy of Pawn Shop from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Pawn Shop is an absolutely beautiful book. It tells the story of four different people, and how those stories intertwine. There's so much meaning to every story and so much depth to every character, that I was just in love with every page of this graphic novel.
At first I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy it, because the description was just very dull sounding. In fact, I had very little hope of liking it, especially because the art didn't explode off the page and wow me. But I am so glad I gave it a chance anyways.
Without giving too much away, this is easily one of my favorite reads this year, even without any major action or adventure. I think it will go well with any audience, too, because it's one of those universal heart-warming books. Please give this one a chance and pick it up. -
Pawn Shop is a deceptively simple story the loosely intertwined lives of four New Yorkers that brings on a lot of feels in such sparse content. Although I didn't love the art style, others probably find it too "cartooney" and diffuse, the facial expressions, body language, and pacing communicate the poignancy of the stories more than sufficiently. Pawn Shop doesn't try too hard like many other similarly-structured stories (I admit that when I read that it was about intertwined lives, I rolled my eyes, remembering when this became all-the-rage not too long ago). Instead of being too coincidental, the contacts among the characters are brief, yet still convey the feelings of human melancholy, loneliness, and hope.
Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC. -
FTC Disclosure: I received this eARC through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
Beautiful story and gorgeous art! I love how each chapter is focused on a different character but ultimately each story is connected to the others in some way. Each character is unique and has their own motivations that make them interesting to read about. I want more! Graphic novels are increasingly becoming a new favorite genre of book for me because they are so quick and simple to read.
I feel like there could be a better cover for this. There is a final image in the ARC that would be lovely. -
"Pawn Shop" is an interesting collection of stories about the interweaving lives of people in New York and the pawn shop they all frequent.
I found Joey Esposito's story to be quite touching at times. There's an old man who misses his wife, a nurse who wants to ask out her patient's sister, the sister who wants to ask out the nurse and a homeless girl who wants to get out of a horrible relationship.
I loved how the stories interacted and that it showed that even in a big city like NYC we all live in a very small world. -
Pawn Shop is a set of great short stories run in parallel. Each story overlaps in a way that allows the reader alternate perspective of the events as they happen. The resulting collective reminded me of one involving time travel in that you have past, inside knowledge of the present. What a great, thoughtful read.
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Wow! I was not sure what to expect, and after reading the first story I thought "man, this thing is going to bum me out," but it turned out to be really cool and well done... I won't say anything else so as not to spoil it, but I really enjoyed it!
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A testament to the emotional power the comic artform can have. Fantastic.
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Deus ex Pawn Shop!
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4.5/5
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A New York-based story of intersecting lives.
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I picked this novel up because I liked its premise of how the lives/narratives of strangers can profoundly interconnect. There's something uplifting in the idea that no matter how meaningless your life feels, who you are, and how you act, does affect the people around you. We rarely have the chance to recognize how we influence people, for better or worse, accidentally and unintentionally.
So perhaps this novel bizarrely makes a case for Aristotelian virtue ethics and faith-based ethics: that being a good person isn't bound up in the few grand choices we make, but in the small habits we cultivate and how we live. Jim Butcher's short story "The Warrior" in 'Side Jobs' has a similar moral.
While I don't typically like the style of illustrations--I've never seen watercolour used for a graphic novel--they fit the setting and story. The incomplete edges of objects and wavering colours suggest the characters and their city in continuous transition, their inchoate identities, the lack of boundaries in seemingly discrete lives. The dirty palette, heavy on smog-greys and browns, even matches my memories of New York. The illustrations necessarily deviate from physical realism: they draw out the feeling of a place rather than drawing the place itself. They're ugly in the way of Baudelaire's poems--the juxtaposition of a beautiful narrative against an uninspiring background intensifies both.
And besides this-well. The short story is just really well put together. They do a lot of characterization in a few lines.
AO3 Tags for this story: Noncon, drug use, bad haircuts.
Quotes:
"I've more or less followed the rules. Not rules as in 'the law', I guess, but more like the rules of expectation. You be nice to people, you do well in school, you work hard, and things fall into place. Like a puzzle... what they don't tell you is the puzzle you're building is like one from a kindergarten class. Bits and pieces of different puzzles mixed together... there have been millions of people before you, messing things up and dictating what pieces you get to play with. The truth is, those mixed and matched pieces are never going to fit together right. Doesn't mean you should stop trying." -
Pawn Shop, written by former IGN Comics Editor Joey Esposito with art by Sean Von Gorman, follows the lives of four lost souls who live in the city that never sleeps. Although different in their own way, each character is bound to each other by a pawn shop in New York. The comic got off the ground thanks to a kickstarter campaign that drew a lot of attention thanks to Esposito’s work on Fables and his first book Footprints (which is about a Bigfoot detective), which was also funded thanks to kickstarter.
The four chapters in Pawn Shop are designated to Harold, an elderly widow who is looking for his wife’s mannequin bust; Arthur, a nurse who is having a difficult time trying to balance his work life with his love life; Jen, a drug addict who is having a difficult time trying live in New York City; and Samantha, a New York City employee who is dealing with the guilt of no longer possessing the strength to care for her brother.
The story is solid on it’s own, even without breaking up the stories into four chapters, Pawn Shop would have been an interesting read. Each character is reasonably fleshed out and could have probably carried their own story on their own. That said, interactions are the strongest through Samantha, who punches Harold’s tickets when he goes into New York and Arthur who is taking care of Samantha’s little brother while harboring strong emotions for her. Haunted by the accident that killed her parents and put her brother in a coma, Samantha is trying to keep a grip as bills keep piling up at a rate faster than she can manage.
Jen on the other hand doesn’t have the same types of interaction with characters as Samantha does. Jen does inspire Arthur to change, and her interactions with Harold are essential to each others stories, but both are so brief that they happen in only a few panels. Her time with Samantha is so non-existent that her story would have been the same even if they cut out Samantha’s cameo. It’s the lack of interaction with the other characters that makes Jen interesting. She’s such an odd woman out when compared to the rest of the characters in Pawn Shop that you actually want to know more about her. There is a lot of untapped potential for Jen, too much to be played out in one short chapter.
The art of Pawn Shop is rather nice and has fits the story perfectly. Gorman doesn’t stray away from showing characters with wrinkles, blemishes, and pimples. They can look a little ugly, but that’s one of the nice things about Pawn Shop, sharing the same flaws that normal people have is something that doesn’t show up that often, even in indie comics.
The colors for Pawn Shop are done by Jonathan Moore and Sean Von Gorman, while neither one is better than the other, Moore’s pages tend to be darker and more filled out than Gorman’s. These differences don’t take anything away from the comic and might even be more fitting since the first chapter, colored by Gorman, has a lighter feel to it than the later chapters.
Pawn Shop tries something different than most comics by giving the reader a playlist of songs to listen to while reading their chapters. The music is pretty varied, with artists from Ella Fitzgerald to the Smiths. Each playlist does a pretty good job of defining the character in their chapters, but some artists seem out of place for the characters they represent. Jen has some pretty interesting artists in her playlist, but it feels like whoever was in charge of the playlists decided to stick with the indie/folk music aesthetic from the other playlists. It’s not difficult to find punk and metal songs about drug abuse, abandonment, and fear, so it’s confusing to see Jen’s playlist filled with artists like Tom Petty and Elliot Smith. The only songs that fit well are “To Bring You My Love” by PJ Harvey and “Iron Man” by Nico Vega.
Pawn Shop is a pretty interesting comic; it’s more down to earth than even some other indie comics out there, with the inclusion of music playlists and interconnecting stories it tries to be different, but the problem may be in just how short it is. -
This review originally published in
Looking For a Good Book. Rated 4.25 of 5
A word that I probably haven't used yet in any of my descriptions of a book, but one I will use here: This is a quaint little story.
Once I opened this book, I didn't expect to enjoy it very much. I think that the artwork is ... lacking. It is flat, more sketch-like than finished art, and proportions are often skewed. It struck me as the work of an immature artist who hasn't developed their talent yet (I know nothing about the artist, Sean von Gorman). On the other hand, the panels weren't distracting with too much background detail, and the characters were mostly easy to identify.
The story was pretty simple. Four chapters to this book and each chapter follows a different person and not surprisingly, these four people, who lead four very different lives, not only cross paths, but they touch one-another's lives in some way. There really isn't much more to it than that, except to say that each of these individuals seem to need to be touched by these strangers, which makes the story more poignant.
What I found while reading this was that I was really caught up in the story and in the lives of these characters, much to my surprise. And despite my initial reactions to the art, once I was in the story, I never really thought about the art again. It moved the story forward and helped to tell the story. It did precisely what it was intended to do, and did not distract or over-shadow the story.
It might have been nice to get a little more background on these characters, but for what this was, a one-shot, 100 page graphic novel, it works really well and is, as I say ... quaint.
Looking for a good book? Pawn Shop is a surprisingly good book. It sneaks up on you, and don't judge it simply by flipping through the pages at your local store ... buy it and read it, and you won't be disappointed.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review. -
I received this book from the publisher on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Pawn Shop is a graphic novel that connects four people that don't know each other but somehow brings them closer to what they've been looking for.
Harold's story was at first sad but I was satisfied with the ending. It made me realise that no matter how long you waited for someone, the fact is the time spent when you were with them. Also, you might find what you've been looking for around the corner.
Arthur's story was a bit confusing but I think it was about taking a chance and breaking away from the routine to go after what you want.
With Jen, it doesn't matter how you look or the things you've done. It's still possible to change. If you want to leave those bad things behind, do it. No one's stopping you. It's your life, your choice.
Samantha gave up everything she wanted to take care of her brother and she felt guilty sending him away because she couldn't take care of him anymore. But she was still rewarded in a way for all the sacrifices she made.
I liked the story line. I didn't mind the graphics all that much because the story was great. The owner of the store kept saying things weren't so great at the moment, but he didn't know that his store was bringing happiness to people. Maybe he wasn't doing so well, but in my opinion, without his store, those people wouldn't have gotten an okay ending.
3.5 stars from me. -
'Pawn Shop' by Joey Esposito with art by Sean Von Gorman tells an intertwining story revolving around, you guessed it, a pawn shop. Actually, it's more the items one buys and sells in this particular shop.
An old man has lost his wife of 30 years and moved away from the city, but he keeps being drawn back to the old neighborhoods and places he went with his wife, while he looks for something long thought lost. A lonely hospice nurse tries to find the courage to express his feelings to the sister of his patient. A young punk makes a series of bad choices. A woman who works on the train wants to make more of her life after hearing of the death of a beloved relative.
There are 4 distinct narratives with intertwining characters. There are also items that get bought and sold in the pawn shop that feature in the story. The stories are mostly poignant and moving. I liked how the stories focused on how random encounters can be a bit magical. I liked the mix of characters and the stories, and I'm glad I gave this a shot.
I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Diamond Book Distributors, Z2 Comics, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel. -
This is a series of intertwined stories that tangentially involve a pawn shop, and more directly involve more coincidences and dramatic irony than your normal sappy romance movie. A newly widowed man, a home health care nurse, a ticket taker, and a troubled twenty-something cross paths multiple times with a backdrop of New York. It's a bit treacly, but enjoyable in its focus on human characters rather than major events. The artwork is... well it supports the story, but it felt a bit amateurish to me. Not quite enough to actively distract from the stories, but it definitely didn't add anything.
If you like movies made up of intertwining vignettes, this is a good graphic novel for you. It's definitely not super heroes or high drama, but it's a nice, sweet little collection.
