The Hole: Consumer Culture, Volume 1 by Damian Duffy

The Hole: Consumer Culture, Volume 1 Reviews

• 
  Artnoose McMoose

  I read a lot of graphic novels and picked this one up from the library because of the words "consumer culture" on the cover. The premise seemed good enough: an critique of consumer culture in the form of an Elegba story (Vodou god of the crossroads).
  
  Although I really wanted to like it, I only made it through about a quarter of the way through. I feel bad about giving a novel with a good premise only one star, but it's really hard to get me to stop reading a novel, particularly a graphic novel. It's rare that I don't finish a book. I understand that it's an immense amount of work to draw a 150 page graphic novel. However, these are the reasons I stopped reading:
  
  1. The drawing style was okay, but some of the figures seemed stilted. It was distracting.
  2. What I would call post-production (because I can't think of another term for it)seemed hastily done. There were places where I could tell where one part of the drawing had had another element expanded in size and pasted in, because the line quality was different. Some parts were even pixelated because of this. With the amount of work that it must have been to make this, I think the post-production (layout, etc.) should have been higher quality. It does the artwork and story a disservice to skimp on post-production. Also, having a random 4 pages oriented vertically is distracting. I don't want to have to turn the book while reading unless there's a really good reason to do so.
  3. The story itself was hard to follow. I get that there were dream sequences and alternate realities, but I couldn't figure out what was going on a lot of the time.
• 
  B

  This book is a work of cultural genius. The metaphor of the hero "the hole" and his back story are amazing. There is so much to be said in the art work alone and its attention to detail but the way the story evolves around the God of Crossroads really puts things into a metaphysical perspective. What I liked the most was the written word in the background of scenes. They added layers to an already complex story. I also enjoyed the role that the perception of time played in the story. Characters will often repeat themselves or scenes will be replayed over as the story goes on. It made me reexamine scenes for importance or lack thereof. This graphic novel was made to entertain as well as enlighten and it certainly hit its mark with me.
• 
  Rick Jones

  The story was written well...I liked the characters, and I liked the direction of the storytelling, but the graphics left me dissatisfied. The visual style is already so full of punch that adding tricks and breaking the traditional box (all of the time!) made it all so chaotic that it overly complicated a complicated story, thus rendering it toothless. Add this to the jumpy timeline, and you just don't really care by the end of the storytelling.
• 
  Ron Turner

  The story wasn't really my cup of tea. But I liked the idea behind it and the background information on voodoo.
• 
  Lindsey

  amazing book exploring the world we live in and our need for crap. as well as voicing all our fears by craeting all mart wich is cvs Wal mart and walgreens all rolled into one. I actully had the pleasure of meeting Damian Duffy and my love for his creative book strengthend my opinon of it. If you can read it please do.