Graphic Natural Disasters
With Katrina and the Asian tsunami still fresh on the world’s mind, there’s no time like the present to school kids in God’s weather-borne wrath with Rosen’s GRAPHIC NATURAL DISASTERS series of informative, educational comic books. Like the company’s recent GRAPHIC MYSTERIES line, this comes with six titles, each dealing with a different theme in three illustrated true-life tales and supplemental fact pages.
Hurricane Katrina is among those depicted in HURRICANES, complete with a cover that looks like a guy is breakdancing mid-storm. Without getting too gory, this volume does a good job of showing the horror of such events, not only during, but after. TSUNAMIS & FLOODS could be its companion volume – its cover makes its character look like CGI Barbie dolls – but the art on this one is sketchier and a little rushed-looking.
Getting away from water, AVALANCHES & LANDSLIDES has snow and mud covered. Even if the events aren’t as historically noteworthy, the book spans 100 years of them. In EARTHQUAKES, the 1995 quake of Kobe, Japan stands out, in all-out Irwin Allen fashion.
Vesuvius, Krakatoa and Mount St. Helens are depicted in VOLCANOES, making it probably the most history-friendly of the bunch, but the best of them all is TORNADOES & SUPERSTORMS. I don’t know if that’s because twisters are the only natural disaster I’ve ever had a brush with, but it appealed to me the most, even if it seems bizarre to exclude the state of Oklahoma entirely. Included among the trio of stories is the great wave o’ water from THE PERFECT STORM.
All in all, the scripts by Gary Jeffrey and Rob Shone are well-paced in their brevity, and the art ranges from decent to barely passable, depending on who’s responsible for the illustration. As such, the individual titles in GRAPHIC NATURAL DISASTERS enjoy and suffer from the same pros and cons as GRAPHIC MYSTERIES. Their target audience of grade-school kids, however, are bound to be far less discriminating. –Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• GRAPHIC MYSTERIES
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