Lewis Trondheim Ç 1 READ & DOWNLOAD
-Ahhh.
-This is nice.
-What a lovely day.
-How charming!
-Adorable.
-AHHH!
-Oh no!
-How did this happen?
-How awful.
-Horrible really.
-But now what's going on?
-Oh god! Why are you doing that?
-Nooooo, stop!
-What are you thinking?!
-I don't understand, but ACK
-Why did this have to happen?
-WHY DO THEY KEEP DOING THAT?!
-whew
-okay
-but wait
-Augh!
And so on. Basically, adorable creatures set out across their alien world on a perfect day only to do awful things to eachother and to have awful things done to them. It draws a sort of inscrutable horror from the fact that it's written entirely in alien glyphs (which I love), so reasons for what transpires are very unclear. But then, so are the reasons for many real-world atrocities. Because this does seem to be reaching for a sort of universality. Ultimately the book manages an impressive sense of pathos, isolation from other people (or creatures), and the pervasive incomprehensibility of cruelty. In this way, it is actually vastly more humane and worthwhile than various superficially similar work that exists only to subject cute drawings to awful fates. Comics Graphic Novels 5/5 estrellas.
Me dejó tan confundida y perturbada que se merece todas las estrellas. Comics Graphic Novels Smart, funny and terrific, but pretty bleak and the gross-out factor was high. Comics Graphic Novels
If you find the above oddly funny, as I did, then this is the book for you.
A.L.I.E.E.E.N. is an interesting experiment. It has an untraditional story structure, a bizarre sense of humor, and an unusual art style, so everything feels... alien. However, the individual elements of the story are pulled from traditional styles, so everything also feels oddly familiar. This allows us see our own humanity reflected in the story. Even though the book is wordless, and the protagonists are round, many-eyed, tentacled, fuzzy-eared cartoon aliens, some parts, such as the effects of peer pressure and guilt, ring very true.
I'm conflicted about the rating, but I do appreciate funny, experimental fiction; let's say, 3 stars (very good) for the book, plus an extra one for being so surprising in its strangeness and originality. Comics Graphic Novels I do *not* know what to make of this little volume. The art is simple but really appealing, and the wordless brutal unintended hurts suffered by its many characters oddly endearing, if gross and often inexplicable. My favourite character was the creature who could do no right, and remains all alone. Comics Graphic Novels
Giving this one a 3.5 stars. I read this after reading The Portable Frank to compare since both are wordless and surreal graphic novels. I also saw a review on here that mentioned them collectively, and I wanted to try them out together.
I have to admit that I did not enjoy this as much as Frank. Although very cute character design and clever premise (an alien comic book found by a human), I was let down by the lack of overall narrative. The stories filled me with ongoing feelings of terror and despair, which would have been fine had there been meaning for them. It seemed the entirety of the book would go from disturbing terror to shock value bodily horror and back and forth, trying to justify itself with only those concepts. It made me wonder if there was a reason to this book at all, other than the cute art. It seemed like it was trying to open a discussion for bigger, important ideas - but ended them flatly with meaningless gross outs. I've seen gross out horror done well before like the work of Junji Ito - but this just doesn't work for me. I agree with another reviewer that it seemed too disturbing for children, but not enough content to be enjoyed by older readers. Just an overall unfortunately, disjointed book. Comics Graphic Novels cute character designs, pretty gruesome in an unsettlingly cutesy way. some interesting ideas in terms of predation, racial oppression, etc. is this for kids??? Comics Graphic Novels A sad weird collection of tiny wordless stories about aliens involved in mass eye-gouging and uncontrollable pooping. Comics Graphic Novels Lewis Trondheim manages to mix whimsy and horror in a beautiful way. These wordless (well, the stories do have an alien language, but not one that anyone on Earth can read) stories follow lovable and cute Pokemon-style characters who wander through a brutal world of death and disfigurement. The stories are uniformly bleak, but their cute and cuddly protagonists makes the whole thing funny. The interconnected stories end in a torrent of violence and goo, finishing with the perfectly cute symbol of loneliness, surrounded by a sea of shit. Really wonderful stuff. Trondheim can do practically anything. He's extremely experimental and a damn fine storyteller. These stories are straight storytelling and are damn fine. Comics Graphic Novels Lewis Trondheim makes me feel like the laziest person on the planet, or on any planet: he's been working for 16 or 17 years and made about a billion jillion comics, and they're all good, and he keeps working with more people and trying new things. A.L.I.E.E.E.N. (original title A.L.I.E.E.N.; in French, two E's are as funny as three) is like the result of some unwise bet by the devil: Sure you're versatile, you can do minimalist wordless slapstick strips, and you can do funny animals for grownups, and you can do fantasy parody comics full of sick humor for kids, but I bet you can't do all three at once! So this is a minimalist wordless slapstick funny animal fantasy grownup comic for kids, and it's like almost nothing else, and it is hilarious and sick, sick, sick, sick.
Allegedly it's a kids' comic from another planet, found discarded on Earth (so some of the pages look artfully weather-beaten), written in an unknown language, about a few dozen different kinds of brightly colored critters having a variety of serious problems. Some of the problems are pretty basic: one character accidentally pokes his eyes out on page two (Wertham was right!); another wants to give people presents, but they're not appreciated; another has to figure out what to do with a pet/friend/colleague who literally can't stop crapping, ever. Others are more complicated: why do cheerful Pokemon-looking people like to club little blue shrimpy people on the head?; why does the mad scientist(?) want to dissect a floating weeping ghost(?) that looks like the creature he just smooshed and fed to his plants(?)?; did the little birdie guy just die, or was that his clone that grew out of a clonifying eel type thing? Since you can't read the words, part of the fun is trying to figure out what the rules are, and in some cases you realize that you really just can't. It doesn't really matter, because the characters are so expressive - it's like Trondheim is playing an instrument whose notes are Happy, Hopeful, Hungry, Perplexed, Greedy, Bored, Scared, etc.
The one thing it kind of resembles is Jim Woodring's great Frank, which has a similar setting (mostly pastoral), things that turn into other things without warning, and no words. But where Frank is more haunting and esoteric - a chronicle of currents inside Woodring's head - A.L.I.E.E.E.N. reads like a plain fun narrative that just happens to include some incomprehensible and/or highly disturbing events. The overall message seems to be: the laws of nature are harsh, and all physical beings commit outrages or endure grossness, and these things are funny. Comics Graphic Novels
Beaten up, tattered, and weather worn, this volume has crossed through space to become the first extra-terrestrial comic book in print on earth. The language and even the alphabet are alien, but as human readers will soon discover, the themes and stories are universal. These interwoven stories and vignettes start out quite simply, but a darker, more complex side is gradually revealed as alien characters act out very human problems, from peer pressure to intolerance to the challenges of friendship. Beneath its apparently childlike and cartoony style, A.L.I.E.E.E.N. explores human nature, cruelty, and kindness with surprising depth and loads of humor.
A.L.I.E.E.E.N. is a nominee for the 2007 Eisner Awards for Best U.S. Edition of International Material and Best Writer/Artist - Humor. A.L.I.E.E.E.N.: Archives of Lost Issues and Earthly Editions of Extraterrestrial Novelties