The Alcoholic

No Spoilers:

Yesterday, Vertigo / DC released The Alcoholic, a new original hardcover graphic novel by Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel. I read the first forty-five pages at the store between customers, read some more last night after watching the long awaited return of the best show on tv, Pushing Daisies, and finished it this morning before my morning jog. The Alcoholic is fantastic! It reads very much like an autobiography (but don't let me saying that scare you away if you think autobio is usually boing) and the central character shares the same name as the author (on the liner notes on the back of the book it sates that the character "bears only a coincidental resemblance to the real-life writer" - yeah, right. Anyway regardless of how much of The Alcoholic is true, the reader is drawn into Jonathan's world immediately as the book follows Jonathan as he takes his first drink all the way through his later adult life, imparting on the reader the whole range of emotions as we see his life as an alcoholic unfold.

The Alcoholic is novelist Jonathan Ames' first graphic novel and he came out with all cylinders firing, helped to a great extent by artist Dean Hapiel, who does the best art I've ever seen by him (and I'll have to admit that I previously wasn't a very big Hapiel fan). 136 pages, hardcover, for only $19.99 - this will surely be amongst the front runners in next years Eisners. Now I wish I had a good German dunkel (dark) beer!