greendale:; an advance look

At the ComicsPRO Memphis meeting last week (the annual retailer trade meeting, of which my looong blog entry is sadly not going to happen until next week), DC / Vertigo presented an advance copy of greendale, a graphic novel inspired by Neil Young's concept album from a couple of years ago to attending retailers. The copy of greendale we received is a softcover version (called a galley) of the hardcover version that will be released in June and only the first twelve pages of greendale's 156 pages are in color (the entire graphic novel will be in color when it goes on sale), but those twelve color pages serve to show people just how excellent the final version will be.

Neil Young's greendale, the graphic novel, is written by Joshua Dysart (who also writes the excellent Unknown Solider for Vertigo) and beautifully drawn by Cliff Chiang (artist on Vertigo's Human Target). Greendale is the name of a town in southern California, where the central character, Sun Green lives. greendale does have a very liberal, tree hugging vibe (qualities that are very attractive to me), like Neil Young's music, so it does help if you share these politics, but ultimately greendale is a book about a young woman's self discovery, life, the beauty of the earth, love, and personal growth. One also doesn't have to enjoy Neil Young's music (or have heard his greendale album, of which there's also a good DVD interpretation in which the characters sing all of the lyrics of the album) to enjoy the greendale graphic novel (although people who don't like Neil Young's music is something I could never wrap my head around) as this was even better than the high expectations I had when I first heard that Dsyart and Chiang were going to do this graphic novel. Triple AAA+!! - this was obviously a labor of love for everyone who worked on it (and getting to read this months before its release was definitely a highlight for me of this year's ComicsPRO meeting). For those of you that live in Vegas and or are already regulars of Alternate Reality Comics (and thanks for that!), please ask me to show you this book.