Level Up

Really enjoyed this. The art was so different from American Born Chinese, it took me by surprise! But I liked the simplistic style and I found the story easier to follow. Very touching.

This is one of those stories that can only be told through its chosen medium, an exemplar of the form. I'm not sure I would have thought a “boy comes to term with his father's death through medical school and videogames” story could have been pulled off successfully, but there you go. It's heart-wrenching, redeeming, joyful and a little bit crazypants.

Went in with high hopes, but this had nothing on American Born Chinese. This felt like a quarter of a graphic novel, with all the character development scalped out and the plot thinned to meet some sort of low page count requirement. The bones were there, and the skeleton was good, but there was no meat on ‘em.