Wires and Nerve (Wires and Nerve, #1)

by Marissa Meyer

[nannah]

Okay, so I'm a huge fan of The Lunar Chronicles, but had no idea of a graphic novel continuation until I saw this on B&N's shelf. It was a spur-of-the-moment purchase, and I was incredibly excited to read it. Unfortunately, I was also super disappointed. :S

Wires and Nerve takes place just after the series has ended. Cinder/Selene is trying to be the best queen she can be under the current situations and is trying to patch things up with Earth. There's just one problem: she's promised to remove the mutant wolfmen from Earth but has no idea how. Helpful as always, her android Iko has offered to round the packs up herself, and that's basically how this graphic novel begins.

At first glance, the cover art seems pretty dynamic and fascinating. But the first couple pages in, I could tell the art and I weren't going to get along ...

I don't know what it is about the art style but ... I think I'm just not a fan, maybe. Most panels seemed a bit rushed, with lines not even connecting to each other when they seemed like they needed to -- aka the art seemed more like a final draft of sketches rather than something ready to be published. And I know that sounds really harsh; as an artist I especially know how labor-intensive a graphic novel really is too! But character designs all had similar face shapes, expressions, etc.

Except for some rather disturbing things ... I first noticed it on what I think was Emperor Kai's first close up? I had thought every time he was drawn there was a peculiar expression on his face, and then I noticed his eyes were always sketched as that kind of stereotypical closed, slanted East Asian slits. I checked back, and yeah, every time. Every single time, they were slanted slits. Except for maybe his Super Close-ups at the very end, he had those stereotypical racist slits. It's ... painful. For a book with a ton of diversity (in 2018, damnit!), seeing something like this published is just ridiculous. How many people did this have to go through ... and yet still get published?

Anyway, even besides this, I usually enjoy Marissa Meyer's writing because it's rather campy and fun, but I think the art style didn't improve it at all. Maybe it's just not something that goes well with a graphic novel format? I'm not sure what it was to be honest, but the story and its dialogue felt a bit too cheesy to me, but maybe I really was too distracted by the art.

Whatever it Really was, I didn't enjoy this book very much.