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El Goonish Shive #1
Read Or The Owl Will Eat You
186 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2005
About the author
Dan Shive
3 books6 followersDaniel Elliot Shive is the creator, author and artist of the webcomic El Goonish Shive.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 14, 2023
El Goonish Shive is an incredibly long series, running for over 20 years at egscomics.com. This collection is a nice little booklet of the first 150-ish comic pages out of 2800. It's not perfect - being that this was drawn and written in 2001, when Dan was just starting out, there's a lot of rough patches. The art's amateurish, the writing can be both dense and light at the same time and it's not very consistent.
Still, despite these really humble beginnings, people loved it - so Dan kept it up. Twenty years later, El Goonish Shive is one of the best web comics on the internet, especially when it comes to LGBT and mental health rep. Characters will nonchalantly change genders, or date the opposite sex, or even come to terms with their own asexuality. All of this while weaving in stories of high school kids dealing with fantastical going-ons in their own backyard.
There's science fiction mumbo jumbo, there's nerd references galore that also don't feel obtrusive and annoying, there's moments of genuine heart that made me cry so much and just thinking about it has me feeling a whole lot. Dan's art and writing has improved so goddamn much over the years that going back and reading from the start, i.e. this book, is such a nostalgia trip.
I ADORE El Goonish Shive. I always will.
This particular book is one of only two ever made for the series. Check out the start at https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2002-...
Still, despite these really humble beginnings, people loved it - so Dan kept it up. Twenty years later, El Goonish Shive is one of the best web comics on the internet, especially when it comes to LGBT and mental health rep. Characters will nonchalantly change genders, or date the opposite sex, or even come to terms with their own asexuality. All of this while weaving in stories of high school kids dealing with fantastical going-ons in their own backyard.
There's science fiction mumbo jumbo, there's nerd references galore that also don't feel obtrusive and annoying, there's moments of genuine heart that made me cry so much and just thinking about it has me feeling a whole lot. Dan's art and writing has improved so goddamn much over the years that going back and reading from the start, i.e. this book, is such a nostalgia trip.
I ADORE El Goonish Shive. I always will.
This particular book is one of only two ever made for the series. Check out the start at https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2002-...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews