ATTU: The Collected Volumes (Dover Graphic Novels)

I read a sailors story as a little kid and it always stuck with me as "classic" I have always like realistic war stuff, because of this I bought attu. Normally I do not like this type of genre. I love Kubert but Tor and his Tarzan stuff did nothing for me story wise(his art is always top notch). I don't really carry for sci-fi space or dinoursuas. With that said this book was great, the story and B&W art was captivating, I agree w. another review that some of the scanned art was not the highest quality, but it did not bug me, this art was old to start with, my only complaint was not being able to have a vol. 3 in it. The story was deep and the characters were thought provoking in a time when plot was not so important as art.

Sam Glanzman is one of the greatest artists in the history of comics and Attu is a clear reflection of that. It's extremely entertaining and most definitely leaves you wanting to read more! Everytime you think you know where the story's going, Sam throws in another twist. I highly recommend this book!

:)

Reprinted from some very low res scans. I would have liked to have at least seen the text cleaned up as it was difficult to even read at times. Even with the poor scans, the first 2 stories were enjoyable. The art and setting were very reminiscent of Joe Kubert's Tor. Attu is a curious caveman who must battle giants, dinosaurs, pygmies, and aliens. The lost 3rd story seems to have nothing to do with the previous 2 and feels more like a first draft for the character.Received an advance copy from Dover and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

'ATTU: The Collected Volumes' by Sam Glanzman features the two published books as well as a third never-before-published book. It's about cavemen and dinosaurs and space, but my review copy had terrible art reproductions.Starting with a foreword by Jeff Lemire and an introduction by Timothy Truman, we learn about the history of the book, and some about the artist Sam Glanzman. The books follow.Attu explores a mysterious cave which seems to have artifacts from the future and what looks like a crashed ship. Most interesting to him is the strange woman trapped in a glass case. Once she is freed, Attu learns that there is more to the universe than he could have imagined.The volume concludes with an afterword by Stephen R. Bissette and an extras section.Is this a classic? I don't think so. Sam Glanzman is a pretty good artist and I recommend another work I recently read by him called U.S.S. Stevens for a better example of his talent. Besides feeling really dated, the review copy I received looked like really bad photocopies and they were hard to read.I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Dover Publications and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

Attu is a caveman who lives on Earth in 137 million B.C. In his role as truth seeker, he visits the forbidden cave, which seems to be sort of a time machine, although the story gets a bit confusing, as if Sam Glanzman couldn’t decide whether this was a time travel or a space travel story. In any event, Attu encounters a woman in a transparent tube. Being a caveman’s caveman, Attu wants to make boom-boom with the woman, but even after heaving a boulder at the tube, he can’t get at her. Attu doesn’t understand that she’s in suspended animation and he wouldn’t care even if he did understand. All he knows is he wants to make boom-boom and he’s frustrated because boom-boom is unavailable. Let’s face it guys, we’ve all been there.Attu kills some people and a tiger and then encounters his gay caveman friend, not that Attu is gay, given his desire to make boom-boom with the woman in the tube, but he has a sense of social justice. He’s a progressive caveman. Or maybe he just has the heart of a rebel. Anyway, the gay caveman is the only one who understands that the big snake in the forbidden valley is really a river. The elders have forbidden lots of things, including rivers and time machines and men who make baskets when they should be hunting and killing.Attu goes on a journey to the valley with his gay caveman friend, where he encounters giants and pygmies and an elderly kung fu fighter and dinosaurs and strange devices. Eventually he unlocks the secret of the hot babe in the tube. But does he make boom-boom? No spoilers here. I’ll just say that Attu gets a lot smarter in the second issue, which allows him to understand a very long-winded explanation of how the hot babe came to the world he inhabits and another long-winded explanation of life on Drago and its neighboring planets. He has a Reefer Madness moment that’s a little silly, but he eventually has an interstellar adventure that’s sort of fun.Unfortunately, the story peters out at that point. Apparently, Sam Glanzman had more in mind, but for whatever reason, they weren’t published.Appended to the first two books, however, is book 3, which is a separate story, not a continuation of book 2. It begins with some “highly developed” warring tribes that predated prehistoric man, which I guess makes them pre-prehistoric. This turns out to be Attu’s origin story, shorter than the others, almost an afterthought that doesn’t quite fit.A long quasi-scholarly discussion of Attu fills out the volume for readers who are into that sort of thing. It reminds us that “prehistoric humans were really aliens” was a popular craze among the gullible in the 1980s, but my impression is that the story has the look and feel of something from the 1940s. It’s sort of an interesting curiosity, but whether Attu is an important contribution to the history of graphic storytelling strikes me a doubtful. Still, it held my interest enough to earn a weak 4 stars.

I was unfamiliar with most of his work and his name didn’t immediately leap to mind when I thought of old comic greats, but as you can see from the forward a lot of good artists (Jeff Lemire, Timothy Truman, Stephen R. Bissette) respect the work of Sam Glazman- and that’s enough to make me look at Attu in depth.For an old time artist who was used to everything he created being owned by the company outright, the chance to publish a creator-owned work must have been a dream come true. This book is a weird one. Ostensibly, it begins on Earth in 137 million BC (or BCE as they now call it) where cavemen and dinosaurs live together, but quickly adds many science fiction elements. Progressing at breakneck speed, our hero is quickly off planet and involved in interstellar intrigue. A lot of material, good material, is packed into this volume.

great book