Marble Season (2023 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

From the look at 2013's Marble Season, one can see a fight about to break out. However, based on the name of the title, the about to begin melee is not over the classic kids game of marbles. 

Marble Season is a semi-autobiographical look at the childhood of Gilbert Hernandez. More of a series of glimpses in the lives of a group of school kids that live in an interracial neighborhood in Southern California. Set sometime in the early 1960s, these vignettes reflect a nostalgic love for the music, TV shows and films, games, comic books and especially that childlike wonder of growing up.

The title for this book actually is about the events that transpired during a child's book-ended experience with the game of marbles. At the beginning of this book, main-character Huey, a Hispanic boy of around the age of 10, is teaching a young girl how to play the game. To help her practice, Huey gives the girl one of his marbles. Once Huey leaves, the child promptly swallows the glass ball. At the end of this graphic novel, Huey is informed that the little girl had to be hospitalized after swallowing several more marbles! Everything that happens in-between is the official Marble Season game card.

Author and artist Gilbert Hernandez is one of the founding fathers of the second generation of underground comics. In 1981, Gilbert, along with brothers Jaime and Mario, created the groundbreaking comic Love and Rockets. In issue #3, Gilbert introduced readers to the magical land of Palomar. Set in a fictional Latina American village, Gilbert's Palomar is a land out of time, free of modern day technology, led by a fiercely independent young woman named Luba.

2014's Bumperhead is a rough follow-up to Marble Season. The book doesn't have any of the main characters from this book. But like the first book, Bumperhead is set in Oxnard, Gilbert Hernandez' hometown, and all of the adults are mysteriously absent. Critics liken both stories as a sort of mature, lifelike Peanuts. And if you take a look at Huey's baby brother, he sure does look like a tiny version of Charlie Brown. However more adult Marble Season may be considered to the Charles Schulz comic strip, this work is nothing compared to the more explicit subject material covered in Herandez' Love and Rockets and further body of work. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #19 (Main Character is a Minority) of the 2023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.