- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Titan Books Ltd; De Luxe edition edition (16 Dec 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0857682407
- ISBN-13: 978-0857682406
- Product Dimensions: 27.9 x 19 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
160,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #46 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Authors > Morrison, Grant
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Gorgeous and haunting... a success." --IGN.com
Product Description
Joe, an imaginative eleven year-old orphan suffering from Type 1 diabetes, can't fit in at school. One fateful day, he enters a vivid fantasy world in which he is the lost saviour of a fantastic land based on the layout and contents of his home. But is his quest really just an insulin-deprived delirium, from which he can die if he doesn't take his meds, or something much bigger?
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Firstly this book looks beautiful. Sean Murphy's art is amazing and captures the mood of the real world and the fantasy world wonderfully.
I heard a lot of criticism of this book from a lot of people that tried to read it as it came out in issues. I read it in one hit and loved it. I found the switching between reality and fantasy captivating and loved the way the real world was interpreted when it was seen through the eyes of his hypo.
This is a great self contained story.
I heard a lot of criticism of this book from a lot of people that tried to read it as it came out in issues. I read it in one hit and loved it. I found the switching between reality and fantasy captivating and loved the way the real world was interpreted when it was seen through the eyes of his hypo.
This is a great self contained story.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I have to give Grant Morrison credit -- few writers could turn a trip to the refrigerator into an epic fantasy adventure. But somehow he manages to do that in "Joe the Barbarian," deftly blurring the lines of fantasy and reality inside one young boy's head. It reads like a cross between "Alice in Wonderland" and "Lord of the Rings," but with more steampunk.
Joe is at home alone with his pet rat Jack. Joe also happens to be diabetic, and bullies stole his snacks earlier that day. When his blood sugar plummets, he struggles to get down the stairs to the hallucinating. In his head, he is the legendary Dying Boy, prophesied to save a strange fantasy world from the evil King Death. Oh, and Jack is a giant talking warrior-rat who comes along to help him.
In the real world, Joe is seriously ill and stumbling through his home, trying to get some soda pop before he falls into a diabetic coma. His hallucinating brain sees everything around him -- a bathtub, a staircase, a vicious dog -- as being part of a vast fantasy world, where airpunk planes fly, dwarves are in steampunk submarines, and ruined cities lead into the final battle.
Will Joe and Jack survive -- both in the real world and in the fantasy one -- and what secrets will be revealed to them if they do?
"Joe the Barbarian" is a simple story, and the beauty of it is in the execution. Grant Morrison takes a simple everyday problem, and manages to expand it into an epic quest, in a world as colorful, wild and strange as a kid's imagination. He even throws in a surprising twist near the end, adding a new dimension to Joe's quest for survival.
Also, the artwork is gorgeous. The real world is dark, shadowy, and filled with torrential rain, while Joe's inner world is exploding with color, strange inventions (steampunk submarines!), and expansive bright skies that seem to go forever.
However, Morrison also gives you the feeling that this world is starting to crumble into chaos because of King Death, and we even get some glimpses of what he's turning it into. And while he inserts some fun comic relief (there's a "giant" dwarf, who is basically normal-sized) and breathtaking action scenes, we never forget that the stakes are very real, and that our hero could easily die.
Joe himself is a solid classic protagonist -- quiet, remote, artistic, and a little embittered by his dad's untimely death. But he also has a lot of courage, as evidenced by his standoff against his enemy. Jack is almost as well-rounded a character, even in the real world -- he's a sweet little rat who obviously loves his owner, worries about him, and even takes on a giant dog to defend him.
"Joe the Barbarian" is a gorgeous piece of work, and Grant Morrison obviously lavished it with beautiful art and a likable young hero... and the most adorable rat you'll ever see.
Joe is at home alone with his pet rat Jack. Joe also happens to be diabetic, and bullies stole his snacks earlier that day. When his blood sugar plummets, he struggles to get down the stairs to the hallucinating. In his head, he is the legendary Dying Boy, prophesied to save a strange fantasy world from the evil King Death. Oh, and Jack is a giant talking warrior-rat who comes along to help him.
In the real world, Joe is seriously ill and stumbling through his home, trying to get some soda pop before he falls into a diabetic coma. His hallucinating brain sees everything around him -- a bathtub, a staircase, a vicious dog -- as being part of a vast fantasy world, where airpunk planes fly, dwarves are in steampunk submarines, and ruined cities lead into the final battle.
Will Joe and Jack survive -- both in the real world and in the fantasy one -- and what secrets will be revealed to them if they do?
"Joe the Barbarian" is a simple story, and the beauty of it is in the execution. Grant Morrison takes a simple everyday problem, and manages to expand it into an epic quest, in a world as colorful, wild and strange as a kid's imagination. He even throws in a surprising twist near the end, adding a new dimension to Joe's quest for survival.
Also, the artwork is gorgeous. The real world is dark, shadowy, and filled with torrential rain, while Joe's inner world is exploding with color, strange inventions (steampunk submarines!), and expansive bright skies that seem to go forever.
However, Morrison also gives you the feeling that this world is starting to crumble into chaos because of King Death, and we even get some glimpses of what he's turning it into. And while he inserts some fun comic relief (there's a "giant" dwarf, who is basically normal-sized) and breathtaking action scenes, we never forget that the stakes are very real, and that our hero could easily die.
Joe himself is a solid classic protagonist -- quiet, remote, artistic, and a little embittered by his dad's untimely death. But he also has a lot of courage, as evidenced by his standoff against his enemy. Jack is almost as well-rounded a character, even in the real world -- he's a sweet little rat who obviously loves his owner, worries about him, and even takes on a giant dog to defend him.
"Joe the Barbarian" is a gorgeous piece of work, and Grant Morrison obviously lavished it with beautiful art and a likable young hero... and the most adorable rat you'll ever see.
Format:Hardcover
This world: Joe Manson is a high school boy, likes drawing, is diabetic, has a pet rat called Jack and no friends, has a single mother working to save their house while his father is buried in a military grave having died fighting overseas.
The other world: Joe the Barbarian is a prophet called "The Dying Boy" who must traverse mountains, castles full of cowardly inventors, submarines full of toilet dwarves, with his companion, a fighting warrior rat called Jack, dodging flying demons, laser gun fights, epic battles, to flood the land with light and the Fountain of Life, and destroy evil King Death.
Grant Morrison writes a hugely inventive story of fantastic proportions, throwing in tropes from every fantasy story ever written of the band of heroes on a quest to destroy evil and save kingdoms of innocents. Joe is diabetic and it seems that his low blood sugar has triggered a vivid hallucination as he struggles to go from his bedroom attic to the kitchen downstairs to drink a soda and keep him from going into hypoglycaemic shock. But anyone who's read Morrison before or knows anything about him, knows that he is a true believer in parallel worlds and that there's more to life than we can see with our eyes. This book mirrors that philosophy as the smallest things in the "real world" are brought to life in the "other world", for example Joe makes himself a bath but forgets to turn off the tap causing the water to pour from the tub into the room and down the stairs, creating a new waterfall across the mountains in the other world.
While there's very little explanation for the who what where and why of the story, and Morrison just plunges the reader from the real world into this fantasy world, I felt that the pure energetic gusto of the storytelling coupled with Sean Murphy's superb artwork made this book an exceptional read for pure creativity alone. The story makes some sense once you read it and realise that it's this boy's way of understanding and coping with his father's death, though Morrison wants the reader to also believe in the fantastic, that it's out there and it's real and it's symbols in this world mean that it exists just beyond our reach - a near death experience can bring us into it, however briefly.
I think that if the reader allows the force of Morrison and Murphy's imaginations wash over themselves, this book will be enjoyable though at times frustratingly melodramatic and incongruous. "Joe the Barbarian" is nothing if not ambitious in its scope and incredibly creative throughout, though not without its flaws.
The other world: Joe the Barbarian is a prophet called "The Dying Boy" who must traverse mountains, castles full of cowardly inventors, submarines full of toilet dwarves, with his companion, a fighting warrior rat called Jack, dodging flying demons, laser gun fights, epic battles, to flood the land with light and the Fountain of Life, and destroy evil King Death.
Grant Morrison writes a hugely inventive story of fantastic proportions, throwing in tropes from every fantasy story ever written of the band of heroes on a quest to destroy evil and save kingdoms of innocents. Joe is diabetic and it seems that his low blood sugar has triggered a vivid hallucination as he struggles to go from his bedroom attic to the kitchen downstairs to drink a soda and keep him from going into hypoglycaemic shock. But anyone who's read Morrison before or knows anything about him, knows that he is a true believer in parallel worlds and that there's more to life than we can see with our eyes. This book mirrors that philosophy as the smallest things in the "real world" are brought to life in the "other world", for example Joe makes himself a bath but forgets to turn off the tap causing the water to pour from the tub into the room and down the stairs, creating a new waterfall across the mountains in the other world.
While there's very little explanation for the who what where and why of the story, and Morrison just plunges the reader from the real world into this fantasy world, I felt that the pure energetic gusto of the storytelling coupled with Sean Murphy's superb artwork made this book an exceptional read for pure creativity alone. The story makes some sense once you read it and realise that it's this boy's way of understanding and coping with his father's death, though Morrison wants the reader to also believe in the fantastic, that it's out there and it's real and it's symbols in this world mean that it exists just beyond our reach - a near death experience can bring us into it, however briefly.
I think that if the reader allows the force of Morrison and Murphy's imaginations wash over themselves, this book will be enjoyable though at times frustratingly melodramatic and incongruous. "Joe the Barbarian" is nothing if not ambitious in its scope and incredibly creative throughout, though not without its flaws.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great art, cleaver story line
This is just a great comic written by Grant Morrison and inked by Sean Murphy. It follows a teenager who mismedicates his diabetes and ends up having a hypo. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Ali Raheem
Mystifyingly underwhelming
I'm a huge Grant Morrison fan - I truly believe 'The Invisibles' is one of the finest literary achievements of the 20th century. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Tee Double You Bee Esq
Ok I suppose
Started off really well, then it seemed to loose itself,or was that filler.By the end I didn't totally understand what was going on, or maybe I didn't care. G.M. Read more
Published 11 months ago by No one important
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