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"As one of the most magnetic icons of modern pop culture, David Bowie seduced generations of fans with his music and counterculture persona. While Bowie's legacy as a musician is remarkable and genre-defying, as a visual performer he obliterate stage theatrics with his psychedelic aesthetics, larger-than-life image, and way of hovering on the border of the surreal. Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns & Moonage Daydreams chronicles the rise of David Bowie's career from obscurity to fame, as well as the rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust, Bowie's historic alter ego. Ziggy accompanies Bowie on his rocky ride to the top, but when the Spiders from Mars finally implode and Bowie leaves London for a nomadic life abroad, he must lay the Ziggy persona to rest for good. The end of Ziggy eventually changes not only Bowie but the world itself."--Provided by publisher.… (more)
User reviews
The art is nice and
Despite its shortcomings, this is a book I'll return to for its style, I just wish it had more
Focused on Bowie’s spectacular rise to fame during the Ziggy Stardust era it illustrates a lot
But I will say that while the script is crammed full of facts, dates, and people it offers little insight. What it did do is make me interested in finding a good prose comprehensive biography of Bowie to learn more about this remarkable artist and his cultural impact.
David Bowie was a cultural icon, eventually touching and influencing not only the people who followed his career, but the foundations of taste and culture around him. From humble beginnings to
But if you are looking to discover what David Bowie was inside, this book not only misses that mark, it completely ignores it. You do have scenes from a life, but the “life” itself, the meanings and desires of Bowie, go totally unexamined. You do not get a feeling as to the ‘why’ of his actions, only the actions themselves. This is a high grade picture show of his career, but nothing more.
The illustrations are tremendous and the journey is well depicted, but at the end of the day I felt as if I had not gained one ounce of insight into the person Bowie was, but only a glorified showing of the person Bowie wanted others to see.
As you can tell, I do have mixed emotions surrounding this book, but perhaps that is the lesson of Bowie’s life. The viewer must be prepared to not like everything that was done, but admire the courage it took for David Bowie to do them
First, because it's a graphic novel, let's talk about the best thing here, and that's the art. Finally, someone's gone and done a graphic novel about a musical artist, and they can actually draw that artist. Not cartoony, not in a "style"...they draw the damn artist. So, kudos
But...not so fast. Obviously he lightboxed a lot of this stuff, because, having read a lot on Bowie and collecting many books about him, I recognized the original photos behind the art. And it appears that Allred couldn't find many for Bowie's lousy manager Tony De Fries, because there's two pages where he appears at least three times, and it's the same drawing, the same expression, every single time. I mean, sure, you need references, but goddammit, you're an artist, not a tracer...extrapolate a little, willya?
So, major points off for that.
And then...sigh...we come to what may laughingly be called the "story"...which it's not. It's essentially a chronology of events both major and minor, and a detailing of every soon-to-be-famous person either met Bowie or was in the audience for one of his shows.
But what it really is is a dry bullet list of people, places, and events. My god, at some points, there's literally a single panel showing each of the band members, and they're speaking the names of the cities they played.
It's pretty, but at the same time, it's pretty lame.
I mostly got this because I'm a huge fan of Mike Allred's art work. With that in mind, this is more of an art book then a biography. You really only get snippets of information. The writing, in my opinion, isn't that great. There's still a ton of questions I have and feel like I