This is a modern classic, full-stop. Synder and Lemire are a match made in heaven and tell a deeply personal tale with universal appeal. I'd love to see this adapted to a movie or a tv show sequel like Watchmen had. Read it! ( )

i remember really liking this... cool ideas

Surprisingly gorgeous, A.D is a mix of prose sections with illustrations and a more traditional graphic novel about a man struggling with his mortality and eventual lack of it. ( )

I wish I understood the ending ( )

What a dreary way to spend an hour or two. I was so disengaged from this awful story that I spent way too much time fixating on how often the art and the words don't seem to match. Was the artist also having trouble staying focused on the writing as he drew the script? (I see the copyeditor was having problems staying focused because he let a couple typos through. That may be due to the choice of the godawful typewriter font that takes up page after page after page.) Or maybe Lemire was working from a rough script and Snyder just didn't bother to look at the pictures closely as he slapped his final-draft drivel into the balloons and captions?

Most egregious example: In one scene we have a character spotting another character on the balcony of a "cape" house. In the illustration, there is no visible balcony on the Cape Cod style house. There is a balcony on the "geometric contemporary" house next to it, but no human figure is visible. Later illustrations in the sequence make it clear the characters are supposed to be meeting on the lower balcony on the front of the "geometric contemporary," a placement that then makes it unlikely for the protagonist to end the scene gazing intently at the backdrop behind the house, though I suppose he could be looking through the house entirely through two sets of windows.

(Oh, during the same scene, we have this awkward encounter: One character uses his right hand to hold the shoulder of the other [inference from a later picture says they are facing each other directly] and then sticks the pinkie of his left hand into his own right ear in order to display blood on the tip of his finger. This isn't impossible of course, but go ahead and act this out once or twice with a friend for a good chuckle.)

Other examples: One of the first illustrations in the book shows the protagonist spotting a balloon just a few dozen feet from a motel sign and palm trees while the text states, "The trees along this stretch of Florida are plain and bare. There were palm trees by our motel, but these look just like the trees at home to me." Later in the book we are told a mountaintop town is "situated on a lake" while the picture shows only a river or stream that's less wide than the length of a dump truck. An earlier picture of the same town from a higher and farther perspective also shows only a river and no lake.

Anyhow, this book is bad. If it is not too late for you, do not bother to read it. ( )