Review : We Stand on Guard by Brian K. Vaughan & Steve Skroce

Posted by Kay on August 3, 2016 3:26 am in 3.5 stars reads | 3 comments

We Stand on Guard by Brian K. Vaughan & Steve Skroce
Pages : 160
Genre : Graphic novel/comics
Stand alone
My Rating : 3.5/5

About the Book  :

My Thoughts :

First I want to start by saying that I really enjoyed We Stand on Guard, and mostly had a good time reading it. But I’m having a hard time right now thinking of the good stuff, because it also had a huge flaw.

Taking place in a futuristic Canada, We Stand on Guard features a group of diverse characters – including one French speaking French Canadian. Which would have been exciting for me (I rarely see my fellow Québécois in American fiction), if not for the fact that the book completely butchered many of the few French lines this character had! I’m well aware that typos do happen, and I can overlook this because they’re genuine accidents (though it really irritates me). But that’s not the case here.

There’s a “j’étais” that is written “j’était” on page 16, which I thought might be a typo, until I made it to halfway through the book and the character says: “ont devraient voter” (which should be written : “on devrait voter”). For non French speakers, I can tell you this is the grammatical equivalent of writing “Their we’re cats.”, or something. And I’m sorry, but that’s not acceptable. It’s not hard to find a few freelance French proofreaders to review your lines (I should know – that’s what I do!). I’m sure some fans would do it for free. There’s just no excuse. Not in a book that is professionally published.

On top of that, in a couple spots, this French Canadian uses expressions that are definitely French – from France. Again, irritating.

Which is a shame, because I otherwise really enjoyed the book. The illustrations are super detailed and the tones are muted yet colorful. I liked the group of characters, too. I found myself thinking the series should have lasted twice as long to fully explore the world, which was really intriguing and had a great potential for complexity. The technology made things futuristic but also slightly less predictable. And finally, the story itself was good, too, and it surprised me in many ways. Great finale. Overall, We Stand on Guard was a fun experience – probably more if you don’t know a word of French, sadly.