Wake Up and Live is an artistic masterpiece that commemorates the life and legacy of the reggae legend, Bob Marley. Through the fusion of compelling storytelling and remarkable illustrations, this graphic novel succeeds in capturing the essence of Marley's spirit, leaving readers with a profound appreciation for the man behind the music. Whether you are an avid Bob Marley fan or new to his work, this book will undoubtedly ignite your passion for his soul-stirring melodies and inspire you to embrace the universal values of peace, truth, and love.

This review is for part 1. I like the art and the Rastafarian dialog. It was too short and there was not much story. The introductory essay was good. As a Marley fan I was hoping for more. Enjoy the art.

'Wake Up and Live: The Life of Bob Marley' by Jim McCarthy with art by Benito Gallego is an attempt to put the life of the reggae superstar into a graphic novel format. It sort of works. My review copy was only the first 51 pages, but I think I got a good taste of this.

The book starts with a nice introduction essay by John Masouri, the author of a book about Peter Tosh, then we get into Bob Marley's story. It starts early with a short history of slavery in Jamaica, then moves to his early life in Nine Mile, Saint Ann Parish in Jamaica, where he lived with his mother. They moved to Kingston, and that's where he got into music. The book traces the trouble he got in to and the friends he made along the way. My copy ends with Bob and his wife Rita and a weird dream she has about a cat.

The art and color are fantastic. The story is less so. The story is told in Bob's particular patois. There are plenty of footnotes to learn the slang and lingo that is being spoken. I got used to this, but it took a few pages to get into the rhythm of the speaking. The story could have used a few more explanatory speech bubbles. The story jumps forward in time. It would have been nice to know when event were happening. I liked it, but I felt like the story jumps around a bit much.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Omnibus Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

‘Wake Up & Live! The Life of Bob Marley Part 1’ has colourful artwork by Benito Gallego and equally colourful language by Jim McCarthy, given the latter’s use of authentic Jamaican patois. Sometimes the meaning is well known or can be guessed reasonably accurately (bumbo claat, yard, pickney, almshouse and hot pum-pum). At other times this is simply not possible (irie, ital, fuckries, duppy, stucky, jegge, bungo-bungo, etc). Footnotes are provided but they seriously disrupt the reading experience.

The story itself takes Marley’s life up to the early 1960s, and thus covers Bob’s childhood and teenage years, culminating in his early steps in the music business and his relationship with Rita. Ganja has yet to appear, although sugar has, somewhat bizarrely been presented as “a cancerous poison, as addictive as … cocaine anna heroin”.

As John Masouri makes clear in his excellent introduction, ‘Wake Up & Live!’ represents an exercise in mythologizing Marley’s life rather than an attempt to be strictly accurate. As far as one can tell it seems to be true in spirit to the man and his times and it certainly serves to remind readers of just how exotic an admixture of influences went into producing Bob Marley.

To sum up, Part 1 is good enough to want to read on but not so strong as to convince this reader at least that the work as a whole will be completely satisfying.