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just a lot of words really
Monday, 6 August 2012 13:07
1) Trailer for the animated Dark Knight Returns (part 1)! I wasn't exactly excited about this when I first heard about it, because I dimly remember not being that thrilled by The Dark Knight Returns when I read it about a decade ago, but this trailer has got me enthused by being mostly focused on Carrie Kelly. A girl Robin that Batman describes as "perfect"? YES PLEASE.
2) Some comics I have read recently:
3) Still working on reading all the Booker and Orange prize winners. Had some trouble with 1999's Booker winner, Disgrace, since I entirely loathed the protagonist. I think I was meant to dislike him, but it's hard to read something when you just keep thinking "go away, go away, GO AWAY" at the point of view character. Amsterdam, the 1998 winner, I enjoyed a bit more, but it was let down by the preposterous ending. The closer I got to the end of the book, the more I thought "oh no, that can't be where this is going, that would just be TOO STUPID", but indeed it was where it was going. Shouldn't there be some kind of minimum plausibility standard for prize-winning realist fiction?
The 1998 Orange Prize winner, Larry's Party, was much better. It was full of warmth and affection, and it made all the characters seem like people in their own right, not just cut-outs orbiting the protagonist. It also helped that it didn't treat Larry's life as being Fraught With Special Meaning And Importance: his life is meaningful and important, yes, but only because everyone's is.
4) My things from the library pile includes a lot of Shakespeare-related books at the moment, inspired by reading James Shapiro's excellent Contested Will. The only one I've managed to read so far is The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street, which does a great job of taking a lot of small pieces of evidence and using them to build up a convincing picture of the milieu Shakespeare might have inhabited.
2) Some comics I have read recently:
- Power Girl: Old Friends: I thought this series wasn't nearly as good after the Gray/Palmiotti/Conner team left, but it picked up a bit towards the end and I really liked the last two issues. (Also, I really loved the Gray/Palmiotti/Conner run, so "not as good as that" is not as damning as it sounds.) The penultimate issue was slightly obvious in its "yay girl power!" stuff, but its heart was in the right place, and I loved that there was a bit of diversity of body shape and ethnicity amongst the Power Girl cosplayers. And the scene where the main fangirl character got to the front of the queue and started off into a whole speech about what PG meant to her, only to get in a muddle and tail off with "...I forgot what I was going to say" was adorable. The last issue was a great showcase of what Power Girl can do, and I laughed a lot at this exchange between her and the villain: "Do you know what most vulnerable part of the body is?"/"...er, the heart?"/"No, you idiot, the back of the knee." *kicks* As closing lines go, "We have all the time in the world" is a bit clichéd, and it's not a patch on "it's only the end if you want it to be", but still, sadness. One thing I did really like about the art was how physically imposing Power Girl is; I've only seen scans of World's Finest, but that seems to be less the case there, which makes me sad.
- Batman: Cataclysm was a bit of a slog, to be honest, though I did enjoy a) finding out that the Drakes apparently lived next door to Wayne Manor (!) and Tim had a secret tunnel to allow him to sneak out for Robining purposes (!!), and b) Dick Grayson running through Bludhaven, tearing his clothes off as he went, hee. I did feel it needed more hugs, overall. But I did enjoy the Huntress/Spoiler team-up, which is what I was reading it for, so that was ok. I liked that even in just one issue, there was space for their relationship to be fairly complicated - some things they had in common, some things they clashed over - and am now even sadder that neither character is around any more. :(
- I've also been (slowly) catching up with Greg Rucka's run on Wonder Woman, which is just as amazing as I'd heard. I love Wonder Woman so much: her strength, her serenity, her clear-eyed compassion and her determination to do the right thing, whatever the personal cost. ♥
3) Still working on reading all the Booker and Orange prize winners. Had some trouble with 1999's Booker winner, Disgrace, since I entirely loathed the protagonist. I think I was meant to dislike him, but it's hard to read something when you just keep thinking "go away, go away, GO AWAY" at the point of view character. Amsterdam, the 1998 winner, I enjoyed a bit more, but it was let down by the preposterous ending. The closer I got to the end of the book, the more I thought "oh no, that can't be where this is going, that would just be TOO STUPID", but indeed it was where it was going. Shouldn't there be some kind of minimum plausibility standard for prize-winning realist fiction?
The 1998 Orange Prize winner, Larry's Party, was much better. It was full of warmth and affection, and it made all the characters seem like people in their own right, not just cut-outs orbiting the protagonist. It also helped that it didn't treat Larry's life as being Fraught With Special Meaning And Importance: his life is meaningful and important, yes, but only because everyone's is.
4) My things from the library pile includes a lot of Shakespeare-related books at the moment, inspired by reading James Shapiro's excellent Contested Will. The only one I've managed to read so far is The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street, which does a great job of taking a lot of small pieces of evidence and using them to build up a convincing picture of the milieu Shakespeare might have inhabited.