Webcomic Wednesday
Today’s Garfield minus Garfield cracked me up. That is all.
Twilight Graphic Novel – it’s here!
The Twilight Graphic novel has landed. Even though no one wants to, everyone is talking about it. Even me. And you know what? Today, I kind of want to. Because it’s beginning to bug me the way people are talking about this as if it’s the worst thing to ever happen in the history of bad comics things happening.
Bleeding Cool has a bit of a snarky take on things.
And while bookstores will take the brunt, it’s likely comic shops will see a pick up in trade as a number of people will assume that the strange looking shop off the high street that they went in to once to buy a Hello Kitty Emo doll will be the place to sell Twilight: The Graphic Novel Vol 1.
Look, I’m no Twilight fan but I refuse to to mock the Twi-hards the same way I refuse to mock Trekkies. Why is it open season on Twi-hards, otherwise known as those stupid girls who only buy Hello Kitty stuff and have never seen a comic book shop because THEY ARE MORONS (or, you know, because comic book stores suck at marketing themselves)? Why is there this assumption that if a girl reads Twilight she doesn’t read manga or comics? Is the comic industry really that afraid of girl culture? A little too much glitter?
I’m guilty of it too, of course, I laughed at the idea of a Twilight graphic novel because it seemed hokey, a money ploy, exploitive and the few released pages looked like crap. I’m beginning to rethink it, minus the artwork, I still don’t like that. But I wonder if this is a response to a conversation that we’ve all been ignoring. While we chat about the latest Fumi Yoshinaga or the Blackest Night, has a bigger fanbase and a new, fresher acceptance of the medium been building?
We are loath to listen to girls, young women, mothers. Disney is sick of marketing to them. The cons are afraid they will take over and leave berry lip balm on every surface. What is it about girl culture that makes us cringe?
Is it the fact that the stuff that sells is kind of, well, princessy? That Bella is not exactly a good role model? Is Wolverine? Is Spiderman? Do you want your teenage boy emulating Batman with his tendancy to isolate and destory relationships? Or do you trust your teenage boy to read it and process it and take it for what it is? Why not the girls?
This has gone of track if I had a track to begin with. I guess my final stance is that it’s kind of crap to assume that a.) girl culture is bad, b.) girl culture is driving down the road instead of already in your face and c.) this Twilight graphic novel is horrible.
Has anyone read it? Like to weigh in?
Time Change Reading
I suck at time changes. Just ask my boss.
So, today I thought I might take a look at some books that feature time.
Watchmen – This classic, it’s a classic right?, features the past and time as perception. To me, Dr. Manhattan’s mars dwelling looks a lot like clock gears and we can see it crumbling, an allusion to the end of the world, the end of time as we know it. And really, isn’t time just something we made up anyway?
Bride of the Water God – In this gorgeous manhwa, Soah is a slave to time. By day, her lover is a small boy by night, he’s a man. She better watch that clock if she wants to be awake for the good stuff!
Sand Chronicles – The hour glass is a central motif to Ann’s coming of age. As time slips by, she grows up. It is both quick and slow, sweet and painful.
Road to Perdition – This may seem like an odd choice, since time isn’t really addressed but there is always the feeling of time pushing at the characters’ backs. Hurry hurry hurry to the end is the feeling this book gives me. Of course, the end is tragic and at that moment time stands still. It’s a very strange feeling.
Can you think of any others?
Reading Over Shoulders
Is it spring yet?
It’s not a graphic novel but Johanna Draper Carlson watched She’s Out of my League. I’ve sworn off anything that doesn’t come in 3D but I might check out the dvd.
David Welsh is almost through is manga alphabet. He’s up to “U’.
GoGo Monster – a review
As usual, I’m a little late to the party. This book has been reviewed like a million other places but that’s ok. Here’s what I thought, in the typical just finished reading no analysis style:
First, I really want to give Viz a giant blue ribbon for presentation. This book is gorgeous (at least the hard cover I read)! The cover is brightly colored and very solid feeling with, I feel, a lot of attention paid to the spine. I want this book on my shelf, no doubt. They also colored the edges of the pages red with one of Yuki’s illustrations. It’s really cool. Kudos. I’m ordering my copy like, stat.
Inside is the mind (you can’t even really call it a story) of Yuki Tachibana, a boy who ’sees’ the other side. The other side is a different world filled with SuperStar, his friend, and the Others, a group of mysterious, ephemeral creatures with malicious intentions. Understandably, Yuki is an outcast who only speaks to the caretaker. That is, until the new kid becomes his friend and the other school outcast becomes his mentor. Of sorts. Like I said, most of this feels and looks like the inside of Yuki’s mind so none of it can really be trusted. It goes beyond a first person narrative to a first person stream of consciousness/subconsciousness/imagination/mental illness (?)
The best way to read this book is to just go into it and let it pull you along. If you stop to think too long you’ll lose the pace of it and find yourself struggling to keep up or make sense of it when there is no sense. There’s a million different ways to accept what you’re reading or not accept it. Are the things Yuki sees real? Is he sick? Is any part of this world real, including the school?
Since the entire book seems to be from Yuki’s head, it’s drawn that way too. At times, this gets to be a bit tiresome, like reading a comic book drawn by a talented child. It works well when he’s describing the others or when he’s very emotional but for the parts when he’s relating to his friends or the caretaker, the off centered faces and wobbly lines got kind of irritating. Still, it was an effective and unique way to present a manga. Toward the end, there’s a series of pages that take place in the near dark -these are simply amazing and haunting.
I’m glad this book found its way to America. Interesting, gorgeous and lingering.
