Whats everyone reading?

[Dandontdare]

There's a logical storytelling progression/escalation to events as things seem to follow an episodic format spun out of the seeds planted in #1 where things are set up well enough, though this maybe feels like a cheat to modern audiences used to having McGuffins set up that then go nowhere and/or the random deaths of cast members. 

I've not read this particular work, but I find this surprising. I've read a couple of Byrne books lately ( a collection of his Namor stories from the early 90s and vol 2 of The Next Men) and I find his storytelling rather weak - characters appear and disappear with no explanation, scenes and flashbacks jump around all over the place, and it all ends up a bit confusing and unsatisfying. His art is skilful but looks rather dated now, and although his facial expressions are fantastic, his action scenes could be a little more imaginative in their composition.

But maybe I'm just biased against him 'cos he's an egotistical dickweed! 


I've been on an anthropomorphic animal tip lately. After re-reading all my Grandville books, I managed to snag Blacksad from my local library - fan-bloody-tastic. Whereas Grandville is animals in a Sherlock Holmes/steampunk setting; Blacksad does the same as a 40s noir PI story. Highly recommended, bothy in the story and the incredible art.

I also got The Celestial Bibendum from the library, which I think Bryan Talbot talks about as one of the influences for Grandville. The art is lovely, but I'm finding the story rather heavy going - it's all a bit arty-farty surreal for my tastes.

I guess I need to re-read Maus and Elephantmen now to maintain the animal theme!

[Basilisk]

A lot of stuff has fallen int omy hands these days. Mainly european comics, like WW2.2, D-Day(Jour J in english, an ucrony series), XIII, and some Star Wars Stuff: Darth Vader and the Lost Command, Jedi vol.1(the one with Qui-Gon Jinn), KOTOR, etc.

I've seen quite some bad reviews from DV and the LC... but i enjoyed the trade. Well, the art it's not that great, compared to let's say Dark Times(trade 3 is gorgeous), but it's not that bad, story-wise.

One thing that i can recommend without hesitation is the Pacific Rim comic Prequel. It explains a lot of things, from before the movie and way before it, etc. I won't spoil it but it's not bad at all. Let's see it's not the typical "trash" to milk the money cow outta people.

[SuperSurfer]

Bit behind the times but: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vol 2.

I really liked Alan Moore's America's Best Comics but couldn't get into LOEG – which I bought only one issue of in comic form. Should've given it a chance.

Someone quite recently gave me volumes 1&2 as the original owner emigrated and gave them away (bit battered but not complaining). Now I have some time on my hands I can't put the ruddy things down.

I was admittedly put off as I thought it would be full of literary references that would go over my head eg I had no idea who Mina Murray is but like the idea that I can delve into it and find out more.

Kevin O'Neill is one of my favourite artists but his LOEG work didn't appeal to me – really into it now. Perfectly suited. The man is a genius.

[I, Cosh]

Struggling a bit with Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men. Very dry. Being presented as a future history rather than a straight novel it immediately and continually breaches all notions of "show, don't tell." Occasionally a single sentence provides a flash of insight and imagination which would easily fuel a short story, if not an entire novel, so I persevere.

[LorcanQ]

Bit behind the times but: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vol 2.

I really liked Alan Moore's America's Best Comics but couldn't get into LOEG – which I bought only one issue of in comic form. Should've given it a chance.

Someone quite recently gave me volumes 1&2 as the original owner emigrated and gave them away (bit battered but not complaining). Now I have some time on my hands I can't put the ruddy things down.

I was admittedly put off as I thought it would be full of literary references that would go over my head eg I had no idea who Mina Murray is but like the idea that I can delve into it and find out more.

Kevin O'Neill is one of my favourite artists but his LOEG work didn't appeal to me – really into it now. Perfectly suited. The man is a genius.

Hm funny you should say that, I felt the exact same thing. I read LOEG volume 1 years ago, and, although i thought it was great fun, still havent gotten the later volume. Using all those victorian literature characters made me feel I should read the original novels first before moving on to the later books in the LOEG series. I started this with Dracula, and was actually quite disappointed. Although yeah, I get it's a typical Moore deconstruction of seemingly innocent characters and looking at their personalities more cynically, Mina Murray just didn't seem to correspond at all to how she is portrayed in the book. From this, I just didn't see the point of why Moore used her if she's a different character to what she used to be.

Also, what annoyed me most about LOEG is that Moore specifically says in this interview that he condemns his writing in the killing joke because "a lot of nasty things" happen in it only to make the point of the story that Joker and the Batman are similar, which he says, on the whole scale of things, doesnt matter because these characters are preposterous so the "nasty things" that occur are gratuitous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSXXIuKZ6qA

That's all well and good, but he completely contradicts himself with LOEG. It has a hell of a lot of nasty things, specifically the rape scenes, which specifically in the first volume, are completely gratuitous and sensational IMO. And, they're there for no reason other than to entertain or state something about just as preposterous characters as Batman and the Joker. Such huge contradictions just annoy me. However, I'll admit, there's a huge chance I am completely and stupidly missing some point to LOEG that defends this and would completely accept it if it came up.

[Dark Jimbo]

Using all those victorian literature characters made me feel I should read the original novels first before moving on to the later books in the LOEG series.

See, this is why I love LOEG. I first read it in 2004 and was inspired to seek out some of the source material, and nine years later it still informs most of my reading material to this day. I've been happily stuck in a mire of purple-prosed penny dreadfuls and gung-ho genre exploits ever since. Dr Nikola, The Beetle, John Carter, Raffles ...most of this stuff would never have registered on my radar otherwise.

Although yeah, I get it's a typical Moore deconstruction of seemingly innocent characters and looking at their personalities more cynically, Mina Murray just didn't seem to correspond at all to how she is portrayed in the book. From this, I just didn't see the point of why Moore used her if she's a different character to what she used to be.

The Mina of the novel is a prim Victorian music teacher. The Mina of LOEG is one that's been seduced by an undead vampire count, briefly been a vampire herself, been hurriedly divorced by her husband and then ostrasized and castigated by a society who blames her for being ravaged by a foreigner, to say nothing of being a divorcee. She's been through an awful lot of trauma, and small wonder that she's had to steel herself in order to stay out of the asylum. I personally think it would be very strange if she was the same character after all that.

It has a hell of a lot of nasty things, specifically the rape scenes, which specifically in the first volume, are completely gratuitous and sensational IMO. And, they're there for no reason other than to entertain or state something about just as preposterous characters as Batman and the Joker.

I don't remember any rape scenes in the first volume apart from the arabs who try and attack Mina early on - and I don't really see how Mina or Quatermain are preposterous.

[TordelBack]

I don't remember any rape scenes in the first volume apart from the arabs who try and attack Mina early on...

Griffin does do a fair bit of it in the girls' school, where it's even played for laffs.

If I have one big problem with Moore, a writer I admire above all others, it's that he does include a lot of sexual assault.  In fairness it's not like sexual assault is rare in the real world or in fiction and almost uniquely he balances this by showing far more consensual sex in innumerable permutations and writing solid female protagonists, and he does tend to focus on the effects on the victim rather than the affronted male, but it still makes me deeply uneasy to find so much of it in my entertainment.

[LorcanQ]

I don't remember any rape scenes in the first volume apart from the arabs who try and attack Mina early on...

Griffin does do a fair bit of it in the girls' school, where it's even played for laffs.

If I have one big problem with Moore, a writer I admire above all others, it's that he does include a lot of sexual assault.  In fairness it's not like sexual assault is rare in the real world or in fiction and almost uniquely he balances this by showing far more consensual sex in innumerable permutations and writing solid female protagonists, and he does tend to focus on the effects on the victim rather than the affronted male, but it still makes me deeply uneasy to find so much of it in my entertainment.

Yeah, I do love reading Moore's work as well but it does have that nasty side to it which some of the time seems to be only there in a sensational aspect not integral to the story. There are also a huge number of near rape scenes aswell where the woman is, in the nick of time, saved by a tough man. (ie. first scene of V for vendetta, first scene of LOEG, Comedian-Silk Spectre scene in watchmen) which i personally find extremely cliched and slightly lazy writing TBH.  I remember an interview with Grant Morrison saying that Moore was "obsessed with rape" in his comics and, other than tom strong, every one of his works contains at least some sort of sexual assault, which weirdly, cant be denied...

[Frank]

Moore was deeply immersed in the world of radical feminism during the seventies and eighties, reading Spare Rib in the same way some folk read the Bible. Anyone forming a world view based on the feminist literature of that period would be under the impression that patriarchal civilisations were specifically structured by men to afford them the opportunity to rape as many women as possible. Moore's is a great mind and he's nobody's fool, but his work does sometimes feel like a dramatization of the twisted logic behind the slogan all men are potential rapists.

[Professor Bear]

Comics readers will sooner complain about sexual assault in a book aimed at mature readers than we will in a book published by Walt Disney featuring superhero characters aimed at children.  I often wonder why that is, but my personal take is that Moore doesn't flinch from portraying it as terrible, while superhero comics are still using it as titillation and their audience likes it that way.

Having said that, that 1910 thing was fucking baffling to me - the character basically goes out of her way to get raped and then almost immediately uses it as a justification for the most awful retribution on the perpetrators.  My best reading is that it's a parody on sexual assault as a motivator for grim and gritty comics characters, as for my money LOEG is unambiguously a parody of the failings of the shared superhero universe, but a straight reading of the material is largely impossible because it's hard to read any character as being that dim that they can't see or hear everything and everyone around them going "raperaperaperape" for about sixty pages.

[TordelBack]

Having said that, that 1910 thing was fucking baffling to me - the character basically goes out of her way to get raped and then almost immediately uses it as a justification for the most awful retribution on the perpetrators.  My best reading is that it's a parody on sexual assault as a motivator for grim and gritty comics characters, as for my money LOEG is unambiguously a parody of the failings of the shared superhero universe, but a straight reading of the material is largely impossible because it's hard to read any character as being that dim that they can't see or hear everything and everyone around them going "raperaperaperape" for about sixty pages.

Janni's story is a direct retelling of the song 'Pirate Jenny' from The Threepenny Opera, in which essentially the same events unfold (albeit less explicitly - contemptuous treatment rather than rape), only with slightly more restrained pirates and less repeating harpoon guns.  Rarther than being a parody, I think Moore is just wrapping his characters into a harsher post-Ripper London.

However, looking at it from within the story, isn't Janni about 15 in 1910, and prior to this living on an island of indiscriminately rapey pirates who would never look sideways at her because of who she is?  You can see how she might be naive about her new circumstances.

BTW I can never thank Moore & O'Neill enough for introducing me to Brecht and Weil.  Fabulous stuff.

[Professor Bear]

Living on the island would surely give her more of an inkling of how bad things can get out in the world?  That's just going by her pirate company and not her dad's warnings, too.  As I say, I'm only going by the story itself and not any background details I might need to know going in, and by the measure of the story itself her arc doesn't make a lot of sense.

[radiator]

Decided to give All Star Superman another try, having not warmed to it first time round.

Still don't really get what all the fuss is about tbh. It also seems quite continuity-heavy, and doesn't really attempt to explain who all the weird characters are.

I'm also not very keen on Quitely's looser, sketchier artwork (darkened pencils?) nor the colouring.

[TordelBack]

As I say, I'm only going by the story itself and not any background details I might need to know going in, and by the measure of the story itself her arc doesn't make a lot of sense.

And that's an entirely reasonable way to look at it. My point re: Janni is that she may think she has grown up amongst the scum of the earth, but she has also been shielded from their worst excesses because of who she is.  And 1910 is a story about her rejecting and then accepting that mantle - she wants to become one of the ordinary folk, free of the demands of dynasty and anarchist idealism and her father's expectations and protections, only to learn what that freedom actually means for a broke girl in early 20th C London.  To learn about what it is about the world her father hates.  More broadly, there is a theme of asserting personhood, Janni's attackers and ordeal represent her dehumanisation in their eyes.  One of the annoying things about naivety is that by definition you aren't aware of it.

1910, and indeed much of Century, does follow The Threepenny Opera very very closely, in terms of plot, themes, lyrics and character, but there have always been points in the LoEG series where you really do need to be aware of the source material to unpick the story  - whether that's a good thing is another argument, but it's definitely part of the central conceit.

[Link Prime]

Decided to give All Star Superman another try, having not warmed to it first time round.

Still don't really get what all the fuss is about tbh. It also seems quite continuity-heavy, and doesn't really attempt to explain who all the weird characters are.

I'm also not very keen on Quitely's looser, sketchier artwork (darkened pencils?) nor the colouring.

I still like it for what it is, but by far Morrison's best take on the character was during his JLA run.