By far one of my favorite comics we have read all class. I've always been a huge fan of Neil Gaiman, so his story telling mixed with amazing artwork is just incredible. I like how the stories are not entirely episodal. It seems to focus more on different events that the characters have in common. I'm not sure if the series skips through time at all. I've only read a couple other chapters than the stories we were to read for class.
The collectors was an absolutely terrifying and wonderful story. I wasn't entirely sure what to think about it after I first read it and wandered around the dorm not doing much. On the other hand, the story with Hobb was incredibly sweet at the end. I hope I continue to see that character when I keep on reading this comic. I know I plan to.
Starman Omnimbus:
This was a well written comic. I thought it was interesting how the main character Jack was forced to take on the responsibility of being a superhero when for the longest time he didn't want to. He didn't take it seriously and poked fun at his father and brother who were both so gung-ho about it. I've never seen a hero before who was so reluctant to take on the role at first. It was hard to stop after only 14 pages. I wanted to read further to see how his character would develop as he started to accept his new role in society, even though it seemed he would be more of an anti-hero rather than a traditional super hero. The art for this comic was lovely. This would definitely be another comic I would recommend to other comic readers or someone who's never picked up the medium before.
Bone:
This was an absolutely adorable comic with a wonderful plot. I loved the character designs for the monsters and dragon. Ted and his brother were awesome as well. At the end of the 30 pages the part where the snow fell to the ground in one large blanket made me giggle. It reminded me of what its like to live through winter here in Minnesota. This comic would definitely be a must read.
Crime Stories: The Court
I was starting to like this story when the end kind of flopped. It seemed awkward. I didn't care so much for the art. There wasn't much character development. Sure, it was a short comic. That would be hard to do, but there wasn't something specific about any of the characters that grabbed your attention. Normally I love Gaiman's work but I wasn't entirely sure about this one.
Bone: Maybe it was the cutesy simple nature of the art, but Bone seemed very reminiscent of strip comics. The logic and adventure to weird places reminded me of Popeye, Krazy Kat, and the like. It’s very light reading especially compared to Starman Omnibus.
ReplyDeleteStarman Omnibus: Definitely harking back to a lot of Superhero themes, it has a nostalgic sense to it reflecting with the character’s obsession with old things. It is a very beautiful comic, but as it is more of a reaction to previous superhero stories it seems as if it is more written for fans of superhero stories that are greatly familiar with the classics. That said, I didn’t feel very interested in it at all. It has a hybrid comic way about it that I see in a couple of the newer comics I’ve read, such as Promeathea. (I don’t read many comics) I guess what I mean by hybrid is that it clearly works off of many ideas and characters from previous comics, mixes them, and extends their ideology further. They seem more clearly epic, psychological, and symbolistic with better writing that gives every action and almost every detail a clear purpose, and somehow they seem far less tethered to reality.
Does anyone agree with this or am I completely mistaken?
Sandman: It’s writing teetered between weird and logical making it dreamlike just like it’s main character. I disagree with Lindsay on it being terrifying. It’s a little too removed from reality to be frightening, its more of an awkward type of funny. I mean, yes, they are cereal killers, but none of the dismemberment gore is shown in the comic, instead it focuses on the oddities of it and almost comical aspects. It felt not that far off from superduperman’s writing.
I personally liked the first story which was assigned to everyone more than the cereal convention. It’s disconnection to one time period and the overarching theories of immortality made the story more clearly symbolic and mysterious. As a first story to read with the Dreamlord character in it, it makes you really want to find out more about him. At first I thought him to be a vampire or a ghost, then a timelord, and the wondering lead me to go read previous issues so as to learn more about him.
He also reminds me of Promeathea from Moore’s writing as they are similarly dreamlike psychological type characters, if that description makes sense.
The Court: I also wasn’t very impressed by this comic. The ending wasn’t satisfying and seemed almost superfluous. Maybe Gaiman was trying to underline the lack of morality in both Mr. Alice and the narrator or possibly that the narrorator is more immoral then Mr. Alice, but it seemed unnecessary as they established it earlier and remarked on how immoral and illegal it is. I haven’t read a lot of Gaiman’s work, but this seemed fairly poor compared to writing in The Book of Magic. The story line seems a little jumble and confused lacking the normal story structure we are use to fallowing.
Superduperman: As a re-read I didn’t get a whole lot more out of it. I do see more of the same sort of elements that occurred in this story and the Starman story. Basicly it’s just the constant reference of other stories that are being reworked to fit together under the same unreal logic.
If I was to suggest any of these, I’d probably pick the additional Sandman reading, because it seems to be a completely different kind of story then the other one we all read and it’s psychological discussions seem more current and interesting. It’s also appears to be more satisfying and better written than The Court.