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jazzfishAlan Moore and David Lloyd, V For Vendetta
I hate the art for this book. Looks too much like newsprint, and there's far too much use of yellows and browns for my taste. Having said that, V is a neat post-nuclear-war Orwellian anarchist fable. It clarifies the distinction between anarchy ["without leaders"] and chaos, it invokes Guy Fawkes and Thomas Pynchon, and it's generally a good story. Not great; ranks behind From Hell and Watchmen. But still quite good.
Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, Black Orchid
I read this when I lived in Apt 6 and had just started getting into Sandman. I remember thinking that it had a great beginning ("I'm just going to shoot you. Now.") and got kind of weird.
It's still got a great beginning, and it still gets kind of weird. Behind the weird is a really effective story about living your life, with references to the DC comics universe strewn hither and yon. Dave McKean's art is first-rate, and Neil's scripting is good but has gotten better over time. I'm glad this is finally back in print.
Jamie Delano and David Lloyd, The Horrorist
I'm not actually clear whether this is a two-part book called The Horrorist, or whether the story is called "Antarctica" and it's part of a larger series called "The Horrorist." With that out of the way . . . David Lloyd's art is a lot more palatable here than it was in V. The story itself is a kind of small Constantine story about how he's dead to the world, can't feel anything, and he encounters a creature that preys on human, well, horror. Sort of interesting but nothing to write home about. I'm not sure whether I keep reading Constantine because I like the character or because I feel vaguely obligated to do so, having gotten this far.
Alan Dean Foster, The Mocking Program
Aborted halfway through.Okay, it's set in a nifty gritty near-future, yes, even cyberpunk world, and it's a murder mystery with cool technology. But the main character is just too perfect. Not only is he the perfect moral cop, but he's an "intuit" [low-level empath], so you can't even lie to him. People he questions tell him things he wants to know after making a token show of resistance-- this includes young street punks, shopkeepers who could get killed for spilling their guts, gangsters about to kill him, etc. The exploding house in Chapter 2 was cool enough that I kept reading, hoping for more stuff that was that cool-- but when Foster interrupted a sex scene for a paragraph-long digression about the technology, I realised that the man simply has no sense of pacing and prepared to give up. Not even the appearance of talking monkeys halfway through was enough to save this one.
I hate the art for this book. Looks too much like newsprint, and there's far too much use of yellows and browns for my taste. Having said that, V is a neat post-nuclear-war Orwellian anarchist fable. It clarifies the distinction between anarchy ["without leaders"] and chaos, it invokes Guy Fawkes and Thomas Pynchon, and it's generally a good story. Not great; ranks behind From Hell and Watchmen. But still quite good.
Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, Black Orchid
I read this when I lived in Apt 6 and had just started getting into Sandman. I remember thinking that it had a great beginning ("I'm just going to shoot you. Now.") and got kind of weird.
It's still got a great beginning, and it still gets kind of weird. Behind the weird is a really effective story about living your life, with references to the DC comics universe strewn hither and yon. Dave McKean's art is first-rate, and Neil's scripting is good but has gotten better over time. I'm glad this is finally back in print.
Jamie Delano and David Lloyd, The Horrorist
I'm not actually clear whether this is a two-part book called The Horrorist, or whether the story is called "Antarctica" and it's part of a larger series called "The Horrorist." With that out of the way . . . David Lloyd's art is a lot more palatable here than it was in V. The story itself is a kind of small Constantine story about how he's dead to the world, can't feel anything, and he encounters a creature that preys on human, well, horror. Sort of interesting but nothing to write home about. I'm not sure whether I keep reading Constantine because I like the character or because I feel vaguely obligated to do so, having gotten this far.
Alan Dean Foster, The Mocking Program
Aborted halfway through.Okay, it's set in a nifty gritty near-future, yes, even cyberpunk world, and it's a murder mystery with cool technology. But the main character is just too perfect. Not only is he the perfect moral cop, but he's an "intuit" [low-level empath], so you can't even lie to him. People he questions tell him things he wants to know after making a token show of resistance-- this includes young street punks, shopkeepers who could get killed for spilling their guts, gangsters about to kill him, etc. The exploding house in Chapter 2 was cool enough that I kept reading, hoping for more stuff that was that cool-- but when Foster interrupted a sex scene for a paragraph-long digression about the technology, I realised that the man simply has no sense of pacing and prepared to give up. Not even the appearance of talking monkeys halfway through was enough to save this one.
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Date: 2004-08-19 04:52 pm (UTC)Anarchy
Date: 2004-09-02 11:12 am (UTC)