With apologies to Dave the Thune
(as well as Mike Baron & Steve Rude).
WRITING:
Every day. 1000 words.
That’s the goal.
So, things are a bit slow in the
writing department at this time of year.
We celebrate a purely secular Christmas here in the heart of Maine and
there are presents to be wrapped, decorations to be hung (finally got the final
bits up this week), and specials to watch.
This cuts into my writing, but I did manage to get some work done this
week, padding out the 300K words for the year, which is going to make it
difficult to equalize next year. Sure,
there’s some wiggle room, but not a lot, especially when one has a full-time
job and a family that deserves one’s attention.
Plus there are all those good books and comics to read. You need to feed the beast if you want to do
this. It’s good to have a bar to reach
for, though.
But, enough lamenting. Here’s to the magic of Christmas! When you can believe a man in a red suit can
fly all around the world in one night to bring happiness to children at every
corner of the Earth.
READING:
The Wrenchies, by Farel Dalrymple,
published by First Second Books.
I’d seen lots of headlines touting
the wonder of Dalrymple’s book, and I am a fan of his art, so I figured I
needed to check it out. Sadly
disappointed is how I might best sum up my reaction to this. The settings and scenarios, the art and the
color palette especially, the ideas surrounding a lot of this dystopian
alternate-reality story are great. But
it was a slog to read, for me. I don’t
know. It felt, a lot of times, like this
should have been a novel. Other than
visualizing this dreary, sad world full of monsters and shadows, there’s no
good reason why this was a comic. Much
of the dialogue revolves around explaining the history of the world or the
scene on the page. It’s full of
expositional bits that could have been better realized through wordless pages
of wonderful illustrations (if explanations were needed at all). Writers like Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman can
make text-heavy comics sing in a way few can, and Dalrymple is not one of those
creators you come to for his deft hand with prose. Maybe I missed the entire point of the book,
and that’s wholly possible, but I did not enjoy this at all. If not for the wonderful art, I probably
would have returned it to the library without finishing it.
FRONTIER #6, “Ann by the Bed,” by
Emily Carroll, published by Youth in Decline.
Frontier is a quarterly series of art comics featuring a different artist with each new
issue. This most recent one, from Emily
Carroll (whose Through the Woods has been getting much-deserved rave reviews),
was amazing. One of the best comics of
the year. In 32 pages, Carroll managed
to infuse this short tale with enough atmosphere and dread that when I turned
to the final page – which was one hell of an exclamation point – I worried,
sans hyperbole, that I would be having nightmares about the main character of
this short narrative. Carroll builds the
tension gradually and inventively throughout the course of this short comic and
manages to tie it all up in a way that is chilling and brilliant. Highest recommendation.
Also jumped back into my pile of
classic G.I. Joe comics. I read issues
51-56 plus Yearbook #3. These stories
take place after the big anniversary issue, number 50, where the Joes attacked
Springfield, home to Cobra, and were repelled by Cobra’s newest soldier, a
composite from the DNA of the ten most acclaimed soldiers in history, Serpentor. In these seven issues we see G.I. Joe
disbanded, a full-out assault on the Pit by Serpentor, along with Cobra
Commander, Destro, the Baroness, et al. that results in the decimation of the
Joes’ secret headquarters, the reinstatement of the G.I. Joe team as a nimble,
mobile unit with no set headquarter to help avoid future issues like this,
Destro and Cobra Commander forced to work together to escape from beneath the
rubble that is the Pit, and these two eventually discovering that Cobra
Commander’s son, Billy, is not dead but in a coma, which causes CC to
reevaluate his life, while back on Cobra Island Serpentor starts up a new plan
to sell their Terror-Drome assault bases to third world, Communist countries
like Sierra Gordo, in order to help finance Cobra’s plans and lead them to
becoming a more above-ground and legal group, which comes with the new Cobra
consulate building in Manhattan. (*phew*
… take a breath) With the revelation of
the new Terror-Drome, a disguised Snake-Eyes (in the guise of Flint) is dropped
into Sierra Gordo with the plan of being captured so that he might infiltrate
the base and learn more about it, which is followed by a rescue mission, led by
Stalker, that goes wrong, leading to Scarlett seeking out Storm Shadow (who
dropped into the Pit in one of these first issues and got the key to
Snake-Eyes’s mountain cabin so that he could get away and contemplate his
recent death and resurrection) for an infiltration of the consulate building to
finally rescue Snake-Eyes from Cobra – a silent issue redux from Yearbook #3
that also introduced my favorite Joe artist, Ron Wagner, who will go on to draw
most of the issues between #57 and 89.
These were some fun comics. I continue to be impressed at how well they
stand up, with thirty years of hindsight.
Larry Hama writes some exciting narratives and rushes through myriad
plot point, churning through story in a way that would be unfathomable today,
while also managing to include the exposition in a manner that does not bog
down the story too much. And his
artistic collaborators in these issues, Rod Whigham and then Ron Wagner, with
Andy Mushynsky doing most of the inks, provide imagery that is clear and well-delineated
without being too flashy. An all-around
enjoyable experience.
WATCHING:
Continuing with The Americans. It’s still pretty great and well worth
checking out if you’re a fan of exciting action/dramas or Cold War
narratives. Fun stuff.
MISCELLANY:
If you’ve not checked out the
ITDMODcast (the podcast from In The Mouth Of Dorkness), and you are a lover of
movies, you are missing out. These guys
talk intelligently about all types of film, and it’s just like all those
conversations you had with your friends while hanging out in the parking lot,
or when you all got together at someone’s house. It’s a blast, and if you don’t watch out you
might end up learning something. The
latest one I listened to was their Christmas special focusing on Die Hard (oh, and those other die hard movies; yes, lower case is intentional). I haven’t seen this film since it first hit
theaters. Like Matt (@TheOmegaDork), I
was not a fan of Bruce Willis and having him in the movie turned me off a bit
to it, and I never did go back. But
after listening to these guys, I now realize I definitely have to watch this
again – if, for nothing else, the way it is structured as a story. Sounds like there are a large number of
lessons I can take away from Die Hard for my own writing.
SIGN OFF:
And, as always, check out Brad& Matt – mentioned above – and Don McMillan for their own weekly recaps on things comic-y and geeky, and we'll see what's
what in seven.
-chris
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