Reading Wednesday
What are you reading now?
Sean Howe, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. I started this on the way home last night, so I've only just gotten up to the invention of the Fantastic Four and Spider-man. So far, my impressions are that the early twentieth-century magazine industry was extremely sketchy and that comics' habit of treating creative workers like shit has a long and storied history. It would have made more sense for them--and writers and artists in a lot of other industries, to be sure--to make like Hollywood and unionize.
I was getting annoyed at the lack of citations, but consulting the table of contents showed that the footnotes for citations are treated differently than the footnotes for conversational asides. The citations do not appear in text and are in the end footnotes by page number, with no link back to the main text and the helpful information that the page numbers for the footnotes do not match the electronic edition and you have to search for the text. This bit of unprofessional sloppiness brought to you by newbie indie publisher Harper Collins.
Fictional note: Apparently Namor the Sub-Mariner has been committing genocide since his (pre-Marvel) inception during World War II. He continues this practice to this very day. I don't understand why no other head of state in the Marvel universe has had him assassinated yet.
What did you just finish?
I put Night and Day back on the TBR shelf after a hundred pages of having to reread paragraphs three times to remember what just happened. You can see elements her later work would develop further: already men regard women as mirrors which reflect them at twice their proper size; already women -- everyone really, men too -- benefit from rooms of their own. I also have a better sense of how Woolf developed stream-of-consciousness out of Victorian omniscient, which is what she uses here. Well, technically I suppose it's Edwardian omniscient, but the models are so clearly Victorian, and the book itself is greatly concerned with the heritage of the Victorians. Quite a lot of it reflects on the influence of not!Tennyson, his work, and his fame on his descendants.
I caught up on Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga, which meant reading the second half of Volume 1 and then issues #7-9. I like the inventive and eclectic space opera/science fantasy world building and the hapless star-crossed protagonists from warring worlds, and I love Fiona Staples' art, but I can't decide whether I like the drop-dead pacing more than I dislike the repetitive feeling of constant cliff-hangers. (It's a bit like The Vampire Diaries in full stride--it burns through plot like rocket fuel.) Also, various Brian Vaughanisms make it feel shallow: the cliff-hangers, but also the characterization shorthands and the fake-out dream sequence. (My first reaction to the fake-out dream sequence: Oh, come on, Brian Vaughan, aren't you too old for this?) I like foul-mouthed hardass Alana, but I do not like her use of sexist and ableist insults -- not just because I don't like them in general, but because they're a lazy way to get a contemporary edge when they don't necessarily make sense in the world of the series. Strangely, because I do not particularly like the character, the most emotionally charged moment for me has involved Prince Robot IV, who has a TV for a head: the screen is usually blank, but it flashes to a screaming face during a heart-stopping moment of triggered PTSD.
But at this point, despite my Vaughan reservations, I will follow Fiona Staples anywhere. (I have decided to think of the beefcake-with-spider cover for Saga #9 as a joke about tentacle porn. My favorite cover to date is probably Alana reading.)
What books have you aquired this week?
This week marks my first book purchases of the new year. (I've received other books this year, but they were all ordered in 2012.) I got The Devil's Delilah (my favorite Loretta Chase) in ebook, because why not, and Kate Zambreno's Heroines, because this, this, and this.
cups brewed at DW
Sean Howe, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. I started this on the way home last night, so I've only just gotten up to the invention of the Fantastic Four and Spider-man. So far, my impressions are that the early twentieth-century magazine industry was extremely sketchy and that comics' habit of treating creative workers like shit has a long and storied history. It would have made more sense for them--and writers and artists in a lot of other industries, to be sure--to make like Hollywood and unionize.
I was getting annoyed at the lack of citations, but consulting the table of contents showed that the footnotes for citations are treated differently than the footnotes for conversational asides. The citations do not appear in text and are in the end footnotes by page number, with no link back to the main text and the helpful information that the page numbers for the footnotes do not match the electronic edition and you have to search for the text. This bit of unprofessional sloppiness brought to you by newbie indie publisher Harper Collins.
Fictional note: Apparently Namor the Sub-Mariner has been committing genocide since his (pre-Marvel) inception during World War II. He continues this practice to this very day. I don't understand why no other head of state in the Marvel universe has had him assassinated yet.
What did you just finish?
I put Night and Day back on the TBR shelf after a hundred pages of having to reread paragraphs three times to remember what just happened. You can see elements her later work would develop further: already men regard women as mirrors which reflect them at twice their proper size; already women -- everyone really, men too -- benefit from rooms of their own. I also have a better sense of how Woolf developed stream-of-consciousness out of Victorian omniscient, which is what she uses here. Well, technically I suppose it's Edwardian omniscient, but the models are so clearly Victorian, and the book itself is greatly concerned with the heritage of the Victorians. Quite a lot of it reflects on the influence of not!Tennyson, his work, and his fame on his descendants.
I caught up on Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga, which meant reading the second half of Volume 1 and then issues #7-9. I like the inventive and eclectic space opera/science fantasy world building and the hapless star-crossed protagonists from warring worlds, and I love Fiona Staples' art, but I can't decide whether I like the drop-dead pacing more than I dislike the repetitive feeling of constant cliff-hangers. (It's a bit like The Vampire Diaries in full stride--it burns through plot like rocket fuel.) Also, various Brian Vaughanisms make it feel shallow: the cliff-hangers, but also the characterization shorthands and the fake-out dream sequence. (My first reaction to the fake-out dream sequence: Oh, come on, Brian Vaughan, aren't you too old for this?) I like foul-mouthed hardass Alana, but I do not like her use of sexist and ableist insults -- not just because I don't like them in general, but because they're a lazy way to get a contemporary edge when they don't necessarily make sense in the world of the series. Strangely, because I do not particularly like the character, the most emotionally charged moment for me has involved Prince Robot IV, who has a TV for a head: the screen is usually blank, but it flashes to a screaming face during a heart-stopping moment of triggered PTSD.
But at this point, despite my Vaughan reservations, I will follow Fiona Staples anywhere. (I have decided to think of the beefcake-with-spider cover for Saga #9 as a joke about tentacle porn. My favorite cover to date is probably Alana reading.)
What books have you aquired this week?
This week marks my first book purchases of the new year. (I've received other books this year, but they were all ordered in 2012.) I got The Devil's Delilah (my favorite Loretta Chase) in ebook, because why not, and Kate Zambreno's Heroines, because this, this, and this.
cups brewed at DW