Update
I went for Haruki Murakami's 'hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world' to start with, many thanks to all who got involved with giving me new authors and my apologies to esther for the earlier rant, in my defence it's very early in the morning, i'm in the clothes i slept in and i've had a lot of esspresso.
I just read a graphic novel, and not my usual grant morrison/neil gaiman/warren ellis 'proper writers' graphic novel either. It was by kurt busiek. A normaly competent superhero writer that occasionaly reaches for greater heights. In this book he reached them.
The book is called 'Secret Identity' and is based on an interesting idea:
Young Clark Kent gets bullied at school, he lives in a small town in kansas (not smallville but a real one) in the 'real world' and feels quite giped by his parents choice of name for him. So yeah he hates his life, no mates, total arse kicking all the time, joke of a life. He's pissed that he's got all the problems of the mythical clark without the powers of superman. Then one day, he flies. it's never explained, is he an alien, a mutant, a victim of a radioactive wedgie? not important.
So Clark now has a whole new set of problems besides people setting him up with every girl called lois they meet. In the real world the US government is less tolerent of freaks, they set out to hunt him down. He starts out saving lives cos, well, he can. He ends up doing it as a bit of a fuck you to the government. There are layers of metaphour in this book, as a writer the character writes deconstructionist stuff about america and humanity and the book captures those ideas.
There's a wonderful moment when he realises that his daughters are also 'super' after he intervenes between american and arabic troupes to find that all the arabs chemical weapons have been neutralised but not the americans. he remarks that it shows a typical american way of thinking, a little dig at himself and the way he turned out his kids.
It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it's a book with heart and it showcases what busiek would be capable of if he could get a bit more distance from the spandex books.
i'm now off to by a shit load of warren ellis and grant morrison books though.
see ya'll soon.
Plus, a more specific random request. If anyone has something to contribute to finer_world or knows someone that would, please do so/get them to, i'd like to kickstart the thing and see if it flies, otherwise i'll just kill it in a month or so.
I just read a graphic novel, and not my usual grant morrison/neil gaiman/warren ellis 'proper writers' graphic novel either. It was by kurt busiek. A normaly competent superhero writer that occasionaly reaches for greater heights. In this book he reached them.
The book is called 'Secret Identity' and is based on an interesting idea:
Young Clark Kent gets bullied at school, he lives in a small town in kansas (not smallville but a real one) in the 'real world' and feels quite giped by his parents choice of name for him. So yeah he hates his life, no mates, total arse kicking all the time, joke of a life. He's pissed that he's got all the problems of the mythical clark without the powers of superman. Then one day, he flies. it's never explained, is he an alien, a mutant, a victim of a radioactive wedgie? not important.
So Clark now has a whole new set of problems besides people setting him up with every girl called lois they meet. In the real world the US government is less tolerent of freaks, they set out to hunt him down. He starts out saving lives cos, well, he can. He ends up doing it as a bit of a fuck you to the government. There are layers of metaphour in this book, as a writer the character writes deconstructionist stuff about america and humanity and the book captures those ideas.
There's a wonderful moment when he realises that his daughters are also 'super' after he intervenes between american and arabic troupes to find that all the arabs chemical weapons have been neutralised but not the americans. he remarks that it shows a typical american way of thinking, a little dig at himself and the way he turned out his kids.
It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it's a book with heart and it showcases what busiek would be capable of if he could get a bit more distance from the spandex books.
i'm now off to by a shit load of warren ellis and grant morrison books though.
see ya'll soon.
Plus, a more specific random request. If anyone has something to contribute to finer_world or knows someone that would, please do so/get them to, i'd like to kickstart the thing and see if it flies, otherwise i'll just kill it in a month or so.