Yesterday's library trip

[dherblay]

As well as my fitness kick, I've been on a real graphic novel tear, because nothing says fitness and athleticism like a great big stack of comic books. I've been following my own advice and visiting my local libraries. Yesterday, I finally managed to restrain myself and return more books than I took out.

Returned:

• Complete Atomic City tales,vol.1:

Comments

[angeyja]

I have _Gift_ coming on ILL btw. And eleven others. I've only read _Endless Nights_ on the Sandman but if you are still thinking of _Lucifer_ reading these first is more traditional.

[dherblay]

I'm thinking of Lucifer! I'm thinking of that and Fables.

well, thinking is good.. can be

[angeyja]

..you're a bad influence:
http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=angeyja scan down to the ILL section.

While I am at it, googling your pen pal yields a top hit of:
CHAPTER 33 The Motive Powers of Destructionism
http://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/msS12.html

Thought you might like to know. Speaking of thinking, anything on the X-men yet?

I've been writing on Lucifer too much the last couple of weeks and am getting a little burnt on it now. And re: The Dark Knight Returns is that one you've just read now for the first time?

Re: well, thinking is good.. can be

[dherblay]

Yay for being a bad influence! Though, I've read only three of those! (Painting that ate Paris, Death: The High Cost of Living, and Gifted.) I don't really have too many thoughts on X-Men yet. I'm only up through vol. 4. Plus, I don't think all that often.

I read Dark Knight Returns in 1994 or 1995, and I may have read it before that in 1988-1990, though I doubt that. What I just now read was Dark Knight Strikes Again, which is the sequel, much in the same way that Demetrius and the Gladiator is the sequel to The Robe.

[graffitiandsara]

My favorite comics ever was the Swamp Thing run Moore did, oh a long, long time ago. Darby gave it to me to read back when we were in college which was over 25 years ago, and I don't think they were new then. That may very well be the most interesting thing I've seen done. I just loved how it took the old origin story and without really making anything that went before untrue, turned it all on its head. Comic writers are such wimps now, making up new origins at the drop of a hat, and just magically making everything that came before go *poof*! Wimps, I say! Ok, done ranting.

[dherblay]

Swamp Thing was amazing. Of all the comics I've been looking at, it's the only one that makes an effective love story.

[graffitiandsara]

The Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics were very cool as well. Love that icon!

[cjlasky]

Doctor Strange warped my mind permanently when I was a kid. Steve Ditko's extradimensional landscapes, like something out of Miro...Stan Lee's alliterative pseudo-mystical mumbo jumbo...I loved the idea that Dr. Strange was a bastard when he was a surgeon, and he's STILL a bastard--he's just channeled his arrogance in a more positive direction.

ETA: "Year One" is close to definitive Bats and inspired most of what you enjoyed in the new movie.

[dherblay]

Isn't that rather presumptuous of what of Batman Begins I enjoyed? Maybe I just went for the Scientology.

(Anyway, much of what I liked about the movie was invented by Walter Gibson well before anyone had imagined Batman.)

[londonkds]

Hmm. I read the first two full-length Hellboy graphic novels and was disappointed by the complete incomprehensibility-verging-on-non-existence of the plots - I'd thought that that was something that had afflicted the film adaptation. I gather The Chained Coffin is better in that respect, but another comics fan at work has checked out our copy.

This last week I read The Dark Knight Returns and The Man With No Fear and was not vastly impressed with Frank Miller. Especially since having seen the Sin City movie made me project that onto the fatherly-hero-and-barely-legal-girl stuff in both those books.

[dherblay]

Plus, the motherfucker practically invented ninjitsu.

After reading The Dark Knight Returns, and then a decade later seeing Sin City, my opinion of Frank Miller was muck like yours, but The Dark Knight Strikes Again was a pleasant surprise: it was neither as ambitious or as offensive as I expected, being another jaunty little recontextualization of the Justice League like Kingdom Come or The New Frontier. It was nothing earthshattering (though Wonder Woman and Superman's tryst did register on the Richter scale), but there were some small, fun moments, like the battle between Plastic Man and Elongated Man. And the scene where The Question and Green Arrow argue on the Chris Matthews Show is just perfect.

[dherblay]

OL?