And the second penguin said, "Maybe I am."

[fakely_mctest]

Fellow nerdlingers with good memories for media quotations may recognize the above quote as the punchline to the joke Special Agent Dale Cooper tells to Annie Blackburn as part of his dorky seduction routine (hereafter known as mysterious and silly Twin Peaks hard right plot turn #1).Being first and foremost a Barbara Gordon fan, I have extremely

Comments

[mercuryfading]

Ok. So since every nerdlinger I know wet themselves over this, I decided to get my geek membership card by reading it. It was more or less my first real Batman comic (though...sigh...Hube caught me up on what I needed to know...for about three hours while I was in New York)...

...but I'd be interested in more feminist critiques of DC comics; because I read it after your entry I was like "Uh. Yeah. Sarah is right. This is clearly a rape story. And, um. I don't much care for THAT." But I like the psychology of the whole thing.

Was your "world's cleanest prostitute" comment specifically referencing that terrible, terrible movie, or is the book of From Hell just as bad? Because I kind of want to read it but not if it's going to make me think that Alan Moore is a misogynist with unrealistic notions of Victorian hygiene.

Hube says now I have to read "other canonical 80s comic books" like The Dark Knight. Sure. Why not? But only if there's a feminist angle. Otherwise it's kinda uninteresting.

[fakely_mctest]

No, From Hell as a graphic novel is messy and Alan Moore has a good grasp on how horrible it most certainly was to be a person of a particular class & gender in the Victorian era. My main problem with the graphic novel was that the art? She was teeny. I felt like I didn't know what the heck was going on half the time.

What I took issue with most about the movie was Heather Graham's character and her no-sex-for-money school of prostitution. Because it's obvious that the filmmakers there didn't think she'd be sympathetic enough if she were a whore who actually, um, did any whoring. Barf.

Frank Miller is a demon spawn and if there were any justice in this world of ours he'd be peddling his misogyny in the form of screaming, incoherent rants that people just ignore the hell out of on their way to work:

[mercuryfading]

Heh.

I did flip through From Hell and yeah, it was kinda...hard to read! But I think if I can find it at the library/at a friend's I'll give it a try.

I like that blog. I think I am becoming a Comic Book Person (tm). Hrm.

[mercuryfading]

Well if you do, I'll have someone else to talk to about these things.

I'm sure people will rec Craig Thompson's Blankets up and down (although as a young-arty-dude-coming-of-age story, you know my preference is always going to be Scott Pilgrim because of the snark and the fights and the evil ex-boyfriends and because book 3 was called Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness) but I prefer Thompson's earlier work, Good-bye Chunky Rice, which remains the only graphic novel I've ever read that made me cry at the end. It's about a turtle and a mouse who are friends.

In the superhero vein, A Superman for All Seasons is pretty good as are The Long Halloween and Dark Victory (both Batman stories) and, naturally, anything by Darwyn Cooke.