Maybe I should give it another try sometime, but I think I'd rather read a Red Sonja comic. Maybe I haven't read enough Sim, but the politics stuff always seemed like a caricature. More sophisticated skulduggery than you might get in Robert E. Howard, but not insightful or complex.
Where would I find the stuff you're seeing there? I think I read Church and State. Is there another volume I should look at?
What do you think of Adrian Tomine? Shortcomings is one of the best things I've read lately. Brutal -- cruelly funny. And, according to a friend who would have some knowledge, accurate in describing a lot of people's lives.
Thinking of collector-types, have you read Alex Robinson? Box Office Poison is a lovely version of that old story. Sympathetic to its characters, while recognizing just how pathetic they can be.
Sim has a knack for plotting too-it's amazing that he was able to manipulate all those marionette strings over 300 issues, even if, after a while, you begin to understand his universe's logic only works in the pages of the comic. Then again, his characterizations nicely mirror how the politicos of our reality think. You learn that it's self-possession and personal ambition, not any outside source, that power our political system. Dave Sim's universe isn't our own. I don't expect him to create a dissertation acceptable to Harvard's political science department. I do recognize that he's created a world out of whole cloth, which is damn impressive. Whether it can be tested or put into practice is beside the point. I don't believe the Kingdom of Oz is a valid blueprint for a new nation either. As a fantasy, it's kind of silly to impose reality on it
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Tomine's work is not like that anymore. I'd imagine the effect it has on girls is closer to the effect Joe Matt's has. It gets to be too much for me sometimes, how mean and self-involved almost all his characters can be. One of the best parts of Shortcomings is that some of the secondary characters show some signs of progressing beyond that kind of emotional life, as the main character becomes more confirmed in his bitterness and self-pity.
Having read the entire series, I can say concure with those who say the latter books of Cerebus reflect the progression of Sim's mental illness - the story starts to be about the various voices in Cerebus's head, just before Sim himself appears as a character.
I'm sure you're familiar enough with the "crazy person thesis paper" genre to recognize the open struggle between Sims storytelling sensibility and his need to expunge the mental noise with quasi-academic, philosophical rambles. He never loses his sense of design there are moments of lucidity and self-satire even if it collapses into bitterness over the triumph of the homesexualist/feminist agenda. Considering what a massive fan I was at the start, I was saddened by how it fell apart.
I agree with you on how so much modern comics brings a lot of skill to a minimalist storytelling. I'd add I've grown weary of the constant undertone of failure, tragedy, despair and death. Art doesn't have to be happy and I don't mind it with individual works, but at times the collective level of despair seems like being very downbeat is cliched way of signalling high art.
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Where would I find the stuff you're seeing there? I think I read Church and State. Is there another volume I should look at?
What do you think of Adrian Tomine? Shortcomings is one of the best things I've read lately. Brutal -- cruelly funny. And, according to a friend who would have some knowledge, accurate in describing a lot of people's lives.
Thinking of collector-types, have you read Alex Robinson? Box Office Poison is a lovely version of that old story. Sympathetic to its characters, while recognizing just how pathetic they can be.
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Dave Sim's universe isn't our own. I don't expect him to create a dissertation acceptable to Harvard's political science department. I do recognize that he's created a world out of whole cloth, which is damn impressive. Whether it can be tested or put into practice is beside the point. I don't believe the Kingdom of Oz is a valid blueprint for a new nation either. As a fantasy, it's kind of silly to impose reality on it ( ... )
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I'm sure you're familiar enough with the "crazy person thesis paper" genre to recognize the open struggle between Sims storytelling sensibility and his need to expunge the mental noise with quasi-academic, philosophical rambles. He never loses his sense of design there are moments of lucidity and self-satire even if it collapses into bitterness over the triumph of the homesexualist/feminist agenda. Considering what a massive fan I was at the start, I was saddened by how it fell apart.
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