When I read Micheal Chabon's "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" some years ago I really enjoyed it. The book followed two young men in the early days of comics who invent a comic book character, The Escapist,and their various creative struggles around him. Thebook spawned a series of comic book spinoffs, where various comic book writers and artists created their own Escapist comics, often pastiches of various eras in comic books. Accompanying those were Chabon's notes of how these stories fit into the greater history of comics. Now comes "The Escapists," a comic set in the world of "Kavalier and Clay" and those historical notes which deals with a modern-day revival.
The introduction to "The Escapists" is in fact a short story by Chabon about an encounter between Sam Clay (one of the creators of the Escapists) and a young Brian K. vaughn (the writer for "The Escapists"), and how this inspired Brian to go into comics. It's actually well done, and doesn't feel hokey at all, instead tying once again "the Escapist" to the real world.
The main character is Maxwell Roth, a young Clevelander who inherits a huge collection of Escapist memorobilia when his father dies. This causes him to grow up with a lifelong obsession with the Escapist, and when his mother dies years later he uses his inheritance money to buy the rights to the character in order to realize his dream of reviving the character.
Max decides to be the writer for the comic, and recruits his friend Denny as letterer and a he meets named Case for the artist. The three have great chemistry together, and all three are delightfully nerdy and very identifiable. There's a romance between Max and Case which is fine, and does lead to some cute moments, but it's somewhat artificially extended by Max not wanting to pursue it or something like that. Also, we're told a few times that Case is some sort of extreme sports nut, but nothing is really done with it.
The rest of the story consists of our three heroes coming up with their take on the Escapist (which is illustrated using a very different art style), their efforts to publicize it, and the various attempts by the media corporation that used to own the rights to the Escapist trying to get the rights back. It's a solidly told story, and I liked how the story of the comic our heroes are creating resonates with the overall story in interesting and somewhat unexpected ways. My only gripe is with an irritating plot twist near the end just before the main conflict is resolved that makes that resolution much more complicated and bittersweet. Although it's realistic and fits with what we know of the characters involved, it still seems like adding in unecessary angst and drama just for the sake of it.
The art is good. I liked the soft and rounded style of the main comic especially, although the sharp and spiky style of the comic within a comic also worked well. there's only one panel I hated, a picture of Case drawn in the spiky style that makes her look like deranged bag lady.
All in all, "The Escapists" is a good comic, especially for lovers of comics. It's not quite as good as "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," but it's still worth a read.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Alice in Sunderland
I picked up "Alice in Sunderland" by Bryan Talbot at the library because I had enjoyed Talbot's previous work, "The Tale of One Bad Rat." Like "One Bad Rat," "Alice" is a graphic novel on several subjects that overlap in several odd and unexpected ways. In "One Bad Rat," this was by telling a fictional story which involved Beatrix Potter, the English Lake Country, child abuse, and rats. "Alice" is a nonfictional meander through the history of the city of Sunderland and the life of Lewis Carroll, the writer of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass." The story is told through the perspective of an actor onstage, sometimes wearing a white rabbit mask, who tells the story of Sunderland and of Alice to the only other person in the theater (barring some ghosts), a rude blue-collar type of fellow who interjects frequently with his own observations. Another character, the Pilgrim, walks the streets of Sunderland telling stories of its great and grand history. Both the Pilgrim and the Performer are clearly avatars of Talbot, and both speak as him throughout the story.
I had never heard of Sunderland before, so I suspected Bryan Talbot was making the whole thing up. As it went along, and it was tied into more and more pieces of British history, my doubt was marginalized and I became more fascinated with stories like the monkey hanged as a French spy and the tale of the Langdon Worm. The style of the comic, which incorporates pictures and others' pictures in with Talbot's own drawings, and often forgoes traditional panel borders for larger pictures or flowing panels where the Pilgrim goes from one place to another, helping to impress upon the reader the immensity and complexity of the story of Sunderland.
The Lewis Carroll parts are interesting. Talbot addresses with significant gusto several things he considers myths about Carroll and his masterwork, including that he came up with the story spontaneously in a single afternoon, that he was socially maladjusted, and that Carroll was a nerdy Oxford don who rarely dealt with others. Talbot also goes to great lengths to show that the Northeast, and particularly Sunderland, were a great influence upon Carroll in the creation of "Alice in Wonderland." My impression of Lewis Carroll certainly changed.
"Alice in Sunderland" is a very interesting and well-done book, which shows the hidden depths of its two subjects. It's infinitely readable and I would recommend anyone who wants to experience something new should read it immediately.
I had never heard of Sunderland before, so I suspected Bryan Talbot was making the whole thing up. As it went along, and it was tied into more and more pieces of British history, my doubt was marginalized and I became more fascinated with stories like the monkey hanged as a French spy and the tale of the Langdon Worm. The style of the comic, which incorporates pictures and others' pictures in with Talbot's own drawings, and often forgoes traditional panel borders for larger pictures or flowing panels where the Pilgrim goes from one place to another, helping to impress upon the reader the immensity and complexity of the story of Sunderland.
The Lewis Carroll parts are interesting. Talbot addresses with significant gusto several things he considers myths about Carroll and his masterwork, including that he came up with the story spontaneously in a single afternoon, that he was socially maladjusted, and that Carroll was a nerdy Oxford don who rarely dealt with others. Talbot also goes to great lengths to show that the Northeast, and particularly Sunderland, were a great influence upon Carroll in the creation of "Alice in Wonderland." My impression of Lewis Carroll certainly changed.
"Alice in Sunderland" is a very interesting and well-done book, which shows the hidden depths of its two subjects. It's infinitely readable and I would recommend anyone who wants to experience something new should read it immediately.
Monday, July 13, 2009
The City and the City
The British writer China Mieville is one of the most inventive speculative fiction writers currently working. I loved his three Bas-Lag books, as well as his children's book "Un Lun Dun." He specializes in ignoring all of the storytelling baggage of others, which often make the twists and turns of his plots genuinely surprising.
His latest, "The City And the City," is a good example of this. Although much less fantastical than his previous books (except for it's setting it's largely a straight mystery book), it has the unmistakable Mieville traits of an unpredictable plot and a few twists you'd never expect.
It is these same traits that unfortunately occasionally cause some problems. Because there are so many plot twists, the final reveal of who the murderer is seems like it's been sprung on the reader, and there' not enough setup to make it feel like it grew from the rest of the book. This also affects the pacing, as it seems there's too much exposition at the beginning and too much action at the end.
Not that the exposition is a bad thing, as Mieville has given us both an interesting setting to describe and an interesting character to deliver said description. The setting is the cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma, somewhere in southeastern Europe, and the main character is inspector Tyador Borlu of the Beszel Extreme Crimes Squad. The main thing distinguishing the two cities is that they exist in the same place: a street in Beszel can also be a street in Ul Qoma. The two cities have been forced apart, and it is illegal to interact with people or places in the other city except via checkpoints in the very center of both cities. This makes things complicated for Borlu when it is revealed that a Jane Doe found in Beszel was murdered in Ul Qoma.
As Borlu looks into the murder, assisted by a Constable Lizbyet Corwi in Beszel and, about halfway in, his opposite number Qussim Dhatt in Ul Qoma. All three are interesting and multilayered characters. Borlu is cynical and somewhat contemptuous of authority, but he's no stereotypical antihero rebel cop: he merely cares nothing for politics or bureaucracy. Corwi is a cool character, very intelligent and very independant, and I liked that a lot of the accomplishments of the first third of the book were because of her. She's a strong, independant female character that it is not necessary to announce is a strong, independant female character. Really, most of the female characters who appear in the book are like that: capable characters we don't need to be told are capable. Corwi does disappear for about the middle third of the book, though, which is a little weird and kinda annoying. Her replacement, Dhatt, is interesting, as a character who has Borlu's temperament but not his personality. While Borlu is a somewhat introverted and thoughtful character, Dhatt is boisterous, a litle bit of a ham, and likable almost from his first appearance in the book by the sheer force of his charisma. The other characters in the book are all well done, as each seems to be a well-flushed out character who does what they do for reasons that make sense, although the character eventually revealed as the "villain" is a bit confusingly portrayed. A special favorite of mine is Borlu's boss, Comissar Gadlem, who appears for one scene in the entire book and completely stole it from Borlu with his sarcastic, no-BS manner. I liked all of the characters in the book immensely, and I think they're easily the best part of it.
The setting of Ul Qoma and Beszel allows for Mieville to play around a lot. Because it's a setting that often times characters can't acknoledge they can see, more often than not Mieville frames it so that the important part is happening in the part of the city they cannot acknoledge. And the concept that, in some neighborhoods at least, the part in Ul Qoma can be an upscale residential area and the part in Beszel can be a slum creates an interesting mindscape to picture. It's also great when Borlu remarks on the cultural influence the US has had on the youth of his city, or the immigrants to one city or another from the Balkans or north Africa, or the background detail that Ul Qoma (which is significantly less democratic than Beszel) is under sanctions by the US so the main international presence in that city is Canadian. These are lived-in cities, and feel like real places almost.
All in all, "The City and The City" is a whole lot of fun. An interesting story set in a fascinating location with interesting characters, I enthusiastically recommend it to all.
His latest, "The City And the City," is a good example of this. Although much less fantastical than his previous books (except for it's setting it's largely a straight mystery book), it has the unmistakable Mieville traits of an unpredictable plot and a few twists you'd never expect.
It is these same traits that unfortunately occasionally cause some problems. Because there are so many plot twists, the final reveal of who the murderer is seems like it's been sprung on the reader, and there' not enough setup to make it feel like it grew from the rest of the book. This also affects the pacing, as it seems there's too much exposition at the beginning and too much action at the end.
Not that the exposition is a bad thing, as Mieville has given us both an interesting setting to describe and an interesting character to deliver said description. The setting is the cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma, somewhere in southeastern Europe, and the main character is inspector Tyador Borlu of the Beszel Extreme Crimes Squad. The main thing distinguishing the two cities is that they exist in the same place: a street in Beszel can also be a street in Ul Qoma. The two cities have been forced apart, and it is illegal to interact with people or places in the other city except via checkpoints in the very center of both cities. This makes things complicated for Borlu when it is revealed that a Jane Doe found in Beszel was murdered in Ul Qoma.
As Borlu looks into the murder, assisted by a Constable Lizbyet Corwi in Beszel and, about halfway in, his opposite number Qussim Dhatt in Ul Qoma. All three are interesting and multilayered characters. Borlu is cynical and somewhat contemptuous of authority, but he's no stereotypical antihero rebel cop: he merely cares nothing for politics or bureaucracy. Corwi is a cool character, very intelligent and very independant, and I liked that a lot of the accomplishments of the first third of the book were because of her. She's a strong, independant female character that it is not necessary to announce is a strong, independant female character. Really, most of the female characters who appear in the book are like that: capable characters we don't need to be told are capable. Corwi does disappear for about the middle third of the book, though, which is a little weird and kinda annoying. Her replacement, Dhatt, is interesting, as a character who has Borlu's temperament but not his personality. While Borlu is a somewhat introverted and thoughtful character, Dhatt is boisterous, a litle bit of a ham, and likable almost from his first appearance in the book by the sheer force of his charisma. The other characters in the book are all well done, as each seems to be a well-flushed out character who does what they do for reasons that make sense, although the character eventually revealed as the "villain" is a bit confusingly portrayed. A special favorite of mine is Borlu's boss, Comissar Gadlem, who appears for one scene in the entire book and completely stole it from Borlu with his sarcastic, no-BS manner. I liked all of the characters in the book immensely, and I think they're easily the best part of it.
The setting of Ul Qoma and Beszel allows for Mieville to play around a lot. Because it's a setting that often times characters can't acknoledge they can see, more often than not Mieville frames it so that the important part is happening in the part of the city they cannot acknoledge. And the concept that, in some neighborhoods at least, the part in Ul Qoma can be an upscale residential area and the part in Beszel can be a slum creates an interesting mindscape to picture. It's also great when Borlu remarks on the cultural influence the US has had on the youth of his city, or the immigrants to one city or another from the Balkans or north Africa, or the background detail that Ul Qoma (which is significantly less democratic than Beszel) is under sanctions by the US so the main international presence in that city is Canadian. These are lived-in cities, and feel like real places almost.
All in all, "The City and The City" is a whole lot of fun. An interesting story set in a fascinating location with interesting characters, I enthusiastically recommend it to all.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea
Ursula K. LeGuin is one of my favorite authors. Her stories are always interesting and all seem to have a lot of thought behind them. For these reasons why I picked up "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea," a collection of short stories I had not previously heard of by LeGuin, when I happened to see it it in a used bookstore.
The collection starts out with an essay by LeGuin on many misconceptions the public and literary authorities have with science fiction. It's brief, but LeGuin is very persuasive in her belief that science fiction can accomplish many things that other genres cannot, and that it is often undervalued. She follows this up with notes on each of the eight stories in the volume, which are helpful as a way into the mindset LeGuin had when she wrote them.
The first story is a short and somewhat silly story called "The First Contact With the Gorgonids," about an American couple's contact with extraterrestrial forces in the Australian Outback. It is a bit sharper than I'm used to with LeGuin, and it's rather obvious in its message of cultural relativism. It's alright, but is definitely not my favorite in the collection.
Next is "Newton's Sleep," a much more skillful, although just as sharp, story than "First Contact." LeGuin explains that it's a rebuke of the kind of science fiction which assumes that the clean, shiny, advanced people on a space ship are superior to the dirty unadvanced people on a planet surface. On a future Earth which has collapsed into anarchy, a satellite called SPES launches containing a small collection of very intelligent people trying to create a sort of ideal society in space. However, as the story goes along the people on SPES realized they've carried all of their Earthly baggage with them, including their racism, classism, and other unattractive features, symbolized as visions of the plants, animals, and people they left behind. I found it a quite effective story, subtly and slowly building to its final point about how humanity thinks and acts.
"Ascent Of The North Face" is just weird. It's the journal of an adventurer as he climbs up the outside of a house. It's just weird. It wasn't bad, but I didn't really get the point of it.
"The Rock Than Changed Things" was one of my favorite stories in the collection. It concerns a culture of creatures called obls and their servants, the nurobls. The obls' main form of art is made of complicated rock patterns that also symbolize words. After a flood at Obling University, the nurobls are assigned to reassemble the rock patterns that were knocked askew. One nurobl named Bu discovers that in addition to shape and size, there can also seen to be patterns in the color of the rocks which also say things. This simple discovery changes everything in ways unexpected. LeGuin in her introduction notes her discomfort with this story, given that it's a parable and she dislikes parables, but I kinda liked it because it was clever and inventive.
"The Kerastion" is not really a story, it's more of a character/background sketch. A woman named Chumo watches as her brother is buried. It then flashes back to fill in the background. The world of this story is fascinating, with people divided by their professions, decided when they feel a calling in early adolesence. The people worship the goddess of beauty, who is a jealous goddess who reclaims the most beautiful things to herself. Therefore everything is made of perishable materials and it is considered a great honor when one's creation is destroyed soon after it is made. "The Kerastion" portrayed a world entirely different from our own in only a few short pages, and I was fascinated by it.
The last three stories are related, and are a part of LeGuin's larger Hainish cycle of stories, in which lightspeed communication is possible but lightspeed travel is not, and where long ago a species called the Hain seeded various planets with intelligent life, including humanity. These three stories deal with the creation of the churten drive, a way for ships to go from one place to the other instantaneously. However, in each story there is a complication. "The Shobies' Story" tells of the first crew to test the churten, and their discovery of the churten's flaw: it is necessary to be in perfect unity for it to work. "Dancing to Ganam" takes place several years later, as a former member of the Shoby test crew is persuaded to try another Churten test to a planet called Ganam. Even though they succeed, the explorers on Ganam discover that they still need to stay harmonized in order to understand the culture they discover there. The final story, "Another Story or The Fisherman of the Inland Sea," tells of a scientist from the planet of O who works on developing the churten drive, and how that forces him to sacrifice his possible life on his home planet. The story asks whether it was worth it, and comes up with a more complicated answer than you might expect.
I liked most of the stories I read in "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea." they were interesting and very well-written. Leguin is an expert world-builder, creating alien cultures that seem like they could be real. I liked her little touches: the descriptions of the way marriages on O O(which are between four people) work and how the commander of the mission on "Dancing to Ganam," a childhood hero of the main character, is shown to be a flawed human being without having to make him secretly evil (which seems to be the fate of most childhood heroes in stories like this). I just all around liked them, and I'm going to make a point of reading mor LeGuin in the future
The collection starts out with an essay by LeGuin on many misconceptions the public and literary authorities have with science fiction. It's brief, but LeGuin is very persuasive in her belief that science fiction can accomplish many things that other genres cannot, and that it is often undervalued. She follows this up with notes on each of the eight stories in the volume, which are helpful as a way into the mindset LeGuin had when she wrote them.
The first story is a short and somewhat silly story called "The First Contact With the Gorgonids," about an American couple's contact with extraterrestrial forces in the Australian Outback. It is a bit sharper than I'm used to with LeGuin, and it's rather obvious in its message of cultural relativism. It's alright, but is definitely not my favorite in the collection.
Next is "Newton's Sleep," a much more skillful, although just as sharp, story than "First Contact." LeGuin explains that it's a rebuke of the kind of science fiction which assumes that the clean, shiny, advanced people on a space ship are superior to the dirty unadvanced people on a planet surface. On a future Earth which has collapsed into anarchy, a satellite called SPES launches containing a small collection of very intelligent people trying to create a sort of ideal society in space. However, as the story goes along the people on SPES realized they've carried all of their Earthly baggage with them, including their racism, classism, and other unattractive features, symbolized as visions of the plants, animals, and people they left behind. I found it a quite effective story, subtly and slowly building to its final point about how humanity thinks and acts.
"Ascent Of The North Face" is just weird. It's the journal of an adventurer as he climbs up the outside of a house. It's just weird. It wasn't bad, but I didn't really get the point of it.
"The Rock Than Changed Things" was one of my favorite stories in the collection. It concerns a culture of creatures called obls and their servants, the nurobls. The obls' main form of art is made of complicated rock patterns that also symbolize words. After a flood at Obling University, the nurobls are assigned to reassemble the rock patterns that were knocked askew. One nurobl named Bu discovers that in addition to shape and size, there can also seen to be patterns in the color of the rocks which also say things. This simple discovery changes everything in ways unexpected. LeGuin in her introduction notes her discomfort with this story, given that it's a parable and she dislikes parables, but I kinda liked it because it was clever and inventive.
"The Kerastion" is not really a story, it's more of a character/background sketch. A woman named Chumo watches as her brother is buried. It then flashes back to fill in the background. The world of this story is fascinating, with people divided by their professions, decided when they feel a calling in early adolesence. The people worship the goddess of beauty, who is a jealous goddess who reclaims the most beautiful things to herself. Therefore everything is made of perishable materials and it is considered a great honor when one's creation is destroyed soon after it is made. "The Kerastion" portrayed a world entirely different from our own in only a few short pages, and I was fascinated by it.
The last three stories are related, and are a part of LeGuin's larger Hainish cycle of stories, in which lightspeed communication is possible but lightspeed travel is not, and where long ago a species called the Hain seeded various planets with intelligent life, including humanity. These three stories deal with the creation of the churten drive, a way for ships to go from one place to the other instantaneously. However, in each story there is a complication. "The Shobies' Story" tells of the first crew to test the churten, and their discovery of the churten's flaw: it is necessary to be in perfect unity for it to work. "Dancing to Ganam" takes place several years later, as a former member of the Shoby test crew is persuaded to try another Churten test to a planet called Ganam. Even though they succeed, the explorers on Ganam discover that they still need to stay harmonized in order to understand the culture they discover there. The final story, "Another Story or The Fisherman of the Inland Sea," tells of a scientist from the planet of O who works on developing the churten drive, and how that forces him to sacrifice his possible life on his home planet. The story asks whether it was worth it, and comes up with a more complicated answer than you might expect.
I liked most of the stories I read in "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea." they were interesting and very well-written. Leguin is an expert world-builder, creating alien cultures that seem like they could be real. I liked her little touches: the descriptions of the way marriages on O O(which are between four people) work and how the commander of the mission on "Dancing to Ganam," a childhood hero of the main character, is shown to be a flawed human being without having to make him secretly evil (which seems to be the fate of most childhood heroes in stories like this). I just all around liked them, and I'm going to make a point of reading mor LeGuin in the future
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