Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Ltd.

Archive for the ‘Comics and Manga’ Category

So I recently made a trip to Hastings (“You’re entertaiment superstore!) and picked up a few things. First, I got volumes 4 and 5 of Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley.  I’ve been enjoying the Scott Pilgrim series over the past month or so, and these two volumes were great.  For those who don’t know, the book’s titular hero falls in love with Ramona Flowers, who has seven evil exes that Scott must defeat to continue dating her.  The book is great for fans of video games and music, and I’ve enjoyed the romance story between Scott and Ramona.

Second, I got volume 1 of The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore.  I had heard about this book for years but had never picked it up (as with Scott Pilgrim as well).  I felt that the beginning was too much like 28 Days Later in why the main character, Rick (a small town police officer), doesn’t know what’s going on (he was shot on duty and in a coma for a month), but overall I enjoyed it.  There were a couple of times when reading it, however, that I had to double check the pages to make sure I hadn’t missed something; at times, there is a slight jump in time, but there’s no obvious indication of it.  Other than those two quibbles, it was good, and the art style helps to capture the creepiness of a world overrun with zombies.

Third, I finally bought Night by Elie Wiesel.  I’ve wanted to read this book for a while, and I found it in the used the section.  I’m considering teaching it in my Reading class, given its shorter length.

Fourth, I got C.S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Support of the Argument from Reason by Victor Reppert.  The book is an examination of Lewis’s argument that the existence of rational thought proves the existence of the supernatural (an idea Lewis explored in Mircales).  It was fortuitous that I found this book at this time, as I was listening to a podcast in which the hosts briefly discussed recent scientific developments in brain research that suggest that there is no free will (something atheists have been claiming for years).  This “discovery” (if it’s held up) basically proves Lewis’s argument: in a “naturalist” system (in which nothing exists but nature), there cannot be true rational thought (because everything is cause and effect); thus, reason is a supernatural miracle.

Let me know if you’ve read any of them.  I may post fully reviews as I finish reading these books.

Front Row Crew – GeekNights » Blog Archive » Why it has to be “The Squid”.

GeekNights is one of my favorite podcasts, and they are huge Watchmen fans.  Scott, one of the two hosts, posted a short audio response to the change in the ending of Watchmen in the film version.  I have to admit that it had been so long since I read the original that I missed the ending change, but Scott’s argument is very well made, althought he admits that he hadn’t seen the movie yet (this was posted on March 5).  I’m going to be rereading it and posting my thoughts about it, so I’ll cover my thoughts about the ending when I get there.  If you’ve already watched the movie and read the graphic novel, then give this a listen.

Jen and I have just gotten back from Watchmen. (Currently, she’s looking up actors in the movie to see what else they’ve been in.) In getting ready for watching it, I did something that might seem counter to the normal way of doing things: I did not reread the graphic novel before hand. This is a case where I didn’t want my ideas about the comic to influence too deeply my opinion of the film. I know that sounds counter-intuitive; after all, those of us in the “geek cultures” of things like Lord of the Rings and comic books love to break down the adaptations into their components and compare those to our beloved works. But I wanted to approach this movie as it is and consider the work as an adaptation later. I can never, of course, be one of those for whom this movie is their first exposure to the work, but it’s been long enough since I’ve read Watchmen that I didn’t have every particle of the book in my mind, criticizing the film as I watched it.

By the way, the purpose of this article, as the title says, is just to get a few thoughts down, to sketch my initial impressions of the movie. It might be a while before I see it again (when the DVD is released, perhaps), so I want to jot down a few things before the memory fades.

I also want to follow up this article with a series of posts chronicling my rereading of the graphic novel. I got the idea from a series of blogs on tor.com, in which someone reread Lord of the Rings and chronicled their impressions of it. I think that might be an interesting idea to do for this and other works that I regard as classics, so look forward to that in the (hopefully) near future.

Now onto the sketch. Read the rest of this entry »