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three comics and a cartoon
May. 31st, 2016 07:36 pmMs. Marvel Volume 3: Crushed, Wilson, Bondoc, Miyazawa. I didn't think this was as strong as Generation Why, plot/theme-wise, or as fun in its guest stars (Wolverine >> Loki), but it still had a lot of great character beats. I'm... cautiously intrigued by what they're doing with Kamala and Bruno, like it's maybe *not* falling into any of the obvious patterns that could take?
Hereville: How Mirka Caught a Fish, Barry Deutsch. The third Hereville book. Okay, talk about character beats. Deutsch is *so good*. There were bits of this that were almost breathtaking. And I didn't quite cry but I got a little misty-eyed. Plus the Hereville world is just so interesting - I guess it's exotifying to look at it that way, but we're in my lj, so, whatever, I *really enjoyed* the way it sometimes jars my assumptions, like, it's so easy to slip into thinking that they're in the past because of the clothes, and then suddenly - car! Or the comparative bathing suits! Don't tell Junie but I need to either buy her all three of these or put them on her wishlist, now that she's into comics, they're just so good.
Last of the Sandwalkers, Jay Hosler. I really wanted to love this, and I feel all weird and sad about how lukewarm I ended up feeling about it. I mean, THIS IS AGE OF ELYTRA - I didn't even realize when I picked it up and then at some point I was like, holy shit, this IS the long-prophecied beetle project, I've been waiting for, what, over a decade? The thing is, I love beetles, but part of what I love about beetles is just how *gorgeous* they are, and this comic, for me, didn't really capture that. In fact, I found the character designs confusing - I had to keep referring back to the cast page to try to tell them apart - and not particularly easy to identify with in a Scott McCloud iconic-character sense. I did enjoy meeting some nifty beetle species, but the mechanics to get the party from encounter to encounter felt way over-labored... neither the action-adventure-intrigue plot or the character dynamics ever really drew me in, but that stuff was way too much of the weight of the book for the zing of pure beetle enthusiasm to shine through. I don't know. I feel like an asshole griping about this when, like, it's a fucking comic book about beetles, it's amazing it exists in the first place, who cares if it was 50% gratuitous robot, but Clan Apis was so beautiful, and moving, and important to me, I obviously wanted this to be Clan Apis But With Beetles and you can't step into the same stream and... yeah.
Megamind is stylistically similar to another DreamWorks animated superhero movie from around the same time that I really liked, Monsters vs Aliens, but the latter is more of a classic origin story, and Megamind is a deconstruction. I mean, both have some fun with the cliches of the genre, but I think a *lot* of Megamind was lost on my not-yet-genre-savvy kids, and I'll be surprised if they remember it as enthusiastically? I loved it, though. Great character dynamics. Am now tearing through fic. :)
Hereville: How Mirka Caught a Fish, Barry Deutsch. The third Hereville book. Okay, talk about character beats. Deutsch is *so good*. There were bits of this that were almost breathtaking. And I didn't quite cry but I got a little misty-eyed. Plus the Hereville world is just so interesting - I guess it's exotifying to look at it that way, but we're in my lj, so, whatever, I *really enjoyed* the way it sometimes jars my assumptions, like, it's so easy to slip into thinking that they're in the past because of the clothes, and then suddenly - car! Or the comparative bathing suits! Don't tell Junie but I need to either buy her all three of these or put them on her wishlist, now that she's into comics, they're just so good.
Last of the Sandwalkers, Jay Hosler. I really wanted to love this, and I feel all weird and sad about how lukewarm I ended up feeling about it. I mean, THIS IS AGE OF ELYTRA - I didn't even realize when I picked it up and then at some point I was like, holy shit, this IS the long-prophecied beetle project, I've been waiting for, what, over a decade? The thing is, I love beetles, but part of what I love about beetles is just how *gorgeous* they are, and this comic, for me, didn't really capture that. In fact, I found the character designs confusing - I had to keep referring back to the cast page to try to tell them apart - and not particularly easy to identify with in a Scott McCloud iconic-character sense. I did enjoy meeting some nifty beetle species, but the mechanics to get the party from encounter to encounter felt way over-labored... neither the action-adventure-intrigue plot or the character dynamics ever really drew me in, but that stuff was way too much of the weight of the book for the zing of pure beetle enthusiasm to shine through. I don't know. I feel like an asshole griping about this when, like, it's a fucking comic book about beetles, it's amazing it exists in the first place, who cares if it was 50% gratuitous robot, but Clan Apis was so beautiful, and moving, and important to me, I obviously wanted this to be Clan Apis But With Beetles and you can't step into the same stream and... yeah.
Megamind is stylistically similar to another DreamWorks animated superhero movie from around the same time that I really liked, Monsters vs Aliens, but the latter is more of a classic origin story, and Megamind is a deconstruction. I mean, both have some fun with the cliches of the genre, but I think a *lot* of Megamind was lost on my not-yet-genre-savvy kids, and I'll be surprised if they remember it as enthusiastically? I loved it, though. Great character dynamics. Am now tearing through fic. :)
