Ghosts, Raina Telgemeier, middlegrade graphic novel. A girl with a terminally-ill little sister has a comforting fantasy about life after death. Er, sorry, "puts aside her fears to embrace her heritage and the magic of the Day of the Dead". I did enjoy it, it's very sweet, but the real-world thread and the magic thread felt poorly fit together to me. I have the impression that the internet dislikes this one because Telgemeier is a white author [edited; I was being flippant in my word choice of how I described this and I'm sorry] using Mexican imagery (and uses an abandoned mission church as an atmospheric setting without mentioning the horrific shit that went down at the missions) but, I don't know, I guess I lean towards the "more art good" side of the cultural appropriation wars, at least in some cases. (That creative work can be a profound way of entering into a relationship of empathy, respect, and imagination with the cultural Other, to which mandatory avoidance feels like a negative alternative...) Anyways, given how much Junie loved Book of Life and Coco it's not a surprise to me that Telgemeier doing Día de los Muertos was something she wanted to pick up, and I think it's nice that stuff like this is going to be her cultural reference point instead of, say, the misery of Macario (which I don't think we actually watched *every* year in Spanish class, but man do I remember hating). Like, at least she'll think of it as colorful and beautiful. (I'm not sure whether I think a ruined hacienda would have been better than the ruined mission. Maybe?)
Oct. 14th, 2018
sequels or sequelae
Oct. 14th, 2018 11:15 amOk, look, I *know* that a surefire way to avoid the vexation of "why are they remaking/revisiting this thing that did not need messing with" is to just NOT READ/WATCH THE NEW THING, like, hey, I already know you can't step in the same stream twice, why do I keep getting my feet wet. AND YET. Splish. Splish.
The Power of the Dark Crystal Vol. 1, comic based on an unproduced movie script. I found this both a bit over-the-top (in a very normal comics way, where there are lots of bombastic captions) and a bit hard to follow, and also at odds with some stuff I thought I remembered from the movie, although maybe I'm wrong or it gets explained in later volumes. But there's some good art (plus the phenomenal alternate covers by Sana Takeda, which is how I come to have heard of this in the first place), and the basic conflict they've come up with seemed like a reasonable way to set up the plot. I believe the series concluded in the spring and both Vol 2 and the concluding Vol 3 are 2018 works, which I could read if I wanted to read more 2018 comics. I don't know that I do want that, especially... I think what I really want is for my kids to get old enough for the movie, or maybe just to watch it again myself. Which I could do. :)
The Power of the Dark Crystal Vol. 1, comic based on an unproduced movie script. I found this both a bit over-the-top (in a very normal comics way, where there are lots of bombastic captions) and a bit hard to follow, and also at odds with some stuff I thought I remembered from the movie, although maybe I'm wrong or it gets explained in later volumes. But there's some good art (plus the phenomenal alternate covers by Sana Takeda, which is how I come to have heard of this in the first place), and the basic conflict they've come up with seemed like a reasonable way to set up the plot. I believe the series concluded in the spring and both Vol 2 and the concluding Vol 3 are 2018 works, which I could read if I wanted to read more 2018 comics. I don't know that I do want that, especially... I think what I really want is for my kids to get old enough for the movie, or maybe just to watch it again myself. Which I could do. :)
on being a lying liar
Oct. 14th, 2018 08:06 pmSo Junie heard people casually talking about the end of the world at a party and was very worried and so I got to give her the climate change talk. She indicated that she didn't want to be told anything too scary and so I gave her an overview of the concept of global warming and some of the ways it can be bad ("more hurricanes, the melting Arctic ice makes it hard for the polar bears, and when enough ice melts the oceans will rise a little") but told her that lots of people are trying to work very hard to make it not as bad as it could be ("look at our shiny solar panels! our shiny electric car!") and did not, you know, tell her that I expect the later part of her life to be an endless parade of climate-related disasters from which she might escape personal immiseration only by the relative privilege of our affluence, while billions of less-lucky people suffer, riot, starve, drown, etc. Touched very gently on "we might not be able to fix everything we wish we could, but it can make a difference just to feel like we're doing something", which I'm sure will be very comforting when she finds out people knew about this for forty years before she did and just didn't care. I don't know. I was never into the Santa thing, or the tooth fairy, but I guess I just don't want her to know yet how bad I think things are. I guess I did mention "the president trying to make California not make cars have to put out less of those gases" to give her some idea of how much some people oppose doing anything, so maybe she got a picture of the USian political-level situation at least. But I just... I don't know, I find it immensely bleak to be living in the decline and fall of my country and my civilization, I just want her to have a little while longer before she has to move there too. :(