psocoptera (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
psocoptera) wrote2022-06-25 01:40 pm
psocoptera) wrote2022-06-25 01:40 pm
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Far Sector
Far Sector, N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell. I did not expect to get much out of this - previous DC or Marvel franchises written by big names from the SFF prose world have generally not done much for me (McGuire's Ghost Spider, Okorafor's Black Panther, Ahmed's Black Bolt). But in fact I really liked it! I think a big part of that is how Jemisin's story sits within the franchise - instead of writing about an existing character and expecting people to already care about the character (and maybe be familiar with their whole dang backstory), Jemisin uses the most general details of the Green Lantern universe that even I knew (Corps, rings, power to manifest glowy green things) to set up a new character in a new setting, and puts all the reasons to care right there on the page I was actually reading (and not some other page I was supposed to have read in some other book earlier). I thought basically everything here was really well done - the main character, the alien world with its three very interestingly different alien species, the central conflict of the big arc and the pacing and specifics of how it played out issue-to-issue. I am not very far into my Hugo Graphic reading but I think I'd be pretty happy to see this win - it seems like a really good example of how it's possible to tell interesting standalone stories within an established franchise, by being willing to develop original material instead of just rehashing the same tentpole characters all the time.
A couple of specifics behind a spoiler cut: I really liked how some of the stuff that I thought was just Jemisin having fun (CanHaz's fondness for memes, Jo's excitement over getting the fanfic chapter and its explicit rating) becomes more meaningful in light of the "emotional content economy" later. I loved the panel when Marth holds his seven-fingered hand out and it's so human and also so alien, a perfect visual for that, and also I had managed to not notice until that point that the Nah had extra fingers? But looking back they're totally there, in a number of panels, but drawn so naturally that I guess my brain just went "yes hands we know hands" until really confronted with it, really nicely done by Campbell. (In general, I thought the art was really good. Jo's Janelle-Monae-in-Tightrope hair when she's in uniform, vs her curly civilian look, the carnivorous plant people, the alien cityscapes. I sometimes have a hard time following what's happening in big action sequences like the mech battle, but I thought the emotional details came through pretty well even when I couldn't quite tell you where anyone was in space.) And I know Green Lantern has been Black for a long time (or one of them is? TSOR suggests that John Stewart is like the fourth GL, introduced in 1971, and is the canonical GL of DC animated shows) but I still thought ending the book on "in brightest day in blackest night" was a really neat use of the vow (the other thing I know about the GL universe!). Especially with "so much blackness/so beautiful" on the previous page, the simultaneous blackness/Blackness of space, telling you to read the vow not as "when things are good/when things are bad" but "at any of these two different peaks of awesomness, brightest or blackest"... I don't know, that's obviously a white person read and actual Black people might feel completely differently, but I thought it was a powerful moment.
A couple of specifics behind a spoiler cut: I really liked how some of the stuff that I thought was just Jemisin having fun (CanHaz's fondness for memes, Jo's excitement over getting the fanfic chapter and its explicit rating) becomes more meaningful in light of the "emotional content economy" later. I loved the panel when Marth holds his seven-fingered hand out and it's so human and also so alien, a perfect visual for that, and also I had managed to not notice until that point that the Nah had extra fingers? But looking back they're totally there, in a number of panels, but drawn so naturally that I guess my brain just went "yes hands we know hands" until really confronted with it, really nicely done by Campbell. (In general, I thought the art was really good. Jo's Janelle-Monae-in-Tightrope hair when she's in uniform, vs her curly civilian look, the carnivorous plant people, the alien cityscapes. I sometimes have a hard time following what's happening in big action sequences like the mech battle, but I thought the emotional details came through pretty well even when I couldn't quite tell you where anyone was in space.) And I know Green Lantern has been Black for a long time (or one of them is? TSOR suggests that John Stewart is like the fourth GL, introduced in 1971, and is the canonical GL of DC animated shows) but I still thought ending the book on "in brightest day in blackest night" was a really neat use of the vow (the other thing I know about the GL universe!). Especially with "so much blackness/so beautiful" on the previous page, the simultaneous blackness/Blackness of space, telling you to read the vow not as "when things are good/when things are bad" but "at any of these two different peaks of awesomness, brightest or blackest"... I don't know, that's obviously a white person read and actual Black people might feel completely differently, but I thought it was a powerful moment.