I haven’t posted in awhile, but I figured this was post worthy.

I have seen “The Watchmen.”

[Short Version] It was excellent. If you like the graphic novel, you’ll like the movie.

[Longer Version]

I’m not going to throw in a lot of spoilers, however I’m going to assume that if you are reading this, you are familiar with the story.

The movie is a relatively faithful adaptation of the graphic novel. There were a few changes. Some of the details in the set up for the end were changed. There are no exploding psionic squids, although the basic concept for the end is the same. There is no “Black Frigate” story line. There is no Ozymandias back story. Some of the subtlety of the graphic novel is lost. But on the whole, it was faithful.

The soundtrack is fantastic and sets off the movie very well. Some of the music is very subtle. I almost missed the soft song that was behind Adrien Veidt the first time we see him. There is music from Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Leonard Cohen, among others that are very well matched. The Soundtrack, as available on Amazon, is missing a few songs.

The visuals are also outstanding. Gritty. Surreal. The cinematography was beautiful. All and all, it was what I was hoping for. I loved watching it. Like the music, there were lots of subtle touches (although not as many as in the comic). I want to see it again just to see and ID all the different stuff on Ozymandias’ multiple TV sets. From what I could tell, they all had meaning. Quick hint, look at the screen to the middle right. The World Trade Center is softly noticeable in the skyline and it was slightly disconcerting. The costumes are outstanding. Did I mention the attention to detail? Seriously excellent.

I was a touch disappointed with Dr. Manhattan. He has always had some degree of unreality but it really shows. There are lots of fine details in him, yet he just isn’t quite right when he moves and talks. It goes to show that CGI still isn’t quite there, despite what they did with “Benjamin Button.” And speaking of Doctor Manhattan, he is anatomically correct and that is not hidden…several times.

There was one thing that really irked me though. The “aging” that they did was bad. Really bad. I know that many of the characters have to appear in the present and in the past. They took 20 and 30 year old actresses and cover them in stuffing, latex and make up to make them look old. They look like 20 and 30 years old actresses stuffed in latex. The skin on the neck and cheeks looks especially bad. I had total loss of suspension of disbelief when the older version of Sally Jupiter was on screen.

I was also kind of disappointed by Dr. Manhattan’s watch-like contraption on Mars. It was supposed to look like it was crystalline. I though it looked and moved like it was CGI. It just didn’t look…cool.

Things to note: There is sex and it is graphic. Thrusting, grunting, showing both bodies, no sheets. With a camera angle change it would have been a different type of film. There is also lots of violence. Some of it is very graphic. There are several very brutal killings that, in many movies, would have been displayed by showing the shadows. The killing here is shown with fairly significant gore. Basically, if it was gory in the graphic novel, it was gory in the movie. Again, there is significant attention to detail.

All and all, I liked it. I liked it a lot. I will likely see it again and buy the DVD. I’m not a hardcore comic geek, but I read the graphic novel when I saw the preview for it before Batman. I went with a hardcore Watchmen fan and he also liked it. A couple of people I went with had never read the comic and they liked it. If you liked the Dark Knight, you will probably like this movie. If you want light hearted, puppy loving, everything works out in the end type movie, you won’t like The Watchmen.

Anyone else have a program like this at their library? This is from an email sent by the town:

Library Celebrates Free Comic Day – May 5

Saturday, May 5, is National Free Comic Book Day. Many comic stores around the
country are celebrating by giving out free comic books to everyone who comes to
their stores. Thanks to the generosity of Eye Opener Comics in Newington, the Faxon
branch of the West Hartford Public Library will have a limited supply of free comic
books to hand out to patrons on Saturday. Comic books will be available to all
children and teens that visit the library on a first-come basis and will be limited
to one to a person.

After getting your free comic book, be sure to check out the rest of the library’s
collection — including all of our graphic novels and manga titles. For more
information, please call the Teen Services office at 561-6996.

That’s pretty cool. Many graphic novels are truly works of literature in their own right and deserve a place in the library.

I’ve been reading too much non-fiction lately, so in an effort to add some fiction to my list, I picked up a couple of new books this week. One twist, all of them are graphic novels. First up is the first volume of Y: The Last Man, a series by Brian K. Vaughan. Vaughan worked for a while for DC and Marvel, but most recently he joined the writing staff for Lost. Yes, another Shah/Hojnicki obsession, but I promise you, a healthy one. Honestly, I didn’t know this when I picked up the book. I was intrigued by another Vaughan title, Pride of Baghdad, which follows four lions who escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. It’s based on a real episode, but the idea of using the lions to explore the concept of liberation sounded pretty interesting. More on that book later.

Y is set in a world where an unknown pathogen or agent wipes out all the male mammals in the world. All the males except for two, actually: our protagonist and his pet monkey. Somehow, he becomes the last human Y chromosome in the world.

The first volume runs through the opening of the story. We meet what look to be the major characters in the series, all women except for Yorick, the last man on earth. The men all die at once, suddenly leaving chaos and turmoil behind. Imagine what it might be like if suddenly every man in the world disappeared. Imagine the knowledge lost, even at a practical level. So many professions are still dominated by men. How many women know how to run the garbage collection system? Heck, my office would be down to maybe 10% or less of the staff remaining, especially among the technical staff. In the U.S., women account for about 45% of the workforce, which isn’t that bad. I suspect you might get a different breakdown by industry.

Vaughan’s imagination creates an interesting world. The Secretary of Agriculture becomes President (Nancy Pelosi would be the first female president if this happened today), gangs of women band together as Amazons, and the Washington Monument becomes an impromptu shrine to the dead men of the country. Don’t know what it is about dystopian futures, but between this and Transmetropolitan, clearly something is getting my attention. This one seems to be a bit more optimistic than Transmet (well, except for the whole all-the-men-are-dead thing). Both series are also published by Vertigo.

So far, I’m curious about what happens next. Best thing a first volume can do, I guess, so I’ll be picking up the next few.

Last week, I heard an interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation talking about a new graphic adaptation of the 9/11 Commission Report. At first, I thought that this was an odd idea. Why would anyone want the 9/11 Report as a graphic novel? Are you ready for the words BLAMM! to be shown next to an image of a burning Pentagon? As I listened to the authors explain their motivation, I was convinced that this might be a unique way of communicating the 585 page 9/11 Commission Final Report.

It didn’t hurt that these authors were excellent comic writers and artists in their own right. Sid Jacobson created Richie Rich and was the editor-in-chief at Harvey Comics. Ernie Colón worked at Harvey, Marvel and DC Comics and oversaw “production of the Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, … and The Flash.” Both sounded very serious about why they were doing this and what this project meant to them.

I also began to see this as a piece of art that, while completely based on fact and striving to be true to the Final Report, offered a new way to view the tragic events of that day. Even before the authors brought it up, I remembered the power of reading Maus for the first time. I wrote then that a graphic novel about the Holocaust seemed “wrong” at first blush, but after reading it, I really appreciated having and reading Maus.

This graphic adaption also rises to the occasion. There are fold out timelines of all four planes. There are actually two timelines, one focusing on the events on board the aircraft and the other focusing on when each agency knew about the various events. While you can read much of this in the Executive Summary, this representation makes it easy to understand how the events fit together.

It’s these thousand word pictures that allow a reader to choose whether they want to skim the text or to dive into the details and the touches in the panels. The artwork is beautiful and rich in detail. The writing is clear, simple, and expertly crafted to capture the essential points of each section of the Final Report. Ultimately, it is a serious testament to both the quality and potential of this medium as well as the convictions and vision of the authors. I’m sure they got some incredulous looks when they proposed this project, but the final product says they made the right choice.

If you are wondering if you should see the new X-men movie, I would say yes.  Most die hard fans are not wondering and will go see it no matter what.  For those fans, I will say the movie is good, but doesn’t live up to comic series (literally).  There are numerous changes from the comics that are sure to drive a true fan batty.  But, for those that aren’t that familiar with the written works, the movie is entertaining and has more plot development than the previous two.  For what it is worth, my girlfriend, who is not a fan of comic book movies, thought this was the best one of the X-men movies.  But, I will say this: 

If you see the movie, STAY UNTIL THE END OF THE CREDITS.   If you are a true fan and you don’t stay until the end, you will not get your $10 worth. 

I got this box set from my mother when I last visited her. I had never heard of this comic book, Maus, and was a little wary of the big swastika and mice in camp uniforms on the cover. I remember thinking that a comic book about the Holocaust just seemed wrong.

Heidi told me that these books were well known and critically acclaimed. After finishing the second volume tonight, I can see why. The books relate the author’s process of writing a comic book about his parents and World War II. The Spiegelmans were Holocaust survivors, Polish Jews who through luck, skill, and shrewdness survived. The depth of the story is incredible, conveying the difficult relationship between the author and his father, telling the father’s story during the Holocaust, and exploring the author’s own emotional struggles with writing this story, his father, his mother’s suicide, and describing the horror’s of the Holocaust itself.

I found a couple of sites that go into the scholarship that has come up around these books. One seems to be an abandoned Geocities page listing a number of papers and studies analyzing the text, along with interviews with the author. The other site is an interesting paper examining how the author and people work through personal traumas. One other site that seemed interesting was this analysis of the books for a class on illustrated books.

Remembering Reagan comic strip

Muppets are now Disney

Sorry, Karen!

This cracked me up!

Today’s Non Sequitur.
It’s good to know how the rest of the world thinks

a fairly balanced view of fairly balanced news …
January 26’s Non Sequitur

So I am researching a story on babies doing Yoga and how it is linked with spirituality and I find Yoga poses demonstrated by the world’s most powerful man

Click positions to view.

Enjoy!

Call up the cartoon for 12/26/03
Brilliant!

I guess it’s important to count your blessings wherever you see ‘em.

Happy Happy to you all!

Chhavi

coutesy of my friend Leo (who did not take my harpo marx cartoon suggestion, but I love him anyways. I think this idea was better anyhow)

Update by nachoman: Leo also does cartoons for WBUR which everyone should check out.

I have a new word, from Transmetropolitan: Gengineering. It’s short for genetic engineering, and is one of the nice little touches in Ellis’s story. You can read the Wired review of Transmetropolitan to get an idea of what it’s about, and to see what got me interested in checking it out in the first place.

While the content is sometimes quite over-the-top, including lots of random drugs, sex, and random perversions, the image Ellis and Robertson paint of the future is consistent and immersive. This future shows a culture completely converted to self-indulgence, where every whim that can be fulfilled by technology is. People freely modify their genetic traits, embed nanotech implants, and even download their minds from their bodies into new, non-organic bodies. There are a lot of clever ideas and insights into a future that is, in many ways, quite believable.

The artwork is sharp and quite clever. The early books, especially, are filled with great little details in many of the frames poking fun at both the society in the story as well as some contemporary issues. It’s a great read, and I’ve already loaned my copy out to friends or bought them their own copy of volume one.

If you want to buy your own, you can look at this search I created at Amazon. Using that link will also help support this site.

Anyone read transmet?