More Karen, More Babblin'

Ah, Monday again. Oof.

So here's another page of Untrue Tales:

Karen Comes Clean page 9

So I had a fairly lazy weekend laying around reading comics and watching movies.

I went ahead and read Asterios Polyp as I was threatening to do last week.























It was pretty great, I admit. Books like these make me feel slightly dumb though. Kinda like the main character makes everybody he meets feel. I think there's more to this book than my intellectual laziness can handle. There's all sorts of symbolism and shit that requires a level of thinking that's slightly beyond my reach. Mazzucchelli once again takes his art to a new level of cartoony abstraction, but it's all very much in service to his theme and his story. It certainly works in the context of what he's doing. There's humor here. There's heartbreak. There's examination of the Big Questions. I suspect that this book is Art with a capital A. It's not a difficult read though. There's plenty to enjoy and admire right there on the surface. And probably a whole lot more in the subtext if one cares to delve deeper. Not me though. I generally stick to the shallows.

Reading it, I couldn't help but wonder what it'd be like if Mazz had drawn it in his more figurative style from back in the day. Mostly, I think it wouldn't have worked as well. The abstraction and caricature is pretty key to the whole package. Interesting stuff. This is something I'll no doubt return to quite a few times for rereading and examination.

Personally, I look to comics for more escapist entertainment than dissection of big issues. My all-time favorites tend to be the genre stuff. Superheroes. Crime. Horror. I like a thrill. I like a pretty picture. Is Asterios Polyp a better book than Batman Year One? Probably. But Mazz's Batman and Daredevil stuff will always be closer to my heart.

Still Asterios Polyp is well worth reading. Monday morning is probably not the optimal time to be considering its larger merits. I'm actually not precisely awake yet.

On the flip side, I also read my newly purchased collection of All-Star Batman and Robin having previously picked these up as singles.
























I kinda thought these would read better as a collection, but they really don't. This is a really weird book. I still kinda like it, but I find myself continually scratching my head about what Miller's up to here. The whole tone of the book is bizarre with the constant repetitive captions and extremely over-the-top dialogue. Plenty of odd moments that pull you out of the story. For instance, why is Black Canary tending bar in her full-on Black Canary outfit, including mask? Pretty pictures by Jim Lee, but the art suffers from occasional stiffness upon closer examination. Oh well. It's still intriguing enough to keep me reading, but this thing doesn't even approach the craft of Year One.

So in conclusion, Asterios Polyp is better than All-Star Batman and Robin. I know. It's a shocker.

Moving on, the most fun I had all weekend was at District 9.
























I won't go on too much about it here, since so much has been written about it elsewhere, but suffice it to say it lives up to the hype. Best science fiction film in ten years. Maybe the best since Blade Runner. I loved it.

After watching it, I was inspired to go back and watch the mother of modern sci-fi movies, Alien.























Boy, does it hold up well. Hard to believe it came out in 1979. It really doesn't seem dated at all. Watching it, I tried to remember what it was like watching it for the first time. That must've been some scary shit. There really hadn't been anything like it before. Weird to see Sigourney Weaver looking so crazy young even though she was already 30 at the time. Looks more like 19. All the acting and dialogue is first rate here. What a fucking classic.

I had so much fun rewatching Alien that I kept right on going and checked out Aliens too. Fun to notice that Cameron opens the film with the final shot of Ripley in the suspended animation capsule from the original. This movie is still all kinds of great too. Some clunky dialogue among the marines but it's all overshadowed by the sheer narcotic awesomeness of Bill Paxton's line-readings. That dude is the MVP of the movie. It's all good though. Interesting to notice all the touchstones that Cameron revisits from the first film, covering all the bases but giving everything a new twist and ramping up the stakes. These two movies really have become the template for all the (must be) hundreds of creature feature flicks where a monster picks off a ragtag bunch of characters one by one.

Fun stuff. Now go see District 9 if you haven't yet. It's almost as good as the first two Alien flicks.

I think I'll go watch Blade Runner again now...

Ooops, almost forgot! Here's a sketch:























Bye now!