Posts Tagged ‘Graphic Novel’
Second Take: Watchmen
… As with all my Second Takes this will have spoilers.
I really love the Watchmen graphic novel, it is amazing, I still remember reading it the very first time and being blown away by such a complex story that really thought about comic book heroes. I’ve found more everytime I go back to that book and so it was natural for me to be excited over the idea of a Watchmen film. Excited but really cautious though, anyone care to remember League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ? …
Comment by Sujoy: … have not read the graphic novel. So I have to judge the …
I’m a big fan of of Max Brooks’ World War Z and I think I’ve managed to get copies of it in front of quite a few people, none of whom have been disappointed by it because it is very clever and very well researched. I also enjoyed The Zombie Survival Guide but probably to a lessor degree which is why I took my time to finally pick up and read Recorded Attacks which is a graphic novel detailing zombie events throughout history.
That’s kind of a neat idea.
Romans fighting zombies, ninjas fighting zombies, cavemen fighting zombies, cossacks fighting zombies… ummm you probably get the idea.
And the idea really does work in places but overall the book seems to just be a collection of really neat ideas and doesn’t actually form any overall narrative, which is fine unless you are looking for World War Z. Fortunately I wasn’t really expecting that and I enjoyed each of the short stories as a cool diversion, each one self contained and generally military in nature.
I’ve always figured that a ninja sword is pretty much the best weapon to fight zombies with so it was nice to see them in here (although the zombies apocalypse series The Walking Dead does feature a character with 2 ninja swords) and the part I found the most interesting was the slaver ship that gets infected and all of the slaves chained to each basically have some idea of what’s coming. It is a very powerful sequence in my mind.
The art is great, not as gory as I was expecting and have read from other that said it was. I’ve read much gorier stuff so if you are only a little squeamish you should still be fine in this, or maybe I’m just desensitised completely now. It’s a shame the artist doesn’t get more of a plug on the front cover (no mention at all actually) because it is such solid work.
Max Brooks does address this (very thoughtfully I think) though on his website and the artist Ibraim Roberson is listed on the back cover:
http://maxbrooks.com/news/2009/09/21/ibraim-roberson-the-artist-of-recorded-attacks/
If you like zombie books then you’ll like this book a lot as it does not disappoint, of course if you haven’t read World War Z then you need to get on that first!
You can buy The Zombie Survival Guide Recorded Attacks from Fishpond.com.au
Well I’ve done the ‘good’ list for movies this year so it seems only natural and fair to draw up the naughty list of movies before the year completely comes to an end.
This is potentially a much harder list as I generally don’t like to hate on too many films but there were at least a couple of films this year that deserve to get lumps of coal in their stockings or at the very least a good frowning. I’m sure there are some worse films too but I had to limit it to what I’ve actually seen and not just assumed!
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine – This is a really bad-ass character, everyone generally loves him, he’s on nearly every cover for Marvel, so why then did we get a weak ineffectual version of the character? I mean it’s not the actor who has already shown he can play the character? The writers just seem to soften the character so he was all bark and no brain popping claws through the jaw. And then the film degenerates into a who’s who of mutant appearances including a very young Cyclops who later on doesn’t recognise Wolverine because he had his eyes closed. So I guess no one liked Cyclops back then enough to describe the guy who saved them?? Oh yeah and if there was an Academy Award for worst way to handle the character Deadpool then this film would have it in the bag!
- Watchmen - Great comic book translation onto the big screen for Watchmen fans, horrible film for everyone else. I don’t mind Watchmen as a film, I’ve revisited it and grown to appreciate it as a literal translation onto screen. For anyone else though it is confusing, awkward and hard to get into. I completely get that. Maybe Alan Moore was right, it was never intended for any medium outside of comics.
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian – The first one was generally funny, not the greatest comedy in the world but certainly enjoyable. I have no idea why this one apart from financial concerns would ever even considered being made. It doesn’t add anything to the storyline and you know what Hank Azaria, you do voices, fine we get it, we got it, practise some restraint now.
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – The absolute best bit of the film: giant robot balls. The worst part? The fact that the best part was giant robot balls.
- Terminator Salvation – I feel bad putting this on the list now because I bought this today on Blu-ray, but only because I have the others including T3 and I think it’ll look pretty on the big telly. Other than that to me this film shows why Bill Murray might have head butted McG. There are a lot of dumb ideas in this film designed to look good only so that idiots will buy it on Blu-ray because it looks pretty… hang on… doh.
And there you have it. So any films that should be here that I’ve missed? Any films that shouldn’t be here? Let me know your biggest let downs when it came to film in 2009!
