Free Comic Book Day is coming

Hum...

The offerings for this year's FCBD have been up for a bit now. Apparently this year everything must be all-ages, a designation distinctly different from for children. Basically, no nude Pablo Picasso just because it's true to life. (Or is it?) But give him some shorts and then it's fine even if the kids can't figure out why you would want to read it.

With something more like one book per publisher, a glance through the list gives a different picture of what's easy to get hold of than a glance through some of the more hole-in-the-wall shops. At least, so I hear. Mine local place actually has all sorts of variety.

The list does have plenty of what has become thought of as traditional comics fare. It also has a few of what is traditional if one is judging by the contents of the trunk at camp in the nurse's cabin (in which The Witching Hour was quite prominent.) Suspense, outright fantasy, and just plain fun stuff is there.

So, a quick glance makes me think these will be interesting to pick up:

The Stranded
Neotopia -- seems a bit long for a FCBD offering...
Ape Entertainment's Cartoon-apalooza
Del-Rey and Dabel Brothers Preview
Tiny Titans -- one superhero-y thing, perhaps
Gegika: a Drawn+Quarterly Manga Sampler
Graphic Classics -- adaptions of classic (you know, out of copyright) tales
I.G.N.A.T.Z.: International Graphic Novels at Their Zenith
Maintenance
Atomic Robo and Friends
Viper Comics Presents: Kid Houdini

Most of them previews, even, so you can go ahead and make your own list.

Maybe one day a little more science fiction can be had...

Persepolis

Come Saturday last week I found myself at the other art house theater of the same chain in town for the second of my French movie overload features. Seeing Persepolis, though, was a little more planned.

The movie was deliriously delightful and everything one might expect having read the comic. Well, maybe not quite everything. As it's a memoir, you wouldn't really expect the story to change here and there, but it has been in little ways. A movie has to trim here and there to fit into a usual movie running time. I also noticed a few memorable episodes essentially reduced to their punchline.

As always (nearly), the book is better, but it is still a wonderful romp. A good time at the movie house with plenty to think about after.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

French movie overload the week before last, at least compared to the number of movies I've been watching. Perhaps I shouldn't let it stew for a week... Oh well. The first was Le Scaphandre et le papillon.

This was the result of a, um, wild Tuesday out on the town going for noodles and standing outside one of our art house theaters thinking, "let's see a movie." I had never heard of any of the various foreign films up for Academy Awards that were playing except for the collection of animated shorts, but my companion had had a nagging feeling he wanted to see this one for a while. In the rough summary, this movie is an autobiographical piece about a man after he has suffered a stroke which has left him with locked-in syndrome.

The man is Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor of Elle, and locked-in syndrome is where all the bits work except the connections between the thinking bits and the doing bits. The movie is told from the author's point of view and flows from lows in finding himself nearly entirely without movement to the highs of learning to live what life he still has. Glimpses of the active life before are interspersed with appreciating the environment that must now be examined.

The interactions with other people are the greatest import. The doctor's are only brief encounters, but the therapists start feeling that his condition is a great challenge professionally and proceed to appreciate him as a person. Although he is reluctant at first, his friends and children's mother insist on seeing him. Odd samples of the people he's known come to have their say. He eventually accepts to allow his children to come rather than hiding himself from them. Nearly too late, his girlfriend finally comes rather than hiding him from herself.

In a way, people were able to say their piece and forgive as many wish they had done when a friend or companion has died. A few unfortunates were unable to overcome the thought of always remembering him "like that" instead of as an active person able to easily express whatever joy he was feeling in the moment.

All that said, I was unsure how I felt about the movie when it finished and am still unsure. I didn't find it particularly powerful though it was well executed. My companion felt the life lived after the stroke was a bit wanting, but not any more so than the life before as presented. I've never quite figured out what he thinks is a life well lived as opposed to one that is not, but I suspect I disagree with it. That is no great surprise since this may be the one thing we as individuals agree on the least. The chance to sit back and really reflect on everything and maybe even put right a few things does have a certain appeal, though.

soap ads

You know, I'm not especially glad I use Dial, nor would I specifically wish everybody else did. As a matter of fact, I think the Irish Spring left me smelling just a smidgen better throughout the day.

Lots of elephants and other great critters

Here's something to enjoy: Pascal Campoin's art blog.

He makes simple look so easy. Well, I say simple, but he really takes the time to populate the piece of world he draws for so many of these sketches. Today's post is an exquisite example of this, although usually there are not quite so many characters as today. Still, even if the subject is a new pet, he doesn't forget that cities are full of buildings. Not only that, but there's an overall organization to those buildings and they can't simply be slapped on willy-nilly. He doesn't forget that forests have trees, and behind those trees, more trees. Even the simple, reflective sketches communicate an ephemeral character to the moment they capture, so it's no surprise that he can come up with such fun moments of action. There's even occasional animations, usually for Christmas or the New Year but sometimes just because like that one.

(For each link, be sure to click on the thumbnail to get the big picture and be sure your browser isn't shrinking it to fit, too.)

I am feeling like my posts have been negative lately and this is something on my blog roll the last few months that I look forward to seeing new posts on.

Spider-man 3

I saw the first Spider-man movie in the theater because that's what the group decided to go out and see. It had moments, I guess, but overall wasn't great. It was generally the graphics which tended to not quite mesh with the real world around them. Meanwhile the swinging around on web always had a jarring, not-quite-in-tune-with-physics feel. I mean, aside from how he should be slamming into buildings. A pendulum doesn't quite move like that.

I wasn't looking forward to seeing the second, but eventually did. I can actually ignore the utterly wonky physics, occasionally without so much as a comment. Other than long moments of really flashy, wonky "physics", I don't remember much about this movie at all now. It didn't really encourage watching more movies.

Yet when a flatmate decided he had to rent the third one, curiosity drove me to actually watch it since it was there already. What an incredible mistake. This movie plunges to similar depths of bad as DeepStar Six, my usual marker for bad movies that aren't even fun to laugh at. This is a movie written for twelve-year-olds and no one else. It's a bit violent for the younger set and even a twelve-year-old is getting a bit too sophisticated for this.

I think it was the crowd scenes that really did it in for me. The carnival of happy cheering people celebrating their vigilante was bad enough, but every big fight also draws a crowd. A crowd that doesn't seem to sense any danger from falling objects as some costumed fellows fight it out with various thrown weapons above them, commonly taking out chunks of brick. In fact, this gathered crowd seems simply overjoyed when it comes to fights that involve improperly secured vehicles dangling above their heads. And, oh, Mary Jane might die! Bonus!

Are we supposed to see the crowd and get carried away with feeling good because they apparently feel good? They're all nuts.

Meanwhile, only one brief bit of really flashy and totally absurd "physics".

Dr. Who and the Daleks

Ah, I can't wait for tomorrow. There's going to be a new Doctor Who on! Although I probably won't get to watch it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I can watch the one bit of Doctor Who I haven't seen in some form, the feature films! Some of it is hard to watch since it was made and destroyed before I was born, but reconstructions exist. Those are all listed on the ultimate source of Doctor Who episode information on the web. For some reason the feature films are not. And now I know a little bit of why.

First you rewrite the characters so that the main fellow is, well, human. You can't be having alien characters be central. Who will the humans watching relate to? And give him an actual last name that people may stick after "Dr." to call him. I think he did once introduce himself as "Doctor Who" in the series. It was early on, they were still figuring it out. The first film was done only a couple years after the first of the series and was only using that as the fertile ground from which to spring.

Let both Susan and Barbara call him grandfather and Ian can be Barbara's boyfriend. Let him also be the source of mild slapstick entertainment, too. Then everyone can join up in this "TARDIS" thing the grandfather is showing off to Ian where a bumped lever (ah, more mild slapstick) can launch the merry band into adventure. Everything from here is quite familiar to viewers of the second story from the series, usually referred to as "The Daleks" and sometimes "The Mutants". Yeah, tin pots with plungers have been terrorizing the Doctor that long. Hey, it only took to the 8th Doctor for them to figure out bumps in the road like stairs.

Now, since this story was originally seven episodes in a time of half hour shows, there's a little bit to cut. Not that they did. Instead, they seemed to be ticking off each thing that happened in the original story off a list. Well, there was no alien romance this time, but that had been done fairly quietly and Barbara's already got a boyfriend this time. Meanwhile, the bits that didn't seem well motivated before seem to be positively mechanical in service of performing the story just as it was done before.

It is a wonderful story after all. Start off with the horrors that result from nuclear war, meet up with the side that has decided that one must never fight (although this isn't shown much) and convince them to throw away their values to help retrieve equipment. Then with their help, commit apparent genocide on the side still out to destroy everything. It's alright, they're bad. Well, they are!

Rewritten basic background and adds nothing original beyond that... That must be why it's not listed. My take: watch the episodes, it'll make a little more sense and they do still exist. Meanwhile, there's nothing for it but to watch the second film.