'Lo, Sunshine.
Jun. 7th, 2007 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
constanceI haven't mentioned yet that it looks like the drought has ended here. (Or at least, I have, but not in any entry I could actually post.) Well, kind of, anyway -- there was a big rain over the weekend, and the air since has been humid, and it was lovely to have rain, because all the silvery things are green again, and that's all good.
Another nice thing about rainy weather is that it provides you with the perfect excuse to stay in and read the complete Hellblazer on your computer, the Hellblazer for which you waited very patiently for far too long, but which arrived just in time for a rainy weekend when there hasn't been a rainy weekend for months, and you feel as though it has been planned maybe and you start questioning your whole stance as a nonbeliever because let's be honest here, it's not as though your lapsed-Catholic history has really prepared you well to hold that stance in the face of Eerie Coincidence.
(I am going to stop talking in the second person, now, because it's starting to give me a little bit of a headache. I hope you don't mind.)
In reading Hellblazer, I've found that reading literary comics and comics where the whole series is planned from the start to have a proper narrative arc with a proper conclusion is not good preparation for jumping into a series that's housed several creative teams and spanned twenty years. There's a pretty huge difference between reading one of these tightly-plotted comics series -- I'm thinking of things like Sandman or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen -- and reading something more mutable, and it's disconcerting for me to be reading, to become invested in plotlines and characters, only to find them unceremoniously abandoned (or tied up with an absolute minimum of effort) when the next creative team takes over.
I'm enjoying reading about the trials and tribulations of John Constantine (and God knows I should look around for some Hellblazer slash, because yummy, and I don't even like blonds), but I have to admit to a greater love of comics that are plotted, nurtured by a single entity, and given a conclusion that's more than just a wrapping-up of somebody else's business.
Given that, does anyone have any comics recommendations they'd like to share?
(ETA: OH MY GOD I THINK I CAN POST AGAIN.)
Another nice thing about rainy weather is that it provides you with the perfect excuse to stay in and read the complete Hellblazer on your computer, the Hellblazer for which you waited very patiently for far too long, but which arrived just in time for a rainy weekend when there hasn't been a rainy weekend for months, and you feel as though it has been planned maybe and you start questioning your whole stance as a nonbeliever because let's be honest here, it's not as though your lapsed-Catholic history has really prepared you well to hold that stance in the face of Eerie Coincidence.
(I am going to stop talking in the second person, now, because it's starting to give me a little bit of a headache. I hope you don't mind.)
In reading Hellblazer, I've found that reading literary comics and comics where the whole series is planned from the start to have a proper narrative arc with a proper conclusion is not good preparation for jumping into a series that's housed several creative teams and spanned twenty years. There's a pretty huge difference between reading one of these tightly-plotted comics series -- I'm thinking of things like Sandman or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen -- and reading something more mutable, and it's disconcerting for me to be reading, to become invested in plotlines and characters, only to find them unceremoniously abandoned (or tied up with an absolute minimum of effort) when the next creative team takes over.
I'm enjoying reading about the trials and tribulations of John Constantine (and God knows I should look around for some Hellblazer slash, because yummy, and I don't even like blonds), but I have to admit to a greater love of comics that are plotted, nurtured by a single entity, and given a conclusion that's more than just a wrapping-up of somebody else's business.
Given that, does anyone have any comics recommendations they'd like to share?
(ETA: OH MY GOD I THINK I CAN POST AGAIN.)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-07 09:13 pm (UTC)Sadly, there isn't much slash for the series. You can find a lot more for the movie-verse, but even there (and ignoring how much they butchered the characters in the movie) it's mostly just Constantine/Chase.
As for recommendations - definitely Preacher (http://www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/easyrider/data/preacher.htm) and Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan (http://www.transmetropolitan.com/). Both are fantastic. Then there's Carla Speed Mcneil's Finder (http://www.lightspeedpress.com/), which might just be the best comic out there, and quite a few people have recommended The Maxx (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maxx) to me. However, I just got it recently and so only had time to skip over it, but it does look very intriguing. And if you liked Sandman then you should maybe give Lucifer a try as well.
And one of my favorite comics is the City of Glass (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Glass:_The_Graphic_Novel) adaptation by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. I'm deeply in love with the art (and the writing, of course, but that's a given seeing that most of it comes straight from the novel).
no subject
Date: 2007-06-08 02:29 pm (UTC)Thanks so much for the recs! I'll look into these, definitely.
I've read Lucifer up through I think the sixth collection? What happened there was I read the then-existing graphic novels and then by the time the next one came out had moved on to other things, but I know there've been several collections published since I last read, and I really should pick them back up. I didn't like the Lucifer series as much as I liked Sandman, but I did like the character Carey drew from Gaiman enormously.