Review: Latter Days (Cerebus Vol. 15)

Sim giving us plenty of funny in the beginning of the volume, ’cause he knows he’s going to hit us with plenty of text later on…

From Wikipedia:

First part of the story-arc Latter Days. After a prodigious leap in time over two issues, Cerebus returns from the north intent on provoking the Cirinists into killing him. Instead, he is captured by a trio of characters based on the Three Stooges, who await a religious revelation from him. While Cerebus was in the north, a religious movement developed out of the teachings of Rick and his writings about Cerebus. Once Cerebus supplies the required revelation, he inspires a successful anti-Cirinist rebellion and a subsequent reordering of society. Much of the second half of this chapter consists of Cerebus giving a highly idiosyncratic analysis of the Torah. Lasting nearly a year (in publishing terms), this section, called “Chasing YHWH” (presumably a reference to the Kevin Smith film Chasing Amy) was presented almost entirely in text format, with minimal art. This story arc is unusual in that disembodied thought balloons give the impression that Cerebus is speaking directly to the reader at times. It is revealed in the last issue of the arc that Cerebus has been talking to a woman reporter who bears a striking resemblance to Jaka. He eventually falls in love with the woman and marries her.

Do I ever tire of making fun of the fact Cerebus has no lower jaw?  No.  No I don’t.

Our digression de jure – backstory into the Three Stooges.  Interesting enough to make me want to sit down and watch the Curly-era Stooge shorts. (Shemp was the original 3rd Stooge? Get outta here!)

Not to sound redundant, but – this should not have been in the book to begin with.  If you want to give tribute to them, fine, but don’t bore the reader with extraneous (if still interesting on its own) detail.  It’s like sitting down with a Spider-Man comic and half of the issue is taken up with the history of the Daily Bugle leading up to the day J. Jonah takes over publishing: fine detail work there, but not the main even, if you know what I mean…

And look! It only took until the penultimate volume of the series figure out how to do a good long time passed…

 

and still more – less-headache inducing text pages…

 

And for the Sim Quote of the Day…(referring to European film here)

Of course – as is something of a syndrome for those who become aficionados of international culture – not knowing the language allows you to imagine a much more interesting film than the one you’re watching.

{Manga fans (I would say anime  fans as well – Ed.) are a good example.  If the translations are accurate, there have to be a lot of fans of Japanese comics scratching their heads and going, “That’s what this one was about?” In the same vein, I remember Kevin Eastman admitting that that happens a lot with European material that he purchases and has translated for Heavy Metal magazine – the stories are a lot more interesting to look at than they turn out to be in terms of actual content.}

Dave Sim, Notes on Latter Days, pg. 500

As far as the text bits, analysing the Books of Moshe…if you’re into that kind of thing, go for it.

Review: Form & Void (Cerebus Vol. 14)

In the home stretch now – I don’t expect any of these last reviews to be very wordy at all, as much of what I’ve already written still applies, and having wrestled with this graphic novel for a good long time.

From Wikipedia:

Second and concluding part of the story-arc Going Home. Cerebus and Jaka continue their journey towards Sand Hills Creek, in the company of Ham and Mary Ernestway, characters based upon Ernest Hemingway and his fourth wife, Mary. On the trip, Mary tells them about some of her and Ham’s journeys (this material is based on Mary Hemingway’s journals about Ernest’s last African safaris before his death).

Ham kills himself, and Cerebus flees in panic, taking Jaka with him. They discover that they have been traveling in circles without making any significant progress toward Sand Hills Creek, and nearly die in a blizzard.

They finally arrive in Sand Hills Creek only to find that Cerebus’ parents are dead and the rest of the community has shunned Cerebus for his perceived abandonment of his family. Cerebus drives Jaka away, blaming her for keeping him away too long.

I’ve never read Hemingway – perhaps I should count myself lucky.

Annnoying bit number umpty-dozen: even when I feel that Sim is digressing from what I think the main plot should be, he always gives me something interesting in return. Hard to get mad at him when he does that.

Like: the charge of being a “typist” that Sim levels at Hemingway – I felt the same way while I attempted to read The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  After a bit, I was reduced to skimming the novel for something of interest to me (a good sex scene, some violence, something).  I think it was the short declarative sentences, coupled with McCarthy’s lack of capitalization skills that put me off that novel.  Sounds like Sim had the same sort of time with Hemingway, although, back then, proper capitalization was  still in vogue.

And (yes, I’m inserting a spoiler, sue me) the revelation that both Hemingway and his wife ate lion meat on that last safari they took.

 

Funniest bit in this volume – Sim on the “talent” of Picasso in his Cubism phase:

Let’s say someone is holding a gun to your head and he tells you that you have to do an exact copy of one of these paintings in a week.  And one of the paintings is a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover and one of the paintings is a Picasso.  It does not matter which one, as long as the Picasso is one of the ones that is just a geometric patchwork of painted shapes. So any Picasso from Cubism onward. The Rockwell can be any Saturday Evening Post cover. Now, with a gun at your head and your life on the line, which one are you going to copy?  Exactly.  Why?  Because pretty much anybody can do it.

Dave Sim, Form & Void, Third Printing, November 2001

Priceless!

On chickens being tossed into shredders…

After seeing this…

http://www.mercyforanimals.org/hatchery/

I wonder whose “rights” come out on top when I see videos like this?

Does the male chick’s “right” to live trump, say, a dog’s “right” to eat? (The internet seems to think that the chicks’ carcasses are used for dog food & fertilizer) For that matter, does the chick’s “right” to live trump my “right” to eat? (That fertilizer comes in handy to grow veggies-something important to most vegan/veg types.) And another question: does the chick’s “right” to live mean the humans working at the chicken plant lose their “right” to a job, due to the plant being shut down for “cruelty”?

As to the “cruelty” – does eating a free-range chicken versus a factory-raised chicken mitigate the fact that they will be eaten regardless?  I would say no. If I eat meat, I can hardly quibble about how the meat ends up on my table, can I?  I’ll bet, if I were working as a chicken sexer, I’d be pretty cavalier about how I tossed the males too, given that I’ve got to work there 8 hours a day.

Regarding the warning the special interest group wants on egg containers… does that warning remind anybody else about the old Monty Python “Crunchy Frog” routine? (YouTube it up!)

1 in every 1000? Ya don’t say…

CCTV cameras not helping anybody solve the vast majority of crimes – but certainly keeping people off the unemployment rolls…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/6081549/One-crime-solved-for-every-1000-CCTV-cameras-senior-officer-claims.html

(I’m still doing screen captures of articles – but WordPress seems to smoosh the ones I post to illegiblity. If I figure out what I’m doing wrong, I’ll update the post…)

Review: Going Home (Cerebus Vol. 13)

From Wikipedia:

First part of the story-arc Going Home. Cerebus and Jaka travel across land, then on a river boat. Cerebus is eager to make as much time as possible, as he fears being trapped in the mountains near Sand Hills Creek by winter, but instead he indulges Jaka’s desire for shopping and public appearances.

(We also get a good look at Cerebus’ jawless mouth. Priceless!)

Along the way, they encounter veiled hostility from the Cirinists. Cerebus and Jaka’s relationship begins to show signs of deterioration, and Jaka is almost tempted away by F. Stop Kennedy (a fictionalised F. Scott Fitzgerald), a writer who has accompanied them on their river boat.

Frustrating, that’s what it is. The Fall and the River part of this volume should have been self-contained on its own, rather than shoehorned into the greater Cerebus story arc. Gorgeous art, well-written, but in my opinion, another digression…

At least here, we get some depictions of the military (in earlier volumes, Sim would allude to divisions of pikemen or some such, but would never illustrate them…)

Review: Rick’s Story (Cerebus Vol. 12)

From Wikipedia:

Eventually Jaka’s ex-husband Rick arrives at the bar. He has significantly aged, become a heavy drinker (he could barely tolerate alcohol in Jaka’s Story), and it is gradually revealed that the mental and emotional scars from the events at the end of Jaka’s Story have left him mildly insane. Rick is working on a book about his life, which gradually becomes a religious work in which Cerebus is a holy figure and Rick his follower. Joanne returns and taunts Cerebus by courting Rick. At the end of the book, Rick departs, for reasons not entirely clear, and tells Cerebus that he will see Rick only once more in his life. After Rick has left, Jaka shows up at the bar, and she and Cerebus depart together, heading for Sand Hills Creek.

Yet another interesting digression from the “main” plot line.  Look – even Sim realizes that the story line might be getting too esoteric for the average reader…

And, finally, the “jump the shark” moment for me – Sim puts himself graphically into the narrative…

And more fantasy elements as well, which dropped me right out of the narrative…

Can Sim recover me with some sort of Hail Mary Pass through the last volumes of the narrative? Stay Tuned…

Plus – I’ve been reading ahead (on Going Home right now) and found this passage in the notes at the back…

Part of my ongoing experiment to incorporate text pieces into a comic book story so that the reader actually reads them instead of skipping over them…”Oh shit. Do I really have to read all THIS?”…Yes, Dave, you have to read all one page of it.

Chasing Scott (notes on Fall & The River, Going Home, third printing August 2000)

The only problem being – there’s more than just one page of it.

When adding text like this (I would say), don’t go in for lengthy passages like this, especially if they’re in faux-King James or what have you) and distill the essence down to the really important stuff. Just because you have 6000 pages to fill doesn’t mean that you have to bore the reader.  Especially when you’re using this as a plot point for the rest of the story…

Review: Inglourious Basterds

Just a quick one – What an attention whore Tarantino is!  Not content with making a ripping good (if a little overlong) WW2 picture, he’s gotta throw the historical revisionism in there!

I won’t say what that revisionism is, but in my heart I know it’s there because it wouldn’t be brilliant Tarantino if it hadn’t.

AND MORE (INVISO-TEXT): As to the “Jewish Revenge Fantasy” angle – how wouldn’t that work if the Basterds hadn’t killed Hitler, but some fictional Nazi group instead?  It will be intersting if T. goes all in for the rest of his filmmaking career with his own mythology.  Not that anybody hasn’t done so before, but this would be the first time for a major director to do so…

What to bring to Appleseed Shoot (addendum)

Beyond this list here:

http://www.appleseedinfo.org/pdf/what_to_bring_shoot.pdf

Here’s some stuff I think I could have used on my last Appleseed:

A small set of binoculars (you’re not allowed to check your target after each course of fire – this might help to check your NPOA easier)

Some sort of cover for your rifle during the lunch break (my rifle got mighty toasty in the sun)

A Shamwow-sort of product (for putting water on, and putting on your head in the hot, hot sun.)

A proper shell extractor for your rifle (there was a guy down the firing line who had to keep extracting shells with a collapsible cleaning rod)

Appleseed RESET – #1 (2009)

I had forgotten just how exhausting an Appleseed was. Don’t get me wrong – it was fun as well, met some great people, re-dedicated myself to getting that Rifleman patch (3 people got it yesterday, if I recall correctly).

It’s just the stand-to-prone, stand-to-seated, prone only, over and over again, at Rifleman’s cadence, on knees and elbows already rubbed raw, in the heat.  “Draining” seems to be a word that’s too limiting, even though we all were keeping hydrated throughout the day.  And I also understand why we were doing this – the training under stress would be a great help if we ever had to use the skills we were building – still: I don’t believe I was doing myself any favors by sticking around to the second day.

However – I finally learned how to make the damned loop sling this time, and managed not to shoot any targets but my own.  I’ll have to do some serious study on my own for a good long while now.

Appleseed Pt. 16

It took me a while to write about this, but I thought it was a strange enough phenomena to commemorate…

Went out to zero my rifle for the Appleseed in Bristol happening in 2 days – just for giggles, I decide to turn a new target over and stick a high contrast dot on the back to see what would happen…

 

My group immediately tightened up (that circle is about 2 1/2″ in diameter). 25 yards, offhand.  Of course I’m rushing the shots sometimes and still anticipating the recoil, but I think I’m going to do a lot better at the Appleseed this time…