I blame my creative director…

-
I haven’t been getting much sleep lately. And I blame my creative director. I’ve been up way past my intended bedtime every night this week ever since he loaned me his Sandman collection. Sandman… lack of sleep… the irony…

Anyway, I finished Volume 1 last night (Preludes and Nocturnes), which collected Issues 1-8 of Neil Gaiman's series. Ah, there’s just something about comics for adults that is just so deliciously refreshing.


In your standard superhero comic, sure your villains are evil, but they still seem to operate by some sort of code. They have limits in their evil. In comics for mature readers, well, the gloves are off. The villains of these tales with befriend a mother of 2 and then shoot her at point-blank range in the face. They’ll plunge the world into madness, triggering nurses to set geriatric hospital wards on fire and businessmen stumbling around animal shelters with a bloody baseball bat. They get into people’s minds and have them chop off their own fingers.

It brings back fond memories of those old EC horror comics I used to read as a 10 year old...

Death, personified as a perky, matter-of-fact Goth, will take a sickly old musician to the new realm of existence but she’ll also rob a mother of her newborn baby in the minute the mom turns her back on the cot to fetch bay’s bottle.

It’s intense stuff. And it’s fantastic.

I particularly like Death, who in Issue 8, ‘The Sound of her Wings’ and her collected miniseries ‘Death: The High Cost of Living’ functions in a guiding role, pulling people/beings out of depression to show them that they have responsibilities and can reinject drive and goals into their lives.


With Death, Gaiman has actually created a character who changes your perceptions of death as a concept. It's totally natural, and a neutral transition process.

Comments

Dante said…
hmm adult comics are rather nice. haven't read many. More realistic. I mean i love batman but why he doesn't suffer from knee problems is beyond me. hehe.

okay this might be a duh q. but is the sandman series good?
4:36 PM
Shirley said…
The Sandman series is excellent. It's also graphically illustrated by Dave McKean, who is brilliant in his own right.

At some point, weren't they filming The high Cost of Living? I was sure they were.
1:29 PM
Pfangirl said…
I'm enjoying The Sandman series so far - I'm now on Issue #9. I'd definitely say it's worth reading the 10 trade paperbacks that collect the entire series.

According to Wiki, there's an Absolute Sandman trade paperback, collecting the first 20 issues, and it has been recoloured.

Shirlz, Dave McKean only illustrated the creepy Sandman covers. Artists who actually drew the series include Sam Kieth, Malcolm Jones III, Mike Dringenberg
Charles Vess, Kelley Jones, Jill Thompson, etc etc.
8:46 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is the rebooted Lara Croft gay? Evidence for and against...

-
Image
As some of you know, I’ve been fangirling hard over the new Tomb Raider , the first entry in the video game series since 2008, and ostensibly a reboot for the entire franchise . Taking the form of an origin story, Tomb Raider 2013 depicts the events that transformed a beautiful, if bookish, archaeology graduate into a pistol-packing adventurer with a devil-may-care attitude. We meet Lara Croft as a pretty, fairly ordinary 21 year old, brooding over her work notes, listening to her mp3 player and very much confined to the shadow of her male mentors. By the end of the game, however, she’s taken charge – she’s had to! – and, battered, bruised and bloody, she’s both a survivor and hero, right down to rescuing the princess and carrying her away in her arms. Yeah, this is probably the best point to mention that there will be some Tomb Raider 2013 spoilers in this post, so read ahead with caution. Anyway, I loved the game. Technically it’s near faultless, it looks beautiful, the ov...
Read more

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Queer Icon (Part 4)

-
Image
Part 4: The mystery of Lara Croft’s sexuality “Now what’s a man gotta do to get that kind of attention from ya?” – Larson Conway (Tomb Raider, 1996) Despite being an icon for many queer pop culture consumers, Lara Croft’s own sexual orientation remains ambiguous. Outside of the Top Cow comics and live-action films – where Lara is blatantly heterosexual, with a fondness for slightly scruffy bad boys (who keep betraying and hurting her) – the character comes across as primarily asexual. Kurtis Trent is the only male figure who even comes close to being a love interest in the game series. Lara's apparent sexual disinterest is despite the adventurer appearing very sexually attractive herself; a figure of desire with bee-stung lips, voluptuous breasts, toned stomach and impossibly long, athlete’s legs. Yet Lara is never dominated by sexual yearnings or romantic affections. She is very much in control of herself at all times. It’s worth noting, however, that over time th...
Read more

Ladies I Love: Part 2 - Rhona Mitra

-
Image
Following on from the first post in this series , you may realise that I have a very definite type. Anyway, today we profile model-turned-actress Rhona Mitra . This 36 year old Briton is of English, Irish and Indian descent. You'll have seen her pop up on the big and small screen multiple over the past decade and a half, although Mitra's claim to fame is that she was the second ever model (some say first if you rule out "unofficial"  Nathalie Cook ) to play iconic video game character Lara Croft . From 1997-1998, Mitra could be found in PR material, as well as at trade shows, events and conventions as a flesh-and-blood embodiment of Tomb Raider 's kick-ass archeologist lead. There have been many official Lara Croft models over the years , but as far as I'm concerned Mitra remains the best. In my mind, of all of them, she most closely resembles the video game character in terms of facial features. Plus she comes from money and had a rebellious boarding...
Read more