“Sprawling, trippy, moving, and a hell of a lot of fun”: That’s EW on David Mazzucchelli’s long-awaited graphic novel project, which turned out to be Asterios Polyp.
All of my conflicting emotions when reading this news cancel each other out: So I guess hearing that extremely popular novelist Janet Evanovich is going to be breaking into graphic novels leaves me…apathetic? Hopefully her final product will be better than Brad Meltzer’s or Jodi Picoult’s or Dean Koontz’s or Stephen King’s or…well, you get the idea. The fact that it will be coming from Dark Horse is kinda promising, as they weren’t responsible for any of the godawful graphic novels written by or based on the works of popular airport paperback novelist I’ve suffered through in the past.
Apparently, if it’s new to them it’s news: CNN discovers the “real superhero” movement, which every media outlet in the world except maybe CNN reported on months ago. CNN’s piece tries to tie the movement into the economy.
“Stan Lee, who inadvertently shaped contemporary film, is now trying to do so on purpose”: Not a bad sub-head, that. It’s from an Economist business story about Stan Lee and film. Unfortunately, whatever points one might award them for the sub-head get subtracted for the headline: “Ka-pow!”
I often see IDW’s Astro Boy in my dreams, and wake up screaming: Sarah Boslaugh reviews a couple of comics for kids, including Astro Boy: Official Movie Prequel #1.
Basil Wolverton is rather high on my list of Cartoonists Whose Work Will Never Be Used To Model Playground Equipment After: But what do you know? Look what the Fantagraphics blog has a picture of.
Go read Monster Plus #1: You might reasonably expect the most ingeniously insane character in this online comic to be its star, who seems to be a zombified mummy/Frankenstein’s monster that is also a vampire and a werewolf, but page six will disabuse you of that notion. You’ve never seen anything like what you’ll see on page six.
June 6th, 2009 at 11:32 am
What GN has Stephen King done? I know about the Dark Tower stuff… I haven’t read ‘em yet, but they’ve been very successful, haven’t they? This is the first I’ve (potentially) heard of them not being good. But then he didn’t actually write those, did he? I thought Peter David was involved.
Now Jodi Picoult, OTOH… I feel bad for her, actually. Not a bad writer at all (I rather liked The Tenth Circle), but her run on Wonder Woman was the pits. Then again, I think she was hamstrung by having to write something that followed Heinberg’s less than stellar run (which wasn’t even finished), and she had to tie into the mistake known as Amazons Attack. I don’t think she ever had a chance.
June 6th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Oh, and “popular airport paperback novelist,” while the term applies to all of these people, seems like a putdown in this context. Stephen King may be popular and mainstream, but he’s also a helluva writer. I don’t think he gets enough credit for how good he can be.
I liked the one Picoult novel I’ve read, and as a comics fan I really liked Meltzer’s Book of Lies too. Interesting idea for a book. Suprisingly, I’ve never read Dean Koontz. But anyhow, I’m not going to knock any of these folks for being successful at writing.