Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Comic

Just bought and read the blot by Tom Neely. A pretty book to behold, and the art in the first half or so is great -- kind of like an old-fashioned cartoon with the ominous, titular blot slowly creeping both up on and out our main character.























[this is the cover]

The abstract blot underscores how expressive this old style of cartooning can be, while still offering a distinct visual contrast with the rest of the characters and landscape (I'm talking about the action inside the book, but maybe you can get a little of this from the cover image). I think the story suffers some once our main character meets his "Amazing Girl" and escapes to the country, but I understand the logic of it, and besides, he gets to do battle with a pretty badass monster.

Speaking of "Amazing Girls," they apparently have a counterpart in something coming to be known as the "Quirky-Aggressive." Actually, while they may have some common ground, in their pure form they are almost nemeses, or at least on opposite ends of some kind of spectrum (though I'm sure they'd still be polite to each other at parties). (I'll also point out here that I'm talking about movies and comics and books and such, not real life women, who are, of course, more complex than mere genre-types. Even if they don't want to own up to it.)

There's a not-entirely-horrible indie flick, Dummy, that has a pretty good example of this (Milla Jovovich as a pretty strong quirky-aggressive best friend/unrequited love interest, Vera Farmiga as the "amazing girl"(well, "amazing single mother") who takes meek yet soulful aspiring ventriloquist (oh, indie) Adrien Brody under her loving wing) but after trying to write about it just now, I realized it's nowhere near fresh enough in my memory to totally unpack. But maybe in another post.

Speaking of purely hypothetical future-posts, I've decided to leave Boston for parts more or less unknown. I mean, I'm sure I'll swing through the old stomping grounds at some point, and I'll probably start off at my sister's in NJ, but I'm sort of winging it until I find somewhere next to lay my head for a while. BUT ANYWAYS, you may all get a huge summary post about Boston, my job, and my wacky adventures. It will likely just be a bunch of stuff I should have just tumbled about, all strung together in one post, but maybe I'll manage to do the right and noble thing and draw out larger meanings or something along the lines of all that jazz. Or maybe it will all be fodder for my novel. My Future-Novel!

Purely Hypothetical Future-Novel, like, boom!

1 Comments:

Blogger Pander Bear said...

Of course, I only have this one low res shot, but it looks kinda like one of those magnet things where you draw mustaches and the like. I'll check it out.

2:01 AM, August 19, 2008  

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