Yeah!! Read the first four or five volumes of Ex Machina, but along with everything else, it's been dumped in my old bedroom at my parents for the moment...

Nil a fhios agam:

If you're looking for something with a similar feel to Persepolis, you could try Zeina Abirached's Le Jeu des Hirondelles, about her family's life on the demarcation line in East Beirut in 1984. I've only seen it in French.



You could also have a look at Guy Delisle's books, Shenzen, Pyongyang and Chroniques Birmanes. They're all published in France by L'Association, an independent BD publishing company who have a good catalogue. They're all available in English.

He's a French-Canadian film animator. The first two are about his experiences working in China and North Korea; the third is possibly the best and details his trip to Burma with his wife, who works for Medecins Sans Frontieres. Nothing spectacular happens, but they're interesting musings about life in each country. I like his drawing style.

Gambrinus wrote:
Constantine (Hellblazer) veers between really good, and fucking crap. I think it's at it's best when it steers clear of the magic-the Ennis story about the crashed Spitfire is one of the finest things I've read.[/quote]

Do you know what trade paperback that story is included in, Gambrinus?

It's in "Tainted Love",according to Wikipedia. The story's called "Finest Hour". And I think it may have been a Hurricane, actually.

Bafflin, those two works look great, thanks for the pointers.

The first one kind of reminds me of a movie called West Beirut, which was about the friendship between three teenagers across the demarcation line through the civil war in that city. Pretty good movie, somewhat autobiographical work by a director who moved to LA and worked with Tarantino there before doing that feature.

Mrs Bafflin has just been lent several books from the Loisel and Tripp series, Magasin Général, set in Quebec in the 1920s, and she likes them.





There's an accompanying series subtitled "Arriere Boutique" which has, on alternate pages, the original pencil drawings and the finished, coloured versions. Often I prefer the pencil drawings.

West Beirut is a lovely film, it's nice to see it mentioned.
However I totally could not get on with Persepolis. I just couldn't stand the central character, I'm afraid.

I just read Wanted because I won it at the BFI quiz. It was pretty good. I think the hardest bit about comics is that I always want to read on quickly and that clashes with appreciating all the lovely little details of the artwork.

I thought the film Wanted was actually better, although neither is brilliant. I found the comic to be so dark and nihilistic as to be a bit pointless.

Yeah, I preferred the film. Lots more characterisation, etc.

Is Magasin Général available in English. That cover makes me want to read it. It's one of those images that makes you want to know the story behind it. Fantastic. I'd hang that on my wall.


Is it just me or has Frank Miller really jumped the shark? Everything he does seems to become dumber and more transparently right-wing. Dark Knight Returns was a bit right-wing, but with some subtlety and satire that was so well written and executed that it didn't really seem that way. I don't think it's the definitive Batman but it didn't ruin the character as some suggest.

Then he wrote (but didn't draw) Batman Year One which is, I think, the closest thing to a definitive Batman ever done.

But it's gone down hill since then, I think. Sin City is pretty cool, but it can't really be taken too seriously, gets a bit old after a few issues, and also has a bit of a right-wing vibe too it. 300 was sort of cool, but the film, which he blessed, was ridiculous.

The sequel to Dark Knight was crap. All inscrutible satire and style and no substance. Plus, more shitting on Superman, which isn't fair to the character or the creators who've done a lot of good stuff with Kal-El.

And now he's doing All-Star Batman and Robin with Jim Lee, going further down the road of Batman as Dirty Harry (he actually said in an interview that's how he sees him.) Batman isn't the sane-man-in-an-insane world like he was in Year One. He's just a psychotic, misanthropic, borderline-child-abusing douchebag. And Jim Lee's art is very pretty and he draws Batman well, but the way he draws every female character to look like a porn star is tedious. Yet it fits in with Miller's interest in prostitutes-with-a-heart-of-gold obsession.

Now he's working on something where Batman fights Osama Bin Laden and is spewing all sorts of simplistic sub-Hitchensesque clash of civilization stuff in interviews.

I'm so not impressed anymore.

BTW, anyone who's ever been even slightly entertained by Batman or anime should acquire the new Batman: Gotham Knight DVD and also watch all the extras. In particular, on the extras there are some really great episodes of the Bruce Timm animated series from the early 1990s that I'd never seen before.

Has he jumped the shark? Has he ever! All Star Batman and Robin has got to be the biggest fall from grace not just in comics but in any artistic medium, in the world. Ever!

Let's hope this shitness doesn't rub off on his film career - he has written and directed the new Spirit film and if it fucks it up I'm going to be even madder.

Reed, the publisher of Magasin Général is Casterman (of Tintin fame, in Brussels) so it will probably get translated, eventually. That serie has been really popular in France (one of the main characters is a French expat in Quebec)

There are some samples there: http://www.regisloisel.com/maggen1.htm

Lyra, if you liked West Beirut, you might like a new Lebanese movie called, "Under the Bombs" which just came out. I saw it last weekend, quite poignant and very well done:
http://www.souslesbombes.com/

I think The Dark Knight Strikes Again marked the big fall from grace. This just continues the pattern.

I think the Spirit film will be ok although it will not be brilliant like Eisner's original work. It will be more Milleresque than Eisnerian, althouth despite the way the trailer looks, it's not more of Sin City. It's in full color, he assures us on his blog at www.mycityscreams.com.

It's appropriate that Tarantino and Rodriguez worked on Sin City. Miller seems to be a lot like them - brilliant with the visuals, but lacking anything resebling intellectual or emotional depth with the stories or characters, and all three love to wallow in homages to the favorite schlock of their youth.

Never read the second Dark Knight volume. Was put off by the bad reviews.

Sorry about my outburst earlier. I read the first few comics of All Star Batman and Robin. All bad but I remember one in particular that was so bad it has mentally scarred me ever since.

Just seen the trailer to the Spirit. It's not going to be very good, is it? Well, maybe I'm being overly harsh but as far as I can see, it's a comic that just can't be turned into a film successfully.

No need to apologize. I just wanted to clarify the chronology of the shark-jumping.


I think The Spirit will be a lot like Sin City, except a lot less violent and a bit more fun.

Without Will Eisner's cartoony art, the stories are just noir detective yarns. Nothing wrong with that, but there's nothing especially new and exciting about that either. It would be better as an animated series or feature.

On the plus side, the film version will not feature Ebony White, who was The Spirit's driver in the old comics. To a modern audience, he's a horrible racist stereotype, although Eisner says he didn't mean for it be degrading and the character evolved out of that stereotype in the later comics, which included some "normal" black characters.