How can I thank god for Friday when I still have to go through it?
*Now beginning online serialization - Carl’s Large Story, from Marcos Pérez. It’s large, it’s Carl, and it starts from the beginning.
*One little non-comics book I’m going to be getting soon is Only Revolutions, the new hardcover epic from Mark Z. Danielewski, modest, soft-spoken author of House of Leaves, who gently sells his latest tome as “a piece that I see as written outside the present industry of academia. I don't believe there's a vocabulary yet that can adequately address what's going on. That kind of academic math doesn't exist now.” Oh, ok! It’s a teenage love story involving time-travel and cars appearing out of thin air, told through the formalist conceit of forcing the reader to turn the book upside-down and flip it over after every chapter, one side’s chapters representing the perspective of the male protagonist and the flip side’s offering the female lead’s, the book’s pages also representing a timeline that we thus necessarily traverse from both sides toward the middle, then back over stuff we’ve seen, only through a different set of eyes.
Actually, it all sort of reminds me of that issue of Promethea last year (#32), in which you had to turn the comic upside-down, read it backwards, and traverse multiple simultaneous levels of narrative, with the added fandom/collector’s impulse baiting kick of the creators requesting you physically destroy the comic and reassemble it to reveal yet another path to meaning. I wonder if the visual nature of comics, duly exploited through the more avant-garde samples of the form, are capable of imbuing readers with a sensitive visual/structural awareness that might afford them a firmer grasp of the formalist possibilities encoded within prose novels? But maybe I’m just missing everything because I’m not privy to the futuristic academic math necessary to truly fathom Mark Z. Danielewski’s cutting-edge genius!
Er, anyway I just wanted to say I enjoyed horsing around on the official site.
*52 Dept: I think the random fight with the Weather Wizard was worth it, if only so Supernova could start demanding people respect his personal space, and a random mustachioed fellow could exclaim “We‘re gonna drown!” in a heroic effort to convince us that the Weather Wizard is a real threat. The art wasn‘t pulling its weight alone this week, lord knows. Also, it’s kind of fun to see this book’s myriad plots beginning to double-up, with the Resurrection Cult subplot latching on to Supernova after last week’s Montoya/Question mash-up with Isis and Black Adam.
But obviously, most of the fun this issue involves Lobo, Pope of Space (not his real title, though it is now as far as this site’s concerned), who’s met up with a talking, floating dolphin and is preparing to lead his people on a journey to a promised land - you don’t know how much I’m hoping that the dolphin confides to someone his/her deep-seated fear of water at some point in the future. Da fug? Booster's plot also goes in a somewhat unexpected direction, leaving plenty of questions that, knowing this series, won't be addressed for another two or three weeks or so. Random supercharacter cameos, crazy happenings and curious team-ups, plot movement that sometimes seems like only the illusion of movement, hasty-looking scratched-out art - it's the 52 formula for disposable, pleasurable weekly distraction, and this week is somewhere above the median.
*One little non-comics book I’m going to be getting soon is Only Revolutions, the new hardcover epic from Mark Z. Danielewski, modest, soft-spoken author of House of Leaves, who gently sells his latest tome as “a piece that I see as written outside the present industry of academia. I don't believe there's a vocabulary yet that can adequately address what's going on. That kind of academic math doesn't exist now.” Oh, ok! It’s a teenage love story involving time-travel and cars appearing out of thin air, told through the formalist conceit of forcing the reader to turn the book upside-down and flip it over after every chapter, one side’s chapters representing the perspective of the male protagonist and the flip side’s offering the female lead’s, the book’s pages also representing a timeline that we thus necessarily traverse from both sides toward the middle, then back over stuff we’ve seen, only through a different set of eyes.
Actually, it all sort of reminds me of that issue of Promethea last year (#32), in which you had to turn the comic upside-down, read it backwards, and traverse multiple simultaneous levels of narrative, with the added fandom/collector’s impulse baiting kick of the creators requesting you physically destroy the comic and reassemble it to reveal yet another path to meaning. I wonder if the visual nature of comics, duly exploited through the more avant-garde samples of the form, are capable of imbuing readers with a sensitive visual/structural awareness that might afford them a firmer grasp of the formalist possibilities encoded within prose novels? But maybe I’m just missing everything because I’m not privy to the futuristic academic math necessary to truly fathom Mark Z. Danielewski’s cutting-edge genius!
Er, anyway I just wanted to say I enjoyed horsing around on the official site.
*52 Dept: I think the random fight with the Weather Wizard was worth it, if only so Supernova could start demanding people respect his personal space, and a random mustachioed fellow could exclaim “We‘re gonna drown!” in a heroic effort to convince us that the Weather Wizard is a real threat. The art wasn‘t pulling its weight alone this week, lord knows. Also, it’s kind of fun to see this book’s myriad plots beginning to double-up, with the Resurrection Cult subplot latching on to Supernova after last week’s Montoya/Question mash-up with Isis and Black Adam.
But obviously, most of the fun this issue involves Lobo, Pope of Space (not his real title, though it is now as far as this site’s concerned), who’s met up with a talking, floating dolphin and is preparing to lead his people on a journey to a promised land - you don’t know how much I’m hoping that the dolphin confides to someone his/her deep-seated fear of water at some point in the future. Da fug? Booster's plot also goes in a somewhat unexpected direction, leaving plenty of questions that, knowing this series, won't be addressed for another two or three weeks or so. Random supercharacter cameos, crazy happenings and curious team-ups, plot movement that sometimes seems like only the illusion of movement, hasty-looking scratched-out art - it's the 52 formula for disposable, pleasurable weekly distraction, and this week is somewhere above the median.
posted by Jog at 10:59 PM
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