two random thoughts on V for Vendetta

I love the clever wittiness of the “vicious cabaret” song which begins book two, how it recaps what’s happened thus and shows us where most of the surviving main characters are at this point. I kind of felt like I should’ve been singing, but my roommates already think I’m crazy and I don’t think enigmatic tunes of anarchy would help.

The state of women within the fascist society of V for Vendetta seems to have degenerated significantly. We see this almost from the beginning with Evey trying to turn to prostitution to get her out of the matchbox factory and then again with Almond’s widow, who initially allows him to shove her around because she needs his support. After he’s gone, so is the safety net. In the song and her later monologue, we see she’s suddenly on her own and desperate. We also get a sense of the domestic isolation of a pre-60’s housewife.
Also, Roger Dascombe is a sleaze.

Remember Remember...

I remember the fifth of November. Nothing extraordinary happened, which is fine by me. I took pictures of me wearing a Guy Fawkes mask I found on clearance the week before at Halloween USA (a giant warehouse place which was as amazing as it sounds) and chose one as my profile picture on Facebook. And that was pretty much the extent of things. I think I had a midterm or something…

If you’ve got an inordinate amount of time to waste, the BBC has a slow loading trivia game about the Gunpowder Plot.

I, personally, enjoyed the game for the gravity defying rats that scurry around the whole time. I know no reason why that should ever be forgot.

As far as the book goes thus far, I really like the ‘paint with water’ style color scheme. The pastels lend a kind of surreal feeling to the whole thing. It’s sinister yet calm. Eerie, I guess?

finishing Understanding Comics

First off, for some reason the idiom stage of the six steps discussed in chapter seven confuses me. So... it's like genre, but not quite? I think more than anything, the fact that he calls it the "idiom" stage bothers me. That term does not fit there. Idioms strike me as things like "bull in a china shop" or "killing two birds with one stone". The picture associated with step three made more sense to me, at least - a comic artist can wear many hats. But that's an idiom (in the literary cliché sense), too. Is that supposed to be ironic? Is McCloud just trying to mess with me?

It also amazes me that McCloud doesn't go more in depth with the color in comics branching more into the abstract, picture plane of things. I think, for once, he may've missed an opportunity to throw that triangle in again. I was surprised the chapter was so short.
Still, I was left wondering what kind of impact the expensive nature of color has had or continues to have on the comics world. How many weird and revolutionary things would've been not only tried but exposed to the broader audience by now had starving artists of, say, the sixties and seventies had greater color access (and in a broader range)? It seems like much of this innovation was happening abroad while America was still caught in the superhero time warp. I'm curious to explore that further. It's like a parallel timeline of innovation which this book kind of skims over.

Okay, well, I'm sort of out of time, but I might actually continue this post/line of thinking later on today. Ranting is fun.

Superman!

Is there an equal to Superman in Watchmen? As I finish my wiki page, I'm having a hard time find one totally analogous to the man of steel. This could be due to the ravenous copyright, sure, but I think it's just because he'd be boring. He doesn't have much of an edge. He's never really bad.
Granted, in the beginning he was much more gruff, but back then he didn't really fight general crime so much as social injustice. Way meatier subject matter.
I guess he's somewhat Dr. Manhattan-like, in that he possesses actual powers, but people don't immediately know that. Also, he has a day job and was born with his powers, so that's out.
He's definitely not the comic. There is very little affable Rambo in Superman that I can find. Or maybe it's just that we don't see his dark side. Maybe that's the point. I mean, there's Bizarro and cyborg Superman, but those don't really count. Both of those just set Superman's dark side up as an outside entity, not really a part of him. We don't want to see his inward struggle (unless it concerns his love with Lois). It's so much easier to avert our gaze while he's in the fortress of solitude kicking the walls or whatever, cursing Jimmy Olsen for being too damn nice. And you can't tell me you couldn't imagine that happening. He does disappear quite often, mostly to sulk and bemoan his loneliness, but that doesn't count. I want to see him punch new craters into the moon over his income taxes or something. Something to make him more human in an indefinable way that may just make him less super, but more relatable to the world we actually live in today.

The idea that the battle between good and evil is not so clear cut, that somewhere in the murky middle ground lie corrupt superheroes and retired super villains just trying to get by is awesome to me. So far this novel seems to shatter and re-examine the world of superheroes the way Into the Woods (the play at least – was it ever a book?) flips fairy tales upside-down. And what are superhero comics but modern day, big city fairy tales where the princess is now a wisecracking reporter and the prince needs more than just a trusty steed and a bit of magic to fend off strange villains with atomic powers.