April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

Graphic novels/comics:

Kanan, Nabiel: Lost Girl
(so memorable, I've already forgotten what it was about).

Gurewitch, Nicholas: The Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories
(that's quite an imagination Gurewitch has).

Kochalka, James: Monkey vs. Robot.

Giardino, Vittorio: No Pasaran! vol. 2
(the more I read of this, the more I dig it. He's got a really spare style, so it takes some time to get used to the characters, but it kind of crawls up under your skin, the bright, crisp, colorful art, the beauty of landscape and the well-rendered details of houses, cars, trains, airplanes, military uniforms...I know zilch about the Spanish Civil War, so I'm going to need to read up on it).

Benson, John, editor, Dana Dutch (presumed) author, Matt Baker, artist, et al: Romance Without Tears: '50s Love Comics--With a Twist!
(Fantagraphics. The stories are not really "with a twist," like those romance comics with the text rewritten to snark the original stories. This is a collection of actual romance comics published by Archer St. John in the 50s, presumably written by Dana Dutch and mainly illustrated by Matt Baker; however, as there are no surviving records proving Dutch wrote the scripts, we can't be entirely sure all of these are Dutch's work, and the collection is copyrighted by Benson. In the introduction, Benson explains that the older romance comics of the fifties featured surprisingly liberated and self-possessed heroines, far more so than their counterparts in the 1960s, which are notorious for the "tear-stained faces" of their covers. These 50's comics are still conservative about sex and marriage--sex outside of marriage is presented as disastrous, shameful, and rare, and this is not historically true of what actual people did in the 1950's. That said, Benson's observations about the nature of the heroines and their actions in these comics is borne out by the texts--the collection is just chock full of young women who learn by experience, make decisions for themselves (and sometimes make mistakes), cry infrequently and briefly, and who have the kinds of relationships with their boyfriends, parents, siblings, and friends that support mature growth. Well worth checking out).

Simmonds, Posy: Gemma Bovary
(On the subject of good stories involving romance and well-written women--this is fucking brilliant in every regard, and oh so clever. I highly recommend it).

I have to post once a week on a discussion board for my not-really-cataloging class; the first week, I posted about the weird, fragmentary way graphic novels get classified and shelved in public libraries. I also posted about having retagged hundreds of back entries in this journal once I started focusing so much on reading graphic novels. The professor now knows me as "Margaret, who likes graphic novels." I should have mentioned that I tag food related posts with "101 things to stuff with goat cheese," and all poetry related posts with "april is national poetry month."


Graphic novels:

Kelso, Megan: The Squirrel Mother Stories.

Campbell, Eddie: The Fate of the Artist.

Sala, Richard: The Grave Robber's Daughter.

Giardino, Vittorio: No Pasaran! vol. 1
(ComicsLit. I was thinking that this was the shortest damn spy story I'd ever read until I got the end and realized it was only volume 1. The spine tag covered that bit up, and I had no idea when I started it wasn't a complete work).

Kuper, Peter: Speechless
(not actually a graphic novel, but an artbook and collection of sketches. Kuper impresses me even more now than he did before; he's quite a stunning artist, with a fiery political spirit. I had no idea how prolific his work was, but after looking at the magazine cover selections, I realized I must have seen his work dozens of times before I picked up Sticks and Stones).


Manga:

Kanari Yozaburo, story, Sato Fumiya, art: Kindaichi Case Files: Kindaichi the Killer Part 1, Kindaichi Case Files; Kindaichi the Killer Part 2
(I think I have the answer to the Saki #2 question. A slightly more inclusive character guide at the beginning of these books would have eliminated the question, though.

Damn, I love Akechi. I'm inclined to think he never seriously thought Kindaichi was guilty, but was just running with it because Akechi loves fucking with Kindaichi).

Novels/prose books:

Klein, Naomi: The Shock Doctrine
(when my dad recommended this to me, he said, "I'm sure you don't have much time for reading these days." Honesty compelled me to reply, "I have nothing BUT time for reading these days."

This book chillingly and persuasively draws the lines between the dots of torture, mental and economic shock, and the radical end of the ideology of the totally unregulated free market. I wouldn't have drawn the line myself, but when I see it, I believe it. Generally, I have no interest in bringing politics into this blog, but I will say this: I have no use for social liberalism if it's coupled with economic conservatism, or: it means nothing to blandly smile on people's right to be gay and alive and not jailed, be anything other than white, and alive and not jailed, or to be a woman, and alive and not jailedl, if you don't also believe in the rights of human beings to be able to have food, shelter, and employment. Economics are politics. Wealth and poverty are political. I've noticed that there is a remarkable consistency on this: it's not considered impolite to talk about money unless you have it when other people don't.

The Dispossessed is still radical when The Left Hand of Darkness has come within hailing distance of the norm. That means a great deal).


Graphic novels:

Geary, Rick: A Treasury of Victorian Murder: The Case of Madeleine Smith
(This reminded me rather of Strong Poison. I suppose it's not out of the realm of possibility that Sayers could have been referencing it, although considering how many people must have been murdered with poison over the course of history, and how many of those cases might have been reported and covered in newspapers, there's no particular reason to think that she would have been referencing this one.

This is a less mysterious sort of mystery than most of the books in the Treasury, since it's clearly rather unlikely that Smith didn't murder her lover, but very interesting anyway, as Smith went on to become part of the social sphere of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood).


Van Meter, Jen, author, Christie Norrie and Ross Campbell, artists: Hopeless Savages vol. 3.


Manga:

Oda Eiichiro: One Piece vols. 1-2
(I can see the appeal, but I really don't love it).

Novels/prose books:

Heyer, Georgette: Footsteps in the Dark
(English. Mystery. Witty! Georgette Heyer. This one reads a bit like a Nancy Drew or a Hardy Boys novel for adults, and I think I mean that in a good way).


Graphic novels:

Spiegelman, Art: Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began
(Spiegelman really knows his way around a visual metaphor).

Various: Graphic Classics: Mark Twain
(it's good and it's fun, and Rick Geary always rocks my socks, but the main thing I get from this book is a renewed desire to read Twain as prose. Also, I felt that some of these adaptations were a little short on illustration. As I can read Twain's prose whenever I want to, I felt a bit cheated on that score).

Geary, Rick: A Treasury of Victorian Murder: The Mystery of Mary Rogers
(Geary does not fail to rock my socks with this.

I am unsatisfied over not having an answer to the mystery, but unsolved mysteries are par for the course here--it's not a fault of Geary's presentation of the material. It just so happens that I hadn't heard of this mystery before reading the book, so I had no existing sense of the mythology that sprang up around Mary Rogers' murder. I did already know some of mythologies of Lizzie Borden and of Jack the Ripper when I read Geary's books on them, so I was already anticipating those non-resolutions.

I really don't know why I can enjoy graphic novel true crime stories when the prose kind generally leave me loathing every part of the process. I think maybe because the kinds of true crime stories that make it into contemporary comics tend to be historical, and often the stuff of legend? To me, writing stories based on enduring cultural lore does not feel so sickeningly dehumanizing as what crowds the true crime shelves in bookstores...some of the motivation is the same (we thrill to the gruesome details of the crime, the intense emotion, the extremes of personality), but it's a little more...I don't know...processed. Passed off to history, with the families no longer around to be injured. Like fiction, there's no longer anything really at stake, and no one to be hurt. It's why historical fiction doesn't bug me when RPF does.

And a great deal of the appeal specifically of these Geary works is that the murders ARE unsolved and can almost certainly never BE solved, making them a sort of intellectual exercise, like mental chewing gum).


Manga:

Mashima Hiro: Fairy Tail vol. 2.

Kanari Yozaburo, author, Sato Fumiya, artist: The Kindaichi Case Files: Treasure Isle
(called it. Sort of).

Nakazawa Keiji: Barefoot Gen vols. 1-2
(the introduction is by Art Spiegelman. You know, it's hard to say which of these WWII-related works is more depressing, Maus or this.

I strongly recommend this manga to anyone feeling dissatisfied with works like Grave of the Fireflies or Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms for not discussing Japanese culpability in WWII. The author's father was anti-war, and the manga is a fictionalized version of the author's own life--by pure chance, he survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima, lost most of his family at that time, and struggled to survive afterwards--and his father's (and presumably the family's as a whole) anti-war stance is laid out loud and clear, as are the dire social consequences of not supporting the war (among other unpleasant things, not being able to borrow food from neighbors when your pregnant wife and five children are slowly starving to death). The manga also firmly acknowledges Japanese racism and mistreatment of Korean and Chinese laborers; this is discussed in the context of the family's friendship with a Korean neighbor, who repays their open support and friendship with food he can barely spare.

Reading this is like a reading a weird hybrid of The Drifting Classroom and something by Tezuka: unrelenting horror and death in a blasted landscape, as written by a humanist who over and over and over again calls for peace and human friendship, infused with childlike optimism, energy, and the moral depth and clarity that only a wise adult can really possess. It's humanism from someone who has literally seen with his own eyes absolutely the worst that people can do to each other, and who still believes that we can be better than that, and who can show you both.

Highly recommended, but expect it to hurt).


Taniguchi Tomo: Aquarium
(I am slowly working my way through all the works reviewed in the shoujo issue of The Comics Journal!).

Look, can we talk about Peter O'Toole already? I feel like we've been avoiding this conversation far too long as it is. Let's get straight to it: he's an acting god. He certainly seems to spend a fair amount of time playing god, or at least playing egomaniacs, psychotic killers, paranoid schizophrenics, sex gods, acting legends, and war heroes with disturbed personas. (Except for that one movie with Audrey Hepburn, which is entertaining beyond what it has any right to be. The world didn't need another larceny flick, but it's still a better place for O'Toole and Hepburn screwing around being gorgeous and funny, and How to Steal a Million is a clever and well-executed larceny flick.)

The only downside to his having lived this long is that at age seventy-four, he is no longer the most smokingly hot man I have ever laid eyes on. Still, he was kind enough to do his best work when he was beautiful, most especially in Lawrence of Arabia--which incidentally is the best movie ever made, and for about a week after seeing it for the first time, I replaced my standard greeting of "Hey, it's that guy," with, "Hey, have you seen Lawrence of Arabia?" (Disappointingly, no one's gone for the obvious punchline, or even the really clever less obvious punchline.) I'm not in doubt about my heterosexuality, but if I were, Peter O'Toole would clear things up nicely.

(And if you haven't seen Lawrence of Arabia, you should. It's only the best movie ever made, featuring the best performance of one of the world's greatest actors, living or dead, as one of the most complex and interesting men of the 20th century, but I don't want to oversell it or anything.)


So, O'Toole movies--I'm working my way through the canon as fast as the interlibrary loan can provide it for me. Night of the Generals, I'm only part way through, and it is a freaky, freaky movie, totally a treat for Omar Sharif and O'Toole in the same room, and god, why are they so hot as fucking Nazi officers? O'Toole looks good in a uniform, but he's a lot sexier in his Nazi general coat than he was in the British officer's outfit from Lawrence of Arabia, and it is very distracting. He is like a black hole of charisma; all attention is pulled to him when he's in the room, and it's damned difficult to look at anything else. Good thing he's the star.

Amazingly, he's less scary (so far) as Tanz in Night of the Generals than he was as Jack in The Ruling Class. The Ruling Class is a sick, vicious, twisted, hellaciously funny and weird movie, with just a wisp of a sentimental grounding to turn the ending into a heartache. O'Toole is an English Earl who is also a paranoid schizophrenic; he spends most of the movie believing he's God (he has scary blond Jesus hair and wears a white suit, and talks about love) and the rest believing he's Jack the Ripper. It's hard to say which is freakier. Murderous insanity is terrifying, but the verve and unpredictability of his Christ persona is somehow as unsettling as it is funny. O'Toole equally strong in both aspects, and makes them coherently part of the same madness, no mean trick. He's the reason to watch the movie. Again, it's the good thing he's the star. The other performances in this movie are good, but what drives both the story and the satire is the way that different characters react to Jack's loud, colorful insanity--some with frustration, some with amusement, some with ignorance, all with opportunism--which requires O'Toole to pretty much be the center of every scene in which he talks, and a few in which he doesn't, but does chirp like a bird.

By the way, I would rather by far watch Peter O'Toole chirp like a bird while dressed like Jesus in a lounge suit than watch Nicole Kidman in anything.

Regarding How to Steal a Million. It's not important. It is fun. A lot of movies have been made like this, and there's nothing particularly that requires O'Toole to be there; the character type he plays in it has been played creditably by many a lesser actor. That said, it's O'Toole, and he's a delight to watch, and if the role could have been played by a lesser actor, that certainly didn't stop him from turning in a superior performance--not overacting, mind you; he's charmingly understated. And while for some reason, he's brunet here, he is nevertheless still beautiful, and rather cute with Audrey Hepburn.