I picked this up a couple weeks ago. It was weird. I started to read it. It's like a 300 page graphic novel, and usually you can read one of those within a few hours. But one of those things, I was only able to read a few pages here and there. It was a slow burn. I fell asleep quite a few times trying to read it before bed. And about a third of the way into it I was feeling- ah, so so. Nothing special. I don't know why it has all these worshipping reviews. But then, I don't know. It started to grow on me. Pretty soon I realized I had been reading this thing for over 2 weeks. So one day, I sat down and said, "I am going to finish this bastard today." And so then I did and WOW.
The shining lights in my comic book history goes like this:
The Dark Knight Returns pretty much kicked the doors down for me.
The first 4 graphic novels of the TMNT also fired me up.
The frantic energy of Kyle Baker's DIck Tracy books did it too.
Then it was Mcfarlane's work on early Spawn- which got me obsessed with lines.
Then Sin City came out, and that was about the only comics I read for years.
With a Hellboy here and there...
Then I picked up the first '100 Bullets' collection on a whim and fell completely in love with that series- up until about the 8th book when I think it started to get TOO gritty and there were no more characters to love. I may have to go back and finish it.
With the exception of The Dungeon series and everything Lewis Trondheim does, I'd say for the last 6 or 7 years I've just been buying books based on the art. So I own a lot of awesome looking stuff- but not too much with totally gripping stories...
Now there's Marquis, and I feel a re-awakening. It manages to remind you of dozens of different things you've read before, but somehow manages to be completely fresh and different from all of them.
I can't reccommend this enough.
Plus, it's dang creepy.
Ordinarily people in comics draw monsters that you just want to keep looking at. I mean, if you saw a comic book monster in real life, you would just stand there and admire it. Davis' monsters are really disturbing and twisted. You don't want to linger on them. They make you a little nauseous.
This book is amazing.
2 comments:
nice. I'll have to check it out. The Watchmen was another long GN. I was reading it little by little at the bookstore. I still haven't finished it. I am also big into buying comics for the art alone. Though I am totally hooked on Invincible. Only spandex hero stuff I read.
Watchmen is a great one. It took me years to finally appreciate it. I really hated the art the first time around, I felt like it was too stiff and standard, but then, like a fine wine, I began to appreciate it. As far as superhero writing, I doubt that anything can ever come close. I've heard nothing but good things about Invincible. I should check it out. Ostl(ey)(ie)s rule! :)
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