Kill My Mother

I mentioned in my last post that during my trip to NY, I bought quite a lot of books. One of those books was Kill My Mother, a graphic-novel by renowned cartoonist Jules Feiffer.

I should perhaps start by saying that I'm only passingly familiar with Feiffer's work. I know who he is and I've seen a few of his drawings as well as his animated short-film Munro, about a four-year old who gets drafted into the US army, but that's as far as it goes. However, the cover of Kill My Mother, featuring a woman holding a smoking gun, as well as the enticing front-page blurb by Neil Gaiman, convinced me to shell out the bucks for it. Was it worth the prize? Short answer: Yes.

Kill My Mother is, according to Feiffer himself, a love-letter to the noir-films  and the classic adventure comic strips of yesteryear; those drawn by great artists like Milton Caniff or Will Eisner. The story begins in Bay City in the 1930's, it's here that we meet Elsie, the widow after a cop who was murdered during the Prohibition. Elsie now works as a secretary for her late husband's friend, Neil Hammond; a perpetually inebriated private-detective, in the hopes that the job will enable her to one day track down her husband's killers. We also meet Elsie's daughter, Annie, a rebellious teenager who harbors a schoolgirl-crush on Neil and resents her mother, believing that Elsie has effectively abandoned her. One day, a tall blonde by the name walks into Neil's office. She wants his help to find her old drama-teacher who has vanished without a trace. Neil suspects that there's something fishy going on, especially since the woman in the photo bears an uncanny resemblance to his client. Still, he needs the money, so he agrees to take the job.

I'll stop there, since I don't want to risk spoiling anything for those of haven't read Kill My Mother yet. Suffice to say that Feiffer tells a highly engaging story, one that takes many twists and turns and involves a large cast of characters. Speaking of which, the characters in this story are all memorable, whether it's the major characters like Annie and her boyfriend Artie or minor ones such as the communist liquor-store owner, I found them all to be interesting in their own ways.

On the artistic side, Feiffer draws in a sketchy style that may take some getting used to and may perhaps even put off some readers, which would be a great shame. Personally, I liked the artwork, it's very energetic with characters that sometime seem like they could leap out of the panels. In fact, this would make for an interesting animated movie.

All in all, Feiffer has certainly succeeded in creating a homage to the comics and movies of his youth. If you are a fan of the works of Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler (to mention a few names), I'd suggest giving Kill My Mother a go.

Viktor Takes Manhattan

I seldom write about my personal life on this blog, mostly because I rarely feel that my personal life is worth writing about. That said, I did recently get back from a one-week trip to New York (accompanied by my parents and my younger sister) and so, I thought I'd write a bit about my stay there.

The first night we spent on Long Island, at the home of my dad's cousin (who immigrated to the States at a young age) and his wife. Both of them were nice people and in the off-chance that they might read this, I'd like to take an opportunity to thank them for their hospitality. The next day, we took the train to Manhattan and the hotel we had booked. For the duration of our stay, we mostly did typical tourist-stuff: We went to museums (such as the Guggenheim), took the Staten Island Ferry and saw the Statue of Liberty (though we didn't go up in it, maybe next time), ate at some really good restaurants (including a Brazilian one, my first time eating Brazilian food) and so forth. Of course, I also made time to buy a few books, some of which I will no doubt review on the blog in the future.

All in all, I definitely enjoyed my trip to New York (well, the parts of it we visited, which was mostly Manhattan) and wouldn't mind going again some other time. That said, it's nice to be home and able to sleep in one's own bed.

MacBeth

I'm by no means an opera-buff, but lately I've begun to take an interest in this art-form. It all started last year, when the local cinema began broadcasting live-performances from the Metropolitan in New York. I went to see Puccini's Tosca and enjoyed it immensely. this Saturday I saw MacBeth, Verdi's Opera, based on one of my favorite Shakespeare-plays.

MacBeth is my first Verdi-Opera and having seen it, it's no wonder why Verdi is regarded as one of the greatest composers. The music and singing was excellent, from the fast-paced tunes of the witches' chorus, to the dark and intense melodies highlighting the evil deeds of MacBeth and his wife and their respective descent into their own self-created Hell.

All in all, an evening well-spent.

Comics That Should be Translated: Les Sept Vies de l'Epervier

I'm an avid reader of comics, no matter what format or genre (though obviously there are some genres I favor over others) and it just so happens that several of the comics I read happen to be in French and haven't been translated into English. As such, this will be a recurring series of post in which I will write about some of these comics that I feel deserve to be translated into English. The first such comic I've chosen to write about is Patrick Cothias' and André Juillard's masterpiece Les Sept Vies de l'Epervier.

In order to talk about this comic, we first need to talk about another one; Masquerouge (Redmask, yes it's supposed to be written as one word), which was a comic created by the team Cothias-Juillard for the children's magazine PIF Gadget back in the early 80's. Masquerouge took place in France during the reign of Louis XIII and starred a masked avenger clad in a red mask, who fought against corruption and injustice, as masked avengers tend to do. Somewhat unusual for the time was the fact that the person under the red mask was a woman, the young baroness Ariane de Troïl. Now, I haven't actually read Masquerouge so I can't vouch for it's quality, but everything I've read about it make it seem like a competently made, but fairly standard adventure-comic.

Anyway, in 1982, Cothias got the idea of making a prequel to Masquerouge, focusing on the origin of his heroine. Unlike it's mother-series, said prequel was meant to be for an older audience, with greater depth to the characters and everything that entails. This comic, which would soon come to completely eclipse Masquerouge in terms of recognition, was given the title Les Sept Vies de l'Epervier (or The Seven Lives of the Sparrowhawk).

The story begins with the birth of the future king Louis XIII. Meanwhile, a pregnant woman is running through the woods, she's being tracked down by her husband, Baron Yvon de Troïl and her husband's brother, Gabriel, with whom she's been having an affair. She tries to cross a frozen lake, but the ice is to thin and she breaks through. The woman manages to get to dry land and mere moments later gives birth. She wraps the newborn baby in her clothes to protect it from the cold and is found later by Yvon and Gabriel, frozen to death.

Furious, Yvon blames his brother for the death of his wife and banishes him from his sight. While riding through the woods, Gabriel encounters a strange blind woman who presents him with two birds; an owl and a sparrowhawk. She tells him that his destiny will be linked to one of the two birds and urges him to choose: The philosophical owl or the bold sparrowhawk..

Meanwhile, Yvon decides to raise the infant as his own and eight years later, the child has grown up into a strong-willed young woman named Ariane. One day, a mysterious man wearing a red mask appears in the church and challenges Yvon's closest neighbor; the despicable Count Thibaud de Bruantfou to a duel. Naturally, Ariane becomes fascinated with the masked-man's heroism and strong sense of justice and decides to seek him out, much to the concern of her supposed father and brother, Guillemot.

From what at first seem to be a rather simple tale, Cothias crafts a complex, elaborate plot which spans over several years and involves a multitude of characters, some of them fictional and others taken from the pages of history. Characterization is really the strongest point of this saga, with each character from Ariane and her family, to the french king Henry IV and the mysterious Léonard Langue-Agile (basically, quick-tongued or sharp-tongued) emerging as some of the most memorable and well-crafted characters I've encountered in comics.

I should warn any potential reader that Les Sept Vies de l'Epervier is not for the squeamish. Cothias doesn't shy away in the slightest in showing the cruelties and injustices of the age, an age where the strong ruled over the weak and local provincial lords could pretty much as they pleased. Not that all members of the aristocracy are presented as bad, both Yvon and king Henry himself are both depicted as flawed, but sympathetic characters. On the flip-side however, we have the scheming Concino Concini and the Count de Bruantfou, the latter which seem to embody the worst cruelties and excesses of the ruling class. In short, this is not a comic in which the majority of the cast, whether good or evil, gets away unscathed (or even alive).

I've talked a lot about the story, what about the art? After all, the ninth art-form is a visual medium and while I can forgive a comic whose artwork is less than stellar if the story is good enough, the ideal is of course to have both a great story and great artwork. Thankfully, Les Sept Vies de l'Epervier does not disappoint in that regard. André Juillard is one of the finest artist working in comics and he does an excellent job portraying the characters and the period they live in. Of course a picture is worth more than a thousand words and so, at the end of this post, I've included some samples of Juillard's work so that the reader can see what I mean.

To sum it up, Les Sept Vies de l'Epervier is undoubtedly a masterpiece, one of the finest works produced in the medium in my opinion and a comic that's well deserving of being translated.

Artwork:

The Real Story and Forbidden Knowledge

Although I like owning physical copies of books, I'm not all averse to reading books in electronic format, which is one of the reasons I bought an ipad. Now, one series of books that I've been interested in for some time, is Stephen Donaldson's Gap Cycle and when I discovered that there was an ebook version that collected the first two books in the series available at an affordable price, I decided to jump on it. Having now read both books; The Real Story and Forbidden Knowledge respectively, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on them.

The setting for The Gap Cycle should be familiar to anyone who has read or watched any Science-Fiction and/or Space Opera: Mankind has colonized space, encountered at least one alien race and so forth. As the first book opens, we're introduced to our three main characters; the repulsive and villainous space-pirate Angus Thermopyle, his beautiful and helpless captive, Morn Hyland and finally the dashing Nick Succorso, another space-pirate and Angus' rival. A classic setup for a story, wouldn't you say? Naturally, it doesn't take long until Nick has rescued Morn from Angus' clutches and is riding of into deep space with her, while the villain gets his just desserts. All's well that end's well.
The end? No, this is not the end, this is just the beginning.

One of the most interesting things about the Gap Cycle is the way Stephenson takes three characters, all who fits into a specific archetype; hero, villain and victim respectively and gradually have them switch roles. Take Angus for example; when we first meet him, he simply comes across as representing all of humanity's worst, most awful traits. In short, he's as pure a villain as you can meet in fiction. However, as the story progresses, we get more insight into Angus' character and the events in his life which shaped into becoming the monster he is when The Real Story begins. Turns out that Angus' chief motivation is fear. Simply put, Angus spent most of his childhood being a victim of abuse and his fear of ending up in that situation again, is so great that he will do anything to prevent it from happening - including victimizing others. Of course, due to the way Donaldson structures his story, Angus eventually ends up in the victim's role again and I have to say that some of the treatment he undergoes at the hand of the corrupt and seemingly all-powerful United Mining Companies Police, made me feel genuinely bad for a character for whom I at first had felt nothing but loathing.

I've talked a lot about Angus in this review and mostly that's because I found him to be the most fascinating out of the three main characters. That said, Nick Succorso and Morn Hyland are certainly no 2-dimensional cardboard-cutouts either. Morn, for example, may start out as a simple damsel-in-distress, but soon reveals herself to be far braver and more resourceful than she may have seemed like at a first glance. As for Nick, well, it turns out that he underneath his charismatic swashbuckler persona, he possesses a cruel and vindictive streak a mile wide.

Amusingly, although the first book is titled The Real Story, it's not until Forbidden Knowledge that one gets the feeling that the real story of The Gap Cycle has begun in earnest, with the first book serving as a prologue of sorts. Forbidden Knowledge adds more characters to the mix, such as the members of Nick's crew and the alien-race called the Amnion among others.

In his afterword to the first book, Donaldson mentions that The Gap Cycle is loosely based on The Ring Cycle. I've never seen Wagner's opera, but I am familiar with the story and it's quite interesting to see which of Donaldson's characters corresponds to the ones in the opera. For example; the character of Warden Dios with his cybernetic eye is clearly meant to reference Wotan/Odin, who gave up one of his eyes in exchange for knowledge.

All in all, I greatly enjoyed both The Real Story and Forbidden Knowledge and will definitely read the other books in this series. Reading them has also made me eager check out more of Donaldson's work. I do remember trying to read the first book in his The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series as a kid, but couldn't get into it. I think it's time I gave it another shot.

The Wolf Among Us

Ever since I was a kid, I've been a huge fans of the adventure-game genre and I've spent many hours playing the classic adventure-games such as Gabriel Knight, Day of the Tentacle and The Last Express, to name just a few gems that this genre has to offer.

The Wolf Among Us, is the latest adventure-game from Telltale Games and like most of the games in Telltale's stable, it's based on pre-existing property: Namely, Bill Willingham's comic-book Fables. Now, before we go any further I should point out that I've never actually read Fables, I've been aware of it's existence for many years and I've been meaning to read it, but haven't got around to it yet. That said, you don't really need any previous knowledge of Fables in order to play The Wolf Among Us, since the plot of the game takes place before the first issue of the comic.

For those of you who are completely unfamiliar with Fables, the concept behind the comic is that (almost) all the fairy-tale characters (called Fables) have been driven out of their own world by a mysterious enemy known only by the ominous moniker, The Adversary. The refugees now live in a part of New York called Fabletown, with the non-human Fables using a magic known as glamour to hide their true appearance (those who can't afford glamour are exiled place called The Farm).

In The Wolf Among Us, you take on the role of Bigby, formerly known as The Big Bad Wolf, who serves as Fabletown's sheriff in order to make up for his unsavory past. The game begins with you rescuing a prostitute from The Woodsman (of Red Riding Hood fame). Your actions are in vain however, because it's not long after that the girl's head literary appears on your doorstep. Naturally, it's up to you to track down the killer, before he/she strikes again and of course, what starts out as a fairly straight-forward murder-mystery soon evolves into something far more complex and sinister.

Gameplay-wise, The Wolf Among Us is similar to another comic-based game from Telltale; The Walking Dead. Much like that game, The Wolf Among Us focuses mainly on the interaction between characters as well as what choices you make in order to progress further into the game. Each choice you make has a consequence, as it should be. Try as you might it's impossible to make everyone happy and I guarantee that you'll piss off at least a few characters before your search for the killer has come to an end.

Aside from gathering clues and interrogating suspects, the game also contains several action-sequences (what you just heard was the sound of several adventure-game fans moaning and gritting their teeth). However, these are all fairly easy (whether that's a good or bad thing, I leave up to you to decide) and trust me, this is coming from someone who is not exactly quick on his reflexes.

I'm not going to write much about the graphics in the game, since the screen-caps pretty much speak for themselves. Suffice to say that I found the graphics to be excellent; being very detailed and making great use of color to make the game more atmospheric.

The game's voice-acting is also very good. I can't say I've heard about any of the voice-actors (though a quick check revealed that they have portrayed characters in other games from Telltale), but they all do a good job. Adam Warrington, who voices Bigby deserves special mention; I got a bit of an Eastwood -vibe from his performance, which fits Bigby's character perfectly.

To sum it up: If you're looking for a good adventure-game, with great graphics and superb voice-acting, I highly recommend giving The Wolf Among Us a shot.

Random Thoughts

- The first two episodes of Gravity Falls' second season have now aired and they definitely lived up to my high expectations from season 1. Here's hoping that the rest of the season is this great.

- Still haven't gotten around to season 3 of Korra yet, not sure when I will. Granted, the presence of Zuko as well as the fact that the main villain is voiced by Henry Rollins have me intrigued, but right now, there are other shows I choose to prioritize over it.

- Finished The Wolf Among Us, am thinking of reviewing it.

- Speaking of which, I really should do something about my huge backlog of unfinished games.