comics followup

[trochee]

beegirl asked me:
...any comics you recommend for before bed reading? Maybe a little on the lighter side...?
And I responded there. But I thought I'd put this in an entry of its own...

I think Castle Waiting is really fun. It's a fairy tale, sort of -- a young woman escapes a frightening bad marriage, and runs to live at the Castle. It seems to surprise no one that the castle is populated by fairy-tale creatures, including a stork butler whose sense of humor runs to the very dry. (I like it much).

On the more science-fictiony end of things, there's Finder, which the author describes as "aboriginal SF", and is possibly my favorite comic put together in the last ten years. Also I have the collected versions of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, which is a sort of aboriginal SF as well, only Japanese.

If fantasy and SF isn't so much your thing, you might like the Hopeless Savages, a family story about punk rockers, that's sweet without being sappy. Kane is pretty spectacular police procedural, but isn't exactly "lighter", though some parts are funny.

I am not in front of my collection, so that's cheating off JDC's. Oooh -- I bet beegirl would really like Clan Apis.

On the less-light side, there's quite a bit beyond Kane mentioned above, but I might mention Love and Rockets and Strangers in Paradise as non-fantasy extended novels. Very very good, especially L&R. And of course, there are modern classics like Sandman. Tell me more about what you like, and I'll try to help you out.

Comments

[mythalethe.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the selections. Have you read a comic called Promethea? I heard it was good, but would love the trochee opinion!

[trochee.livejournal.com]

Promethea is Alan Moore's latest masterwork. Moore is one of comicdom's mad geniuses, and I think that Promethea is a clear example of that.

It's an esoteric trip (I choose both words carefully) through alchemy and Qabbalah, framed initially as a minor mystery in a world with "science heroes" (a riff off 'super'-heroes). But don't let that push you astray -- the 'science heroes' are still representatives of a mundane world, where good-guys and bad-guys can call each other that, and a college student (Sophie) can have bickering fights with her alcoholic mother, and wonder whether her best friend is queer (and whether she herself is) while thinking of poetry and art.

And into the middle of this questing, Sophie (not an accidental name, I might point out) finds herself with dreams of Promethea, who may or may not be the same as Prometheus.

I think you'd like it a lot. I have the series as individual pamphlet-style (22-30pp) issues, which you're welcome to borrow. The collections are probably worth pursuing, though a little expensive.

here's a review, and here's the wikipedia entry.