Boxers & Saints

Image taken from http://www.amazon.com

Boxers & Saints

Gene Luen Yang

I finally got my hands on Gene Yang's Boxers & Saints. It's a remarkable story told from two different perspectives. Yang brings his magical realism to the story of China's Boxer Rebellion in this funny, sad, and touching graphic novel. Both sides show the heartbreaking repercussions of giving of your self for a greater purpose, be it nationalism or faith. One story leads to massacre and one story leads towards martyrdom, but both sides are told from the perspective of very believable characters, with no clear winners, no good guys or bad guys.

I really loved the stories of Little Bao and Four-Girl. I  appreciated the interwoven nature of the two parallel tales. I read Saints first, but want to read both again a couple more times. I'm sure both narratives will benefit from repeat reads. The books embrace the myths of Joan of Arc and Ch'in Shih-huang as avatars of different faith systems, and both become symbols of the forces driving Bao and Four-Girl to take action. I cannot recommend these books more highly!

Batman: The Court of Owls

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Batman: Vol. 1: The Court of Owls

Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo

In order to pick up some more mainstream comics, I've tried reading some of the more recent Batman (the ones from DC's The New 52), but so far I'm not overly impressed. I think I'm just not a superhero comic book reader, as much as I may want to give that stuff a chance. For example, the Batman story line for The Court of Owls involves a cabal who has controlled Gotham for centuries. The writer, Scott Snyder, tries to make it sound like there have always been rumors of this group, the Court of Owls, and one of the ways he does so is to make Gordon and Bruce both reference a nursery rhyme about the court. But to me, it seems like such a cheap way to pretend that this is something we should have known, making up a nursery rhyme. I mean, Batman's been going strong for 75 years and this is the first time it's referenced. We're supposed to suspend disbelief that somehow we have not heard of these guys ever before; Bruce, Dick, Gordon and everyone else has, but they haven't mentioned it till now, yet this mysterious group has been in the shadows pulling the strings all along.

This is the type of crap I don't like about mainstream superhero comics. They can't just introduce a new supervillain. They have to retroactively rewrite history so that he's not really new.  He's been there before, you just didn't know it. Oh, and by the way, the original Robin, Dick Grayson, was really being groomed to be the next Talon of the Owls as a kid, and if Bruce hadn't adopted him after his parent were killed in the circus, Dick would have ended up working for the Court of Owls. Crappy retconning, clumsily done. This constant rewriting of history with recon after retcon is what I don't like about superhero comics in general. Sometimes it's handled better than other times, but in general, I think it's the Achille's heel of long-format serial superhero comics. I think it stems from each writer's desire to leave their stamp on a given character.

I'm giving the series a little longer (I've got vol. 2 and 3 on order through ILL), but so far it's not doing it for me. I much more enjoyed reading Batman: Hush by Jeph Loeb, though it, too, introduced one of Bruce's childhood friends who (surprise) we've never met before this story and who plays a pivotal role in Batman's current mysterious new villain. Maybe I'm just too snobby in my comic book tastes.

Who's this Hob guy?

Image taken from http://bolhafner.com

"So who is this Hob guy and why did you name your blog after him?" you may ask.  Hob Gadling is one of the characters in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.  He was first introduced in an issue titled Men of Good Fortune, which is itself part of the longer story, The Doll's House. Hob makes the absolutely ludicrous boast in a pub one night that he refuses to play the same game as everyone around him: he refuses to die.  Dream and Death overhear him, and Death decides to let him live for as long as he's game to keep on living.  Morpheus (that's one of the many names for Dream) tells Hob that if he's still willing, he'll meet him at the same pub 100 years hence.  And so begins a series of meetings between a now-immortal man and the incarnation of Dream. Hob's fortunes swing like a pendulum: some centuries he's living life large and others he's barely scraping by. But regardless, he's never ready to throw in the towel. Even when life sends him a rotten fate, it's better than death.

Originally played primarily for comedic value, Hob Gadling is ultimately a catalyst for Morpheus to accept friendship and the relationships that ensue.  Hob helps Morpheus realize that even he needs friends, needs human contact, needs to find a way to connect to others. In many ways, it's Morpheus' relationship to Hob that eventually paves the way for him to accept the death of one aspect of himself and the birth of a newer, more humane and forgiving aspect of himself, born of a human child, Daniel. In this regard, Hob is a great symbol of the indomitable will of mankind to struggle ever onward, making friendships and loves despite the pains that sometimes accompany life.

In this blog, I'll be discussing some of the books and comics I read. As the reference to Gaiman's character shows, I like some of the more offbeat comics out there.  But I'll be sharing my thoughts on the books I read, both traditional novels and graphic novels.