Whilst at the comic book store yesterday, I finally broke and picked up the book one from each of the “Before Watchmen” books. If you’ve not seen them, they consist of seven miniseries starring: (deep breath) The Minutemen, Silk Spectre, Comedian, Nite Owl, Ozymandias, Rorsharch, Dr. Manhattan, culminating in a one-shot epilogue.
I don’t approve, of course. I told my dealer that I didn’t approve. He said that when he first heard of them, he didn’t approve either and he had plans to not enjoy them as he read them. I nodded. That’s my plan too. So far, I’ve read The Minutemen. It’s pretty good.
Edit: Figured that this would not be completely inappropriate:
For the bookclub, we’re going to be wrapping up the Season Two Finale!!!
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
Afraid there’s only one thing to say:
http://youtu.be/iM7BKQZ-LOw
I’ve added the 80’s Watchmen Cartoon opening credits to the post.
Needless to say: Alan Moore is against the very idea of someone using his characters to make new stories. Which is, I suppose, fair enough except that his best stuff has always been writing stories for characters that were not originally his.
Can’t forget this either:
http://www.comicbookdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/watchmen-babies.jpg
For me, it’s not so much that Moore is against it (though it really shows Gaiman’s wisdom in getting Sandman contractually locked to himself the way he did), because Moore is against lots of things, I’m sure.
It’s that when someone writes a pretty-close-to-perfect, self-contained and completed story, LEAVE IT ALONE, BY ALAN MOORE’S BEARD.
It’s why I have never bothered with the American ‘Office’ remake, despite being told it was actually good – what’s the point? It was already done, perfectly, the first time.
We (and DC) shouldn’t need Alan Moore to tell us this.
Still, your plan (“I’ll read it, but I wont *like* it, by gum!) is a reasonable one, and I can’t say I wouldn’t go that route too. 🙂
When I finally broke down and read Mike Carey’s ‘Lucifer’ (after reading some of Carey’s other stuff) I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. It’s not quite Sandman-level in story, but it’s a worthy addition to that universe, and some of the individual setpieces are stunning.
Authors can do this to themselves too. Cannery Row is an almost perfect book, melancholy with only a hint of solace. In Sweet Thursday, Steinbeck uses the same characters to make sentimental slop. Caveat lector. (Speaking of which Hannibal Rising “explains” him, instead of leaving him as absolute evil. Very bad idea.)
I’d disagree about the American Office, though. It’s a different work entirely (at least, once it figured out who its characters were) from the British one. It’s like not reading The Once and Future King because you already liked Le Morte d’Arthur.
I was thinking about Once and Future King recently, I need to re-read that soon. I really – well, maybe ‘liked’ isn’t the right word, as it’s a fairly heavy book – but it really made an impression on me as a kid. I’d like to re-read it as an adult.
I haven’t thought about Once & Future in years. It was a favorite in my teens.
Just ordered a used copy off Amazon. Will let you know if it holds up 🙂
It’s one of my favorite “there are no other books remotely like that” books, along with Phillip Roth’s “The Great American Novel” (which is about baseball. Seriously.) The Pushcart War too, but I haven’t read that one since I was about ten.
The only Roth I’ve ever read is ‘Portnoy’ (which I liked, but isn’t really that different from Woody Allen’s pieces from around the same time, IMO).
Would ‘American Novel’ be a good second Roth, even though I know/care little about baseball?
Good question. It’s very, very funny, but I’m not sure how many of the jokes work without the background. One of the main plots is about little people, and I think you’d have to be familiar with the story of Eddie Gaedel to appreciate it fully.
Twin Peaks (on streaming Netflix.) I must have seen it the first time around, because a number of moments seem awfully familiar, e.g.
* Cooper solving a murder by throwing rocks at a bottle.
* Audrey tying a cherry stem in a knot with her tongue.
* Joan Chen being called “the best-looking woman in the state” (even with that haircut.)
But if you’d asked me, I’d have said “Maybe one or two episodes.” . The first season was a combination of awesome and almost unwatchable, but with a very favorable ratio. From the little I’ve seen of the second season so far, the proportions are shifting.
First season rocks, second goes off the rails 🙁
Still, a singular thing. I still can’t believe David Lynch had a network, prime-time ‘soap’ for a while there.
Mulholland Drive began as a pilot for another one, though, as you’d expect, ABC disliked all the things that made it different.
Don’t know if you have been watching ‘Fringe’ along with the guys here at MD, but at one point it’s implied that Gjva Crnxf naq Sevatr vaunovg gur fnzr havirefr.
I haven’t, but now maybe I should.
By the way, I’d been thinking “there should be a ROT13 plugin for Chrome”, and it turns out there are a couple of them. ROT13er seems to work fine.
Fringe really is pretty terrific. My biggest caveat is that the first season was a bit of a slog, it doesn’t really get consistently good until the end of season 1. I almost gave it up in S1, even the second time I tried it after people I trusted told me it was good, but am glad I didn’t.
I only started watching Fringe because of affirmations from multiple sources that I would *LOVE* the show.
Multiple sources were right. It’s a really good show with really strong characters and a surprisingly intruiging mythology. Now, of course, the worst of the shows are rough slogs that, really, aren’t that rewarding to have watched.
But the best shows? White Tulip? That’s the 5%, right there. That’s the stuff that reminds you why you fell in love with this stuff when you were a kid.
I just started watching Warehouse 13.
Warehouse 13 is a campy fun version of Friday The Thirteenth: The Series.
Never seen it, and since I’m only on the first episode of Warehouse, the jury is still out. Would you recommend Friday the 13th? That might be too scary for me. I’m a wimp of Russell proportions.