Novel Graphics

Sometimes my post titles don't get the thought they deserve so instead this one gets my faux "reverse clever" approach that I'm so fond of - "The word order is switched. How innovative". In many ways, I haven't moved beyond that high-school level of playing with words in totally conventional ways and feeling poetic for doing so.

Last week I went to the library (did you read the post? if not, why? are my posts not good enough for you?) and took out some books, specifically Batman Year One and a Hellblazer (the thing they made that "Constantine" movie with, it had Keanu). I had never read the Batman one and it's Frank Miller so I figured I had to give it a shot.

I finished it up and it is a really good story and enjoyable art. Comics or graphic novels are weird. I may have mentioned reading Frank Miller's RoboCop a few weeks ago and that was incredibly violent and kind of sexist. Not that I'm looking for righteous morality in my comic books, but the violent imagery was almost too oversaturating that it distracted me.

Batman kept it nicely in check, and it's actually not all that violently drawn. I'm looking forward to another one.

I haven't really started the Hellblazer yet. One interesting note is that these are both from the 80s, so a lot of the personal styles of the characters are definitely from that era, which is weird.