User Profile

dvo

meunierd@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 2 months ago

My wheelhouse is in fiction, especially comics. I enjoy genre fiction, and tend to lean towards horror, weird and science fiction. I enjoy reading about food, socialism, music, religions, and computing.

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dvo's books

Currently Reading (View all 5)

2023 Reading Goal

Success! dvo has read 101 of 100 books.

Spawn (Paperback, 1994, Image Comics) 3 stars

This situates itself in the Year One timeline, and is mostly Batman calling Spawn names like "punk", "twit" and "boy" (yikes) while Spawn beats him up. In the beginning Miller is trying to be brooding and poetic and you just have to read it in the Christian Bale voice. It's mandatory. After that people are talking just to talk. There is no narrative momentum to this thing whatsoever.

The plot, such that it is, is paper thin. Russians are putting the decapitated, still living heads of the unhoused into robots for unexplained seasons. Some woman Spawn recognized from the battlefield of his life as Al did it. They kill her. The end.

McFarlane's art is what it is. Anatomy is not a high priority. There are a few good pages in there with more collage style composition but mostly it's just Spawn and Batman punching each other over and over …

The Cuckoo's Egg (2000, Pocket) 4 stars

In the days when the presence of a computer did NOT presume the presence of …

Borrowed this from a friend. Reality could really use an editor. The bulk of this book is Cliff getting paged and tracing calls and phoning the same people over and over. That said, Cliff himself comes off as really endearing and presents an awesome piece of computer history.

Usagi Yojimbo Origins, Vol. 2 (2021, Idea & Design Works, LLC) No rating

Presenting the earliest adventures of rabbit ronin Miyamoto Usagi in all-new full-color editions for the …

I didn't realize this would be coloured and I'm sorry to say it detracts a lot from Sakai's art. Colours are chosen haphazardly with no effort to establish tone or enhance setting. What time of day is it? The colorist doesn't know. What's the weather? The colorist doesn't know. We just get some cheap gradients to give everyone cheek bones and call it a day.

The stories themselves are strong as ever, but I'll need to be more careful in tracking down the black and white versions.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Vol. 2 (Paperback, 2004) No rating

Nausicaä, a gentle but strong-willed young princess, has an empathic bond with the giant Ohmu …

This is where the story really starts to diverge from the movie, which makes it a bit more engaging than the first volume. Page layouts are still wonky, there's still too much hatching, and Miyazaki's weird purity thing is still front and centre. All in all though, it's much more enjoyable.