(no subject)

[skygiants]

My Little Yuletide Request That Could, although still pretty needy, is no longer The Neediest in the Land! I was so overflowing with joy at this that I went back and offered for several more Yuletide fandoms, which was possibly a mistake, but oh well.

Meanwhile, I have a couple of bookloggings that I'm sitting on until I finish the sequels, so instead I will try to catch up on my comics-logging backlog. (A word of advice: never tell comics or manga fans that you would read more comics if you knew where to start or could afford them.)

Over the past month, rushin_doll has lent me all of Gunslinger Girl that has been published in English so far (volumes 1-6) and I kind of love it. Although the title and basic plot description make it seem like a fairly standard girl-mercenaries story - physically damaged girls are recruited from hospitals, turned into child cyborg assassins, and paired up with handlers; you know, the usual. However, despite the assassinations and the chase scenes and all, I would have a hard time even classifying this as action; the series is actually a set of quiet and unnerving character studies of the girls and their relationships with their handlers and each other. The series does a really good job of maintaining the balance between showing the girls as teenagers with ordinary human feelings and concerns, and portraying the essentially dehumanizing nature of the conditioning and training and what that's done to them. I often have a hard time keeping the terrorists and their goals straight, but that's okay because I don't really care; I'm reading for the characters anyways.

PS 238 III: No Child Left Behind, on the other hand, which camwyn lent me, was pretty much just sheer adorable. Kids with superpowers! Doing dorky kid things! I don't have much to say about this except that it was continually tongue-in-cheek and a lot of fun.

Less fun, and the only thing on this list that I actually got for myself as opposed to having it lent to me by someone else: the conclusion of Y: The Last Man, Whys and Wherefores. Spoiler-cut even though it is several months since everyone else has read it, just in case. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about the ending. On the one hand, I didn't exactly expect it to end happily; on the other . . . I don't know. I guess in the end I was kind of dissatisfied by the jump ahead - it feels kind of like cheating to have all these changes in society, after the slow build we've been seeing through the rest of the series - and also by the fact that 355's death wasn't about her at all. And I haven't been a fan of the Crazy Alter Oh Those Wacky Militant Israelis plotline from the beginning, so I really wish it hadn't come down to that at the end.

But I'm glad, I think, that they never explained the plague. Also Hero/Beth made me crack up a whole lot. And overall, it has been a great ride.

Comments

[newredshoes]

Y: The Last Man... yeah, that ending, I don't know. I wasn't expecting a happy ending, but I don't think I know anyone who was satisfied with it.

[skygiants]

Yeah - the more I think about it, I think, the less happy I am with it.

(The drawback of reading it so long after everyone else is that what I really wanted to do was to go find everyone else's reaction posts, but it was too late to hunt them down!)

[furikku.livejournal.com]

There are some here (http://womenincomics.blogspot.com/search?q=y%3A+the+last+man), some of which may even be by people you know!

[skygiants]

- oh awesome! :D :D :D


(....man, this is another site that is going to kill my already dubious productivity at work. *giggling*)

[cupenny.livejournal.com]

PS 238 is online! http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/ps238/index.htm

[skygiants]

Is it really?? Oh man, you probably should not have told me that - I already have a Reading Giant Webcomics Backlogs At Work Problem. >.>

[agonistes]

I am still just mad about 355. >:( After that, it was like... "oh, who CARES what's going on." At least for me. I am a bad critic.

[skygiants]

I call that fair criticism! She was pretty much the best and most compelling character in the story. :(

[gramarye1971]

You should totally see the Gunslinger Girl anime series! It's out on DVD! And just as unsettlingly awesome as the manga!

*enables, with exclamation points!*

[skygiants]

I have seen the first few episodes and consider it A++ so far! I definitely plan on seeing more - it's so cool the little differences of what they choose to focus and elaborate on in the show as opposed to the manga. It is just different enough to make it interesting while still being very faithful.

[jothra]

Really! See, whether or not I agreed with some of his creative choices, I thought the last few pages of the last issue were just awesome. The straightjacket floating away on the wind especially.

[skygiants]

Aesthetically I will agree that those pages were kind of awesome! Emotionally - well, I sort of queried my feelings after finishing, and my feelings returned to me a giant '???????' as opposed to a '!!!!!!!!!'. *waves hands vaguely in the air*

[jothra]

I get that.

I may also be influenced by the giant platonic crush I have on BKV. (His books come out ON TIME.)

[skygiants]

That is an excellent reason to be crushing, yo. :O

[jothra]

It's so rare! In a world where some people *cough*JOSS WHEDON*cough* can be consistently late and still worshiped, it is nice to have someone who seems to be a consummate professional.

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

As you might imagine, I've thought about YTLM's ending a lot and I think... nobody was supposed to be satisfied by it because the ending couldn't be satisfactory. Not given the circumstances of the book. But I will tell you I loved the echoing of the beginning in the last sequence with the straitjacket flying away, and the whole wondering where could Yorick be? starting all over again.

There were things in it that were so poignant they made me weep, and things that were so ridiculous they made me laugh. Ultimately I can't say that I was either satisfied or dissatisfied with it, but I figure it was exactly what Brian K. Vaughan wanted it to be.

[skygiants]

I kind of wish I'd reread more of the early books leading up to reading the last one; I think the ending might have had more resonance for me that way if the early ones had been fresher in my head.

Oh, yeah - I don't think he lost control of the story at all. It just wasn't, in some places, where I would have liked the story to go. But obviously Brian K. Vaughan is not writing to make me happy (*cracks whip* WRITE FOR MY PLEASURE, AUTHORS! WRITE NOW!).