Friday Review - Maggie's Car Broke Down
This week Benn read All Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder #1 by Frank Miller & Jim Lee:
"It's always great when Frank Miller returns to Batman (despite the compromised and somewhat disappointing Dark Knight Strikes Again, it was still more interesting than most other sooperhero comics), a character that he's used to create groundbreaking work. After all, the one-trick pony of Sin City (it's a great one trick, but it still fails to move beyond an exercise in lighting and noir storytelling) has gotten old (or perhaps it's just moved on to a new medium).
Miller's story is coupled by Jim Lee's art, the least offensive artist of the original Image Comics school of illustrators (you know, women with impossibly thin waists, super-long legs, big breasts, plastic-surgery noses, men have muscles that should render them immobile, and everyone's clothes seem shiny and metallic).
Vicki Vale brings a "Sex And The City" quality to this retelling of Robin's origin. I wonder why Miller chose to revise the death of Dick Grayson's parents. His version is no more probable than trapeze artists falling to their death from tampered rigging. The story has a circus, a hit man, corrupt cops, and lots of bats, so it's a can't miss. And while Lee's shiny art removes the grimy element one would expect of a gangster story, the final page shows that Miller and Lee are not screwing around here."
Rachel read Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth by Tucker Shaw:
"This is pretty much my kind of book. I'm a list gal, a documenter and I will never stop wondering about other people's daily routines. What other people eat will be endlessly fascinating to me for the rest of my days.
And here's a whole YEAR of what this guy ate every single day. Every handful of kisses, every Utz, every Whole Foods sushi, from donuts to caviar, KitKats to piles of fruits and veggies - he's what I heartily approve of - a complete omnivore.
Dude eats a ton of cereal. Also he often doesn't have his first meal until the afternoon.
And it's those little details that you glean from the book that are interesting. If you've ever kept a food log you know how tedious it can be, but he has fun with the mostly point-and-shoot photos. You'll see someone's hands, or a book he's reading, glimpes of his apt, what he's watching on tv. He lists where he eats and who he eats with. It's just all so much more than what he's putting in his mouth.
Eating is something you do every day, and really, what your life revolves around."
"It's always great when Frank Miller returns to Batman (despite the compromised and somewhat disappointing Dark Knight Strikes Again, it was still more interesting than most other sooperhero comics), a character that he's used to create groundbreaking work. After all, the one-trick pony of Sin City (it's a great one trick, but it still fails to move beyond an exercise in lighting and noir storytelling) has gotten old (or perhaps it's just moved on to a new medium).
Miller's story is coupled by Jim Lee's art, the least offensive artist of the original Image Comics school of illustrators (you know, women with impossibly thin waists, super-long legs, big breasts, plastic-surgery noses, men have muscles that should render them immobile, and everyone's clothes seem shiny and metallic).
Vicki Vale brings a "Sex And The City" quality to this retelling of Robin's origin. I wonder why Miller chose to revise the death of Dick Grayson's parents. His version is no more probable than trapeze artists falling to their death from tampered rigging. The story has a circus, a hit man, corrupt cops, and lots of bats, so it's a can't miss. And while Lee's shiny art removes the grimy element one would expect of a gangster story, the final page shows that Miller and Lee are not screwing around here."
Rachel read Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth by Tucker Shaw:
"This is pretty much my kind of book. I'm a list gal, a documenter and I will never stop wondering about other people's daily routines. What other people eat will be endlessly fascinating to me for the rest of my days.
And here's a whole YEAR of what this guy ate every single day. Every handful of kisses, every Utz, every Whole Foods sushi, from donuts to caviar, KitKats to piles of fruits and veggies - he's what I heartily approve of - a complete omnivore.
Dude eats a ton of cereal. Also he often doesn't have his first meal until the afternoon.
And it's those little details that you glean from the book that are interesting. If you've ever kept a food log you know how tedious it can be, but he has fun with the mostly point-and-shoot photos. You'll see someone's hands, or a book he's reading, glimpes of his apt, what he's watching on tv. He lists where he eats and who he eats with. It's just all so much more than what he's putting in his mouth.
Eating is something you do every day, and really, what your life revolves around."
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