Look, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, we discuss Star Wars Poe Dameron 11, Archie 17, Lumberjanes 35, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 67 and Kill or Be Killed 6. Also, will be discussing Sex Criminals 16 on Monday, check that out too! As always, this article contains SPOILERS.
Look, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, we discuss Star Wars 28, Darth Maul 1, and Faith 8. We discussed The Woods 29 today, and will be discussing Paper Girls 11 on Wednesday, so check those out too! As always, this article contains SPOILERS.
Look, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, we discuss Autumnlands: Tooth and Claw 14, Cannibal 4, Faith 7 and Jem and the Holograms 22. We’ll be discussing The Wicked + The Divine 25 on Tuesday and Saga 41 on Wednesday, so come back for those! As always, this article contains SPOILERS.
Today, Spencer and Ryan D. are discussing Faith 1, originally released July 20th, 2016.
Spencer: Life is difficult, and rarely goes as we plan. In fact, life is so often defined by stubborn difficulties that it can almost be jarring when something actually goes our way. I know there’s been plenty of times in my life where I couldn’t help but be worried that an opportunity was “too good to be true,” and sadly, in a few of those cases that was absolutely correct. Life is even harder for a superhero, as Faith Herbert, the titular star of Faith 1, is finding out first hand. The creative team of Jody Houser, Pere Perez, and Marguerite Sauvage are running Faith through a wringer of superhero-related difficulties, and sadly, it looks like things are only going to get harder for her. Continue reading
Today, Shelby and Taylor are discussing Faith 4, originally released April 27th, 2016.
Shelby: It can be difficult to relate to the superheroes we admire so much; their quips are too perfect, their bodies are too perfect, hell even their flaws manage to be too perfect. It’s why so many guys I know name Spider-Man their favorite superhero. Peter Parker wasn’t a mutant, or a magician, or super rich, or a totally jacked alien; he was just a nerdy kid like we all were. No wealth, no power, no influence, just a guy with accidental superpowers trying to do the right thing. In fact, he didn’t even do the right thing to start off with; he did what any person would do and tried to make some money off the situation. I feel like roughly a third of every Spider-Man story has to do with him struggling to balance his superhero life and his regular life, and that is why we love him. He brings our reality into the his superhero world. This is exactly why I’m excited about Faith; she’s absolutely a superhero, but she’s also a regular person just like me. Continue reading
Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Dead Drop 4, originally released August 26th, 2015.
Drew: Endings always take a bit of finesse, but Ales Kot set his ending to hard mode in Dead Drop 4. He had to do all of the regular ending things — wrapping up the plot, landing on a resonant theme, giving every character a satisfying final beat — but he also had to introduce a new agent to do it; not only to maintain the pattern established in the first three issues, but because all of his other agents had been incapacitated. That’s no easy task, but Kot cleverly uses that need to his advantage, bringing in a character that is as much about tying up loose ends as this issue needed to be. Continue reading
Today, Drew and Ryan are discussing Divinity 1, originally released February 11th, 2015.
My feeling is, story is the apple, plot is the arrow through it. (Or, story = mountain, plot = path through the mountain.)
Chuck Wendig
Drew: I’ve often attempted to distinguish between the “story” and “plot” of a narrative, but because those terms are often used interchangeably, I’ve never felt like I was being totally clear. Little did I know that Russian formalist Vladimir Propp had actually coined the specific terms I needed almost a century ago: fabula is the chronological events of the “story”, while syuzhet is the narrative arc as laid out in the “plot”. There are a great many stories where the distinction is trivial — the events of the story are presented in chronological order — but in a world full of flashbacks, flashforwards, and other chronological twists and turns, it’s helpful to be able to differentiate the two.
In most cases, the syuzhet is crafted to enhance the audience’s experience (to obscure a key detail of a mystery or to remind us of a detail as it becomes important), but it can also be used to reflect a character’s subjective experience of the fabula. LOST did this well, showing the audience proustian memories brought about by triggers on the island, but there are a few stories that take that concept a step further, where the character’s experience of the fabula is more explicitly achronological, allowing the syuzhet to track the fabula, even though neither is arranged chronologically. The “backwards” order of Memento simulates Leonard’s anterograde amnesia, and the “Watchmaker” chapter of Watchmen simulates Dr. Manhattan’s omnipotent experience of time. Matt Kindt and Trevor Hairsine’s new Divinity clearly has a great deal in common with that latter example, even if the subjectivity of the syuzhet is less explicit. Continue reading
Retcon Punch 