Evening Thoughts

Evening Thoughts

I was surprised with the latest bunch of grapic novels and manga which I took out. I did not expect the manga, Path of the Assassin to be basically X rated with lots of steamy sex in it. Because of this, I would not recommend it. It looked like it was the same kind of thing as Lone Wolf and Cub. Lots of samurai violence, but very little sex. Path of the Assassin is truly steamy. It includes everything from palace intrigue, sex, and ninja assassins. You would call it humanity laid bare at its most base level.

I also found League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Black Dossier, by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill to also have gone a little bit too far. The section called The New Adventures of Fanny Hill in the book was pretty extreme. It had a lot of erotic drawings done in a very similar style to Aubrey Beardsley. I like Aubrey Beardsley, but this goes pretty far. Also, the ending is done in 3D. There is even a pair of 3D Glasses included in the book.

Kevin O'Neill is drawing, "The Blazing World" or a kind of higher dimensional space in 3D. It is very strange looking. The actual pictures have a 3D quality, while the text bubbles appear flat. The effect is very mind bending, almost psychedelic in quality. There are all sorts of odd things in the pictures, whales, superheroes, buildings, and other things.

There is a lot of material that is truly over the top in this book. I could not begin to create what Alan Moore has written. Alan Qatermain and Mina are being chased through a 1950's style dystopia by the agents of a kind of big brother style government.

This is one of those books written with a singular purpose to confuse and blow your mind. It breaks pretty much every convention. My favorite part, and one of the few pieces that I found readable is "The Life of Orlando", a series of panels recounting the tale of an immortal person who changes sex every hundred years or so. It tells a story of a man consumed by warfare and intrigue traveling all of histories byways.

This book will not be for most peoples taste. If you want something very odd to read or something quite mind expanding, almost psychedelic read this book. Large portions of this graphic novel were very hard for me to read. Alan Moore wrote the comic book V for Vendetta. He also wrote one of the most famous comic books ever written, Watchmen. Watchmen is being made into a movie. I think at this point in his career he is free to write almost anything which he wants.

I did not read much that I wanted to review or write about so far this weekend. The Complete Guide to Manga by Jason Thompson is not bad. It covers all the basics. I am looking through it right now.