Planet Hulk - big green crusader

Planet Hulk by Greg Pak (Marvel Comics: 2008) The Incredible Hulk is banished from Earth and Time to go swimming in the deep end again. Give something else a try. Not entirely new if I’m honest. The whole GBR adventure has taken me here before. To graphic novel territory. The first time, it was in a sort of literary way. Then in a pseudo political way. Now into more classic territory. Doesn’t come much more classic than a bit of Hulk.

ends up shipwrecked on an alien planet with plenty of its own problems. Hulk becomes embroiled in a Civil War, leading a rebellion against a repressive emperor.

 

Unless you’ve kept up with Hulk’s story, you (like me) will probably not recognize a lot of Planet Hulk. Gone are the mindless rampages, the monosyllabic monster the good doctor tries to keep in check. Instead, we’re given a coherent superhero, nevertheless consigned to exile by his well meaning superhero buddies.

The set up gives Hulk a different kind of adventure. An epic which takes in new worlds and crusades. It’s a compelling context, a clever new stage on which to set Hulk loose. It allows the rise of new legends. It allows parody of some familiar human struggles. It allows a deeper, more thoughtful Hulk to emerge.

Don’t worry, the rage is still there. The “you won’t like me when I’m angry” is still there. But so is a softer side. A more contemplative side. One that can grasp the nature of a societal struggle; make an informed decision on which side to support and how to support it.

I found a lot of this entertainingly new. It was a brave turn by Marvel, and one that works. It revitalised Hulk for me. Made him more interesting. The newness of it, the imagination at work, helped this go by in a hurry. I had to consciously stop every now and then to actually look closer at the art, be careful not to let the half of the story the pictures told pass me by entirely in my hunger for the plot.

So yes, this engaged me and it entertained me. But it wasn’t without its eye rolling moments. There was a handful of twists too many. There was an implausible (and relatively pointless) guest appearance from Silver Surfer. There were elements of the story and of the character reactions that were crow barred in with no finesse. In fact, there was a general lack of subtlety to the entire thing.

Having written that, I’m immediately aware how stupid it is. Criticizing a Hulk graphic novel for its lack of subtlety? Dickhead. 

Got to get over myself. Got to look at this dispassionately. Got to ignore the fact it’s a book I’d never have picked up if it wasn’t for my GBR adventure and a strong recommendation from my brother. Did this entertain me? Did it leave me wanting to find out what happens next? Did it create characters that I liked and disliked in the way I was supposed to? Yes, yes, and yes.

But it’s a matter of degrees. They’re not yes/no questions. Yes, it entertained me, but only a little. Yes I want to know what happens next, but not enough to Amazon one-click the sequel. Yes I found the characters interesting, but also ridiculous in places, and none of them ever took on the shape of fully formed, complex personalities.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. I’m glad I tried it, and I’ll probably try another graphic novel at some stage. But I’m a long way from being a convert. This genre is still more likely to make up a small corner of my book shelves than overtake them completely.

6 GBR

I came. I tried. I mildly enjoyed.

Next week, an author I fear I could become as obsessed about as I am with Glen Duncan. Worrying times.

Ex Machina - cabbage

Ex Machina – the first hundred days (DC Comics: 2005). The first instalment of a series charting the trials and tribulations of Mitchell Hundred. He’s a man with the ability to control machines with his mind, but after realising the mysterious super hero route might not work for him, he decides to run for Mayor of New York instead.

With some things, I’m like the kid that says they don’t like cabbage before trying it. We are all a bit like that, right? You kind of have to be. If I watched every TV show I saw an advert for, went to the cinema for every new film, bought every new album that came out, I’d go crazy. So you filter. You pick off a few genres you know you’ve enjoyed in the past and, for the most part, you stick by them.

I’ve never really touched a graphic novel before. The one graphic novel I did try wasn’t your classic super hero type. I’d assumed I wouldn’t really like those sort. But a lot of people have told me I’m wrong. That there’s more to graphic novels than I think.

So I tried one. I sucked it up and decided to taste the cabbage before screwing my face up and saying I don’t like it. I am a grown up after all (most of the time).

I had assumed the pictures would get on my nerves. Kind of like watching a subtitled movie. Constantly switching back between the two mediums, between the words and the images – I thought that’d be frustrating. But it wasn’t. I got used to it pretty quickly. More than that, I enjoyed it. It was done well, the words and the illustrations were matched smoothly and complimented each other.

It was the pace of this that took a little longer to get used to. It dived right in from the first page, which was exciting, but meant there wasn’t any room for build up. It skipped a lot of the getting-to-know-you phase. The bits that did try to give a bit of back-story seemed clumsy and rushed.

But that’s super hero stories I guess. High tension and dramatic emotion from the get go. It’s not about real people, it’s about big characters with dark motivations. It’s glossy and it’s big-screen. Ex Machina is all those things, which is fun, it’s just a shame that there wasn’t room for a bit of balance too – a breather every now and then to make the action more meaningful.

The story itself was OK. Not much more than that though if I’m honest. I’m no connoisseur of graphic novels (*cue gasps of disbelief*), but even I spotted quite a lot of recycled elements. The misunderstood hero. The accusations of vigilantism. The childhood traumas. The unreasonably evil bosses. The mystery villains. It all felt like it’d been done before.

It even tried to inject a little bit of political debate, but that went the same way as the character development. It was done in a bit of a superficial way. It felt shoe horned in, with no room to grow or gather any deeper meaning.

I’m probably missing the point. I’m imposing the same sort of criteria on this as I would on a normal book. Ex Machina achieves a lot. It’s exciting. It’s fast paced. It’s explosive and imaginative in parts. But it never really surprised me. I’d hoped that it would. I’d hoped that it would have the sort of intrigue and complexity and real tension that I always assumed graphic novels couldn’t achieve. But it didn’t.

It tasted pretty much as I expected it too. Like cabbage.

5 GBR

Maybe I just need to read more of these to get into the swing of them. Develop a taste for them. Which is probably worth doing – I know enough people that love graphic novels to believe that there must be something there that I’m missing.

Next week, back to normal books. The un-illustrated sort. A bit of Gaiman maybe. He’s a guy that does the graphic sort and the normal sort.

Or maybe I’ll have finally finished the monster of a book I’m still working my way through.

Persepolis - graphic

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (Vintage: 2008). A graphic novel following the story of the author’s life. She grew up in Iran and lived through the headlines. Persepolis gives an insight into the lives of a political family, and how the story of Iran shaped the outlook of one of its daughters.

I was watching Fresh Meat last week. At one stage, they took the mickey out of “geeks that read Iranian graphic novels and get around to talk about it” (or something like that, anyway).

This was about three days after I finished an Iranian graphic novel. And had decided to blog about it.

It was a struggle not to feel pretty small at that point.

To be fair to Persepolis, it’s also a “major motion picture”, which earns it a few more cool points, right? No?

Well, no matter, I read it and now I’m blogging about it, and if that means I get judged by the Fresh Meat crowd, well I guess I’m just going to have to live with that. So there.

This was my first graphic novel. Which, after a bit of thought, I’ve realised really is too wide a label to be a genre. I mean, it’s like saying this is my first movie, or this is my first cartoon. It’s a format, but the differences between each example can be huge. Persepolis, Watchmen, Sin City – they’re all graphic novels, but I’m willing to bet cold hard cash that they’re all very very different.

So I’ll not pause too much on the graphic novel factor. It was new to me, but I got used to it pretty quickly. I guess the big difference is that there are more tools on hand to create a distinct feel. Satrapi didn’t have to rely solely on the words on the page to develop the atmosphere of the book, she had the style of the drawings, the way they were arranged on the page, the expressions on people’s faces – all came together to signpost both the plot and the emotion of the book very effectively.

Perhaps most impressive about Persepolis was its consistency. The writing style, the pictures, the layout – they all chimed together, they all looked and felt and sounded the same. This is a book with a very strong personality, and it works well to tell a powerful story.

But there was a fairly major downside to Persepolis for me. The style is very simplistic, which means that it comes off as childish in places. Which is brilliant  and apt in the early and middle parts, where the world is being presented through the eyes of a child. But the kid grows up as the story moves on, and the style stays the same. When there’s high drama early on, the child’s voice and perspective makes it all the more heartbreaking. But when there’s similar drama later on, and we’re still experiencing it with the same style of narration, it comes across as flippant.

And a little annoying.

I don’t want to get too down on it. I enjoyed reading it, and it’s probably a little unfair to applaud the style of the book and then criticise it for staying true to that style from start to finish. I just felt that the story moved but the characters didn’t. The grown up Marji at the end of the book still feels like the child Marji from the start.

Maybe that was intentional. Maybe she’s trying to show that we’re the same people our whole lives, no matter what age we are. Maybe that’s a good point to make. But in making it, I think she’s sacrificed depth and development and richness.

5 GBR

Plenty good about Persepolis, but plenty bad too. Classic middle value score.

Next week, think I’m going to turn a little Doctorow. I’m sure the Fresh Meat lot would approve. Not that I care.