Cheerful Megalomaniac » Comics

Comic Review: A Distant Soil

Ryan — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 06:44:54 +0000

I spent last night reading “A Distant Soil” 1-4. I don’t have the final volume, curse it! *weeps hysterically*

They are awesome books. I love the art, simply because it is incredibly beautiful. Its made clear in the later volumes that the art itself is not idealising normality, but in fact deliberately beautiful. Ugly characters start to crawl out of the wood work as time goes on. The extreme beauty is a device to contrast the extreme cruelty, and selfishness and inner ugliness of the the Ovanan race, with the beauty that they surround themselves with. They are a people that worship youth and beauty. They exile people that have been senetenced to terminal aging. The incredibly pretty hero, with his long blond hair, and youthful, angelic face isn’t so pretty once he has his hair cut off, and he is tortured, but his inner strength and purity is stronger than ever.

The number of societal issues that the books address tactfully and meaningfully is impressive.

It deals wonderfully with the impact of child abuse on children, both physical and sexual abuse, but also emotional abuse, and manipulation. The effect that this has on adult relationships is subtly critiqued, using a variety of different characters experiences. I was strongly reminded of my grandmother by one of the characters, and found some of this content extremely poignant and connected with one of the characters very intimately. (I see him as the hero now, though he really isn’t)

The books also look at a variety of attitudes to homosexuality, and transsexuality. Its rather cleverly done. The Avatar is having an affair with his man-servant, and this is scandalous… not cos they are gay, but cos the manservant is a mortal. One of the characters is a shape shifter who can change her gender and appearance at will, and at one point she asks one of the other characters why he doesn’t like her as a man, when he was so keen when she was a woman.

Race isn’t ignored, and neither is slavery. The characters are predominantly white, but the humans come from a variety of races, and the Resistance fighters come from a variety of alien races, trying to overthrow the White Supremacist Ovanan. I quite like one of the speeches by a character where he asks if there was never any slavery on Earth because of the humans lack of sympathy to his cause.

One of the things that I was extremely surprised to see in there, is a man’s addiction to the ‘Nexus’ a communications network somewhat akin to the internet. He actually becomes numb to humanity because he is so enthralled by the flow of information… whats the point in knowing everything, if you care for nothing? Any comic book that looks at the effect extreme internet addiction can have on someone life, but more importantly WHY the internet is so seductive, is pretty fine, IMHO.

The Avatar, Seren, has become my favourite character. He is an incredibly effeminate, and is conducting an extremely scandalous relationship with his mortal manservant. He is lonely though, and tends to be too trusting. Kindness is to him, like rain on the desert, and this gets him into trouble with people that simply want to manipulate him. His ‘mother’ betrays him, deliberately manipulating him in his pain, to gain complete control over him. He was weak willed, and shy until he acquired a much stronger, braver, second personality, and slowly as he has gained in strength and courage the personalities have assimilated into one personality.

He is brave, and his greatest battle isn’t necessarily the political struggle to free his people, but with his personal healing after a lifetime of being manipulated and abused, and the brutal understanding that he cannot trust anyone.

I wouldn’t recommend this series to anyone that doesn’t like the ‘pretty’ aspect of it, or is uncomfortable with all the characters being people, instead of 2D shadows. Also keep in mind it does have sex scenes, rape scenes, torture scenes, and pedophilia.

Overall though, I give it 10 out of 10.

Conversations at the Comic Shop

Ryan — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 06:59:14 +0000

I stopped and had a chat with the fellow in the comic shop today. Its quite amazing. Nice Guys(TM) are so formulaic. I felt like shaking him and saying “Get a grip man! You’re a CLICHE!”

He’s a nice fellow, but somewhat misguided. I scored Bingo on the Feminist Comic Bingo Card during a half hour conversation. He is quite sympathetic to the Feminist cause, but calls himself a masculinist, and I am afraid that when he started the regular Nice Guy(TM) trope about how girls are more attracted to arseholes I smirked, and rolled my eyes.

Women aren’t more attracted to arseholes, they are just conditioned to put up with shit, and so they end up going out, and staying with whoever asks, and usually the arsehole is there asking while the NiceGuy(TM) is too busy watching 300.

I do not know a single truly nice man that is single, except for those who choose to be so either temporarily or permanently. I think that really fabulous men tend to get snapped up pretty quickly, and because our society seems to spend an inordinate amount of time shaming single women, the girls that don’t manage to hook up with a treasure, often feel pressured to go out with whoever asks, instead of waiting for more men to try harder, and be nicer.

I quite like the fellow in the comic shop, he’s nice, and I look at him as a kind of hatchling feminist… DC’s Elseworld comics woke him up to what feminists are ‘whinging’ about in comics.

I’m losing patience and tolerance for idiots and arseholes though. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me on everything, but I think that it is reasonable to expect a certain minimum standard of behaviour from my friends, and from now on people in violation of those standards probably wont see me much. I’m too busy. I’ve got work to do.

BACK!!

Ryan — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 06:43:57 +0000

My internet hasn’t been working recently, so I have been forced to go nomadic with my work laptop. I am currently steelin’ internets from Fenner Hall (a college at ANU). It took me 25 mins to figure out how to get on the network…My enrollment has been suspended it seems. I left my enrolment too late. Most upsetting. I have to pay a late fee of $125 if I want to enroll. It doesn’t seem worth it frankly. *growls* Anyway, in other news! My time offline has been spent writing many blog posts! It has also been spent PLOTTING with Farida to start a joint comic-blog which will probably be called “The Centre for Insanity”. We haven’t finalised that yet. So on to the many posts I have written!

Woman After My Own Heart…

Ryan — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:38:35 +0000

Comic-type amusement after the jump!

I want to be Hannelore’s mother when I grow up.