Wis[s]e Words

Saga — Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Published on January 6, 2013Leave a comment

So a couple of months ago I talked about Prophet and how much it seemed influenced by European comics. Well, Saga is another Image series that could’ve just as well been published in Metal Hurlant or A Suivre. It’s written by Brian K. Vaughan, known to me from Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina, but whom I haven’t yet read anything from and drawn by Fiona Staples, who I know nothing about but who is seriously good here. Especially her facial expressions:

Saga - cutting the umbilical cord

Saga is the story of Alana, the woman on the left and Marko, the horned dude, starcrossed lovers in a galaxy at war. Alana is from Landfall while Marko is from Wreath, its moon and these two have been at war for seemingly forever, having outsourced it to the rest of the galaxy. Alana and Marko met on Cleave, the latest planet to become a battlefield when he was a POW and she his guard, fell in love and deserted. Now they have to get off planet while taking care of their newborn baby. Hijinks ensue.

Saga - The Will and the Lying Cat

Both sides meanwhile want them dead. From Planetfall Prince Robot IV is sent to Cleave to hunt them down, while Marko’s people have hired freelancers to do the same. That’s one of them above, The Will, with his partner Lying Cat, who can tell if you’re lying to her. The other freelancer is The Stalk, below, whom The Will has history with.

Saga - The Stalk

The story moves slowly over the course of the six issues represented in the first trade paperback, with Marko and Alana trying to get to the Rocketship Woods on the other side of Cleave, while The Will, The Stalk and Prince Robot IV all attempt to catch up to them, one way or another.

Saga - Prince Robot IV

What makes Saga more than just a pretty sci-fi adventure is the simple fact that none of the main characters are true villains or heroes. Alana and Marko just want to live in peace with their daughter, to be left alone, while Prince Robot IV just want to get things over with so he can go home to his pregnant wife. Even the two freelancers are anything but Boba Fett like bounty hunters, with The Will frex having confliced feelings about his former partner, The Stalk.

Saga - The Will and the Stalk

But what really makes the series is the artwork; as said Staples is seriously good at facial expressions, slightly exaggerated at key moments, but also has a good eye for character design and layout in general. In general, like Prophet, this is a series that actually makes me enthusiastic about American comics again, something that shows there are still pleasant surprises to be had.

AC Milan takes a stand against racism

Published on January 3, 2013Leave a comment

Kevin Prince Boateng walks off in a friendly match after being racially abused by some Pro Patria supporters:

Anti-racism campaigners praised Boateng’s decision to walk off. Piara Powar, the executive director of the European anti-discrimination group Fare, said: “We salute Kevin-Prince Boateng for his actions and his team-mates for their support. This is the not the first time a player has walked off in Italy – if the situation continues it may not be the last. Italy, as much as any country in Europe, has a serious problem of racism to deal with. Football infrastructure is in need of renewal and at serious odds with the changing nature of Italian society. We look forward to strong action by the FIGC [Italian FA].”

Racism in football all over Europe is still an underreported problem. In many countries it’s much less than it used to be in the seventies and eighties, but it’s still present and needs to be dealt much more firmly with.

Books read December

Published on January 2, 2013Leave a comment

And so we’ve reached December and the year’s total: ninetyone books read in total, the first time since 2006 that I’ve read less than a hundred books — and even this number is somewhat inflated by my reread of the entire Discworld series. I blame my obsession with Football Manager — as well as other videogames — this past year for this, for keeping sitting behind the pc for much longer and hence reading less. I also seemed to have less energy for reading and in general 2012 was somewhat of a year of recuperation for me, for obvious reasons.

Terminal World — Alastair Reynolds
Alastair Reynolds does steampunk in a far future world where Vingean zones make high technology possible in some parts of the planet, but limits technology in others.

Outies — J. R. Pournelle
A sequel to a sequel which itself had not been half as good as the original novel, written by the daughter of one of the original writers, decades after the first sequel had come out. Nine out of ten of the books you can describe this way are godawful crap (ten out of ten if Kevin J. Anderson is the cowriter), but this is the exception. It helps that J. R. (Jennifer) Pournelle is an archaeologist and anthropologist and takes her experience into the novel. As a writer, she’s at least as good a craft person as her father, if not better.

Imperial Women in Byzantium 1025 — 1204 — Barbara Hill
An interesting look at a period of Byzantine history that saw a remarkable number of powerful women entering imperial politics. This book not just tells their story, but examines their limits and powers and the ways in which they could and could not exercise their power and how this was represented in contemporary sources.

Moving Pictures, Reaper Man, Witches Abroad, — Terry Pratchett
The first batch of Pratchett Discworld novels read in December in my ongoing reread of the entire series.

As They Were — M. F. K. Fisher
Sandra always loved M. F. K. Fisher’s writing, which is why I read this collection of essays about food, traveling and the people she met.

Small Gods, Lords and Ladies, Men at Arms — Terry Pratchett
The second batch.

Same procedure as last year

Published on December 31, 2012Leave a comment

I don’t like New Year’s Eve; never have. It’s a holiday that always puts you in a melancholy mood as you’re supposed to reflect on the past year and get swallowed up in all the instant nostalgia television and the news media bombard you with. Not to mention all the obligatory partying on the night, which always seems to be going on somewhere else than where I’m at. It all puts me in a maudlin mood and I can’t stand that. then again I’m somebody who can get wistful because the novel I’m reading is almost finished…

2012 has been a strange year anyway, it would’ve been a good year if not for one little thing: the job went well after a bit of a hiccup in 2011 (switching assignments), financially everything’s alright, the cats are in good health, it’s just that this has been the first year without Sandra. And when you’ve been with somebody for eleven years it’s very strange to not have them around anymore. Very strange and painful. Not a day that hasn’t gone by without me being reminded of her not being here. Especially today.

Sandra always liked New Years eve and the crazy fireworks the Dutch get up to tonight (and in the runup to tonight and for several days afterwards (the cats are less impressed)) and always wanted to be in the thick of it, while my first instinct had always been to hide away from it. Despite this mismatch, we had some good New Years’ Eves together, going out to Nieuwmarkt to watch the mobsters, the Chinese kids and the students competing with each other as to who could light the biggest bang, as well as that New Year’s party back in Plymouth, the last year she lived there, that had been just perfect. Without her? Eh, what’s the point.

Death of a linesman

Published on December 22, 2012Leave a comment

The Guardian reports on the death of linesman Richard Nieuwenhuizen, beaten up at an amateur game in early December and what it means for Dutch football:

Yet moments after the players started shaking hands with the three volunteer officials, Nieuwenhuizen was knocked to the floor, then punched and kicked in the head by several of the Nieuw-Sloten team. Parents immediately ran on to the pitch to try to defuse the situation and get some control. Nieuwenhuizen eventually got back to his feet but he was knocked to the floor for a second time. Witnesses report that one of the Nieuw-Sloten players then took off his shirt, presumably to make it harder for him to be identified, before kicking Nieuwenhuizen while he was on the ground and then running off. Mykel, Nieuwenhuizen’s son, saw everything.

As the article makes clear, the case has become a rorschach blotch for every Dutch anxiety about modern society: racial tension, lack of respect for authorities, youth gone wild, etc. The victim was a white man, a linesman from Almere, the perpetrators allegedly are Moroccan boys from one of the Amsterdam districts with a high level of Dutch-Moroccans. Mix that in with the fact that the victim was a linesman, an authority figure, when there has been a string of horrible assaults of authority figures — police officers, first aid workers, ticket inspectors — in the last few years and you got an incident that was tailor made for Geert Wilders to exploit. Which he promptly did, but which fortunately hasn’t gained much traction

A tragedy such as this of course needs to be taken seriously, though I do think it’s easy to overreact to it as a country or a sport. The vast majority of football fans and players at all levels of Dutch football are decent people and to make great moral judgments out of one incident, no matter how tragic, seems wrong.