Geek Apologetics: "My Scott and Jean"

What's that? You don't know what it means when someone says "that's my Scott and Jean"? Well, first of all there's the great blog crossover event going on right now, which you can read about here. As for the phrase itself, it refers to "...my geek sacred cow, the one topic I cannot discuss rationally..."

I am a little late to the party, so instead of getting this all down ahead of time, I'm rushing to get it out on the right day. I had a few ideas, but it came down to two and I decided to take this in a slightly different direction that everyone else. For most people it has been comics or television, but I'm going to go with books. You see, my Scott and Jean, my one thing for which I will brook no argument is The Wheel of Time¹.

For those of you who don't know The Wheel of Time is a fantasy series written by Robert Jordan. It has been part of my life for a very long time. I first began reading the series when I was a sophomore in high school and there were already four books in the series published. (For the record, that means that since I first started reading this series I have graduated three times, moved six times-I think, gotten married, had a 10 year anniversary, started a career and worked for countless iterations of the same company as we bought and sold and were bought and sold.) The characters in these books, and the richly detailed world they inhabit were with me through my teenage years. As I grew up, so did these characters, and even now I am anxiously awaiting the final book(s)² in the series.

As the wait between books grew longer and the amount of detail given to minor characters began to take word count away from the main characters, readers grew restless and began to fall away (in the way most fans fall away: They still read the book or watch the show, but complain about it). While I understand some of the frustration³, I refuse to simply turn my back on the amazing work and have no time to listen to anyone who thinks that I should.

¹ The other finalist for this was Lost, but that apologia will have to wait for another time.

² I say "book(s)" because the final book, written by Brandon Sanderson, who was chosen to complete the series after Robert Jordan's death in 2007, has now been broken up into three books, the first of which is being released in November. I guess the publisher decided that waiting until 2011 and releasing one 800-thousand word novel wasn't a good idea.

³ I really could go on for much longer and get into more detail, but if I intend to post this on the same day as all of the other My Scott and Jean posts, I need to shut up.

Watchmen

Alan Moore's celebrated graphic novel, Watchmen, has often been referred to as "unfilmable", and for years it had seemed as if that might be true. There had been several unsuccessful attempts to get an adaptation started over the years, but now Zack Snyder has brought it to the big screen. Is it completely faithful to the comic? Not completely faithful, but about as faithful as can be expected. 

I really enjoyed the film. The flashbacks to the early years of the Minutemen, Osterman's accident and Vietnam were handled very well. Snyder wove info from "Under the Hood" and other sections of the comic into the movie deftly and was able to provide the backstory and bring to life the alternate 1985 that Moore and Gibbons first created. The casting was excellent and the acting is quite good, but the real stand-out, in my opinion, was Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian. (With the minor exception of the fact that he is supposedly 22 in the 1940 flashbacks and who are they kidding, he fit the part perfectly.) 

It's not all perfect, however. There were some things that did bother me. While the look of all of the times and settings was excellent, President Nixon just looked absurd. The obvious prosthetic nose and massive amounts of makeup were distracting every time he was on screen. I don't mind changes from the source material, but changing the name of the second group of costumed heroes from Crimebusters to Watchmen. The change made it seem as if they didn't believe that the audience could comprehend that the title of the film came not from the name of a group of crime fighters, but from the question that it asks. The thing that bothered me the most was Snyder's (over)use of slow motion. Just as he did in 300, Snyder uses slow motion and freeze frames in every action sequence. the technique can be used both to emphasize the action and to replicate the panes of the comic source material, but when it is used so often it becomes distracting. I'd had enough of it before the end of the first scene of the movie and by the end I felt like it was the only move he knew for action scenes and that asking him to do anything else would be like asking Zoolander to turn left.

If you could only choose one and asked me whether it would be better to go see the movie or read the comic, I would tell you without hesitation to pick up a copy of the graphic novel and start reading now. Fortunately, the world doesn't work that way, and we get to have the comic in its original form and the movie counterpart we were told we could never see.

The Graveyard Book: Less a Review Than a Declaration of Love

The Graveyard Book has gotten a lot of press recently. After all, it was named the winner of the Newbery Award. Feeling a little behind the times, I started reading the book myself. Less than 24 hours later, eyes moist, heart full of joy, pain, loss and love, I sat holding the book I had just finished reading. While the book is reasonably short and simple to read, the real reason I finished it so quickly was that I never wanted to put it down.  

The title plays off of Kipling's The Jungle Book, as does much of the story, but where there were wolves and a jungle, there are now ghosts and a graveyard. Nobody Owens is a boy who has lost his family, but by wandering into the graveyard finds a new, somewhat nontraditional one. The inhabitants of the graveyard act as family, teachers and protectors, keeping him safe until the time comes to return to the world of men. (I'll stop the plot description here for the sake of any of you who haven't read it yet.)

I tend to consider myself a fan of Neil Gaiman. I read pretty much as many of his works as I can get my hands on. I think that, to date, The Graveyard Book may just be my favorite thing he has written, and really, I don't know that I can think of much higher praise than that.