Comics

Rigt now, I am watching some kind of horrendous anime called DearS. The English dubbing is awful and so is the original Japanese voicetrack. Add to that stupid sex jokes and that typical absence of actual animation, and it is just like so many other bad anime series out there. I want more Miyazaki, or, lacking that talent and budget, at least more stuff like Lain, Witch Hunter Robin, Wolf's Rain, Haibane Renmei, Last Exile... Talent! Hello?

You may take those implicit recommendations at face value, the above series are really very good, especially Lain.

And now I turned dear DearS off.

Speaking of drawings, I generally prefer them sitting still, except when it is a cheap money-saving trick. That is, I like comics, even though the word is so strange nowadays, what with most comics being full of death and despair. Anyway, in the last few years, I have read through such a shitload of comics that I am a bit ashamed of myself. I could have learned a new language or raised children - maybe even saved the world or something. But no, I have been reading all the Dark Horse and Vertigo stuff, plus a lot of other comics of the same ilk. I cannot say I have not enjoyed it, though, even if some of them were really a waste of time. I mean, stuff like Preacher, Black Hole, Y the Last Man, the Vertigo Pop miniseries are positively brilliant whereas comics such as Spawn are rather tedious in the long run. Maybe, however, the authors did not intend for someone to read 200-ish issues in three days.

Anyway, the recommendations from last week's reading are I Paparazzi, WE3, Tell Me Dark, Tattered Banners and Seaguy. They are good to a rather varying degree, with the last two being discordianismly absurd, the first nightmarishly absurd and the
other two being horrible tales with comparatively happy endings, which I happen to like.