Emma vol. 6 and Watchmen

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death.



The "dark" installment, where everything hits the fan. William finally stands up to his old man in an intensely cool sequence with the two of them shouting at each other for pages. On the other hand, Emma's quiet passivity is really grating this time around. The art's sumptuous and beautiful, but I don't understand what William ever saw in her in the first place. Backbone, people! Spine! Moxie! Recommended with reservations.



What was this, the fourteenth or fifteenth time I read this? It remains a masterpiece of construction and foreshadowing full of genuinely great characters, but it satisfies a little less each time I read it. I don't read all the pirate stuff every time, but I realized this time the main reason I want to skip them is because those damn captions are the most turgid, overwrought things in the book. It might make a good movie, but I don't know that a contemporary audience is going to buy the almost immediate armistice the way we did twenty years ago. Recommended, but not for younger readers.

Incidentally, whatever happened to that comic book with the Art Adams promotional art with Batman punching Rorschach? Did that come out yet?

(Originally posted February 03, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)