When Spaceman was announced, it was so surprising. Azzarello and Risso doing a... scifi comic...? The duo best known for 100 Bullets along with a few Batman comics and they're doing scifi? It was hard to fully grasp. Now, it seems so natural. They did their sort of story in a scifi setting. A world that Risso brings to life with stunning background and scenery setting. While I'm more likely to pay attention to the writing, because that's what I'm most comfortable with -- and far more likely to write about, because I'm far more comfortable with it in this arena -- it's hard to ignore the enormous role Eduardo Risso plays in Spaceman being as good as it is.
He makes the spacemen look different from one another. And not in big, obvious way. He maintains a sense of 'they all look alike to me' that would come with something as different and weird as the spacemen are. They have subtle differences like body language and haircut. Their faces are quite similar, which is fitting. Their hunched over bodies are strange, too. I remember reading when I was a kid that astronauts had to be six feet or under (maybe even less) -- yet these spacemen seem taller. Interesting choice.
That first shot of the docks is stunning. Perfect lines and colours.
Adam is right: this future isn't really much different from the world we know or have known for a while. There's the rich, the poor, and there's corruption One of the most chilling moments of the series is at the end when we see the cops now working security for the Ark. Money wins. Money always wins. That makes me wonder if we left the fantasy too soon. If Spender wouldn't actually fall victim to his brothers, because money wins.
I never would have guessed how much I like seeing Risso draw a spacesuit.
Of course, the dialogue Azzarello writes is so fun to read and figure out. It's a natural progression of what English is now, with some dropped letters and mispronounciations that I wouldn't be surprised were already occurring. But, it's not the language spoken in the Dries. That's something Azzarello is very mindful of. What we see is 'poor English' as it were. It doesn't even seem like it's out of place.
Trisha Mulvihill's colours... the reds and oranges... the paleness of Mars... spectacular.
Like Adam said, this is a comic. Nothing but a comic. Damn right.
In 30 minutes... I don't actually know entirely.
[Don't forget to donate what you can to the Hero Initiative (Details in this post)! After you do, let me know via comment or e-mail (found at the righthand side) so I can keep track of donations -- and who to thank.]
Showing posts with label adam langton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adam langton. Show all posts
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Blogathon 39: Spaceman (Adam Langton Guest Post)
So Chad Nevett is insane and relishes putting himself through this blogathon business every year. Presumably the only motivation is masochism. But I am nothing if not an enabler, so heeeeere we go!
Sick and tired of comic books and comic creators that are all but begging for a film adaptation? Ever since the big comics2film boom of fourteen years ago, new comics (not the boring rehashed superhero fare) have become more and more like storyboards, complete with Hollywood hook. Hell, we’ve even got idiots like Mark Millar selling his yet-to-be-made comics to Hollywood studios, only to eventually turn out absolute garbage like “Super Crooks.” It would seem that our beloved little medium has become little more than a springboard in the minds of these men and women, rather than the home for original stories that couldn’t be told anywhere else.
Well that aint true for Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso; my evidence? “Spaceman.” “Spaceman” is one of those rare, delightful comic book stories that couldn’t work in any other medium. The best part is, it doesn’t have to work in any other medium--it’s perfect in a comic book, as it is. An original, self-contained sci-fi serial, “Spaceman” takes the trope of the everyman caught up in extraordinary circumstances... only in this case, Orson is anything but an everyman. Genetically engineered to survive space travel, Orson’s mission to Mars has come and gone; now, he has fallen the wayside in a futuristic world that doesn’t look very different from our own.
You’ve got to love Azzarello for creating a sci-fi future where life absolutely sucks for the vast majority of people. That is the way life has been on Earth for the past few millennia, why should it suddenly change a hundred years from now? When you think of the creation of a sci-fi landscape you immediately begin envisioning different directors ‘bringing it to life,’ but screw you, because Risso already did that. Combined with colours from Patricia Mulvihill and Giulia Brusco, Risso’s scenes featuring Orson’s flashbacks to Mars look and feel starkly different from the darkness of his life on Earth; the two stories are balanced beautifully, leaving the reader guessing at both until they dovetail into one another in a thrilling conclusion.
Wow, two storylines that both work on their own accord, dovetailing into one another at the close: why mess with the classics? “Spaceman” doesn’t need eighty twists or ten false-finishes. In fact, I stick to the word “classic” because that’s what “Spaceman” reads like: a modern version of a story from the 1800s. While the setting and plot involve all of the details and trappings of modern life, the storytelling and theme are decidedly old-fashioned, allowing the reader to glimpse an argument about our quotidian lives being made within each page.
Celebrity, priority, greed, money, society... all lambasted through the eyes of a man who never asked to be born, never asked to be different, and has merely been trying to wait out his years in our messed up reality. A reality that is obsessed with a simulacra of reality; be it the reality television that is anything but, the promise of riches that never come to pass, or the sexual fantasy of virtual pornography that cannot be realized, the reality of Orson’s world is one where the simulation has won: just as in our own.
Everything from the larger-than-life spacemen themselves to the very language of “Spaceman” refutes the argument for adaptation. While it would be distracting to listen to actors wrestle with the quirky dialogue that Azzarello has given his characters, on the page the reader is allowed to develop their own ear for the new slang, listen to it at whatever pace they are comfortable with in their minds. The result is a deeper immersion into this world the creative team has made, whereas in other media the language would achieve the opposite result.
“Spaceman” and comics like it are the reason that our beloved art form will still be around no matter how long the Comics2Film craze persists. Let 95% of creators make books for no other reason than a potential lottery ticket to Hollywood riches; the rest of us will cleave to creators like Azzarello and Risso and keep enjoying comics for what they are and what they’ve always been: simple, fantastic, occasionally subversive tales that let us see ourselves differently.
Kudos to anyone and everyone involved in “Spaceman.”
[Don't forget to donate what you can to the Hero Initiative (Details in this post)! After you do, let me know via comment or e-mail (found at the righthand side) so I can keep track of donations -- and who to thank.]
Sick and tired of comic books and comic creators that are all but begging for a film adaptation? Ever since the big comics2film boom of fourteen years ago, new comics (not the boring rehashed superhero fare) have become more and more like storyboards, complete with Hollywood hook. Hell, we’ve even got idiots like Mark Millar selling his yet-to-be-made comics to Hollywood studios, only to eventually turn out absolute garbage like “Super Crooks.” It would seem that our beloved little medium has become little more than a springboard in the minds of these men and women, rather than the home for original stories that couldn’t be told anywhere else.
Well that aint true for Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso; my evidence? “Spaceman.” “Spaceman” is one of those rare, delightful comic book stories that couldn’t work in any other medium. The best part is, it doesn’t have to work in any other medium--it’s perfect in a comic book, as it is. An original, self-contained sci-fi serial, “Spaceman” takes the trope of the everyman caught up in extraordinary circumstances... only in this case, Orson is anything but an everyman. Genetically engineered to survive space travel, Orson’s mission to Mars has come and gone; now, he has fallen the wayside in a futuristic world that doesn’t look very different from our own.
You’ve got to love Azzarello for creating a sci-fi future where life absolutely sucks for the vast majority of people. That is the way life has been on Earth for the past few millennia, why should it suddenly change a hundred years from now? When you think of the creation of a sci-fi landscape you immediately begin envisioning different directors ‘bringing it to life,’ but screw you, because Risso already did that. Combined with colours from Patricia Mulvihill and Giulia Brusco, Risso’s scenes featuring Orson’s flashbacks to Mars look and feel starkly different from the darkness of his life on Earth; the two stories are balanced beautifully, leaving the reader guessing at both until they dovetail into one another in a thrilling conclusion.
Wow, two storylines that both work on their own accord, dovetailing into one another at the close: why mess with the classics? “Spaceman” doesn’t need eighty twists or ten false-finishes. In fact, I stick to the word “classic” because that’s what “Spaceman” reads like: a modern version of a story from the 1800s. While the setting and plot involve all of the details and trappings of modern life, the storytelling and theme are decidedly old-fashioned, allowing the reader to glimpse an argument about our quotidian lives being made within each page.
Celebrity, priority, greed, money, society... all lambasted through the eyes of a man who never asked to be born, never asked to be different, and has merely been trying to wait out his years in our messed up reality. A reality that is obsessed with a simulacra of reality; be it the reality television that is anything but, the promise of riches that never come to pass, or the sexual fantasy of virtual pornography that cannot be realized, the reality of Orson’s world is one where the simulation has won: just as in our own.
Everything from the larger-than-life spacemen themselves to the very language of “Spaceman” refutes the argument for adaptation. While it would be distracting to listen to actors wrestle with the quirky dialogue that Azzarello has given his characters, on the page the reader is allowed to develop their own ear for the new slang, listen to it at whatever pace they are comfortable with in their minds. The result is a deeper immersion into this world the creative team has made, whereas in other media the language would achieve the opposite result.
“Spaceman” and comics like it are the reason that our beloved art form will still be around no matter how long the Comics2Film craze persists. Let 95% of creators make books for no other reason than a potential lottery ticket to Hollywood riches; the rest of us will cleave to creators like Azzarello and Risso and keep enjoying comics for what they are and what they’ve always been: simple, fantastic, occasionally subversive tales that let us see ourselves differently.
Kudos to anyone and everyone involved in “Spaceman.”
[Don't forget to donate what you can to the Hero Initiative (Details in this post)! After you do, let me know via comment or e-mail (found at the righthand side) so I can keep track of donations -- and who to thank.]
Blogathon 38: Spaceman (Part 1)
Spaceman was one of my favourite comics of 2012. It barely missed out on my top ten books of the year and I was glad that Adam is giving me a chance to talk about it (and a reason to reread the whole thing in one sitting).
Something that I didn't have as much of a chance to focus on when the series was coming out was the dream/fantasty Mars sequences. Some call them flashbacks, but every bit of information suggests that the mission never happened. Yet, they're incredibly detailed, telling a complete plot over the course of the series. Bits and pieces of dialogue relate those scenes to what's happening at the moment in the comic. That seems like a clue, but it's a technique that Azzarello uses frequently, so there may not be a connection beyond his preferred method of scene transitions. In the first issue, it's strongly suggested that the Mars stuff is something that Orson is dreaming... and, then, it continues while he's awake...? Or are we seeing the entire dream -- the unrealised dream?
After all, the mission to Mars was what he was born for -- it's his dream and the dream of the people at NASA, but it never happens. We get to see it continue. We get to see the dream fulfilled and it's a disaster of greed and betrayal between the spacemen. It's meant to be Orson's dream of what his life should have been, but it's infected by what his life actually is. It's sad. But, there's a glimmer of hope at the end as the remaining spacemen choose one another over the gold. They choose to be brothers...
There are so many implied things. Like, Bubba -- is he another spaceman? He calls Orson brother in one of the Mars fantasies and Orson seems to speak to him a few times throughout the series, including at the end. Or, is that what he calls everyone on the phone? Bubba was the ground man it seems -- the Earthbound one, their Mars mission's contact. Orson seems to not have any contact with his brothers, though. Unless he keeps his connection to Bubba private.
With Azzarello, so much is in the interpretation of language, so much that can be misread or misunderstood. The basic plot is simple, but everything surrounding it is given in little pieces here and there -- and never all of them. But, that's the way with his noirish storytelling. The plot is something basic like a kidnapping gone wrong or a group of guys find some gold and starting killing each other... It's the same shit you've seen a million times before at its core. But, the world surrounding it is so rich and different. Instantly recognisable, too. You know pretty much what happened without having it spelled out. Azzarello puts a lot of faith in his readers. I wish more writers did. We may get it wrong sometimes, but we're trying -- and we're thinking.
In 30 minutes, Adam Langton will drop a little knowledge on us all.
[Don't forget to donate what you can to the Hero Initiative (Details in this post)! After you do, let me know via comment or e-mail (found at the righthand side) so I can keep track of donations -- and who to thank.]
Something that I didn't have as much of a chance to focus on when the series was coming out was the dream/fantasty Mars sequences. Some call them flashbacks, but every bit of information suggests that the mission never happened. Yet, they're incredibly detailed, telling a complete plot over the course of the series. Bits and pieces of dialogue relate those scenes to what's happening at the moment in the comic. That seems like a clue, but it's a technique that Azzarello uses frequently, so there may not be a connection beyond his preferred method of scene transitions. In the first issue, it's strongly suggested that the Mars stuff is something that Orson is dreaming... and, then, it continues while he's awake...? Or are we seeing the entire dream -- the unrealised dream?
After all, the mission to Mars was what he was born for -- it's his dream and the dream of the people at NASA, but it never happens. We get to see it continue. We get to see the dream fulfilled and it's a disaster of greed and betrayal between the spacemen. It's meant to be Orson's dream of what his life should have been, but it's infected by what his life actually is. It's sad. But, there's a glimmer of hope at the end as the remaining spacemen choose one another over the gold. They choose to be brothers...
There are so many implied things. Like, Bubba -- is he another spaceman? He calls Orson brother in one of the Mars fantasies and Orson seems to speak to him a few times throughout the series, including at the end. Or, is that what he calls everyone on the phone? Bubba was the ground man it seems -- the Earthbound one, their Mars mission's contact. Orson seems to not have any contact with his brothers, though. Unless he keeps his connection to Bubba private.
With Azzarello, so much is in the interpretation of language, so much that can be misread or misunderstood. The basic plot is simple, but everything surrounding it is given in little pieces here and there -- and never all of them. But, that's the way with his noirish storytelling. The plot is something basic like a kidnapping gone wrong or a group of guys find some gold and starting killing each other... It's the same shit you've seen a million times before at its core. But, the world surrounding it is so rich and different. Instantly recognisable, too. You know pretty much what happened without having it spelled out. Azzarello puts a lot of faith in his readers. I wish more writers did. We may get it wrong sometimes, but we're trying -- and we're thinking.
In 30 minutes, Adam Langton will drop a little knowledge on us all.
[Don't forget to donate what you can to the Hero Initiative (Details in this post)! After you do, let me know via comment or e-mail (found at the righthand side) so I can keep track of donations -- and who to thank.]
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