Botched Book Review: 'The Walking Dead'

After watching the first episode of 'The Walking Dead' on AMC & deciding I liked the story better than the show itself, I went to Midtown Comics to pick up the first compendium.

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Allow me to have an aside here for a moment: I love Midtown Comics.  The place is well-organized, bright, & well stocked. Their staff are friendly & helpful (& also I kind of have a thing for nerds). When I was trying to decide whether to buy the individual 4-episode volumes or the 48-episode compendium, a cute staffer helped me do some simple math to figure it out, & when he found out I had never read it before, his praise bordered on the obsessive.

"It's the greatest comic book series of all time. I bet you couldn't find anything better within a ten-foot radius in this store."

 I pointed to the Alan Moore display we were standing right next to:
"Is it even better than Watchmen?"

"Erm... no. Nothing is better than Watchmen. It's the second greatest comic book series of all time.

So, yes. The staff is knowledgeable & friendly. Also, their customer rewards program is brilliant: $20 free after each $100 spent in-store. That's like a 20% discount all the time.

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But back to the series. I read a lot of Manga as a little girl, including getting Smile magazine delivered to my house  just before it entered its death throes. So I'm not totally unfamiliar with "how" to read & absorb the visual information, & the lack of color really doesn't bother me- in fact color comics always seemed kind of overwhelmingly gaudy.

I am only a little ways in, but the story is clear & suspenseful. It's not really a story about zombies, it's about humanity & what it does under stress. I feel not uncomfortable comparing it to the Sci-Fi version of August: Osage County or The Grapes of Wrath (but maybe a little faster-paced).

It has also inspired me to add a little more comic book - schlock style back into my drawing. Sure it may be cheesy looking, but it's clear & communicative as anything.

So far I would recommend the series, although if you can manage to borrow it from somebody do that instead of sinking all of your drinking money for the next two weekends in to the Compendium.

Movie Monday: The Walking Dead (Episode 1)

"The Walking Dead" has taken over the "Mad Men" slot on Sundays. Since I was thirsty for a new story to obsess over, I became, for an hour, one of the mindless slaves their advertising wanted me to be.

The story is great, but it would be difficult to make a bad story out of what has been argued as the second greatest comic book of all time (nothing is better than Watchmen, y'all). The effects are great, the visual imagery is strong, and I have relatively few problems with the dialogue.

My biggest problem with this series is, of course, the acting. Andrew Lincoln, the man playing the protagonist Rick Grimes, is just not an interesting actor. Remember how in I Am Legend Will Smith was by himself on screen for the first 45 minutes of the movie & you barely noticed that nothing was happening? Yeah, that wasn't the case here. Lincoln lacks subtext & the ability to tell us what he is thinking without mugging. The brief moment we had with Shane (Jon Bernthal) & the rest of the van camp was spent with Bernthal more or less screaming at the camera "I AM THE BAD GUY. I WILL BE BAD. LOOK AT MY EYES! THEY SAY BAD GUY."

I suppose my other problem with the show is the pacing. It seemed over-anxious to get Shane into the city & around some grisly creatures to blow up. I could have used a few more traveling scenes, or some more  of the normal-life-backstory-lead-up. The first episode came off as rushed & almost forced, in a way that said "Look horror movie fans! Zombies! Please watch our show!" I supposed elapsed time is easier in comic books, when the author can write "later..." & the reader is free to imagine what happened in the interim.

And that's my problem overall with the TV version of "The Walking Dead"; it's not a book.

my new iPod

In the tradition of Small Reviews, a blog I enjoy reading written by a friend of a friend of mine, I shall now impose my thoughts about something on you. Oh wait! That's the tradition of the internet.

Along with my new computer (you read that post, didn't you?!), I received a "free" iPod touch. I say "free", because they only give you a rebate for the smallest one, and really what am I supposed to do with 8gb of space? I ponied up the extra $100 and got the 32gb one, which doesn't really seem a logical correlation for price (1/3 more money for 3/4 more space? ....okay!), but I am passing my used iPod along to my Dad, so we split the cost of the iPod and you don't really care about this part anyway.

So. I kinda like it, but it's not my new favorite thing. It's not really that easy to operate, since you have to be looking at it the whole time you're using it, + I used to keep my iPod in my pocket and just feel around for the 'next' button when I felt like I wanted it. Having to fuss around with the touch screen also isn't so good while driving, but I guess there's a reason touchscreen computers never really took off for use outside of POS systems. It is a damn efficient way to do things, though, and I guess Apple is all about the sleek design. So neutral points there.

I don't really play any games on it. I guess I grew up not being allowed to have any video games, + so it's not really something I got into the habit of interacting with. I don't really have the patience to sit down + play a game, and get frustrated easily when I lose. So I have maybe three games on it.

I do have a whole lot of organizational apps- a to do list, a grocery list, a countdown clock, an IOU app, and of course my calendar. I really like having all of those different things parsed out into separate spaces on my iPod rather than on different sheets of paper floating around my notebooks. I miss being able to scrawl little notes in my calendar, or put pertinent phone numbers next to things I am doing in my planner. So the tactile aspect of my planner is something I miss, but I'm quite glad to have one less thing in my purse [Calendar + iPod consolidated]. Plus I always carry a tiny sketchbook anyway, so it's not like I have no place to doodle.

Overall? I like it. It reminds me of when I tried to get into using a PDA but failed because I was in 8th grade + had no way to write my homework in it. And it really, really makes me want to bet an iPhone, because that would be yet another thing not stuffing my poor little purse. But my Verizon contract isn't up until october '10, + it's not worth it to pay the early termination fee. So we'll see where I am then.