Posts Tagged ‘fantasy’

The difference between Game of Thrones (TV) and A Song of Ice and Fire (books) in a nutshell

June 4, 2012

Instead of cutting characters or storylines from the books to save room on the show, Game of Thrones cut a theme: that you are a single thread in a sprawling tapestry of history and prophecy sprawling backward and forward and sideways through time; that you have no control over the shape or design or pattern of this tapestry; that the occasional glimpses you get of the larger tapestry can be exhilarating and terrifying and awe-inspiring; that attempting to unravel the awesome mystery of what it all looks like and how it all connects is a driving force in people’s lives.

Most of the major storylines and characters remain intact; other themes, particularly the exploration of how violence destroys human dignity and connectedness, remain intact. So there’s still much of what you love from the books in the show. But the theme above is not what the creators are interested in exploring. You have to decide how to handle that on your own.

Game of Thrones thoughts, Season Two, Episode 10: “Valar Morghulis”

June 4, 2012

For my recap/review of Episode 20, please visit Rolling Stone.

No, for serious: Please do click the link and read it, because that’s my real review. The stuff that follows is…I don’t know what it is. A review of my own viewing experience?

Alright. BOOK SPOILERS AHEAD. Do not read unless you’ve read at least the first three volumes.

All season long I’ve tried to chart a middle ground — not just in writing the reviews for RS, but also simply as an audience member — between considering the differences between the books and the show and not letting that be my be-all-end-all. There’s a good professional reason for that: Most of the audience hasn’t read the books, and I want something I write for a big mainstream publication like Rolling Stone to be useful to as many of those people as possible. And there’s a good critical reason for it, too, I daresay: It’s just not a productive use of one’s critical faculties to perpetually weigh an adaptation against the source, across the boundaries of different media/art forms and geared toward a different audience and with different creators behind the wheel.

Unless you’re someone for whom fealty to the book is quite openly the one metric that matters to you — and I can respect that — the fact that Littlefinger behaves differently on the show than he does in the book, say, is a value-neutral proposition. Is his new behavior well written, well acted, well shot? In the end that’s all that matters. Frankly, I don’t center my criticism on “but THIS changed, and THAT changed, and and and” as a writer, because I know how little use I’ve gotten out of that sort of criticism over the course of the season as a reader.

Now, once upon a time I tried to evaluate the series based on what non-readers would think, or even what they’d simply be able to understand and comprehend; I don’t think I lasted any longer than the series premiere before realizing what a mug’s game that was. I’m not a mind-reader and I can’t speak for those people, and it’s a waste of time to try. What I described in the paragraph above is different than that, mind you: I’m not trying to guess what non-readers think, I’m trying to base my opinions solely on the text at hand without constantly turning to an outside source for justification.

That being said, nothing can change the fact that, well, I have read the books, and I do notice the differences. And it’s clear at this point that some, but not all, of what I truly love about the books isn’t a priority for Benioff & Weiss. I don’t know why the truncation and bowdlerization of the House of the Undying came as such a shock to me given that the two most directly comparable scenes from the first book, Bran’s vision of the land of always winter and Ned’s dream of the Tower of Joy, were both dropped entirely, but it did. And that’s hard to deal with, man! If I were to make a list of the most important scenes in the series so far, in terms of communicating what the series is “about,” the original House of the Undying sequence would be in the top four, behind only Jaime throwing Bran out the window, Ned’s execution, and the Red Wedding. For all intents and purposes it’s not in the show at all, not in a form that counts — a form freighted with all that prophetic information and linking Dany to a grand tapestry of past, present, and future events. And that’s a loss to me. To a lesser extent, so is turning Brienne into a fury-fueled killing machine, or making it look like Jon killed Qhorin in a rage.

I don’t feel “betrayed” like Linda does, though, because I don’t understand how art can betray anyone. All of us have it within our power to make art completely harmless in terms of its direct impact on our lives, simply by not watching or reading or listening to the stuff we don’t like. Moreover there’s still plenty of stuff going on here that I DO like, centered mostly on marvelous, powerful performances, and a tendency to nail the big images, and the same healthy, bitter anti-violence message I respond to in the books.

Ultimately what I need to do, I suppose, is stop weighing the two against each other entirely — to look at the books as an outline, if at all, and take Game of Thrones as it comes, on its own terms. That’s a tall order, not because I’m married to the text, but simply because when you’ve read the source material you can’t help but remember it. Unlike The Sopranos, Twin Peaks, Deadwood, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Wire, and even Boardwalk Empire, the element of surprise that separates those shows from the pack — when I sat down to watch an episode of any of them, I literally had no idea what I might end up seeing, and that’s different from 95% of television — simply cannot exist for me with Game of Thrones. In the end, that’s the big obstacle for me, not for the show, not if I’m giving it a proper chance to be its own thing.

Carnival of souls: Special “Even more NSFW than usual” edition feat. Benjamin Marra, JK Parkin, Game of Thrones Season Three, more

May 30, 2012

* Let’s start with a couple of quick updates to the piece I wrote yesterday about Tim Marchman’s essay on superhero comics for the Wall Street Journal. First, I thought it was important to add that I read and like quite a few Big Two superhero comics being published today, and I enjoy the field overall more than Marchman does, so that would be another quibble of mine with the piece. My attitude for the last few years has been that since I have an easy enough time finding superhero comics I enjoy, I don’t bang my head against the overall health of the genre. (Indeed it’s been a long time since I felt worrying about the Health of Comics was a productive or worthwhile goal for me as a writer.)

* Second, the Washington Post’s Michael Cavna wrote in to point out that he has indeed been covering the ethical ramifications of the Avengers movie and Marvel’s treatment of Jack Kirby for WaPo’s Comic Riffs blog: here he proposes Marvel just up and giving the Kirby heirs a million dollars, and here he interviews writer-artist Roger Langridge about his decision to cease working for Marvel and DC over creator-rights issues. I guess there’s a difference between the book review section (where Marchman’s piece appeared) and a dedicated blog for comics and cartooning, but I said that the national media hadn’t touched these issues at all, and here you have one of the most national-est and mainstream of national mainstream news publications talking about it. My only defense is that I simply missed the articles. Thanks to Cavna for bringing them to my attention, and for bringing these issues to the attention of his readers.

* Normally I’d save items like this for All Leather Must Be Boiled, but Entertainment Weekly’s big scoop on all the new characters in Game of Thrones Season Three (I’ve linked to Westeros’s coverage because they add a couple scoops of their own) is good enough news to share it over here, too. Basically, that character you love and were worried wasn’t going to be in the show, whoever that happened to be? He or she is in the show.

* Another one bites the dust: Like it did with me, fatherhood has forced my old Robot 6 editor JK Parkin to retire from the blog. John’s a smart writer and a tireless editor, who was responsible for making perhaps the great “you got peanut butter in my chocolate” comics blog — Robot 6 covers the entirety of comics from the home base of a superhero-centric site, and John’s the one who navigates the conflicts and congruencies — as good as it’s long been. Good luck, Papa John, and good luck to the equally awesome Kevin Melrose, who’s officially taking over.

* Speaking of Robot 6, Chris Mautner provides an introductory course on Charles Burns.

* Whoa: Benjamin Marra unveiled a whole new primitive style this past week. Feast your eyes on “Inner-City Wizard” and “College Buds.” But don’t worry: “High School Hooker Vigilante” still has that old-school Marra magic.



* Catching heavy Renee French vibes, of all things, from Tyler Crook’s portrait of the Childlike Empress from The NeverEnding Story.

* Mind you, the original Renee French is always available for your perusal as well.

* You anti-London Olympics people out there, and I know there are a bunch of you, ought to appreciate this savage, vulgar thing from Pete Barn Paulsz. (I wish I could remember how I found this.)

* Jonny Negron, man. Jonny Negron.

* Music writer Jamieson Cox interviews music writer Brandon Soderberg for his tumblr-centric music-writing podcast. Two great writers who taste great together.

* Aw man, that Jack Kirby “Spiderman” image that went around last week was a fake. (Via an apologetic SHIT COMICS.)

* Fun fact I learned from Glenn Greenwald #1: Did you know the Obama administration defines any military-age male in a strike zone as a combatant? Keep this in mind next time you hear about how many militants our fleet of flying killer robots blew up.

* Fun fact I learned from Glenn Greenwald #2: Did you know that the way we caught Osama Bin Laden was by hiring a Pakistani doctor to pretend to vaccinate children for Hepatitis B when in actuality he was collecting DNA samples? Keep this in mind the next time you hear about how those evil Pakistanis put that guy in jail for 33 years for the crime of “helping us find Bin Laden.” And try to imagine the damage this will do to vaccination rates in Pakistan — “Oh, you want to vaccinate my kid? Sure, sign me up for the program that could well be a CIA front to find someone, shoot him to death in view of his family, and dump his body in the ocean.”

* I already knew this was going on so it’s not a fun fact I learned, but as Glenn Greenwald points out, the Obama administration’s interpretation of “due process” is as ludicrous and laughable as it is totally horrifying.

* On a palate-cleansing final note: this fake menu handed out at the Brooklyn food festival Googamooga is the funniest bit of writing I’ve seen in a very, very long time. Panty slaw has entered the lexicon of the Collins household in a big way.

The Boiled Leather Audio Hour is for the children

May 29, 2012

In the latest episode of my Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire podcast, my co-host Stefan Sasse and I discuss this weekend’s tremendous “Blackwater” episode before launching into a lengthy examination of violence against children in the books. Not exactly light lunchbreak listening, I suppose, but food for thought.

Carnival of souls: Brian Chippendale, George R.R. Martin, psychopathic children, more

May 15, 2012

* Here’s everything George R.R. Martin is working on at the moment. Sounds like the fourth Tale of Dunk and Egg is finished.

* How far did you get in Jennifer Kahn’s New York Times Magazine piece on psychopathic children before you recoiled in horror? I hit the panic button at the cat thing, predictably. But in all seriousness, this is a very strong and very troubling article about something that I’ve wondered and worried about since I first started reading about serial killers years ago. Violent sociopathy is a real challenge to a liberal democratic society’s ideas of justice and liberty, and pop-psych serial-killer books tend to hammer that home hard. Kahn’s article adds some welcome, though no less challenging, ideas to the discussion, pointing out that a graduation to adult violent sociopathy is not guaranteed, and thus something likely can be done to save these kids and their future victims, just as people who’ve inherited heart disease can be prevented from dying from it. The problem is no one’s really sure what that something is. Lots more to ponder in this thing: Could you love a cruel child? Why is it so disturbing that the kid at the heart of the article doesn’t just lash out, that instead, he…waits?

* Roger Langridge quits working for Marvel and DC over creators’-rights concerns. I guess this is how it’ll work: people at the margins leaving, and publicly declaring why.

* The Mindless Ones come forth to tackle Mad Men‘s “Lady Lazarus.” A friend planted a far less optimistic appraisal of Peggy in my mind a while back than the one espoused by the Mindlesses, and I’m finding it tough to shake.

* Andrei Molotiu has had it up to here with your so-called “stories.” I like Andrei and I like many of the abstract comics he’s championed, but this post reminds me of that Sopranos episode where the local rock band guy complains about how the Beatles have boxed in his own genius.

* Oooh, a new I Just Figured It All Out from Tom Neely.

* Oooh, a new A Wrinkle in Time promo image from Hope Larson.

* Oooh, a new gif/image gallery from Uno Moralez.

* This is a gorgeous Karl Wills page. Funny, great physicality, love the blood spatter, love the big white thighs, love the erasure of the faces as the fight begins.

* Rob Bricken’s piece on the CW’s forthcoming Green Arrow show Arrow made me laugh. “People might accidentally recognize the name ‘Green Arrow’ — we all know how unpopular superheroes are nowadays!”

* Can you imagine listening to M83’s “Kim and Jessie” as a real-live emotional teenager?

* “You think you’re better than me?” is humankind’s worst emotion.

* Finally, there’s a panel in this Puke Force strip by Brian Chippendale that sums up America’s drone wars so perfectly and devastatingly I don’t even know what else to say. You’ll know the one when you click the link for the full comic.

The Boiled Leather Audio Hour Rises Again, Harder and Stronger

May 9, 2012

My A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones podcast is back! This time my co-host Stefan Sasse and I are joined by Race for the Iron Throne’s Steven Atewell for a brief discussion of the A Game of Thrones graphic novel and a lengthy discussion of the nature of prophecy in the series that manages to be both nerdy and heady. Enjoy!

Watching the ‘Thrones’: Panic! at the Red Keep

May 7, 2012

What Are They Doing With Dany On ‘Thrones’? | Video | MTV

The latest MTV News Game of Thrones video roundtable once again covers my two favorite moments from the episode. Also, I’m wearing a FREE GAIUS Battlestar Galactica t-shirt handcrafted by 24/7 Magnum, and that’s pretty exciting to me.

Carnival of souls: Fluxblog 2005, BCGF 2012, Slechtemeisjes, Thickness, The Hobbit, Jack Kirby, more

May 1, 2012

* Matthew Perpetua’s Fluxblog returns with its latest eight-disc (eight disc!) survey of music from the ’00s; this time it’s 2005 in the spotlight.

* I think I may have missed an earlier announcement, but my RSS reader insists this is breaking news: The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, historically the best comics convention, has announced its date for this year: Saturday, November 10, 2012. That’s about a month earlier than usual, and while I’ll miss the gray wintry Brooklyn weather and holiday-season vibe a bit, I don’t see any reason the new time frame won’t work.

* Ooh boy, Secret Acres is publishing a print edition of the profoundly strange and uncomfortably sexy webcomic Slechtemeisjes called Wayward Girls, now revealed to be by Netherlands art-school graduate Michiel Budel! That’s a good get.

* Thickness #3 may be the final issue of the series, but co-editor Ryan Sands reveals a collected edition with added material is in the works.

* This Comics Journal roundtable on the comics of Jack Kirby and critic Charles Hatfield’s book about Kirby The Hand of Fire, is an absolute feast, and as of this writing there’s no end in sight. Featuring Jeet Heer, Dan Nadel, Jonathan Lethem, Sarah Boxer, Glen David Gold, R. Fiore, and Doug Harvey.

* Speaking of the Journal, here’s a great review of Benjamin Marra’s Lincoln Washington: Free Man by Matt Seneca. And Brandon Soderberg’s review of Derf Backderf’s memoir My Friend Dahmer, about the author’s adolescent friendship(ish) with Jeffrey Dahmer, makes me want to read the book even more than I already did.

* Salon’s Willa Paskin is a fabulous TV critic, and her piece on the exquisite awfulness of Joffrey from Game of Thrones offers ample evidence as to why. I’m going to print out that first paragraph and keep it under my pillow at night.

* Speaking of fabulous TV critics, don’t miss the Mindless Ones on last week’s Mad Men.

* So I guess the picture quality of The Hobbit‘s revolutionary 48 frames-per-second filming technique is so good that it actually goes back around to ugly-looking. Peter Jackson defends the move, while TheOneRing.net’s Quickbeam (whoa, flashbacks to 12 years ago!) says it’s a matter of taste that takes getting used to.

* Sam Costello talks to Robot 6’s Brigid Alverson about his decision to end his very, very ambitious webcomic/print-comic horror anthology series Split Lip. Sad to see it go.

* How bright will seem, through mem’ry’s haze, those happy, golden, bygone days: Grant Morrison waxes thoughtful on the big superhero characters for Playboy. Also Frank Quitely is now drawing him to look like a nightmare cross between Crowley and Burroughs.

* I don’t know how Michael DeForge’s Ant Comic is able to keep making me feel worse and worse, but I’m…glad it does…?

* Keep going, Jonny Negron. Just keep going.

* Let’s ask people about Alan Moore Before Watchmen. Let’s ask people about Jack Kirby and The Avengers. Let’s note for the record what they say.

* Julia Gfrörer on Dylan Williams. What a moving video.

Watching the ‘Thrones’: Shadowboxing

April 30, 2012

In the latest MTV News Game of Thrones video roundtable, I talk a bit about a certain shadowy aspect of last night’s episode that I wasn’t crazy about but didn’t really get to talk about in my Rolling Stone review. Plus I wear a bitchin’ Monster Squad t-shirt from Found Item Clothing. Check it out!

Carnival of souls: Closed Caption Comics, Jonny Negron, Glenn Greenwald, more

April 24, 2012

* Sabrina, don’t just stare at the limited edition broadsheet collection of Benjamin Marra’s American Psycho illustrations, buy it.

* Chris Mautner reviews Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem and Jean-Pierre Filiu & David B.’s Best of Enemies, two nonfiction comics about the Middle-East by two world-class cartoonists. I look forward to tearing into both of them.

* Hooray! The Closed Caption Comics-anchored smut-comics anthology Sock is returning for another issue, featuring guest stars like Edie Fake, Andy Burkholder, and Anya Davidson. You can pre-order it at the link. (That’s from Ryan Cecil Smith’s contribution below.)

* More CCC news: Apparently Noel Freibert’s Weird anthology has a tumblr? (Via Shit Comics.)

* Still more CCC news: I’m quite excited for Difficult Loves, the debut full-length from Molly Colleen O’Connell, whom I believe is of mixed Portugese-Ethiopian-Maori-German extraction.

* Speaking of anthologies, I was happy to see that the crowdfunding project for the next issue Happiness was successful; here’s a page from contributor Krysta Brayer.

* Oh my, am I pleased to have made the acquaintance of the comics and short fiction of Aaron Shunga. (Via Shit Comics again.)

* Jonny Negron. Jonny Negron. Jonny Negron.

* “I Am the Arm” by Matt Rota, for the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me art show at CoproGallery in Los Angeles.

* I’d actually intended to write about this project not at all, in any way, but oh well: Rob Bricken of Topless Robot speaks for a lot of people (ha, that’s not a sentence I get to write every day) in this piece absolutely laying into Before Watchmen, as well as the treatment of Jack Kirby vis a vis the Avengers movie, especially in the final sentence: “Hey Marvel and DC — it sure would be great to enjoy your products without feeling like an asshole.” Related: Tom Spurgeon on the implications of the recent dust-up between DC and writer Chris Roberson (when the latter announced his intention to stop working for the former following the completion of his current commitment, citing ethical concerns, the former ended that commitment preemptively) and DC’s recent legal victory over the laywer who represents the heirs of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel. That’s probably it from me on the Watchmen 2 issue barring further newsworthy developments.

* Glenn Greenwald. Glenn Greenwald. Glenn Greenwald. Glenn Greenwald. Glenn Greenwald. Michael Hastings! Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald has recently focused on three areas about which he has formed genuinely revelatory theses, for me at least. 1) A separate, even harsher American judicial system exists for Muslims, one that inflicts punishment up to and including execution without trial; 2) Genuine dissent, dissent that truly challenges or threatens or even upsets the American government and its business and military allies, is functionally illegal; 3) The range of opinion and information afforded Americans regarding their conduct versus that of other countries is just as narrow, and the resulting opinions just as deluded, as those of more traditionally tyrannical or even totalitarian states.

* Wow, that was heavy. Okay, here’s Geoff Grogan’s endearingly lo-fi promo vid for his webcomic Babyheads.

* The Mindless Ones may well be doing the best Mad Men writing around.

* Finally, something to chew on that combines a bunch of my interests into one post that in retrospect strikes me as serious overreach on my part but whatever: I wrote about fanfic and creators’ rights in the context of a fic-based civil war amid George R.R. Martin/A Song of Ice and Fire fandom.

Watching the ‘Thrones’: trifecta!

April 23, 2012

Catelyn Faces Off And A Shadow Baby Is Born On ‘Thrones’ | Video | MTV

In the latest MTV News Game of Thrones video roundtable I got to hit three of the things I most wanted to talk about in last night’s episode: Littlefinger, Qarth, and the birth of the shadow baby. It doesn’t always work out that way. Also: Linda from Westeros.org, Jill from The Mary Sue, and MTV’s Josh Wigler. Check it out!

And if you missed it, here’s my review for Rolling Stone, featuring the most extensive comparison between Game of Thrones and American Psycho you’re likely to read anywhere.