Anyway, enough sociology. The reason I write today: Leaving
Sweden I needed
reading material for the long trip USward. In a newstand at
the airport there
was a whole f**king wall of english language paperbacks, many
of them
acceptably HB. I snagged Ellroy's autobio _My_Dark_Places_.
I'm not much of
a fan, but being stuck on planes for a day was a good place
to give Ellroy
another go.
What a fascinating book. Ellroy's style suits the autobio
pretty damned well,
better I think than his novels. This is old news to many of
you, but I had
not realized his mother was murdered when he was a child,
that he was a petty
criminal and drug addict, that he writes about his very real
demons rather
than imagining new ones (I know someone on this list must
have mentioned
these; like I said, I'm not a fan so probably wasn't paying
attention, curse
me). Hellfire, I recommend this one heartily despite the fact
that his editor
left in way too many pronoun mistakes.
Catching up:
Thanks, Mr. Reasoner, for reminding me that Grimjack was John
Ostrander's. I
didn't get all the way to Sable this X-mas, but remember it
fondly, though
don't recall it being nearly as HB as Grimjack. I'll dig
Sable out next time.
Frank Miller has done a lot of good work over the years. Too
good. I share
Mr. Reasoner's impression that Dark Knight had an undue and
rotten influence
on comics (what? those weren't your words?), especially the
superhero genre.
Unambiguous escapism is harder to come by these days. It
didn't take long for
life to invade the four-color world once First Comics refused
to follow the
Comics Code in the early 80s, while at the same time
eschewing the label
"adult". Why, anyone can walk into any comic shop and buy Sin
City!
Cheers,
myshmysh
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