reading wednesday
Aug. 13th, 2020 01:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
boxofdelightsI read The Umbrella Academy, Vol. 1: The Apocalypse Suite, by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. I enjoyed this, but I don't think it would have worked for me if I hadn't already watched the Umbrella Academy tv series. The book puts a lot of cool bits on the page, but leaves it to the reader to provide the connective tissue to make a story.
The tv show used its gradual reveal of their Mom's nature to show things about the kids' characters, their relationships, and their history. In the comic book, as soon as we see the Mom, Diego rips off her clothes to show us that her body is a combination of anatomical model and dressmaker's dummy. Why? Because it's cool! But what motivates him to do that? No idea!
The female characters are crap. As a child, one of the sisters gets to save some children; as an adult, she can't even manage that. The other is -- surprise! -- the most powerful of the seven, but first she is brainwashed and drugged out of being able to use her power, and then she is reprogrammed to use it in service to someone else's evil plan. Both sisters are there to fail, to be shouted at, to be told they're useless, to BE useless, and to be the object of incestuous love. And both sisters finish the book hospitalized and depowered.
The tv show used its gradual reveal of their Mom's nature to show things about the kids' characters, their relationships, and their history. In the comic book, as soon as we see the Mom, Diego rips off her clothes to show us that her body is a combination of anatomical model and dressmaker's dummy. Why? Because it's cool! But what motivates him to do that? No idea!
The female characters are crap. As a child, one of the sisters gets to save some children; as an adult, she can't even manage that. The other is -- surprise! -- the most powerful of the seven, but first she is brainwashed and drugged out of being able to use her power, and then she is reprogrammed to use it in service to someone else's evil plan. Both sisters are there to fail, to be shouted at, to be told they're useless, to BE useless, and to be the object of incestuous love. And both sisters finish the book hospitalized and depowered.
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Date: 2020-08-13 07:59 am (UTC)