Romancing The Virgin Read: Date Raped by Comics

Look - we have to talk. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.....and this just doesn’t feel right to me.

I’ve tried. You KNOW that I’ve tried.  

I’ve wanted it to work out between comics and me. I’ve done everything - The Virgin Read, Romancing The Stone... but frankly - I’m just not that into them.

There. I said it. Let me say it again, but in all caps.

I’M JUST NOT THAT INTO COMIC BOOKS!

I’m hoping we can still be friends, at the very least. In fact, it’s not totally over. I’m just calling a spade a spade so that we can move forward. See, from this moment on, I am not going to engage in this charade of me developing into a fan of comic books. I’m not even going to TRY! (I feel so FREE!)

And you know what? I will no longer even pick the book. I mean, I do this whole thing to entertain my husband. Why not let him pick the comic book that I “have to” read each week? This way, I still get to do my weekly blog post, and I get a happy husband. So, in a sense, no more of this politeness. Rather, I'm going to have a comic forced upon me each week. (It sorta sounds like Date Rape, doesn't it? I mean, it sounds awful to make a joke out of it, but--so what?)

So without further ado - my review of Memoir # 1, which I think came out recently.

ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz.......Zzzzzzz.........zzzzzzzzzz.....Oh!  What?!?

Shit!

Sorry. I totally fell asleep!

This comic is so boring that I fell the fuck asleep.

Seriously. Have you read this?

In a brief 22 pages, the scene changes 10 times. Isn’t that a lot? 

With all those scene changes, you’d think it’d hold one’s attention.  

Nope! It's a snoozefest.

Why? Why is it so damn boring? Let me see if I can capture the reason why.

Perhaps it's that the very first page - the flashback-y, cliff-hanger-y, foreshadowing page - doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Pages like that are supposed to hook us and make us wonder what’s going on, wonder what just happened, there's a general "OMG WTF" kind of thing that's supposed to happen, like it or not. A really good set-up that makes one want to turn the page. But in this case, it’s jut kind of confusing and mildly uncomfortable. A guy with two kids...hiding? Silencing them? Is he a good guy or a bad guy? And the “they” he refers to when he says “they found us” looks like glue pouring down a hillside. [Huge intake of breath!] Huh. That's so....crazy.  

Well, no. Not really. It's just weird, and it's weird in a boring way.

After that, we're led through the rest of comic book by a journalist who has come to find out what’s going on in the kooky little town. I think he’s supposed to be a city-slicker who is jaded and funny? Ohmygod he is so not funny. I have to give him some credit, I guess, because that description, "city slicker who is jaded and funny" is so cliched and uninteresting on the face of it that it's going to be really, really difficult for anything good to come out of it. But the character is so hard to like that it's really tough.

And....ugh. I really can’t write about all the stuff that seems off about this comic book. There's weird art that seems like the artist really wanted to show one face from 5 different angles, but that just leaves the shadowing and age lines all over the place. This might be a case where the old adage “less is more” could have come into play. A couple of these characters have so many lines drawn into their faces they look like decaying fruit.

What's this whole thing about, anyway? Essentially, we are dealing with a mystery here. The entire town’s memory was wiped out. A bunch of people are dead. Other people’s behavior is just plain odd. And.....oh, who cares? And as if being boring isn't enough, all the boringness is punctuated by the entire comic being black and white and grey. I mean, I usually really like when a comic book artist sticks to just three colors in their palate. That usually looks really cool. I've read some pretty gnarly black and white comics that I quite liked. But in this case, it’s only adding to the sleepy, "this doesn't matter" feeling.  

Look, I'd rather read about superheroes than read this. And that's saying something.

-Nina Stone, 2011

Comments

[Jack]

Fuckin A. One of the better reviews I've read.

[AComment]

Who writing it? I can't make out the names on the cover and my Google's broke.

[NoahB]

"A couple of these characters have so many lines drawn into their faces they look like decaying fruit."

What a great line.

[Frankius]

It's over, it's over, it's ooooooooooaaaaahhhhverrrrrrrrr!

Sing it!

[John K(UK)]

Is this a creator owned comic? Because you shouldn't say bad things about it if it is. Didn't your other half tell you that? That makes him an accessory! Anyway, I enjoyed your review despite your ThoughtCrime.

Cheers and beter luck next time!

[Dan Coyle]

Well, you can kiss any Beat links goodbye...

[ne1]

Your husband hates comics more than anyone. That doesn't stop him from reading and also reviewing every rapidly decaying, crusty dog turd Marvel and DC unleash on the world on a weekly basis. In fact, everyone with an iota of good taste hates comics and yet, here some of us still are.