I've finished "A Princess of Mars," and it turns out to have followed through with my original expectations. Overall, I liked the book. It was a fast-paced, short read with just enough depth to keep you interested and a pacing that keeps you from pausing to break out and laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing. Classic pulp to the core. The heroes are larger than life, the villains are just plain villainous, and the ending sets up for plenty of sequels.
My only qualm: since when is it o.k. to sack a city using ravening hordes of brutal barbarians just to get the woman you love out of trouble? In keeping with the Martian setting, exulting in physical prowess, and martial skill are at the core of this work. This would leave us in a Nietzachean universe were it not for the countervailing emphasis placed on love, pity (Zarathustra's great sin!), and friendship.
Moving on down my list of summer reading, Hellboy Volume 8: "Darkness Calls" came in yesterday. I've had time for a strait read-through, and then some skimming of key passages to help clarify my thoughts (I use this method for all serious comic book reading). This volume was certainly, and appropriate to where the overall story is at this point, the most intense. The choice of handing over the actual art-work and layout to Duncan Fegredo plays a large part in this. Fegredo's style is much more direct than Mignola's. Fegredo keeps thrusting us into the action with his panels where Mignola would defer or come at a situation obliquely. Still, their styles are similar enough, overall, to avoid jarring the reader out of the world (a weakness in my opinion with some of the stories in Volume 7: "The Troll Witch and Others").
Without giving away the plot, Yolen's assessment on the jacket seems correct: this volume sets us up for the eucatastrophe. My big question is "how will this play out?" This question is wrapped up with the very fabric of the world Mike Mignola has created. If we are in a fundamentally "Christian" world, then good will definitively triumph over evil. If we are in a dualistic world, then somehow the devil will get his/her? due. This all hinges on whether Hecate is right in the Epilogue. Typical of Mignola's work, the bad-guys often seem to be the closest to the truth, but they then draw the wrong conclusions from it. We'll see if this is actually the case.*
*Caveat: Mignola is express in stating that "Hellboy" is meant to take place in its own sub-created universe and is not meant to represent cosmological realities in our own.
My only qualm: since when is it o.k. to sack a city using ravening hordes of brutal barbarians just to get the woman you love out of trouble? In keeping with the Martian setting, exulting in physical prowess, and martial skill are at the core of this work. This would leave us in a Nietzachean universe were it not for the countervailing emphasis placed on love, pity (Zarathustra's great sin!), and friendship.
Moving on down my list of summer reading, Hellboy Volume 8: "Darkness Calls" came in yesterday. I've had time for a strait read-through, and then some skimming of key passages to help clarify my thoughts (I use this method for all serious comic book reading). This volume was certainly, and appropriate to where the overall story is at this point, the most intense. The choice of handing over the actual art-work and layout to Duncan Fegredo plays a large part in this. Fegredo's style is much more direct than Mignola's. Fegredo keeps thrusting us into the action with his panels where Mignola would defer or come at a situation obliquely. Still, their styles are similar enough, overall, to avoid jarring the reader out of the world (a weakness in my opinion with some of the stories in Volume 7: "The Troll Witch and Others").
Without giving away the plot, Yolen's assessment on the jacket seems correct: this volume sets us up for the eucatastrophe. My big question is "how will this play out?" This question is wrapped up with the very fabric of the world Mike Mignola has created. If we are in a fundamentally "Christian" world, then good will definitively triumph over evil. If we are in a dualistic world, then somehow the devil will get his/her? due. This all hinges on whether Hecate is right in the Epilogue. Typical of Mignola's work, the bad-guys often seem to be the closest to the truth, but they then draw the wrong conclusions from it. We'll see if this is actually the case.*
*Caveat: Mignola is express in stating that "Hellboy" is meant to take place in its own sub-created universe and is not meant to represent cosmological realities in our own.
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