Last night, I finished all the issues of Batman:Hush. All but one, the very last of the series. I stayed awake until 3:30 AM, rereading the earlier issues again ( i had read the first three books ), zooming in and out to view the details of Jim Lee’s extraordinary artwork, breathing in deep, trying not to get goosepimples everytime something goosepimply happened, like that awesome mano-a-mano sequence between Superman and a Poison-Ivy-controlled Superman. Or Catwoman getting trounced by Lady Shiva. The sword-fight between Ra’s Al Ghul and Bats. Batman choking Joker to…death? I love fandom!
You know, for someone who’s grown up reading comics on a whatever-I-get-I-read basis, it’s kind of a zen thing, ignoring endings. It used to be painful, earlier. Issue 246 of The Fantasic Four would end with Franklin Richards’s eyes starting to glow, as he burns up his guardian robot. And there would be a TO-BE-CONTINUED blurb, and I would be left clutching the comic in hand and day-dreaming the rest of the class ( yes, comics were a staple in-class activity, especially when the teacher was boring and the day was barmy ) – wondering what happens to Franklin Richards – would he kill his own parents? How would they possibly bring his powers under control? The 80’s Justice League Cliffhangers were worse, with lots of random characters placed in near-death situations, which in turn get resolved by rather badly-plotted deus ex machinae.
Now, and for quite sometime now, reading cliffhanger-based literature been a very relaxing activity. Concentrate on the 22 pages, I tell myself, concentrate on what’s going on and not on what has gone past or what will and might happen. True joy lies in reading 22 pages of illustrated text, and trying to put things together and coming up with the “base” storyline all by yourself. True joy lies in being able to foresee what is going to happen in the next issue. That is, if I find the next issue someday.
I believe a lot of comic-book readers do not start reading a DC/Marvel comic only because on an average, a comic book is not a self-contained story.
I ended Hush at issue 617. The ending was an awesome cliffhanger, that has left me in a state of dazed confusion – kind of rare in a DC comics storyline. Either Jeph Loeb has gone bonkers or he’s leading this through to something pretty logical. ( reading the reviews has given me slight hints of how he’s blindsided readers, but again, I am leaving my options/ideas open. )
Oh, yeah. Five point five Gigabytes of comics just touched base, thanks to the collaborative efforts of Anil and Vasu. Thanks, guys.
The collection is awesome. Loads of Batman – includes the historic Dark Knight Returns, Batman:Year One ( both of which I have at home in Guwahati), some issues of Knightfall/Knightquest/Knightsend, Dark Victory, the Long Halloween, some crossover collections, the complete Catwoman volumes ( both the original 100+ Balent run, and the current take by Brubaker and Co. ) The best of the lot is the complete CrossGen print-run. CGE is a company that has been receiving quite a few rave reviews regarding it’s continuity-based storylines, and c’mon, this is awesome!!! ALL comics ever published by a company – woohooo!!
It’s like those wishes-for-a-genie I used to have – once upon a time – coming true all at once.
Learnt some important stuff too. For instance, there seem to be tonnes of comic-scans available on the Internet. ( one of the important sources being BitTorrent. Most of them are available in .CBZ or .CBR archives, and they can be read using CDisplay.
Google came to the rescue again, and a cursory search in the morning got me links to the second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I downloaded four out of the six CBR files available, heh heh.
Sleep beckons.
Hey.. have you read gaiman’s endless nights? Vol 11 of the sandman?
no. :(
I have read very few Sandman stories. A Game of You, Distant Mirrors, Brief Lives, and parts of Season of Mists and The Wake. I understood very little of The Wake, because that was what I had read first.
Comics are hard to get in India, the usual stuff here are Superman, Batman, XMen, JLA…the vertigo comics are very hard to find. I got most of the Sandman comics with‘s help.
I have read most of Gaiman’s non-graphic fiction, though.
Yeah.. the wake is the last of the 10 volumes.. the first 7 (till brief llives) are probably defining ones..and the next three sorta wind down the series..
I guess it is rather difficult to procure..and expensive too. It is something like 36 Sing $ per book so I just ended up borrowing off friends or reading it in the bookshop..but the beauty of gaiman’s graphic novels is that you can come back to it months later and still find something in his aphorisms so relevant to your life just then..
The endless night is almost like a prelude to the other 10 volumes..and features some kickass illustrations by the best inkers out there.. but I don’t it had quite the same power or pathos of the other graphic novels..
I think neverwhere was the best of his non graphic novels though.. the ending in american gods just totally let me down..and stardust was a lovely read though..not much dark humour but that was right for his story..
i liked Smoke and Mirrors, his short fiction a lot, and of course, Neverwhere and Stardust were mindbogglingly good. I didn’t find anything bad about American Gods’ ending, :) enjoyed the book. Try finding a book called The book of Dreams, an anthology of tales about the Dreaming by various authors.
I saw your post started talking about Hush, so I stopped reading — I’d like to read what you thought, but I haven’t read Hush yet (I’m waiting for it to be collected in paperback), so can you let me know in a comment if you wrote about any spoilers I might not want to read?
Whoops. Well, I mentioned some events and characters in Hush, which must be pretty obvious for someone who’s at least seen the covers of the issues. No plot giveaways. If you know nothing at all of what was going on in Batman’s life during Hush, I suggest you read (the book) first and then come back to my post.
By the way, you can’t imagine how surreal this sounds…me reading a comicbook before you….I used to go crazy once upon a time, because in India, we get comics only three years after their publication date. the power of P2P…. :)
Lady Shiva???? with Catwoman??? whozzat????
send this one over.. asap. ;)
Your enthu is catching…
Just keep a couple of blank cds ready when I come to Bangalore. :-D
from the DC secret files.
Real name: Shiva Wu-San
Occupation: Martial artist
Base of Operations: Unknown
Marital Status: Single
Height: 5′ 8″
Weight: 135
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Black
First Appearance: RICHARD DRAGON, KUNG-FU FIGHTER #5 (DECEMBER-JANUARY 1975/1976)
In the history of martial arts, one name stands above all the rest: Shiva.
Lady Shiva Wu-San has devoted her entire life to the quest for perfection in the martial arts, traveling to every corner of the globe in pursuit of a new technique, a better opponent, another form.
This single-minded passion has led her to become the premier martial artist in the world. Not even Batman has successfully defeated her in solo hand-to-hand combat. In fact, there’s only person to have ever beaten Shiva – Batgirl.
At their first meeting, Shiva could see that, at last, she had found someone to potentially rival herself. But she sensed something was keeping Batgirl from achieving her full potential. Shiva therefore agreed to help unlock that potential, for a price: Batgirl must then meet her in a battle to the death one year later.
Batgirl agreed to the fight and arrived at the proper time, not expecting to survive the encounter. Instead, she realized that Shiva also had a subliminal deathwish; it was this insight, along with her unsurpassed skill and physical prowess, which allowed Batgirl to triumph.