The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1 – Alan Moore

In the continuing saga of Erin Discovers Comics, I picked up first volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The league in question is made up of iconic characters from British literature: Mina Murray, Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde, The Invisible Man, and Allan Quartermain.  They are recruited to fight the Fu Manchu and Professor Moriarty.

I absolutely loved the concept. Literary figures as de-facto superheroes? Sign me up. This story was packed full of literary allusions and steampunk fun that made it a fun read. You could spend hours doing nothing but finding every literary allusion. The action and adventure was fast-paced and fun, and the ending left me wanting to hear more about the League and its adventures.

I have serious misgivings about continuing this series, though. On one hand, people at the turn of the 20th century were super white supremacist and misogynistic, including some of these characters. However, the Fu Manchu storyline was so incredibly stereotyped that I had to put the book down a few times. I think there’s a big difference between acknowledging that fact that the characters are racist and you yourself writing a racist storyline. The Chinese characters aren’t actually characters, they’re just stereotyped stand-ins. That doesn’t make for very interesting villanry nor does it make for good storytelling. I kept trying to tell myself that maybe there was a purpose – maybe there was a critique of how Chinese people were represented at the time or how our heroes were reacting to them, but if there was one I missed it.

And that isn’t even going into the weird rape scenes continuing with our literary tradition of overusing sexual assault as a plot device where is doesn’t even serve a purpose.

I don’t have a ton of patience for authors who can create alternate universes complete with sci-fi elements like anachronistic technology but are unable to conceive of a world where women and people of color aren’t treated like absolute shit. As soon as you start introducing historically inaccurate things, your excuse of “that’s just how it was” goes out the window.

There were definitely elements of this comic that I really enjoyed, but I’m not sure that I’m convinced that I should finish the series. I love the concept so much that I keep trying to talk myself out of my misgivings in hopes that maybe it wasn’t actually that bad. I think I might give volume two a try, but I definitely won’t be buying the omnibus edition unless I love volume 2.

Attachments – Rainbow Rowell

Like I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump. While I was browsing Amazon for my million dollars worth of textbooks, I saw that the Kindle edition of Attachments was on sale. I was hoping that it would pull me out of my slump and kick my butt back into reading. It kept me up well past my bedtime, so it looks like there is definitely potential this one did the trick. It was cute and funny and heartwarming and all the things you expect from a Rainbow Rowell novel.

(This review will contain SPOILERS. You have been warned.)

Attachments is about Lincoln, an IT guy in Nebraska. He is in his late-twenties and has moved back home after picking up a couple advanced degrees. He is working the night shift at a local newspaper monitoring employee emails when he starts to see emails between two employees, Beth and Jennifer, consistently coming into the folder. He develops a crush on Beth, and enjoys reading their correspondence so much that he doesn’t report them. He lives with his mother, has a disapproving sister in her mid-thirties, his D&D crew, and his friend Justin. He is also still obsessing a little about his breakup with his high-school sweetheart, whom he followed out to California for college.

Lincoln is kind of having a hard time. He has a masters, but is doing an IT job that a high school student is capable of. He lives with his mom who is devastated that he might one day move out (at the ripe old age of 30). He still can’t get over his high school girlfriend, even though they broke up almost a decade ago. While this story is about the romance between him and Beth, it’s also about Lincoln growing the hell up. His maturing and figuring out his life were my favorite parts of the story. 

There were some parts of the story that I thought Rowell dropped the ball on, though that can be forgiven since this was her first novel. There were little bits of tension sprinkled throughout the story between Eve and their mother. Eve’s father and their mother divorced when she was little, and there’s hints that it wasn’t a great situation. Their mother was only 20 when she was divorced, and Lincoln came along a few years later with his father unknown. I feel like these bits of information were never really developed to have any impact on the story. It could have been exactly the same without them, which to me says they needed to be ditched or more fully fleshed out. 

And now SPOILERS for the ending.

I didn’t love the ending. I feel like the whole book was about Lincoln maturing, and to an extent Beth maturing as well, and so I was really hoping that in the end he would meet someone whose personal emails he hasn’t been reading for six months and he and Beth would just go their separate ways. I didn’t completely hate the ending – obviously this book is like a romantic comedy and you want the characters to be happy – but I think they would have been just as happy going their separate ways and just having the idea of “Beth” and “Cute Guy” to look back at.

Current TV favorites

I’ve been in a serious reading slump lately, so I figured I’d share my other favorite storytelling medium: TV. Over the summer, instead of watching the summer shows I have been catching up on series I’ve never watched.

Bob’s Burgers

I cannot stress enough my love for the Belcher family. I am typically not a huge fan of adult cartoons, but this one is something special. The show focuses on the family and the burger restaurant they run. It is perpetually on the brink of closing down, and the family is super weird, but that’s exactly what makes them charming. I think part of what makes this show funnier than a lot of other cartoons is that the family actually likes each other. Bob may roll his eyes, Louise may plot, but at the end of the day they have each other’s back.

Mad Men

Mad Men is one of those shows that I tried to watch when it first came on, but I think I was too young for it. I thought it was too slow and it drove me crazy how Don seemed to mumble three-quarters of the time. Well, that still drives me crazy actually. But now I find the rest of the show ridiculously engrossing. I love the character-driven nature, especially since each character is so fascinating. The way that Weiner and co chose to write the story is so different from many other depictions of the era. Instead of Civil Rights crusaders or racist fist-shakers, these people are the normals. Rich normals, but normals all the same. They aren’t concerned with making waves, they’re concerned with maintaining the status quo that allows Betty to be a rich housewife and Don to cavort all over Manhattan.

West Wing

This show is a little out of the norm for me. Beyond Nick at Nite, 90s TV is not something that I have a lot of exposure to, having been too young to appreciate it at the time. After hearing Rosianna Halse Rojas rave about it on her Tumblr, I decided to give it a go. I’m only a few episodes in, but I can tell this one’s a keeper. It’s so interesting to watch a show that is so optimistic about Washington. In the era of VEEP and The Ides of March it’s refreshing the way the characters rally around the man whose vision they believe in. I’m also a sucker for any show with fast-paced dialogue and politics.

What do you turn to during a reading slump?