Loco for Locas
Jan. 5th, 2005 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jkcarrier
I got a Barnes & Noble gift card for Xmas, so I went out today to spend it. I had my eye on some of those Marvel Masterworks paperbacks, but I flipped through one of the Spidey volumes, and the reproduction was pretty shitty. Ditko's beautiful linework all broken up. Screw that. Browsing around a bit more, I saw Jaime Hernandez's 700-page Locas hardcover. No repro problems here... it's fucking gorgeous. My gift card didn't cover it all, but what the hell, you only live once.
I was a latecomer to Love & Rockets, so I haven't read much of the early stuff; it's interesting to compare the really textured inking of the first strips to the cleaner approach he developed later. Right from the start, you can see the tension between the obligatory sci-fi/adventure elements and the character stuff that is clearly where his real interest lies. I may try to do a "formal" review after I've read it all. Damn, now I want to get Gilberto's Palomar book, too...
Other nerdly Xmas goodies included Justice League of America Archives vol. 2 (includes the Cosmic Funhouse story I talked about a while back, plus the first appearance of the suddenly-trendy Dr. Light), the Complete Bone (another gorgeous volume that merits an overview), and the Spider-Man 2 DVD.
This is actually the first DVD I've ever owned. Scary, eh? I've had a player for a while, and rented a few things, but never felt the need to keep them. I never owned that many VHS tapes either. Comics and books I will go back to again and again, but there's not that many video things that I like well enough to watch multiple times. But now that my cherry's broken, I'll probably start to accumulate them despite myself. I already have my eye on a Cowboy Bebop box set. The bonus material on Spidey 2 is pretty interesting, if you're into that whole "behind the scenes" thing (which I am). I find it very amusing that, while Doc Ock's tentacles were sometimes CGI, a lot of times it was just somebody off-camera moving them around with a stick.
I was a latecomer to Love & Rockets, so I haven't read much of the early stuff; it's interesting to compare the really textured inking of the first strips to the cleaner approach he developed later. Right from the start, you can see the tension between the obligatory sci-fi/adventure elements and the character stuff that is clearly where his real interest lies. I may try to do a "formal" review after I've read it all. Damn, now I want to get Gilberto's Palomar book, too...
Other nerdly Xmas goodies included Justice League of America Archives vol. 2 (includes the Cosmic Funhouse story I talked about a while back, plus the first appearance of the suddenly-trendy Dr. Light), the Complete Bone (another gorgeous volume that merits an overview), and the Spider-Man 2 DVD.
This is actually the first DVD I've ever owned. Scary, eh? I've had a player for a while, and rented a few things, but never felt the need to keep them. I never owned that many VHS tapes either. Comics and books I will go back to again and again, but there's not that many video things that I like well enough to watch multiple times. But now that my cherry's broken, I'll probably start to accumulate them despite myself. I already have my eye on a Cowboy Bebop box set. The bonus material on Spidey 2 is pretty interesting, if you're into that whole "behind the scenes" thing (which I am). I find it very amusing that, while Doc Ock's tentacles were sometimes CGI, a lot of times it was just somebody off-camera moving them around with a stick.
