Hugos: rest of the graphic stories

[alias_sqbr]

These are all series I was already familiar with, which speeds up the reading process.

"Girl Genius, Volume 9 Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm": Made. Of. Awesome. Steampunk about mad geniuses in pseudo-Europe. It's slowed down a bit recently but this particular storyline is still great.

"Schlock Mercenary: The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse": I mostly like Schlock Mercenary, it's fun clever space opera despite it's flaws (though they do grate a bit), and this plot was ok.

"FABLES: THE DARK AGES": Reading Fables (about fairy tale characters living in the modern day) always gives me a bad taste in my mouth and I'm not sure why. The premise and characters are interesting, and it's well written and very nicely illustrated but...I just don't like it. I read the first pdf to make sure I disliked this as much as the previous volumes I've read and I did.

Comments

[strangedave]

Bill Willingham, who writes Fables, is quite politically opinionated, and it is a fair bet you don't agree with most of his politics - perhaps that is coming across in the story, and is what is bugging you about it?

I find Schlock Mercenary pretty much sums up what is wrong with the Hugo graphic novels - it is ok, but by no means great, and always rates well in the Hugos not because it is one of the best bits of graphic storytelling, but because its particular subject matter appeals to people who are likely to go to worldcon disproportionately. It is basically an artifact of there being a comic category voted for by an audience that has many people who don't really read comics at all (but might read a hard sf webcomic).

[sqbr]

I have wondered if it's the politics thing (Fables is one of those unlucky works I encountered first via someone's angry feminist ranting :)), certainly I think that's part of it but I don't think it's everything. Politics I disagree with tends to make me feel angry not icky, and even the entirely politics free bits bug me.

Yeah, I agree about Schlock Mercenary. It's probably one of the best hard sf webcomics out there, but there's many better speculative fiction webcomics that didn't get nominated. I wasn't very impressed with the fanart either, but the criteria there confused me. I'm not 100% sure any of the artists I nominated were even eligible.

[angriest]

To my mind the absolute best SF/F comic/graphic novel of 2009 was Naoki Urasawa's manga Pluto, but sadly that didn't get nominated.

[alias_sqbr]

I reserved two of her works from the library ages ago based on your recs so I could read them and maybe nominate them but they haven't come in :(

[softestbullet]

I felt the same way, reading Fables! Just... badness. (If you remember where you read the feminist ranting, though, I would love to read it. :D)

[alias_sqbr]

Sorry, it was AGES ago. I think they were complaining that Snow White/Bigby had gotten very heteronormative since they got married (upon which I cannot comment, having given up on the series before then).

[softestbullet]

Ah, interesting. Yeah, I gave up before then, too.