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alivemagdolene) wrote2010-07-25 06:21 pm
alivemagdolene) wrote2010-07-25 06:21 pm
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Book-It '10! Book #45
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: Strangers In Paradise Book (Book Four) by Terry Moore
Details: Copyright 2004, Abstract Studio
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Once Francine and Katchoo were inseparable, but recent violent events have taken their toll on the two young women, driving them apart. While Francine's desire for marriage and motherhood suffers a devastating setback, Katchoo embraces a new life in the art world with her own sexy, and highly controversial, paintings. It's only through sheer determination and boundless enthusiasm that Casey manages to bring the two women face to face once more. The result is the most shocking moment in SiP history.
Strangers in Paradise has been awarded the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Award for Best Comic Book, the Will Eisner Comics Industry Award for Best Serialized Story and the GLAAD Media Award for Best Comic Book. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: Having stupidly requested the fifth book in the collected series thinking it was a single book, I now am scrambling to read the rest of this rather sprawling collection. I've read Love & Lies (which will actually fall into book six, which I will hopefully get soon) and Book Three.
How I Liked It: With this fourth book I've now read in this series, I'm thoroughly hooked. This is perhaps the best book in the series I've read yet. Moore's exquisite attention to detail and varying styles (particularly in dream sequences) coincide with a deep-seated emotional investment in the characters worth of Wally Lamb or John Steinbeck. Being as how this is chronologically the very book before the first I've read (book five), I was able to pick up subtle points better and the material was all the greater for it.
Why are these books so excellent? In what feels uncomfortably dismissive, Moore has been lauded as an excellent writer "for women". I've always been uneasy with this phrase. Is portraying women as human beings like men really that difficult? Given the amount of literature I've read, apparently so. And comics and graphic novels are a rather isolated, "boys-only" club even in this century: major superheroes, a staple of the genre, still adhere to sexist stereotypes more than four decades after the establishment of the Second Wave of feminism. And even in the more realistic, poetic style of memoir or especially straightforward fiction, women are relegated to the mother/whore complex, generally in the background serving only to further the plot of male characters. So perhaps the idea of a cast of largely women (and largely queer women) is revolutionary all on its own, without the added benefit of the careful characterization and salvation from easy stereotypes that Moore could fall into. Casey is a perky ex-cheerleader with several boob jobs. Yet she isn't a bimbo and the series has discussed her teenage anorexia and consideration of the male gaze as well as her body issues in general. Katchoo is a (mostly) gay woman with a hard edge and an easy mouth for swearing, gifted in self-defense and more than a little fed up with the male gender (and very quick to put sexists in their place). Yet she isn't a caricature: the series discusses her teenage prostitution, her early abuse at the hands of men, and her artwork as a yearning for some kind of love of humanity. Francine is an occasionally overweight woman who falls for emotionally abusive men due to an internalized self-loathing due in part to her body issues and her traditionalist mother's push to shelter her. Yet she captures the heart, lust, and fascination of nearly every man she comes in contact with, becomes Katchoo's most famous and most popular muse (adding to her "dream girl" quality), and occasionally puts forth unexpected strength without the series lessening it by surrounding the story with sappy and patronizing "empowerment" overtones. And those are only three examples.
Also, as I mentioned before, the idea of a straight male writer writing for queer women spooked me-- I could all too easily see shades of the typical cartoon "Dolly Parton in zero gravity" dollies making out in softcore and it being lauded because queer is queer, right? The fact that the author more than transcends that premise to deliver not just better than expected but a brilliant and engaging series doesn't just make the books excellent: it makes them truly worthy of the word so carelessly thrown around, revolutionary.
Notable: As I've mentioned before, time stamps are difficult with these books. The publishing information doesn't offer much by way of date of issue. However, this book series appears to offer more by way of chronology than previous books.
In a dream sequence, a character confronts her childhood self who declares plans that the character had long forgotten. She proclaims her pledge to be a famous ballerina and throw parties atop the World Trade Center which earns her a Look from her adult self (a beat prompting the childhood self's defensive "What?", pg 206). So it's fairly safe to deduce that that issue came out after 9/11.
Interestingly, earlier in the book we experience a flash-forward (or possible flash forward) to the distant future once again. Thankfully, Moore spares us the foibles of most future-fiction (groan-inspiring images of "technology") and merely focuses on the aged characters themselves. In what is possibly thirty or forty years into the future, the child of a central character visits New York and there is the establishing and typical shot of the New York City skyline. Ominously, the Twin Towers look in the establishing panel (pg 62). Of course, had 9/11 already occurred when this issue was released and this is set in the future, some explanation would have to be made (they were rebuilt?). Given that plans for rebuilding began almost as soon as the smoke cleared, this wouldn't have been off base (although at the time of this writing, the spot where the towers stood has plans for a memorial park and museum and the "rebuilt" building is actually set to be a single structure taller than the Empire State Building (with an uncomfortably phallic feeling to the proceedings).
We get other clues, of course. A character lamenting her age (twenty-nine) after being called "ma'am" by a teenage clerk demands to know who the teenage girl listens to to prove her hipness. The teenager responds with "Linkin Park, Manson..." and our twenty-nine-year-old protagonist quickly defends "Ha! Lincoln [sic] Park! I've heard of them! Head Like a Hole, right?" The teenager responds with polite disdain and the character digs herself further: "No wait, Black Hole Sun! Right? The lead singer shot himself for Courtney Lovitz... or something..." (pg 180) Music, particularly that enjoyed by the young, is seldom a reliable source, though.
Lastly, the final possible time indicator is a character's praise of another's impression of "George W as a lounge lizard" (pg 340). The strongest mark we've had in this book is the suggestion of 9/11 occurring roughly halfway through the book (although it's never an outright acknowledgment). So is George W being mocked as a president or presidential candidate?
Such is the plight of an ardent cultural anthropology fan.
Title: Strangers In Paradise Book (Book Four) by Terry Moore
Details: Copyright 2004, Abstract Studio
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Once Francine and Katchoo were inseparable, but recent violent events have taken their toll on the two young women, driving them apart. While Francine's desire for marriage and motherhood suffers a devastating setback, Katchoo embraces a new life in the art world with her own sexy, and highly controversial, paintings. It's only through sheer determination and boundless enthusiasm that Casey manages to bring the two women face to face once more. The result is the most shocking moment in SiP history.
Strangers in Paradise has been awarded the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Award for Best Comic Book, the Will Eisner Comics Industry Award for Best Serialized Story and the GLAAD Media Award for Best Comic Book. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: Having stupidly requested the fifth book in the collected series thinking it was a single book, I now am scrambling to read the rest of this rather sprawling collection. I've read Love & Lies (which will actually fall into book six, which I will hopefully get soon) and Book Three.
How I Liked It: With this fourth book I've now read in this series, I'm thoroughly hooked. This is perhaps the best book in the series I've read yet. Moore's exquisite attention to detail and varying styles (particularly in dream sequences) coincide with a deep-seated emotional investment in the characters worth of Wally Lamb or John Steinbeck. Being as how this is chronologically the very book before the first I've read (book five), I was able to pick up subtle points better and the material was all the greater for it.
Why are these books so excellent? In what feels uncomfortably dismissive, Moore has been lauded as an excellent writer "for women". I've always been uneasy with this phrase. Is portraying women as human beings like men really that difficult? Given the amount of literature I've read, apparently so. And comics and graphic novels are a rather isolated, "boys-only" club even in this century: major superheroes, a staple of the genre, still adhere to sexist stereotypes more than four decades after the establishment of the Second Wave of feminism. And even in the more realistic, poetic style of memoir or especially straightforward fiction, women are relegated to the mother/whore complex, generally in the background serving only to further the plot of male characters. So perhaps the idea of a cast of largely women (and largely queer women) is revolutionary all on its own, without the added benefit of the careful characterization and salvation from easy stereotypes that Moore could fall into. Casey is a perky ex-cheerleader with several boob jobs. Yet she isn't a bimbo and the series has discussed her teenage anorexia and consideration of the male gaze as well as her body issues in general. Katchoo is a (mostly) gay woman with a hard edge and an easy mouth for swearing, gifted in self-defense and more than a little fed up with the male gender (and very quick to put sexists in their place). Yet she isn't a caricature: the series discusses her teenage prostitution, her early abuse at the hands of men, and her artwork as a yearning for some kind of love of humanity. Francine is an occasionally overweight woman who falls for emotionally abusive men due to an internalized self-loathing due in part to her body issues and her traditionalist mother's push to shelter her. Yet she captures the heart, lust, and fascination of nearly every man she comes in contact with, becomes Katchoo's most famous and most popular muse (adding to her "dream girl" quality), and occasionally puts forth unexpected strength without the series lessening it by surrounding the story with sappy and patronizing "empowerment" overtones. And those are only three examples.
Also, as I mentioned before, the idea of a straight male writer writing for queer women spooked me-- I could all too easily see shades of the typical cartoon "Dolly Parton in zero gravity" dollies making out in softcore and it being lauded because queer is queer, right? The fact that the author more than transcends that premise to deliver not just better than expected but a brilliant and engaging series doesn't just make the books excellent: it makes them truly worthy of the word so carelessly thrown around, revolutionary.
Notable: As I've mentioned before, time stamps are difficult with these books. The publishing information doesn't offer much by way of date of issue. However, this book series appears to offer more by way of chronology than previous books.
In a dream sequence, a character confronts her childhood self who declares plans that the character had long forgotten. She proclaims her pledge to be a famous ballerina and throw parties atop the World Trade Center which earns her a Look from her adult self (a beat prompting the childhood self's defensive "What?", pg 206). So it's fairly safe to deduce that that issue came out after 9/11.
Interestingly, earlier in the book we experience a flash-forward (or possible flash forward) to the distant future once again. Thankfully, Moore spares us the foibles of most future-fiction (groan-inspiring images of "technology") and merely focuses on the aged characters themselves. In what is possibly thirty or forty years into the future, the child of a central character visits New York and there is the establishing and typical shot of the New York City skyline. Ominously, the Twin Towers look in the establishing panel (pg 62). Of course, had 9/11 already occurred when this issue was released and this is set in the future, some explanation would have to be made (they were rebuilt?). Given that plans for rebuilding began almost as soon as the smoke cleared, this wouldn't have been off base (although at the time of this writing, the spot where the towers stood has plans for a memorial park and museum and the "rebuilt" building is actually set to be a single structure taller than the Empire State Building (with an uncomfortably phallic feeling to the proceedings).
We get other clues, of course. A character lamenting her age (twenty-nine) after being called "ma'am" by a teenage clerk demands to know who the teenage girl listens to to prove her hipness. The teenager responds with "Linkin Park, Manson..." and our twenty-nine-year-old protagonist quickly defends "Ha! Lincoln [sic] Park! I've heard of them! Head Like a Hole, right?" The teenager responds with polite disdain and the character digs herself further: "No wait, Black Hole Sun! Right? The lead singer shot himself for Courtney Lovitz... or something..." (pg 180) Music, particularly that enjoyed by the young, is seldom a reliable source, though.
Lastly, the final possible time indicator is a character's praise of another's impression of "George W as a lounge lizard" (pg 340). The strongest mark we've had in this book is the suggestion of 9/11 occurring roughly halfway through the book (although it's never an outright acknowledgment). So is George W being mocked as a president or presidential candidate?
Such is the plight of an ardent cultural anthropology fan.