Thursday, October 19, 2006

We interrupt your regularly scheduled superhero-themed programming for an impromptu rant about a vampire book.

Okay, I picked up Anita Blake: Guilty Pleasures out of morbid curiosity.

I've heard a lot of nasty things about Laurel K. Hamilton, so I fully expected to be angry at her. I braced myself for it. (See, this is how you can tell I'm a superhero comics fan. I regularly pay for things which I know will piss me off.)

However, I wasn't quite prepared for this.



Five pages in, and the artist fucks up before the writer does.

I'm sorry, if the narration says "The button she's wearing doesn't bode well for the evening" you sure as hell had better make the button readable! Obviously, this is a difficult thing trying to translate a prose work to comic format -- but unlike most adaptations the writer is trying to use the medium and you are not helping.

And shouldn't the damned editor have made certain that translated properly when the pages were printed?

And how the fuck do you work in comics and not know that your 11x17 page is going to be considerably smaller when it's finally printed? How do you not compensate somehow?

Guilty Pleasures creative team, you are now officially on my shitlist. I have no fucking clue who you are, or what else you've done, but this panel just pisses me off.

Bastards.

That is all.

7 comments:

  1. Ugh. Yeah, that's a pretty huge mistake. I actually do know what it's supposed to say ("Vampires are People, Too!") and I still can't make out the button.

    Shame. The original novel was rather fun.

    - msmarvel1

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  2. Yesterday, I asked Chris if any women came into the shop to buy this - sure enough he said the two women I just walked by on the way to the new comics came in looking specifically for Anita Blake comics.

    So, for what it's worth, there's that.

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  3. I thought it said
    "vampires
    oue
    peo4le
    tool"

    But that's just me trying to read chicken scratchin'

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  4. Just in case you're curious, the button says something like "bite me" or "vampires are people too" if I remember right - something that would make Ms. Vampire Hunter question her friend's friend's sanity and life expectancy.

    Yes - I am a bad, bad person who owns every single Anita Blake novel.

    I'd bother to look this one up - but it's packed away.

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  5. I've now read the comic and I must be missing something because it seems to have several basic premises that make no sense to me.

    I mean okay I'm willing to believe in a world that tolerates vampires, so long as they are not out actively murdering citizens, but the whole setup with the nightclub is so off in lalaland that it clashes horribly with the attempt at police procedural.

    That nightclub should be shut down for hygenie reasons if not for the whole danger of being brainwashed and possibly murdered.

    It's not working for me. Even if the art is pretty.

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  6. What's up with them advertising Anita Blake inside those little Spider-Man reprint comics they've been including in the Sunay paper? Is the person in charge of advertising on crack?

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