50 Books Read and I Live to Tell the Tale

Well. It's finally done and what's more fitting a book to finish on than The Great Fables Crossover? I finally acquired the elusive volume today and I must say, it was worth the wait. I'm so glad this is all over, I probably would've lost my mind if I kept this up much longer.

Over the past 20 days I've read:
13 books from the Fables series
7 Jack of Fables
10 Hellboy
11 Sandman
3 Batman
3 Y: The Last Man
2 Umbrella Academy
and Mysterius the Unfathomable

My original plan had been to read just a couple comics from a bunch of different series', but that didn't quite work out as the library doesn't have as much of a selection as I would've liked. All in all, this was a "too much of a good thing" sort of experience. I certainly love me some comics, but keeping up the pace got in the way of many more important things. Additionally, it's very difficult to appreciate the art when you're rushing through the books. The illustrations are the most important part of comics!  On Sandman and Hellboy especially I would've loved to slow down and really appreciate the fantastic art. Well, as long as it's done.

This is my final post on this blog, it's been a fun ride. Well. To a certain extent that is.
And the rest was silence.

40 Something-or-other

Eeeurgh, I'm still on track and everything, but I am getting so sick of this it's not even funny. When I decided to read comics for this assignment I thought to myself "AW YEAH, THIS IS GONNA ROCK. COMIC ARE SO GREAT!!!1!!!!one!!!" And at first, it was awesome. I found a cool series I'd never read before, read a couple rad mini-series', and revisited some old favourites. The problem is though, about 4-5 days ago I just stopped enjoying comics.

I think I know why, it's because when it comes to being a fangirl I'm like Tinkerbell. I can't handle fangirling over more than one thing at a time because I just get so into whatever it is that I don't have room in my mind for anything else. And alas, comic have been completely pushed out of my mind by better things and now I just can't wait for this to be over.

So this post started its life as a first draft Hellboy review/summary four days ago. I'm kind of regretting deleting it now though, seeing how this is basically a rant. This ain't Tumblr.

Jack of Fables

A I mentioned before, Jack was one of my least favourite characters in the main Fables series. Now that his character has been expanded so much however, I've become quite a fan. Jack himself is quite an impressive trickster, which is certainly something I can appreciate. I mean, the man has sold his soul to hundreds of incarnations of the devil to extend his life and keep himself out of hell for as long as possible. On top of that, he's a womanizing egomaniac with a tendency to lose enormous fortunes mere days after he acquires them.

Many brand new characters were introduced in this series, from Babe the Miniature Blue Ox with a vibrant inner life (see above) and the Pathetic Fallacy, a man who can give life to any inanimate object to Mr Revise and the Literals, a group of being in charge of controlling the "plot" of life on earth.

Sadly however my time reading Jack of Fables was cut short by the fact that the 7th book in the series is the elusive "Great Fables Crossover" which is also the 13th book in the Fables series and seemingly beyond my grasp. If I ever get a hold of it I'll continue with Jack of Fables but for now I'm moving on to Hellboy. I love me some Hellboy.

So that's all for now. Goodbye and happy easter.

Halfway Point

So, 25 books down. I must say this is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. It's not that I can't keep up with the pace, it's because the library just doesn't have the selection I want.

Anyways, I took a brief break between Fables and Jack of Fables with Batman: Death and the City and Mysterius the Unfathomable. Death and the City, I have admittedly read before. It was ages ago however and my perspective has changed a bit since then. Batman now seems a bit too stale, I suppose. I might try reading some more in the future, but I didn't really enjoy it.

Now, Mysterius the Unfathomable on the other hand. WOW. I just grabbed it off the shelf in desperation and I am so glad I did. It's sort of like a way less pretentious version of Doctor Strange. This book does NOT take it's self too seriously.

It's basically about the adventures of a sorcerer (Mysterius himself) who, although his powers are completely legitimate, is a quite a con artist and just an all-around jerk. After acquiring a new assistant, Mysterius proceeds to trap a rich playboy's mind in Hell during a seance, help a cursed businessman, visit an alternate dimension straight out of the nightmares on Dr Suess and nearly die during a Satanic ritual at the "Blazing Man" festival. The art is just perfect, the caricature-like style really helps capture the absurdity of the situations happening in the book with a bit of a gritty feel. I can't think of a single bad thing to say about this book other than I'm having trouble finding out if there are others. There better be.

I since my last post, I have also completed the Jack of Fables books I managed to get a hold of, but that's a post for another time. Specifically tomorrow morning. Or at least not 11:16 PM. Anyways that concludes this post, I still have another book to finish before bed to fulfill the days quota. Goodnight moon, goodnight stars, goodnight readers (like anyone's reading to the end of my posts.)

12 Down, 38 More To Go

I have finished all the Fables comics I could get my hands on at short notice and let it be known, MY MIND HAS BEEN BLOWN. I enjoyed them all so much! I feel like I'm now as capable as I'll ever be of giving a summary of the series (thus far) so here it goes.

A quick warning though:

Basically every fairytale character (referred to as Fables) that's ever been written about lives in an alternate dimension, connected to our own. At least they DID until it was taken over by a mysterious enemy know as The Adversary . All the Fables who escaped the Homelands fled to our world, the Mundane realm, where a community for Fables was set up in New York. When joining Fabletown, one must sign the General Amnesty which lets Fables off from any crimes they committed back in the Homelands,which for example allows the Big Bad Wolf to be the town sheriff. The Fables fight back against the Adversary's armies and eventually discover that the armies are mainly comprised of wooden puppets. More importantly, the feared Adversary himself is nothing but carved wood, magicked to life.

After some more investigation, it's discovered the everyone is being controlled by Gepetto, the elderly woodcarver who carved Pinocchio. After lots of fighting and plot twists and deaths of beloved childhood story characters, Gepetto is defeated and signs the General Amnesty.

This is the end of book 11, and the end of the first main story arch. I, however, read the 12th book as well which begins a whole new arch and leaves me on the edge of my seat for the next book. All I know is that the new villain is a creepy pale guy wielding insanely powerful magic.Oh yes, and he withers people down to their skeletons then eats their teeth. 

The 12th book ends with the new villain (who I believe is named Mister Dark) disintegrating the spells holding together the building in Fabletown causing them all to collapse, and murdering a main character. Yikes.

This series is so packed with action, subplots, plot twists, doppelgangers, murder, magic and sleazery that even a 1000 word summary wouldn't do it justice. My suggestion is to just read the series, it's FANTASTIC. Trust me, I'm a doctor.

And so, onwards I go to my next series, Jack of the Fables, a spin-off of Fables featuring one of my least favourite characters. With luck it will exceed my low expectations. Thank you and goodnight.

5 Books Down

2 days into my venture and so far I'm on track. I need to read about 2.5 books a day and it seemed best to start with a series I could acquire a lot of. I've taken out the 12 Fables books the library owns/had checked in and since the series' spin-offs seem to be in stock that's probably what I'll go for next. I might as well, since I'm REALLY enjoying the series.

First Post

My goal is to read 50 comic books, with a minimum of 100 pages each in the next 20 days. I'm pretty into comics lately so it was probably going to happen anyways, but I might as well make it count for something.