Simon Dark

SO I tried WOW again. I'm still playing it amazingly enough and for the most part I am having fun which is nice for a change. I've managed to get around most of the things which drove me away from the game in the first place and I am now looking foward to my first charecter. So far I've been making fairly brisk progress through the levels and I made it to 35 without any help from a 70. Now I have a pet 70 and I am hoping that things will progress even faster.

So lets have a real blog entry now.

Simon Dark. Simon Dark is a graphic novel which I recomend to everyone. Go get it. NOW. Oh fine I guess you will all need a little bit more convincing than that. Instead I am going to tell you a story.

It starts with The Crow.

I saw The Crow in the movie theaters with my parents right when it first came out. It was a big deal in my family because Brandon Lee is the son of Bruce Lee and they both died making movies. Brandon Lee's career in film was cut tragically short having only made two movies and all of this was made very important to me because my parents said so. So we saw The Crow. I would like to say here that this was long before I had the desire to dress in all black but that isn't true because there was never I time I didn't. Still much like The Nightmare Before Christmas before it, The Crow imprinted upon me the idea that I wasn't as utterly alone as I thought I was.
So years trundle on and one day there is this massive Nightmare Before Christmas resurgance. I am not sure what the hell that was all about but I found it to be bizzare. I went from quietly loving a movie all by myself to being on a bandwagon. A bandwagon full of assholes. I was NOT happy about that but whatever, there isn't a whole lot I could do about it. I always found it strange that The Crow never had its own resurgance. Its something that everyone seems to know about but something that no one has seen, or if they have seen it they don't like it. I've come to realize that there is this thing about certain movies where it has become cool to not like them, Pi is another example of that sort of movie. I think this is stupid. I'm also mad because no one thinks it is cool to not like Sandman bastards.

Modern Day. Last week I was at Books a Million looking to turn money into goods rather than services and I spied a copy of Simon Dark sitting on the shelf. Upon picking it up I was dismayed to see a charecter with Dream's Hair, and a visual style ripping off the crow, ripping it off hard. As much as I like the crow ripping it off really isn't worth while. Yet it tingled with a life of its own sorta. I get feelings like that about books and movies every once in a while and whenever I follow through with them I am always happy. Now I was there for Grant Morrison's All Star Superman (which is amazing) but that Simon Dark book kept calling to me. So I pussyfooted around for a bit before finnaly giving up and buying the stupid thing.

I would like to say right now I am glad I did. When it first started I was dismayed because Simon is featured as an overly acrobatic young man who cuts off someone's head with little provocation. Buyers remorse setting in I plowed on and discovered one of the most delightful comics I've read in a long time. There are actually quite a few times where I felt extreamly bad for Simon, like when he learned that not everyone can be randomly sewn back together and turned out alright. At that point he realized he had been killing people for real and promptly freaked out. Its cute in its own very bizzare styleized way and it is the first thing by Steven Niles that I have actually enjoyed, and I enjoyed this emensly.

For thouse of you who don't recognize the name, Niles is behind the 30 Days Night books which is a series that I quiety don't like, alone. Oh well. So go do things. Now.