Stand Still. Stay Silent.

The rule from which the
comic takes its name

Were you looking for a heart-warming post-apocalyptic Scandinavian webcomic, in which the artwork is amazing, the characters all have fantastic hair, and the cats are plentiful? If so, I found it. Stand Still. Stay Silent. is a gorgeous webcomic by Minna Sundberg.
With events detailed in the prologue, a catastrophic disease destroys the world that we know, and Iceland, as an island nation which closes its borders and defends them aggressively, becomes the most populous country in the known world. Ninety years later, an expedition to explore the dangerous and empty "Silent World" begins, and thus we meet our intrepid adventurers. Unfortunately, their mission is extremely underfunded, and the crew is therefore composed of a ragtag bunch of not-quite-so-professionals.

The mission's backers discuss their hiring options

Tuuri Hotokainen is the Finnish skald and mechanic, while her cousin Lalli is the mage and night scout for the group. The inexperienced Swedish Emil Vasterstrom and the enthusiastic Norwegian Sigrun Eide are along for more combative duties, while Danish Mikkel Madsen functions as both cook and medic for the team.
There are a lot of things I love about this comic. The characters are all very multi-dimensional and real. The comic manages to have a lot of laughs and enjoyable moments for something set after the end of the world. Most importantly, there are so many cats in this comic.
A lot of world building has gone into this comic, and I like that there are occasional pages of extra information, rather than attempting to awkwardly have characters explain basic facts of their own lives and the world they live in through dialogue. The info pages answer questions readers have about the complex and fully-realized world, without disrupting the story.
Of course, the artwork is fantastic. I would love to own the print version of this some day. The backgrounds are beautiful. The facial features are very expressive, which is important in a comic, and each character's design is distinctive and unique. The use of paneling is innovative--wavy panels help to denote the dreamworld that mages visit, and the artist is not afraid to use creative arrangements of panels. Unfortunately, some of the larger page spreads are not as easily enjoyed online, or may even have to be rearranged for the online posting format (just another reason to buy the print version).
Furthermore, the characters all speak subsets of different languages (Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, or Danish). This is an example of something that works very well in the medium of sequential art, but would not work at all in other media. The author denotes the language spoken with a little flag in the speech bubble, while the huge majority of the comic is all in English. It illustrates well the language barriers that exist between certain characters, while readers are still able to understand what's going on. Even the animals' onomatopoeia is in the correct languages (the Icelandic sheepdog barks "voff")!

The comic updates on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. You can start reading here!

Lalli recites a Finnish runo to summon the moon

Part of a short montage that
represents a few weeks' travel

Map of the Known World

Spring Term!

I spent my Spring Break receiving a Wilderness First Responder certification, and wow do I feel prepared. I hope I never have to use many of the skills I learned, but at least I'll have them if I ever need them. Furthermore, this level of training is recognized by some employers, so it could come in handy for jobs too. I was most surprised to learn the Cunningham technique for shoulder reduction, which seems to be a lot less painful and invasive than expected.
Week 1 is over, and Spring Term is fully in swing. I've declared an English major, in one of the most anti-climactic button-pushing experiences of my life. My courses are going to keep me very busy this term: The City in American Literature, Les Sept Pêchés Mortels, African Literature in English, Advanced Tai Chi, and Windows on the Good Life (Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream this term). So far, I've already finished three books for my courses: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Romeo and Juliet, and Jean Cocteau's La machine infernale, as well as being about halfway through with Dreiser's Sister Carrie, so I guess I'm going to accomplish a lot of reading this trimester.

I recently finished reading Moonglow, and I really enjoyed it. Oddly, it kept reminding me of Maus--perhaps because of the mentions of WWII, Judaism, and the exploration of family relationships within the books, although Moonglow never goes into the kind of detail about the Holocaust that Maus does, which makes sense, because the people in Moonglow didn't have the same experiences as the ones in Maus. I'm adding one of Michael Chabon's other books, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, to my reading list, so maybe some day I will finally get around to reading that too.I've only just begun Zadie Smith's Swing Time, perhaps one-sixth of the way in, and it also promises to be a very enjoyable read.

Interpreter of Maladies

I'm in an Asian-American literature course this term, and one of our selections is Jhumpa Lahiri's short story anthology, Interpreter of Maladies. I really appreciate short stories; they're the perfect length for when you're a busy person who also likes to occasionally sleep, and there is so much attention to detail that goes into a carefully constructed short story. Short story anthologies are one of my favorite things to read, especially during the term.
"Sexy" was probably my favorite story that we read out of this anthology, although "A Temporary Matter" was also fantastic, as were all of the stories. "Sexy" is about Miranda, who participates in an affair with Dev, a married man. While this is happening, Miranda's friend, Laxmi, continues to talk about her cousin and her cousin's young son, Rohin. Laxmi's cousin is distraught after her husband gets on an airplane, sits next to a woman, and gets off the plane with the woman instead of continuing to fly home to his wife and son. Miranda is excited by the attention that Dev gives her, and enjoys that he calls her "sexy"-- a word that no other man has used to describe her. Miranda ends up watching Rohin for an afternoon as a favor to Laxmi, and Rohin defines "sexy" for her: it means "loving someone you don't know." After this revelation, Miranda breaks off the affair with Dev. The entire story is less than thirty pages.
This summary of events does not do the story justice. It is Lahiri's telling of the story that makes it uniquely memorable; the scene where Dev whispers to Miranda (while standing thirty feet away from her), the recurring role of maps and geography throughout the story, and Miranda's plans to impress Dev. Each scene is detailed, and each detail is meaningful, in a circularity that is satisfying to the reader.
Of course, the collection also includes eight other brilliant short stories; precise episodes in the lives of Lahiri's characters that are nonetheless haunting.

Watchmen

So, I read the graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons recently, and then I decided I deserved it and should watch the movie too. At first, I was worried that maybe this is just one of those things that people read and talk about to be pretentious, but wow! This book has a lot of things going on it. I'm really glad I read it, but I feel like I need to go reread it at least twice because I realized that there were a lot of things that I didn't fully notice the first time through, background characters and images to which I hadn't paid enough attention.

The setting is New York City in 1985, in a world where vigilantes (or as we sometimes like to call them, superheroes) used to be prevalent until 1977 when the Keene Act required "costumed adventurers" to retire. The only character with any extraordinary powers is the nigh-omnipotent Dr. Manhattan. The others are simply everyday people who decided to dress up in costume and take the law into their own hands. It's a bit more of a realistic look at how the superheroes that we love to idolize in comic books might actually work in the real world; unsurprisingly, it's not a happy story.
The main character is Rorschach, who investigates the murder of the Comedian (a vigilante vaguely reminiscent of both Captain America and the Joker). Rorschach is one of the few vigilantes who refused to retire after the Keene Act, and he worries that a mask-killer is planning to kill other costumed adventurers, warning several other members of the disbanded Crimebusters team.
Dan Dreiberg, or Nite Owl, is at least superficially similar to Batman, with a reliance on expensive gadgetry to enable him. He is Rorschach's previous partner, and possibly his friend. After the Keene Act rendered his vigilante activities illegal, he retired and stored his equipment underground.
Sally Juspeczyk (Silk Spectre) claims not to miss her previous vigilante lifestyle. Her mother, the first to bear the Silk Spectre name, raised her to fight crime from a young age.
Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias) or "the smartest man in the world" retired before the Keene Act, and cashed out on his superhero image, focusing on building a sprawling financial empire.
Dr. Manhattan (Jon Osterman) gained his powers during an accident in nuclear physics experimentation. He seems to be practically all-powerful, but his unique way of experiencing time causes him to lose touch with humanity.
Overall, most of the characters have a lot of issues, which probably makes a lot of sense--these are people who are compelled to act in ways that aren't really the most normal. The book examines the comic book superhero genre, as well as struggling with issues of politics, morality, identity, gender, sexuality, and patriotism.

The story is complex, but the details are also a big part of what made the book such a fascinating read for me. Even the background details are important and should not be ignored. The pages where every other panel alternated between newsstand scenes and panels from the Tales of the Black Freighter comic book that one character is reading within the scene, with dialogue and narration over both types of panels are some of my favorite.
The way different themes and elements keep recurring throughout the story is satisfying: the recurring imagery of the Comedian's smiley face button with the bloodstain on it, or the references to time and clocks scattered throughout (the twelve chapters of the book, the Doomsday Clock, Dr. Manhattan's story in Chapter IV, et cetera). It's a reminder that this work is composed as a whole, whereas many ongoing series do not have the luxury of forming a complete body of work with a beginning and an end, and consistent writers, artists, and editors.
I can't help but wonder how much I'm missing out of this book because I'm not very familiar with the time period or the history. My history knowledge beyond World War II is rather sketchy, so while I understand the concept of the Doomsday Clock and the Cold War and fears of mutually assured destruction, I'm afraid there may be nuances that have passed over my head.
I've never seen a comic book adaptation movie quite like the Watchmen movie. The credits sequence was really fun; I had forgotten that movies used to have credits at the beginning like that at all. I feel like the Tales of the Black Freighter segments should have been left out; they just didn't really blend in well with the rest of the movie, while they worked well in the graphic novel. It just didn't transfer well between the mediums. A lot of the scenes and dialogue seemed to be pulled exactly from the book, which was exciting for me. On the other hand, I'm not sure how comprehensible this really would be for people who hadn't just read the book. It was quite long already, so the smaller plot elements that were cut out or not fully examined seem to make sense for a movie. Also, the ending was changed from in the book, but I'm still undecided about how much this really mattered. I suppose opinions on it could differ depending on what one believes a movie adaptation should do: remake something in a new medium for people who have already seen the original, adapt a story to a wider audience, tell a somewhat different story that is more timely, or something else.

Watching everything in the movie format after just having read it all really made me think about how the mediums are different. In the graphic novel, the reader can choose how long to stare at a particular panel of gore or violence, whether to skim by it or not. There is no motion on the page, so the motions are filled in by the reader. In the movie, scenes last as long as they last, and it's just a bit more viscerally affecting to see bullets destroying peoples' bodies or characters violently attacking each other on screen than it is while you're only looking at static drawings.
In conclusion, I'd highly recommend anyone with interest in comics, superheroes, sequential art, literature, fiction, or reading to read Watchmen. It's worth the time.