dogpoet

I hate Linux, I hate Windows, I hate computers.

Perhaps a Mac?

What....?

I don't like Y:The Last Man at all, but that's because I found it pointless. It makes a good starting premise and then wanders wide of the mark and then returns to the central premise for a few issues before wandering off again. I have no patience for it.

 

But, the central concept that is so interesting is that only one sex died out.

If half the people on Earth died out, it would hardly be as original a concept.

And, there's far more interesting ideas you can formulate with a world solely made up of women rather than a world solely made up of men, due to the fact that males have been the leaders of our socities for so long now.

It has been done a few times before, though.

Oh-ho?

Nothing serious, just wasn't expecting to be put on the spot and asked to say a few words about the book in front of a crowd, particularly as everybody else doing so had been forewarned about this.

I dried up, to a very arid extent.

Off to this thing in Nottingham after I've had some lunch.

And made rather a tit of myself.

Off to this thing in Nottingham after I've had some lunch.

I'm sure this has been asked somewhere in the 39 pages, but-

 

Vertigo Continuity - is there any real consistency between Sandman/Lucifer and Hellblazer? Considering the conclusion of Carey's Lucifer series, it would seem that the entire occult world would be fundamentally different.

Apparently there was initially, but with the dawn of "Season Of Mists" Ennis was asked to make it clear that his Hellish triumverate bore no resemblance to Gaiman's Hellish triumverate, and since then there's been little overlap between the two.

I did notice that Lucifer appeared briefly in Hellblazer during Carey's run on the book. I also thought that Carey's antagonist in that run was very similar to Ennis' The First of the Fallen (or was it the First Evil - I get that confused with Buffy Season 7) - another rebel against God to be a surrogate non-Lucifer devil.

I'd imagine that the Lucifer cameo was there primarily to stress that they aren't the same chap.

I'm sure this has been asked somewhere in the 39 pages, but-

 

Vertigo Continuity - is there any real consistency between Sandman/Lucifer and Hellblazer? Considering the conclusion of Carey's Lucifer series, it would seem that the entire occult world would be fundamentally different.

Apparently there was initially, but with the dawn of "Season Of Mists" Ennis was asked to make it clear that his Hellish triumverate bore no resemblance to Gaiman's Hellish triumverate, and since then there's been little overlap between the two.

Not "[over-used word]bubbles"?

DP, have you read Excession?.

 

I found Against a Dark background only extremely excellent in everyway, so not quite as good.

 

:)

I enjoyed Excession a lot, but I didn't find it quite as good as Against A Dark Background: there's less nihilism in it, and a happy ending. Cop out!

I haven't read Ian Banks. What are his best?

Depends whether you're after science fiction or his mainstream stuff (a few of his earlier books mix the two approaches to great and impressive effect, but he seems to have been warned off that by an editor). Of the Ian M Banks science fiction, Against A Dark Background is your best bet by a mile. As to the mainstream stuff, I'd say Complicity or The Bridge.

Phantom of the Opera

Lloyd Webber or Ataraxia?

Well, things can change. I mean, hell, John tried to quit magic, didn't he?

Didn't succeed though, did he?

In the DCU, you're damned by your own guilt. John refuses to absolve himself of the damage he's caused (cf. his conversation with Papa Midnite in issue 2) so...

And his first conversation with Gabriel in Dangerous Habits, the implication that he's the First's by right of insult elsewhere in that one, Pain and Pleasure (or whatever it is the S&M demon twins are called)'s brush off to him when they abscond with Richie Simpson in Nergal's carcass, his drunken rant to the ghosts in the story where he's wandering around Gotham looking for a reason not to kill himself...

Even when Jenkins tried to alleviate this assumption a little, he ended his storyline by having Constantine sell his soul to the First, did he not?

Red, I don't have time to reply to the substance of what you've written, but I just wanted to say that in hindsight, my previous post to you was kind of dickish in tone, and I think I must have had my up up my ass when I wrote it. I'm not able to deal further with it right now, but just wanted to acknowledge things before any more time passed.

Fair enough. No biggie.

 

I see we've confronted the Question of Evil once again. AFAIK, the party line on that one is that it's all part of som emysterious plan which will EVENTUALLY turn out for the best. Buy it if you want to.

Theodicy, they call that.

John is willing to give up his soul to the first evil guy to come along. Shameful.

He's going to Hell when he dies anyway: that was made clear very early on.

It seems a pretty unfair way to assign a painful and lingering death though.

 

"I created you creatures with free will. So a big corporation in a distant country that has a basic antipathy to your way of life has free will to pollute the atomosphere, and you, an innocent child living in Africa, with no sway on world opinion, breath in dioxin, get cancer, and drown in your own snot over a weeks time. But it is OK, you have the free will to suffer".

Word. I was thinking more of people who are capable of getting help and refuse to do so, and to be honest, any last vestigial traces of sympathy for said types have just evaporated.

I'd certainly hope so, because the alternative is that God gave you cancer because he wants to see you die a slow, painful, humiliating death that could (in a lot if not by any means all cases) be avoided or at least delayed...

 

Or, that God gave us free will to develop an industrial society and that our industrial pollution/environmental impact is a contributor to our problems with cancer. I'm just saying.

True that. The eschewing medical treatment in the light of that just seems even odder, though.

The Christian Scientist attitude always puts me in mind of gthe joke about the drowning Rabbi, to be honest. By their lights medical progress should be part of God's plan as well.

That's what I think, but at the same time, I can see where someone would be reticent to assume such a thing. I could see that the idea God gave you cancer so that you could go through chemotherapy and radiation treatments doesn't seem to fit any sort of divine plan.

 

However, it would be easy to see the treatment as part of the plan, naturally, and I think most religious people, even most Christian Scientists, are able to find ways to do that.

I'd certainly hope so, because the alternative is that God gave you cancer because he wants to see you die a slow, painful, humiliating death that could (in a lot if not by any means all cases) be avoided or at least delayed, and I have real problems grasping the notion that anybody would worship a deity that small minded and sadistic.

The Christian Scientist attitude always puts me in mind of gthe joke about the drowning Rabbi, to be honest. By their lights medical progress should be part of God's plan as well.

Jehovah's Witnesses that I have known were OK with medical technology, but they refused blood transfusions and transplants, seeing them as a form of cannibalism.

 

Honestly, I can see their point. However, I'm OK with cannibalism. :ph34r:

Fair enough, I'm misaccusing them, then.

(That said, the transfusion thing is plenty bad enough if you need major surgery or suffer from haemophillia, I'd have thought.)

Wasn't Ennis a big fan of Bill Hicks - the Lenny Bruce-esque smoking comedian from the 80's (who died from lung cancer, of course)?

 

Pancreatic cancer - non-smoking-related.

It can't be ruled out that it had something to do with his heavy smoking, though: it's very unusual for somebody that young (he was 32 when he died) to develop pancreatic cancer.

Josh, would you really say that this is the rule? I'd think it would be the exception. I tend to believe that the majority of religious people who think God could heal the sick would take recourse with medical science and not just prayer. I too have read about the people you speak of but I really dont think they are representative of the wider community of religious people.

Apart from Mary Baker Eddie's lot, the Jehovah's Witnesses, The Mormons and some branches of the Hassidim all refuse to have anything to do with medical technology. There's quite a few cases on record of kids with diabetes dying, never mind people being refused to seek therapy for cancers or whatever. Ugly business.

Serial killers are usually (although not always) a mix of Anti-Social Personality Disorder and Schizophrenia. The two are a very potent and scary mix.

Anti-Social Personality Disorder is very close to Narcissistic Personality Disorder on the P.D. Axis. In fact, some researchers can't tell the difference and mark it as, "If the person is a criminal, he's A.S., if not, he's NPD." Which isn't exactly scientific. But attempting to quantify everything in Psychology doesn't exactly work, because of the fact of individualism inherent in each patient.

It may be the case that Anti-Social behaviour is a symptom of severe cases of NPD.

Regarding other human beings as inherently less important than oneself is going to remove most of the hang ups people generally have about about doing terrible things to them, true enough.

Usually the mind of a serial killer is so wrapped up in Narcissistic thought processes that, yes, vanity or conceit will play a part.

 

But, there seems to be a real need to take on the unsolved cases in an almost sacrificial manner (relative to Jesus' taking on the sins of humanity) in an attempt to help.

 

The outward is so wrapped up with the inward that it's hard to find the disconnect boundary.

It is a form of narcissism at heart, then? That's interesting. My point was though, that it may be less an attempt to help than an attempt to elevate their own importance by claiming a few more murders for their tally.

To get back to #1, is it worth mentioning that there's a nice balance between the social content and the sort of absolutely repulsive ott horror imagery that Delano stopped doing after he'd been on the comic for 12 months or so, and that Ennis was (allegedly) more impressed by than the other stuff that grounded it somewhat?

Because, for example, some serial murderers will act in a sacrificial manner, admitting to unsolved murders they had no part in, which seems to be their way to try to help.

Probably it all has much more to do with wanting validity of their existence.

You don't think vanity or conceit might be a factor in that?