Reading, Cormac McCarthy, graphic novels comics, is covering a lot of bases over here.
I’m going to be blogging more regularly and have a bunch of stuff lined up to write about as I pivot this blog into something fun, shorter form, and random while I get time between travels and those pauses that occur in every day life. Sometimes I just have the opposite of profound takes that come to me while I’m in line at the grocery store listening to Blank Check or something
I’m a fan of comics but not someone who typically gravitates toward adaptations of things I already love into the comic book form. It’s less personal mantra and more related to the quality of such endeavors that I’ve been exposed to. It’s probably not as dramatic as the often stated dearth of quality video games to film adaptations but its pretty close.
A lot of times, with a few notable exceptions (some masters worked on some Classic Illustrated books and in Europe they have pretty strong adaptations of classic novels) the creative teams working on adaptations have been haphazard but I think this is in good hands because Manu Larcenet is a real one. His Blast is a book I highly recommend.
Through most of my life I’ve been able to point to the adaptation of Paul Auster’s sublime City of Glass by two masters in Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli to be the one truly essential adaptation that has crossed my path and is a work that is at least equal to the original Auster novella.
I just got this Manu Larcenet The Road effort so haven’t dived in yet but just flipping through the pages it definitely looks interesting and over the last two or so years I’ve noticed that I’ve started paying attention more when I see listings of adaptations into comics just because of having had recent good experiences.
There was a really well done one of Watership Down that came out last year that is a lot like The Road in that it’s a classic book that also has a similarly well regarded film adaptation
Thinking about Cormac McCarthy brought back into my mind a pod I listened to that The Ringer used to have called The Hottest Take. It’s a pretty funny podcast that I wish they still did and Chris Ryan, who is oddly sort of a strong nominee for GOAT podcaster, had an episode where his take was that McCarthy was post-criticism, which as soon as you hear it just makes you want to applaud. Being a turn of the century book blogger myself I’m basically committing some form of on goal on myself but the idea that a non-zero number of dumber people than Cormac McCarthy share what they didn’t like about a Cormac McCarthy novel feels like one of the biggest waste of times that is humanely possible, which is an incredible feat within itself. I realize that criticism is an art and the internet is basically here for porn, sports gambling, and for huge swaths of the population we least should want to hear from to tell each other their misgivings but if you sit back and think about someone sharing what they think Cormac McCarthy is writing wrong it’s one of those odd absurdities that we should not allow to happen anymore. Criticism is art, but the number of people doing good art in that form are probably lesser in number in human history than astronauts.
I’ll probably post again after I dip into this illustrated The Road a bit or when I finish it but to be honest this newsletter is supposed to be spontaneous, live, and random and not so much about following up on previous content.
I’m post-blogger continuity.