Anita Blake comic adaptation

I picked up the hardcover compilation of the Anita Blake: Guilty Pleasures comics last week at NA and have been reading through it over the last week. Story-wise, it has followed the first book pretty closely. I read somewhere that about every 40 pages of the novel is adapted into one issue. Actually, I'm quite impressed by that since we all know that some "adaptations" are only very loosely related to the original story. I would have been pretty sad, I think, if they'd changed Anita's character, or the story itself. Though that's not to say they still don't have time to do that.

I'd picked up several of the individual issues (I think #1-4) back in February at NYCC, but I prefer the compilation book since it's nice and neat. So if anyone's interested in purchasing those from me for a very nominal amount, just let me know.

Judy was nice enough to give me the two issues of Anita Blake: The First Death that were released recently, whose plotline is unrelated to the Guilty Pleasures one. As far as I remember, this is new material; I don't remember one of her first cases with RIPIT being described in great detail in any of the books -- other than the reference to her puking on the corpse at her first crime scene. ^^; So it's nice to have some new information to add to the story of Anita's past, and it's an interesting experience since, 15 novels after Guilty Pleasures, Anita has changed pretty dramatically. I definitely prefer the fact that she isn't as uptight as she used to be, but I do miss the crime-mystery aspect that was the focus for the first 6-8 books.

My only real problem with the comics is the art. The artist for the Guilty Pleasures storyline (Brett Booth) is challenged in depicting more than two facial expressions for her -- that is, pouty or surprised. Even the "angry" face is a slight variation on pouty. It's really annoying. And she is much more wide-eyed than is appropriate for Anita to be. Even for the secondary characters, the artist is not able to depict a wide range of facial expressions. And OMG, everyone is much more muscular or curvaceous, and glamorous/slick-looking than they should be.

I didn't like it, but it wasn't as annoying until reading The First Death. The artist for that storyline (Wellinton Alves) is SO MUCH BETTER. Characters look more realistic, everyone has facial expressions that actually match what they're saying or thinking. It's a much smoother read when you're not struggling to reconcile the simplistic faces with their more complex thoughts.

I expect that Booth will continue to be the main artist for the GP storyline, but I'm hoping that they may use Alves if/when they publish more side stories, or maybe even whatever the next arc might be.

For anyone interested, here's some sample artwork. The first pic is by Booth, while the rest is by Alves.

Back into SPN... with interest, but slightly less enthusiasm than I'd have thought.

NO SPECIFIC SPOILERS, just general impressions.

Lately I haven't been into reading/watching a whole lot of anything, so I decided I should finish up the second season of Supernatural. Which is a pretty detached way for me to get into anything, but the lack of mental stimulation was starting to drive me bonkers.

I wrote up my rant regarding episode 17 ("Heart"), so I won't revisit it, or the episode after that. Which brought me to the last four episodes of the season. Overall, they were actually pretty good/entertaining. The last two episodes were also good. But. Despite the fact that there was an AMAZING PART in the beginning of the last episode -- FOR WHICH I REJOICED AS I HAVE NEVER REJOICED BEFORE, complete with screaming and hitting Maryann in unrestrained joy -- I was generally unimpressed by how they chose to wrap up the season.

I generally do not like episodic series. So one of the things I was greatly surprised by was that I actually do enjoy SPN's episodic-ness. The last two episodes tied back into the main plotline, but there was barely any lead-up to it, so it seemed to come completely out of left field. How can a two-parter seem rushed? But it did. The big ending to what was a significant plot issue fell a bit flat. It was still entertaining. And I do think that they solved the problem in a good way. It was just... unimpressive.

Let me restate, just to be clear, that I am biased toward Dean. So when they took his angst and gave it to Sam AGAIN, I wasn't pleased. To be fair, they did replace it with a different sort of angst-potential, so I suppose I have something to look forward to in season 3. Also, just for the record, I do enjoy it when Dean is NOT angsting. In fact, he's really best when he's being his funny, silly self. It's just the knowing that in the back of his head there's something to angst about that gives the character depth and flavor.

Of course, we just couldn't stop at the end of season 2, despite that it was already 1:30am. So yes, we watched the first episode of season 3. Again, I was summarily unimpressed. I think I was looking for some big draw-in that didn't happen. I did enjoy the reference to Se7en which I would not have understood had I actually watched this episode when it aired. ^^;

In other SPN-related news, I just caught up on the comic Supernatural: Origins. It's the prequel to the series, and tells the story of the father, John Winchester, from when his wife died and he went hunting what killed her. There are cameos by Sam and Dean, but mostly it's about John. So far it isn't all that interesting, but I'm willing to continue to follow it and see how it goes. Even better if I can continue to get free copies from Judy. ^_~; In addition, the art (by Matthew Dow Smith) is really not my style. Very blocky. Not much detail. And the poor man cannot draw babies or children. They look like very short adults. And actually, even young men (late teens) still look to be in the early teens. I suppose if the story sticks to following John, there shouldn't be too much of a problem.