my moral standing is lying down

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.