Rift War – the Torchwood graphic novel
Mar. 28th, 2010 12:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grassangelWhich it isn’t, really. Graphic novel just sounds better than ‘the collected strips from the official magazine’. Which is what this is.
It’s a crack up really, even if I have heard/recognise the name of one of the contributing artists (D’Israeli). Except there are no proper title pages for the chapters, so I don’t know which chapter they drew.
The reason why it’s a crack up is because… the story makes almost no sense (there’s a chapter which is about an alien baby and Rhys and Gwen are babysitting it for a couple of pages) and… the art is horrible, with the exception of chapters 3 and 4 plus the mini-story ‘Jetsam’. But I suppose comics of a live-action TV series are kind of different to regular comics with rotating artists or comics based on novels.
That doesn’t quite excuse the block people and the only way that I could tell Jack, Owen, Rhys and Ianto from each other during some chapters was by their clothes. Artistic caricature and simplification is all very well, but not down to that level.
The characterisation is generally good though. But I suppose the writers did have to clear the scripts with the series producers or something. (By ‘good’ I mean that no one is shunted off to the side for extended periods of time.)
Although I am doubting the proofreading because of the phrase “C’m here y’dafthead” – it took me a moment to realise Gwen was just truncating her pronunciation of English words and not actually speaking Welsh. (Which is actually a brilliant example of how sometimes I don’t actually read words, just recognise patterns of descenders, ascenders and bowls.)
I’m not terribly sure of the actual plot though. Or at least for the titular ‘Rift War’ story, which takes up most of the book. I suppose it’s writer decay, as there were three writers for it and it is at least semi-coherent. It’s just… weird and mish-mashy and not linear.
Whereas ‘Jetsam’ was kind of fantastic in comparison. Not only was everyone RECOGNISABLE, there was cool alien gadgets, Tosh got to be a star (Ianto and Owen are background ones) and Jack and Gwen, while working together as is their fashion, are not quite as awesome.
Oh, and on the second page, Jack has a peek through this binocular device that firstly strips the clothes off the team but a click of a something later and it strips off their SKIN. It’s mostly amusing because it’s such a Jack thing to look through. Even the comment he makes later about Owen needing to work on his abs.
The story also gets bonus points from me for randomly including the tiniest bit of Japanese mythology.
So er… ‘Jetsam’ is awesome and would take someone only ten minutes at the most to read in a bookstore or at the library.
The rest, Rift War… well, if you do have 30 minutes up your sleeve and don’t mind being confused as to whether that person is Owen or Jack, you could read the rest as well.
Now… I wonder if they’ve done any compilations of the fiction in the magazines aside from Consequences….
It’s a crack up really, even if I have heard/recognise the name of one of the contributing artists (D’Israeli). Except there are no proper title pages for the chapters, so I don’t know which chapter they drew.
The reason why it’s a crack up is because… the story makes almost no sense (there’s a chapter which is about an alien baby and Rhys and Gwen are babysitting it for a couple of pages) and… the art is horrible, with the exception of chapters 3 and 4 plus the mini-story ‘Jetsam’. But I suppose comics of a live-action TV series are kind of different to regular comics with rotating artists or comics based on novels.
That doesn’t quite excuse the block people and the only way that I could tell Jack, Owen, Rhys and Ianto from each other during some chapters was by their clothes. Artistic caricature and simplification is all very well, but not down to that level.
The characterisation is generally good though. But I suppose the writers did have to clear the scripts with the series producers or something. (By ‘good’ I mean that no one is shunted off to the side for extended periods of time.)
Although I am doubting the proofreading because of the phrase “C’m here y’dafthead” – it took me a moment to realise Gwen was just truncating her pronunciation of English words and not actually speaking Welsh. (Which is actually a brilliant example of how sometimes I don’t actually read words, just recognise patterns of descenders, ascenders and bowls.)
I’m not terribly sure of the actual plot though. Or at least for the titular ‘Rift War’ story, which takes up most of the book. I suppose it’s writer decay, as there were three writers for it and it is at least semi-coherent. It’s just… weird and mish-mashy and not linear.
Whereas ‘Jetsam’ was kind of fantastic in comparison. Not only was everyone RECOGNISABLE, there was cool alien gadgets, Tosh got to be a star (Ianto and Owen are background ones) and Jack and Gwen, while working together as is their fashion, are not quite as awesome.
Oh, and on the second page, Jack has a peek through this binocular device that firstly strips the clothes off the team but a click of a something later and it strips off their SKIN. It’s mostly amusing because it’s such a Jack thing to look through. Even the comment he makes later about Owen needing to work on his abs.
The story also gets bonus points from me for randomly including the tiniest bit of Japanese mythology.
So er… ‘Jetsam’ is awesome and would take someone only ten minutes at the most to read in a bookstore or at the library.
The rest, Rift War… well, if you do have 30 minutes up your sleeve and don’t mind being confused as to whether that person is Owen or Jack, you could read the rest as well.
Now… I wonder if they’ve done any compilations of the fiction in the magazines aside from Consequences….
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