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Reading Group Report
Jul. 4th, 2008 08:47 pmFor some reason, this week's meeting of the reading group - that's the Graphic Novels Reading Group - was a particularly good one.
Because it was a good book, perhaps? We were talking about the first chapter of Templar AZ, a webcomic by Spike (Charlie Troutman). I find webcomics hard work - even Digger, which I adore, I'd rather read on paper - so that was an interesting exercise right there. And it's an interesting narrative, a young man waking up to a phone call from his boss, interacting with his neighbours, making the acquaintance of Templar, the city where he has come to live, so that his introduction to the place is also ours. It gradually becomes clear that the world we are seeing is not this one, not - in the first chapter, at any rate - in its scientific gadgetry or magical fantasy, but simply in its social habits: people act, dress, behave differently. Reading it reminded me of reading the early installments of Finder, trying to pick up the clues about how this world works, and what these individuals are doing in it.
Perhaps we were just the right mix of people? We just seemed to bring a stimulating variety of approaches and backgrounds to the discussion: someone who was a regular online reader of Templar AZ and was able to tell us about things that were hinted at but not spelled out in this forst chapter; someone who is a very sophisticated reader but still very new to comics, who asked the questions that made us think about conventions we interpreted automatically ("So, what's going on in these unclear speech bubbles?... How do you know it's the voice at the other end of the telephone?...").
The result was an interesting discussion about how SF indicates the difference between the world of the fiction and the real world, what it expects of the reader (and, on the whole, 'literary' fiction doesn't) and how comics have certain advantages in this respect.
Or maybe I just felt it was a good session because I got to ride my hobby horse?
Because it was a good book, perhaps? We were talking about the first chapter of Templar AZ, a webcomic by Spike (Charlie Troutman). I find webcomics hard work - even Digger, which I adore, I'd rather read on paper - so that was an interesting exercise right there. And it's an interesting narrative, a young man waking up to a phone call from his boss, interacting with his neighbours, making the acquaintance of Templar, the city where he has come to live, so that his introduction to the place is also ours. It gradually becomes clear that the world we are seeing is not this one, not - in the first chapter, at any rate - in its scientific gadgetry or magical fantasy, but simply in its social habits: people act, dress, behave differently. Reading it reminded me of reading the early installments of Finder, trying to pick up the clues about how this world works, and what these individuals are doing in it.
Perhaps we were just the right mix of people? We just seemed to bring a stimulating variety of approaches and backgrounds to the discussion: someone who was a regular online reader of Templar AZ and was able to tell us about things that were hinted at but not spelled out in this forst chapter; someone who is a very sophisticated reader but still very new to comics, who asked the questions that made us think about conventions we interpreted automatically ("So, what's going on in these unclear speech bubbles?... How do you know it's the voice at the other end of the telephone?...").
The result was an interesting discussion about how SF indicates the difference between the world of the fiction and the real world, what it expects of the reader (and, on the whole, 'literary' fiction doesn't) and how comics have certain advantages in this respect.
Or maybe I just felt it was a good session because I got to ride my hobby horse?
