Serenity/Firefly

I think I'm reading too many comics. And watching too many movies. This blog is becoming like the TV giude. Rashmi and I (surprising, considering that we never like the same stuff) loved the Firefly series by Whedon. Unfortunately FOX didn't agree and didn't pick up the series after the first year. The series is awesome, and another one where the moralities of the heroes is iffy :). Watch it! 

On a side note there was a lot of protest in the "blogosphere", and so they made a movie called Serenity to finish some of the story lines. 

Never one to let a potential source of procrastin-X  go to waste, I decided to read the 'graphic novel' series Serenity-Better Days. Also awesome, and highly recommended.

Graphic novels

Once I started reading Gaiman (because of Terry Pratchett but that's another post), I started reading a bunch of graphic novels.  I now understand that comic books (sorry is that "graphic novels") are not for kids anymore. These are riveting stories, so dark that they are almost believable.Like Agent Smith said - "human beings define their reality through misery and suffering".? I mean, these couldn't be fantasies right ? Normal people do not fantasize about such imperfect worlds where superheroes loose and nice people die.

 Here are some of the best ones:

1. The Marvel Universe Civil war arc: Amazing stories. I think the future Iron Man movies are headed here (that where SHIELD and Nick fury are from), so if you refuse to read all the comics - there are about 50 of them - you can get some of it from the movies in the next 10 years. The story so addicted me, that I spent most nights awake for 4 days reading them, almost without pause.
2. Watchmen: Really cool plot lines. Unfortunately most of the story happens in the mind of the "hero" Rorschach, who is crazy, psychotic and kills people for fun. Did I mention he is a superhero who helps people? And that the night owl is 40, overweight and out of shape? As wikipedia notes (and it definitely deserves these awards and more!).: To date, Watchmen remains the only graphic novel to win a Hugo Award, and is also the only graphic novel to appear on Time Magazine's 2005 list of "the 100 best English-language novels" published since the founding of the magazine in 1923.

Sandman

Speaking of new stories, the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman is uniformly amazing. All the stories are new, amazing beautiful stories I had never heard before. Gaiman doesn't have any rules, he is free to make the Sandman despicable (which he often does). He uses some characters from greek/roman/christian mythology, but the ideas in each story never cease to astound. 

My favorite one is Worlds' end (note the position of the ' - took me a while to find that gem). It has stories within stories. Each story is set in a different reality/time/planet each with its own rules - and once those are fixed these stories make perfect sense.

My words cannot do justice :) to the awesomeness in these books, so read them!

Harry potter and the deathly hallows

Finally read this one. Completely forgot that the series was not done.  Unfortunately the main story line is amazingly predictable. What happens to side characters is random anyway, since there are no real rules in their universe :). However, if you know it is a story for "tweens?" then you can predict most of the story line. Where have all the good stories gone ?