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Puttering around here on various projects, like PW Comics Week, a general sense of sadness is overtaking us. Adding up today’s postings, it turns out that in Hollywood, messing with one detail of a beloved comic book classic is enough to give a director flop sweats; whereas removing the structures that made one of the most powerful, haunting and profound novels ever written in English powerful, haunting and profound, is dubbed “giving it that graphic novel sensibility.”

I do not think that word means what you think it does. And I think we’re in for a long haul.

[Above image: one of Rockwell Kent’s immortal illustrations for Moby Dick.]

8 COMMENTS

  1. I don’t find it at all surprising that someone whose knowledge of comics comes entirely from Mark Millar would think that a “graphic novel sensibility” means stripping away all meaning and symbolism in favor of empty-headed action.

    You also have to love the poetry; here comics have been running roughshod over the term “widescreen” for nearly a decade, and the second Hollywood catches on, they return the favor.

  2. hmmm…there’s something very ‘odd’ about that erect picture of that sperm whale with everything that’s going on in that picture.

    I wonder what the story is with the artist on it?

  4. All this talk about MOBY DICK makes me want re-read MOBY DICK.

    I could care less about movies. Give me 300 pages of Melville describing how to render whale blubber on the high seas!

  6. “I could care less about movies.”

    “So, you care a great deal?”

    Give it up, Rich. I realized a long time ago that I had better pick another pet peeve than people saying “I couldn’t care less” wrong. Either that or go crazy. 95% of folks say it the wrong way. It’s a lost cause, I’m afraid.

  7. what if they phrased it like a rhetorical question?

    Like, ‘I care less.’ Silently emphasizing, ‘but would I?’. ;)

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