So... a buddy at work has been feeding me graphic novels (which is honestly just a fancy way to say a conglomeration of individual comic books collected all nice and neat and sequential like into a less flimsy, and often glossy covered, packaging). I'm really into DMZ (DMZ)and Ex Machina (Ex Machina). It is totally geektastic.

And here's why I like it.

Its got pictures. Often really beautifully rendered pictures. The art in both is more lifelike than the traditional heroes with oversized bazooms and junk in spandex variety. The women in Ex Machina, for example, are true to their body type for their age. For example, there is one woman who was the love interest of the main dude (a former super hero turned NYC mayor) who is, by my guesstimate, about 40 years old. She's still foxy, but she's not all waspy-waisted, huge tits falling out of her shirt sexy. Rather, she is drawn with a sense of confident foxy.

The plots are adult. DMZ is a post-apocolyptic story--certain parts of the U.S. have seceeded from other parts, NYC is a demilitarized zone. The story is about the people who live in this in between area. Its not about some big war that tore a time-space rift in the universe; its about people living day to day in a war zone. The story was inspired by the Iraqi War our country currently fights in, and poses a real question: what happens to the "normal" people just trying to make it day to day?

The dialogue is as real as you can get for conversation bubbles. The characters don't ask inane questions to move the plot, but rather pretty awesome facilmilies of real life conversations that people would have in those situations.

Read 'em, love them. Revel in your inner comic book geek.

Labels: comic books, graphic novels, literature, review