Nicholas Jeff

Nicholas Jeff by Pyerse Dandridge

Summary: Nick is a bus boy working at Shelly Sholes, a restaurant teeming with belligerent clientele, annoying bosses, and a bunch of slackers. Nick is on the brink of being fired by his boss.Then something goes wrong and things go from bad to worse after something goes wrong with the distract manager.
Likes: The cool thing about Nick is that he is not afraid to say what's on his mind, which can be refreshing in a way. The other characters are strange, quirky, and irritating in a way. We've got the George, a fellow busser who takes his job waaay too seriously. Tar-Lung and FJ, whose chain smoking interferes with their jobs. Lucy, the annoying, ditzy new girl and a whole host of new characters. This also another slow paced story so far. Nick is always one step away from getting fired and it's kind of funny the stuff that he gets away with. Nick says the the things we wish we could say to our bosses, our co-workers, and thinks the things we may be thinking about when we come in contact with the less polite clients in any field of work. There's a turning point in the story and things seem to get a bit more interesting.
Dislikes: Nick's commentary can be a little heavy handed and overbearing at time. Sometimes it's a bit too snarky and it's hard to see him as a likeable character. It's a wonder how he hasn't gotten fired with his attitude. All the characters seem like types at this point and since it's early, I'm hoping that they'll break out of their types soon.
Overall: The story is amusing and a nice distraction, but I'm hoping there will be a little more substance to it. It's interesting because he seems like he's trying to get fired, but the worse punishment would make him keep this dead in job. I'm reading this story, wondering why I'm reading and why I keep reading. I'm not sure what is going on, but the last chapter has me intrigued and I keep wondering where this story is going. This is your standard slice-of-life story but things are getting interesting with the last installment.

Watchmen by Alan Moore

Watchmen by Alan Moore

Date Started: March 8, 2009 Date Finished: March 13,2009

Summary: Watchmen follows the death of a masked adventurer, The Comedian. The vigilante, Roschach, starts an investigation that uncovers a plot to destroy the world and send the world into chaos. The story takes place in an alternate history where President Nixon is elected for three terms and Watergate never happened.

Likes: For a comic book, especially an American one (since manga is pretty standard when exploring some deeper themes), it is surprisingly deep. It explores the themes of sacrifice and humanity. The theme deals with the savageness of humans, which is a really deep theme to tackle for a comic book. Also with sacifice it deals with the death of millions to save billions, just like the one vs. hundredds situation. The superheroes are not superheroes as we know them in other comics, they are flawed and human. For example: Laurie, the Silk Spectre, smokes, has a needy, yet edgy personality. She has her own issues to deal with and when she comes to terms with her past and her mother's pain, she's too late. Dr. Manhattan is loosing his touch with humanity, only seeing them with as masses of atoms and molecules, no different than the everchanging landscape of Mars. When he learns that through all of Laurie's chaos, the chaos surrounding her conception, her birth, and all of its implications that someone so specific came from that. After the millions of people that could have been made, it was her. Dr. M realizes this and goes to Earth, but they are both too late. However, one learns that the world is founded on this broken peace that is based on a lie. It makes you wonder what would have happened if Dr. M made it in time. Or more importantly, what people are going to do when they find out that their hero is really the villian?

Dislikes: It takes getting used to the art work after being an avid reader of Japanese comic books (manga). The pacing was a little odd. Certain scenes were unnecessary, but it would have a neutral effect if they were taken out. The issue with the first Silk Spectre's rape was creepy. If you read the extra information, you'll understand why. It still seems that she struggling with her feelings and the injustice done to her.

Overall: I wish I had read this before I had seen the movie. I like aspects of both, but the comic makes more sense, but the movie is more visually appealing. I like the ending of the comic more because it makes more sense. The movie changed things but putting them in a different order, which made it hard to understand. Since the movie was pretty much true to the comic, I believe the biggest blunder of the movie was changing the ending. I think the movie should have been broken up into two parts. They should have drawn from the clips of the Under the Hood clips and followed the series. The movie was ambitious. I liked some of the changes they did make though and the movie is definitely more gorey. They did their best, but in the end comic still wins simply because of clarity and understanding and in the end the overall themes of humanity and sacrifice are best understood in a graphic novel format. I won't say the movie is unfilmable, but it was an ambitious undertaking. Comic is still better.

Hoshi wa Utau by Natsuki Takaya

Hoshi wa Utau by Takaya Natsuki

Ongoing

Summary: Sakuya is a high school student with a dark past. During her birthday, a mysterious stranger comes to her house and brings her a present. Later she sees this stranger, Chihiro, and is enamored with him. Chihiro joins her high school and they become "friends", even though he treats her like a jerk. The story is centered around the Star Watching club that Sakuya runs with her friends.

Likes: It is really dark for a shojo manga. Even though it's riddled with teenage angst, almost to the point of being melodramatic, the story doesn't rely on its angst alone. This story explores a lot of themes such as abandonment and irresponsible adults whose children have to pay for their mistakes. Each character has there own dark secret and it's interesting to see when their pasts become a problem in the present story. Each story is different, yet they all have the same general theme of abandonment and mistreatment of children. Each of the characters is relatable somehow, despite their odd behaviors and quirks, the author makes us care about what is happening them and more importantly what happened in their pasts that makes them the people that they are when the current narrative is taking place. The artwork is beautiful and Sakuya is similar to Tohru in some ways, but very few of the characters are repeats of characters in Takaya's past works. This shows that she puts effort into making her characters unique.

Dislikes: The fragmented sentences make it hard to read and it's really repetitive at points. There is one character that bugs me, but I can't remember her name so I guess it doesn't matter.

Overall: This is something I don't mind reading continously. It's more grounded in reality than Takaya's other works, which is to be appreciated.