Testement

[cap5]

How is this comic Im thinking of picking up the trades

[DonC]

It has punctuation, so that's a plus. I only read the first trade, but it was okay. Just not good enough to get me interested in continuing to read the book.

[Paul McEnery]

How is this comic Im thinking of picking up the trades

Your subconscious seems to be tell us you think it's a load of bollocks. :biggrin:

But this is not true!

What it is is an interesting failure.

The idea of the series is great: Various Gods from Old Testament time are trying to write themselves into domination of the world by writing history in two places at once. What happens in the Old Testament stories is also happening in dystopian near future. If it happens to Moses, it happens to our hero. And what our heroes decide to do winds up in the Bible. Which is to say that the past is mutable as well as the future present.

Yes, this is confusing. But that's the idea.

Now that's way over ambitious even if you're skilled at writing comics, and Rushkoff -- who's a great writer, and I've got a lot of respect for his non-fiction -- doesn't quite have the skills to pull it off. And the doubling of the story -- usually both stories are happening in parallel on the page -- because what happens in the past becomes the future, and what happens in the future becomes the past -- makes for a present that's kind of static.

It also doesn't help that Douglas's talents don't yet seem to include subtle characterization or an ear for dialogue.

However, the art is terrific, the concepts are wonderful, the Big Idea is a hoot, the Gods themselves are well-entertaining as they glove-puppet everyone in sight, and even though the denouement is a little rushed -- book got cancelled, dammit!; but most everything that needed to get done gets done with breathing room enough -- all the set-ups get the payoff that they need.

So if you're forgiving of books that try really hard to do something different at the cost of getting some of the regular stuff wrong, it's worth trying out the first book to see if you can get along with the oddness of it all.

Me, I'm filing it with the novel that was written without the letter E, the novel that's made all out of footnotes, the novel that's the same boring story told in 200 different styles, and so on.

A peculiar curiosity, then, and worth your time if you like that sort of thing.

Oh, and it has lots of boobies, too.

[FanboyStranger]

It also doesn't help that Douglas's talents don't yet seem to include subtle characterization or an ear for dialogue.



Let me preface this by saying that I really liked the book a lot until the last few issues before its cancellation, but you've hit on what I felt was the central flaw in the series: the central "now" characters were portrayed as broad as possible within their sci-fi trappings in order to make them fit with biblical character types. One arc Jake is Jacob, the next he's Aaron, etc., but you never really get a sense of who Jake Stern is beyond the biblical parallels. The best issues in the series, in my opinion, were the "West of Eden" arc and "Shit Happens: The Story of Job", which shifted the focus to supporting characters that had specific biblical references, rather than having to be broad enough to encompass several biblical characters. I think that's why the book never caught on: it was hard to actually care about the central characters (even Dinah) because they were so ill-defined beyond what biblical character they corresponded to in any given moment. I honestly cared a great deal more for the interactions between the various gods, particularly once I realized the inspired technique of their actions taking place outside the borders of the panels of the central story/stories.

The best part of the tpbs is Rushkoff's exegesis/liner notes, though. Those are some interesting reading.

I guess I would recommend the series if the reader wanted to try something different, but with the caveat that the storyline collected in the first tpb is the weakest in the whole series. West of Eden is considerably better than Akedah, so if you pick up the Akedah because of the low price tag and kinda, sorta like it, I'd say pick up West of Eden.