Dumb people are dumb.
Sep. 25th, 2010 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138At this point, I regard Diana Gabaldon's books as somewhere between a guilty pleasure and force of habit. IMHO, her writing has grown notably more self-indulgent as her doorstopper series continues (and/or her editors have stopped editing), and her recentish meltdown about fanfic didn't improve my opinion. I doubt very much that I'm going to buy her new graphic novel, The Exile, although I may browse through it at a bookstore-- it's essentially a partial retelling of her first book, switching out of the original tight 1st-person narrative toward other characters' POVs.
However, I'm kinda disgusted by the tone of many negative reviews it's collecting on Amazon, which can be summarized as follows:
1.) "How were we supposed to know that a 'graphic novel' would turn out to be some dumb cartoon book?" No comment.
1.5.) "What is this, some stupid anime/manga thing?" Uh, not particularly. The art style is reasonably realistic-looking with detailed full-color shading. It's considerably closer to American comics-- the artist has worked for Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse. Apparently based on his name; see below.
2.) "Everybody looks too Asiatic/Oriental/(similar synonyms)!" O RLY. Somehow, I suspect this would never have come into those reviewers' minds if the artist's name weren't Hoang Nguyen. But since he was born in Vietnam (before moving to the US at age ten), of course he can't draw people right if they don't look like him. Or back to 1.5., obviously he's limited to the idiom of Japanese popular culture.
(His portfolio does include some distinctly anime/manga-flavored pieces. I don't think The Exile particularly fits this mold, though.)
3.) "The characters don't look the way I imagined them!" Maybe not, but Gabaldon approved the character designs, so they're relatively canon as such things go-- which isn't a clincher in itself, but c'mon, haven't these readers *ever* seen a visual adaptation of a familiar book?
There are a number of more solid-sounding criticisms which I may well agree with when I finally see the whole thing-- rushed pacing, visual continuity issues, lack of any real added dimensionality to the series-- but the above review types... sheesh.
However, I'm kinda disgusted by the tone of many negative reviews it's collecting on Amazon, which can be summarized as follows:
1.) "How were we supposed to know that a 'graphic novel' would turn out to be some dumb cartoon book?" No comment.
1.5.) "What is this, some stupid anime/manga thing?" Uh, not particularly. The art style is reasonably realistic-looking with detailed full-color shading. It's considerably closer to American comics-- the artist has worked for Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse. Apparently based on his name; see below.
2.) "Everybody looks too Asiatic/Oriental/(similar synonyms)!" O RLY. Somehow, I suspect this would never have come into those reviewers' minds if the artist's name weren't Hoang Nguyen. But since he was born in Vietnam (before moving to the US at age ten), of course he can't draw people right if they don't look like him. Or back to 1.5., obviously he's limited to the idiom of Japanese popular culture.
(His portfolio does include some distinctly anime/manga-flavored pieces. I don't think The Exile particularly fits this mold, though.)
3.) "The characters don't look the way I imagined them!" Maybe not, but Gabaldon approved the character designs, so they're relatively canon as such things go-- which isn't a clincher in itself, but c'mon, haven't these readers *ever* seen a visual adaptation of a familiar book?
There are a number of more solid-sounding criticisms which I may well agree with when I finally see the whole thing-- rushed pacing, visual continuity issues, lack of any real added dimensionality to the series-- but the above review types... sheesh.