Discovered Comics: “Dreamless”–A Review

I have been knitting through the inundation of school work (more updates on this later); in the meantime, I’ve managed to pick up an old vice again, in all its time-sucking , mind-liberating glory.  Despite my Lenten goals to give them up, cold turkey, I find myself more and more drawn in to web comics/graphic novels these days.

I don’t check nearly as many comics as often as I used to, no (mind, we’re talking upwards of 30-40 different comics I was checking on a daily-to-weekly basis).  I am however, more as a coping mechanism than anything else, finding newer ones to read through in the graphic novel strain.  In one of my favourite dailies, The Devil’s Panties by Jennie Breeden (whom I was convinced, years ago, was my doppelganger/soulmate), I saw a sidebar link for a comic named Marry Me, illustrated by Remy Mokhtar and written by Bobby Crosby.  I read it in a single morning, and found it charming.  Curious to see what else the creators had done, I investigated; out of all their other works, the title Dreamless (another writing project of Bobby Crosby) stood out to me most, and I clicked the link.

The first image you see on Dreamless’ site is the graphic novel’s cover, and it is a heck of a cover; it almost has an Atonement feel to it, mixed in with every movie or story ever made about time travel.

Okay, so, mix Atonement with “Heroes” and we’ve got it.  That (give or take) is the emotion the image alone evokes.  It’s beautiful, possibly one of my favourite covers to a graphic novel I’ve seen in a long, long time.  That, and it gives you a satisfying visual introduction to the lush, seemingly flesh-and-blood art style of illustrator Sarah Ellerton that carries the story with beautiful grace.  Again, it puts in ink-and-colour the exact same emotions I imagined in stories like Atonement, or even The Great Gatsby.  I would love for Ellerton to illustrate The Great Gatsby, come to think of it…

The story starts with a bang and endeavors to keep you on your toes from then on.  Exposition is limited, even choppy.  Huge swaths of time pass in mere pages, and you’re not given a lot of reason or characterisation with which to relate to the main characters; a lot of that connection felt in reading it is in the overwhelming emotion depicted in the artwork.

The story follows (zips through, rather) the lives of Elanor, an American girl, and Takashi, a Japanese boy; separated by ocean, cultures–they’ve never even met–they have  nothing in common except the fact that since birth they have shared the bizarre, continual connection of being witness to each others’ lives in their sleep.  I am not entire sure of all the physic particulars of this–with the way the story is told, it’s difficult to be sure of how exactly the connection functions–but what is certain is the fact that the two grow up together, as close as any two humans could be, and they eventually fall in love.

(It would be difficult, I think, to not fall in love with someone whose life you watch and experience every night in your sleep; you would know this person as well as yourself, practically, you have a major part in the other’s life–you’re practically as good as married!  It’s only reasonable to enjoy the perpetual company. Could you imagine if you couldn’t STAND the other??)

Takashi is a very traditional Japanese boy; well schooled, taught to fight for the honour of his family and country at all costs.  Elanor, the narrator and character on whom everything really hinges, is a bit of a radiant outcast–peculiar, a bit standoffish, product of a distant high-ranking military officer and a mother whom, the story seems to suggest, was possibly schizophrenic before she committed suicide when Elanor is young. It is also suggested that Elanor’s behavior of having deep, colourful conversations with dolls and seemingly talking to herself in Japanese (a language she has no reason to have ever learned) is not unfamiliar to her mother–and this knowledge may have contributed to her mother’s “accidental” death.  This death has a serious impact on Elanor’s character; we watch her grow, listless, directionless, living only to share her life with Takashi.  To be with him, to know for a fact that he truly exists and loves her like no one else has and can help her learn to live outside her own mind, becomes her all-encompassing reason for existence.  It is this, and Takashi’s similar striving to go to America and be with her, that drives the story.

But we can’t forget that I compared this to Gatsby or Atonement…what’s a good cross-cultural love story without a war?  The ULTIMATE war that could keep Takashi and Elanor apart, in fact!  Takashi has been trained his entire life to fight against the Americans–an awkward position for a boy in love with an American Military official’s daughter–an American, for that matter.  To uproot his life–or hers–could put them in grave danger.  This causes great strain, especially for lonely Elanor, already coping with her alcoholic father and her own mental demons.  Having another human being in your head all the time is trouble enough; once you hit adulthood and are expected to live a normal, un-interrupted life in the Real World, how do you manage to keep up with the Reality you love so much your Dreams, as well?  How can you possibly ever unite the two?

I love everything about this comic; as confusing as the story can be, as many holes there are yet in the plot that I desperately wish to have filled, I trust the two impressive comicists are relaying everything exactly as it is supposed to unfold.  They’re setting the scene, plot-wise, and visually (in such a lovingly, perfectly rendered artistic style that fits the story better than anything else possibly could have–in many ways, the visuals make the story) for every essential twist and turn in Takashi and Elanor’s journeys in their worlds and their minds.

I am deeply excited for the development of this story, and highly, highly recommend it.  Recently, I’ve felt it building to some sort of pressure point or crisis in the story’s immediate future.  I hope Mr. Crosby divulges some of the story’s deeper secrets, though I’m sure I can wait a very long time for the conclusion to this comic–I feel like there’s enough potential, enough mystery still floating under the surface, to keep it riveting and astounding for quite a long run yet.

The February of Our Discontent

Last night I saw “(500) Days of Summer” with the girls, at a Gender Relations Department-sponsored screening.  It’s quite an adorable movie, in all, and it had some very pertinent and truthful insights into modern relationships in young adults (the actors seemed so very young to me, even though I know they are  in their mid-to-late 20s, at least).  But the character Tom’s declaration of the fallacy of the greeting card industry struck a particular chord with me:  holidays seem to be made up, established merely for the sake of having an excuse to show someone you care or, even worse, to spend money.  Capitalist consumerism runs into overdrive when we have a calendared excuse or expectation for it.

Hence the hundreds of bi-annual gag-inducing jewelry commercials.

February, in particular, is not really a spectacular month except in the holiday aspect.  Think about it: Groundhogs day, Candlemas, Imbolc, the Super Bowl, President’s Day, Valentine’s Day, the ongoing celebrations of Black History Month, and the elusive Leap Day…nearly more holidays than the busiest of months, and yet it’s the shortest month of the year!!  Why is this?  The earliest Romans (and probably a good number of other cultures) didn’t even consider February a real month until 700 BCE (winter was a period beyond the qualification or defining restrictions of time).  It’s a mighty little creäture, that’s for certain.  But I can’t help but feel like, for all its eventfulness packed into a neatly 4-week schedule, there’s a lot of Heart either inherently forced or lost in the rush.

It could just be that I’m a bitter single girl; maybe Valentine’s Day would be more attractive if I wasn’t?  But the month seems to be dedicated to letting someone know you’re bats about them…leaving those miring in singlehood to a merely brief yet painful 4-week reminder that they’re lacking something seemingly essential:  a better half.  And it’s easy to get jaded and feel like everyone else’s affections are wasted with money and excess…the sort of impersonal approach to love the boy in “(500) Days of Summer” feared was the status quo.

I still have hope, though; I am embittered, yes, skeptical, definitely, but hopeful…of course.  I am young, I can’t possibly be alone forever.  I could shoot for the Helen Reddy route and declare myself invincible and not requiring a man in my life (it’s not as fun, though).  I can hint to cute boys and pray they catch on (lord, please let one of them catch on…)–but I will not chase them (boys just don’t seem to get the hint these days, do they?).  I’ve chased enough, I feel like it’s time to see who’ll reach out for me.  I’ll keep my eye out for some nice, interesting, unique guy while trying not to dwell on past failures or current dry-spells of attention from the opposite sex.

In the meantime, I think I’ll knit a sweater to get the lovey-dovey-ness and excesses of the month off my mind.  February’s damn cold in this arctic tundra of the Lake-Effect Region of Indiana…without an arm around my shoulder, I have to make myself warm somehow!!

There’s this gorgeous cropped sweater in the Lughnasadh 2007 issue of The AntiCraft! (by far one of my favourite craft blogs on the internet)…what do you think?

Flu-dom, and other such difficulties

I am a naturally sickly person.  We’ve never managed to figure out why, but my lungs have always been close to useless, my joints are creaky, my eyesight and hearing feel like they’re dawning on Helen Keller-esque, and my immune system is just deplorable.  I’ve spent more time in doctors and in bed from sickness than I ever have in organized sports (I am told that there is no possible correlation there, either).  I didn’t spend nearly a year in bed struggling for breath for nothing.

There, that’s grumpy exposition.

Throw myself into the petri dish that is college (or worse, college in the winter), and I’m practically helpless.  I’ve been down with some kind of flu-like disease for going on two and a half weeks now; anyone who’s ever had flu knows that you’re effectively in some kind of vegetative state for the duration.  A terrible position for a college student in her first three weeks back at school!!  Not only am I slowly losing my mind from being kept indoors, but I’m falling behind in classes.  Motivation is running sluggishly.  Supplies dwindling.  Morale low.

Despite the fact that I have spent a great deal of my life sick, the Act of Being Sick always throws me for a loop.  I’ve often imagined waking up one day and finding out I have something truly dreadful (for awhile, we all thought I did) and I’d have to summon up all my strength and persevere like you hear so many people doing.  Strong individuals who won’t back down, who strive to get better and do better.  And while I can’t even begin to imagine comparing being constantly under the weather with little things like the flu (however unhappy a 103-degree fever might be) with something drastic like cancer, sometimes I feel like the juggling act of school and jobs and the social life that I’m finally coming into, that I feel, sometimes, that I could not live without, AND sickness…it all feels like too much.

When I get behind in life, I feel like I’m being sucked into this vortex of pained stomachaches and looming or missed deadlines and readings I’ll positively drown in, with little motivation to jump out of it and do something.  I wasn’t like this all the time, lazy, afraid…

Okay, maybe I have.  Since high school, at least.

But the difference between high school and now is that, back then, I had that journal I’ve talked about to read back on and realize what an idiot I was being.  This past week and a half, I’ve just sat in bed, or on the futon, feeling useless and idiotic but unable to move on, put the computer down, and pick up a book for anything better than leisurely reading.

That needs to change.  It’s going to change.

We’re nearing the end of January; I’ve been 22 for three weeks now, nearly, yet it seems ages and ages ago.  I’ve got to get back on the (metaphorical) horse.  They say half of recovery is admitting you have a problem; I’m admitting it to the entire internet.  That’s got to stand for something…at least one foot on the (metaphorical) saddle.

Tylenol, history reading, and a frenzied attempt to catch up in Greek one day…let’s do this thing.

A Beginning…finally

Despite the fact that I technically ‘started’ this blog some time in December as a 3-a.m. “This seems like a great sort of insomniac thing to do!” project, I just haven’t felt the compulsion to sit down and write in it like I endeavored to.  It’s rather like a journal in this sense:  I’ll write in it incessantly when the mood strikes, and put it down for months or years at a time when I could care less.

The intriguing nature of the internet, however, is that of instant gratification and public vetted interest.  If I don’t keep up, someone might know!  If I don’t post, I might feel as though I’ve cheated someone of something they might be looking for.  Blame the new movie “Julie and Julia” for introducing to me the idea that a blog can actually make some sort of difference to people in the world, but I like to think that my writing efforts and projects that I’ll do and share might mean something, to someone, somewhere.  That this unspoken and probably strange support might be enough to inspire me to post just one more thing, to finishing knitting just one more row before bed, to review and research just one more fascinating article to share.  That’s internet support:  a commental prodding hither and thither to Keep Up With the Work that Intrigues.

So here I go, ready to intrigue.

It’s a new calendar year.  A new semester.  A new year on Earth for me, with my 22nd birthday only last Monday.  A time for resolutions, reflection…realisation that I didn’t get a quarter of the knitting I wanted to last year done.  So here, I resolve, in public for all to see and hold me to it, to be a more frequent knitter in 2010.  I promised myself that for every item I knit for myself and a family member, I’d knit three baby items for charity.  So far…that hasn’t happened to such success.  I will keep a running tab of how many baby hats or booties I need to construct as I report on items I’ve finished.

Well, that is, once I’ve finished them.

Currently, I am working on three projects:  a Victorian Lace shawl (from out of the beautiful book “Victorian Lace Today”) for mom [a long-term, inconsistently worked on item], April-May lace bamboo handwarmers for mom (thank you, Jacquelynn Vance-Kuss, for the original pattern inspiration), and a Binary Scarf (courtesy of knitty.com) for a friend.  As I type, the bamboo handwarmers lay on the desk to the left of me, mildly mocking.  It doesn’t help that I’ve only been working on them for more than a year…finishing the first was a cinch, considering how many errors were committed.  The second one has been a lazy dream for quite a long time, but I’m finally *finally* back on track, and set to complete them in the next couple days.

The problem with the April-May lace isn’t in its complexity; in fact, it’s surprisingly simple for the lovely design it produces.  No…it’s in keeping track of where you are on the double pointed needles, remembering if you’ve gotten to the end of the row sequence or are in the middle of it…it’s quite easy to get lost here.  The slippery nature of the bamboo doesn’t help the cause, either, as the slickness of the yarn, as well as its bulkier weight than the original pattern called for, required some significant re-working of the pattern.  But let me promise you when I say:  there is rarely a pattern so simply elegant or as comfortable as this.  Not only is Bernat’s bamboo soft enough that a chinchilla would fall in love, its bulkiness gives the glove an overall “big sweater” sort of look:  peculiar, but you know it’ll feel good.

I may adopt the bamboo yarn for future hand warmer projects; though the yarn bunches something fierce as you’re handling it, the end result is so gorgeous, and too comfortable to resist.  The problem there, again, is modifying patterns to compensate for a bulkier yarn.  This pattern proved easy for that (after several unsuccessful tries), as I subtracted a repeat out of every process (6 repeats rather than 7, with an initial cast-on of 36 stitches; that made it particularly easy to divvy the stitches between 3 dpns, and tickled my fondness for numerical balance).

The conclusion here is, really, that this blog…journal…whatever you are, will hopefully prevent travesties like this, this procrastination of finishing these truly exceptional gloves, from happening again.  I’ve got someone watching my back now, and expecting marvelous results that I hope I can consistently deliver.

Now, on to readings for my various history classes…Welcome Back to School, Notre Dame.