{"id":715,"date":"2010-09-26T14:13:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-26T21:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2010\/09\/26\/comic-book-report-empire\/"},"modified":"2010-09-26T14:13:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-26T21:13:00","slug":"comic-book-report-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2010\/09\/26\/comic-book-report-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Comic Book Report: Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_5B85svs4ENE\/TJkyhR8xjOI\/AAAAAAABDHI\/V8DIRAzU5Kk\/s1600\/3115-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_5B85svs4ENE\/TJkyhR8xjOI\/AAAAAAABDHI\/V8DIRAzU5Kk\/s320\/3115-1.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I finally got around to tracking down Mark Waid&#8217;s oft-praised, early-2000&#8217;s mashup of deconstructed supervillains and epic fantasy&#8211;emphasis on the latter.  It&#8217;s all courtly intrigue, rife with hidden agendas and betrayals and reversals and technology indistinguishable from magic.  Characters and situations are depicted in mile-wide brush strokes, and pretty much everyone is&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;wait for it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<i>irredeemable<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you!  I&#8217;ll be here all week!<\/p>\n<p><i>Empire<\/i> was certainly not a dull read, but it also was not the <i>superawesomeOMGtodiefor<\/i> book that certain reviewers have made it out to be.  It&#8217;s a tragedy through and through, but it all felt hollow.  The last few pages should have broken my heart.  Instead, I just shrugged my shoulders and moved on.  YMMV.<\/p>\n<p>See also: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marvelman#Miracleman:_The_Neil_Gaiman_years\">Neil Gaiman&#8217;s <i>Miracleman<\/i> stories<\/a>, which offer a slightly different take on the superhuman-as-world-ruler premise and, for my money, are much creepier and more emotionally involving.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Buy the book:<\/span> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/34809\/biblio\/1401202128?p_isbn\">Powell&#8217;s<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ISBN=1401202128\/curtiscchensfree\">Amazon<\/a> (affiliate links)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"CKL\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/HotSheet\/CKL.jpg\" title=\"CKL\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finally got around to tracking down Mark Waid&#8217;s oft-praised, early-2000&#8217;s mashup of deconstructed supervillains and epic fantasy&#8211;emphasis on the latter. It&#8217;s all courtly intrigue, rife with hidden agendas and betrayals and reversals and technology indistinguishable from magic. Characters and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[51,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-comics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}