geekin' out

I've stumbled upon a fantastic, fantastic exegesis of the now-classic 1986 graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns. Written in six parts, with a promised seventh part on the way, the series of blog articles speaks in a pop-scholarly voice that manages to avoid the pitfalls of obfuscatory PoMo prose. There's the standard evocation of Nietzsche-- what discussion of Batman and Superman would be complete without mention of the philosopher who gave us the concepts of the Übermensch and the will to power? But along with that are discussions of the technical and artistic aspects of the graphic novel, with plenty of quotes from Scott McCloud (he of Understanding Comics fame) and Frank Miller himself.

On an almost subliminal level, I was pleased to see not a single typo in any of the six entries-- a feat that even I would have failed to execute. That sort of conscientiousness separates the author, AD Jameson, from the typical geek/fanboy who might be great with programming languages, but who has somehow failed to translate that competence into writing well in English. I can take Jameson seriously because he obviously takes his own writing seriously.

Reading through his posts will take some time, so unless you've got a few spare hours, I'd recommend tackling his posts slowly and steadily. Thank me later.


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