The novel of the film of the comic of the same name

[learnedax]

O god, it burns!

If you dare, pull up Inside This Book. Or don't, you'll be better off; its morass of swirling, turgid prose itself bedecked, with dependant clauses, which were recursive, bombastic, riddled with complexities themselves fraught with abecedarian faux pas so redolent with fault that the benighted, wayward, reader, overcome with revulsion, might find itself hastily perplexed, were abominable.

Comments

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Why? Why? WHYYYYYY?

(Okay, I know why- it's for people who are Too Cool or Too Grown-Up or Too Something to read a comic book. But still.)

[tamarinne.livejournal.com]

Actually, I wonder if it might not be because the authors of the comic book want nothing to do with the movie, so if they want to slap Natalie Portman's face on the cover of a book, they can't use the graphic novel...

::actually looked Inside::

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

I wrote better dreck than that when I was 12.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

by my count, five out of eight of the “sentences” on the first page are in fact sentence fragments.

can such things be?

-steve

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Eight sentences on the first page already gives you an idea of the wrongness; such monstrosities are Melvillesque; he, at least, was not so profligate with fragments.

Why, oh why did I look inside?

[tamarinne.livejournal.com]

Oh.... GOD. *claws at eyes*

[danceboy.livejournal.com]

It feels very Bulwer-Lytton (sp?) to me. Which is to say it will probably do well...

Though, to be fair, it's a tough gig novel-izing a comic that was created by people who are explicitly interested in the ways that comics are different from other art forms. I think they could have actually found a writer that spoke English, but I'm not sure they were ever going to get anything good.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

I wonder if that is the same Steve Moore who is a friend and sometime co-worker (but not relation) of Alan's? He's done a fair bit of comic-book writing, but not much previous prose, AFAIK. As a comics writer, he was competent, but not especially noteworthy.

ObAnecdote (possibly urban legend): The author of the novelization of Francis Ford Coppola's Bran Stoker's Dracula was sorely disappointed that he didn't get the gig for the follow-up. He really wanted to see the cover blurb: "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein! By the author of Bram Stoker's Dracula."

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Hmm, it seems that it is. Since he seems to be involved with America's Best Comics currently, and Alan seems to loathe the film, I wouldn't have thought writing the novel would be such a wise move. In fact, Wikipedia at least believes that the two of them have a strong history together, making the decision more perplexing.

On the anecdote, I find it amusingly telling that you need to specify Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. The world of popular culture is a strange one.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Well, Alan seems to understand that his own opinions are, shall we say, unusual. And he is definitely in favor of his friends earning money. Indeed, that is the only reason why he didn't immediately quit when Wldstorm was bought out by DC. I haven't heard of any cases of his objecting to *other* people selling out, so long as they had their eyes open when they did. Witness the fact that, rather than just burn the money he is "due" from the movies, he has it given to his collaborators.

OTOH, I do know of one instance where Alan permanently cut off a decades-long friendship with no warning, over something that most bystanders think to have been a pretty minor slight, so who knows?

[new-man.livejournal.com]

And here I thought for sure you were talking about the novelization of Man-Thing.

BTW, I am unlikely to make it to practice tonight.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Nah, I didn't touch it.

I'll take your share of bouts.

Remember...

[cristovau.livejournal.com]

Remember when I swore that I'd hate you forever for "Dance to the top of Scott Bakula?" I was wrong. Exposing me to this is much worse.

I can't wait for V For Vendetta, the interpretive dance (Lakshmi isn't reading his, is she?)

Re: Remember...

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Well, that's partly your own invention. What dkapell got stuck in my head was "slam in the back of Scott Bakula", which admittedly is only slightly better.

I think there have been plenty of painful brainworms passed between us, anyway. Plain Naan springs to mind...

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Deary, deary me.

I clicked on "Suprise Me." It worked. I'm always surprised when three paragraphs on the same page begin with "And". Of course, the top of the page began in the middle of, well, I'd call it a paragraph, but there were no sentences in it.

*sigh*

[jducoeur]

Oh, dear God. I expected pain, but I will admit that I didn't expect uncontrollable giggles. I mean, Steve Moore is *not* a dreadful comic book writer -- not one of the greats, to be sure, but he's generally readable and fun. But this reads like something that you might find in a Harvard Lampoon parody.

I am going to choose to believe the best: that out of friendship for Alan Moore, Steve Moore has written a novelization *so* awful that it forces people to read the original instead. I am also going to choose to believe that the movie isn't this hideously bombastic, at least until I am proven incorrect...

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I like this theory.