Another volume of The Umbrella Academy, plus more fantasy
I first became aware of this comic series via the Netflix adaptation that kicked off four years ago. I like quirky superhero stories and it appealed. It was created by Gerard Way who founded the band My Chemical Romance. My daughter is a fan and so she was aware of the comics. She has been buying be th books for Christmas over the last few years. Last month I got the latest one.
The stories are based around a group of young people with various special powers who were brought up by a mysterious and manipulative adoptive father. They generally fight crime, but can go rogue. The TV show takes themes from the books, but the stories are quite different.
The drawings by Gabriel Ba have a distinctive style that is quite atmospheric.
I found Hotel Oblivion to be a little confusing to start with as it features some characters who I am not sure were in previous books. I soon learnt enough about them to follow the plot, which is weird and wonderful. These books are very violent and so not suitable for young children. The characters all have issues that they struggle to deal with.
According to Wikipedia a fourth book is planned that would overlap with the third TV season. I would assume we will see more of the Academy on TV too.
Something else I read recently is Stardust by Neil Gaiman. We have had the book for ages as it was a freebie in the weekend paper.
I have seen the movie, but I think there are a few difference in the book story. I did remember a few parts from the movie that were transferred without much change. I need to watch it again to see exactly what changed.
It tells the story of a young man who leaves his boring life in a small village to search for a fallen star in the magical land that lies beyond a nearby wall. He meets various strange people with some dark forces also after the star, that takes the form of a young woman.
I have read a few Gaiman books. He has an amazing imagination, but can be quite earnest. There is some humour in this book though. A lot of his works have been adapted including American Gods, Neverwhere and Good Omens for TV as well as Coraline on the big screen. A few years ago I attended the recording of a radio show that he presented where he read some of his stories and some by other writers with help from some others, including former Doctor Who Peter Capaldi.
I got some other books for Christmas and will probably get more for by birthday. These may keep me going for most of the year.
I was using Goodreads to track my reading, but have switched to a Bookwyrm instance called Rambling Readers. I prefer to use non-corporate platforms. Bookwyrm uses the same technology as Mastodon. I have hopes that Hive will also be integrated with that federated network soon.
Happy reading.
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You and your daughter seems to be a lover of books. Book is life it helps to build our knowledge and makes us happy through entertainment.
These are quiet interesting books to read. @steevc what is the name of the movie the Neil Gaining book stardust was adapted into?
I'm surprised you couldn't guess ;)
Oh, my! That was too easy 😂
Thank you, let me check it out.
It is quiet interesting.
That's great that she likes it! I've seen the series, not too bad. I think I may check out the books here when I have some more downtime, sounds interesting!
I've got back into comics in recent years and am building a collection. I really like this series.
I have been getting irritate by GoodReads of late. Specifically the part where Amazon has not done any significant update to the site since they bought it. In fact they have shut down some good APIs they had. I was going to try out LibraryThing, but if there is a non-corporate platform I am all for it. Will check out Rambling Readers.
Yet to read Umbrella Academy and Stardust. I saw one episode of Umbrella Academy but overall felt that I might like the comic better. I had read Sandman and enjoyed it but was not sure of the novels. Saw American Gods and got excited after a couple of episodes, so thought I will buy the book and read it in parallel. Ended up reading the entire book and came back much later to the show :) Another fun writing of his was The Doctor's Wife in Dr. Who which is one of my favorite episodes.
I read American Gods long before the TV show. I don't generally subscribe to Amazon, so I may have missed some of it. I'm just not a fan of that company, but the big ones own all the cool shows. I just limit my subs to Netflix and Disney for now.
The Doctor's Wife was a cool episode. Gaiman did another one about Cybermen.
I try to use the corporate platforms less these days. I found I didn't really need Twtr, but some people I would follow there are not on others. I check in there once a week. Hive is just too small to interest the big names for now.
!BEER
I want to write on my Hive experience probably towards end of this month. But one thing I have been thinking off is how people can comment or like when they visit a blog we share and they don't have Hive. On the video sites and InLeo I notice that you can connect using just email or one of the other social media ids. Want to check if that has helped people try before joining. Just thinking out loud on how to get engagement from idle passer-bying friends.
Some of the sites do have 'lite' accounts, but I've not tried creating one. It needs to be easy to get involved.
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Es muy bueno que compartas esa historia de cómic que no mucha gente conoce .
The Umbrella Academy series on Netflix held my attention. Such complex and fallible characters even with their super powers. My two favorite characters are Klaus and Number 5. I hadn't thought to read the original stories, but now you've given me some inspiration.
I thought it was very well done. Perhaps some influence from Tim Burton in there. It was interesting how they worked in the changes Elliot Page has gone through as they made it.
Agreed. They left us off with a big cliffhanger last season. It's going to be a long wait before we see the next season roll out. Let's hope they don't lose their unique charm between now and then.