Supernatural Origins #3
No Buffy this month, so just some thoughts about the latest SPN comic.
I was definitely grabbed by the topic on the first page, Dean abandoning Sam and John, fed up with their mobile lifestyle and believing that by going Sam would have to become the focus of John's attention. Ouch. It seems to me this could have been an interesting, ongoing storyline. Instead it's patly resolved by Dean finding John's journal (a different journal, I would assume than his hunting journal which appeared to be a hunting resource rather than a personal diary).
Unfortunately the continuity issues seem to continue. On page 2 John is told that a demon killed Mary, yet in S1 when he tells Sam the news, Sam seems surprised. That never made sense to me, as I figured surely they had known this for some time. Sam and Dean encounter demon possession in episode 3 after all. Of course Sam seems surprised by some of the information of Mary's death in "Home" so perhaps it's only Sam who didn't know about it. It could be that John and Dean would avoid recounting the details to him.
Nice to see Ellen introduced and it's reasonable that John met her and visited the Roadhouse early on, thus explaining Dean and Sam's failure to remember her. Given what Dean ended up seeing, maybe he also blotted it all out.
I can't say I really related to John's initial conflict about his hunt, and that he wasn't a killer. The heeler didn't seem human and John had been in the military after all. When the story added in the twist that the heeler was now a shapeshifter, John's hesitation seems much more understanable, since he had to take the hunter's word alone for what had happened. But to me that made the transition worse, to think that John would hesitate before with less reason and then hesitate so little when things became so much more ambiguous. What's worse is there would have been no confirmation he did the right thing, since in Skin the shapeshifter retained Dean's form once dead. (It also raised the problems I had with Skin in that Sam seemed to realize at once, for no reason I could identify, that Dean had been replaced. At least the hunter had more to go on about what had happened.)
What was good about that sequence was to introduce the level of paranoia John must have begun living with (and passed on to his sons) about what was out there. Little wonder Dean has such contempt for law-enforcement.
On the other hand, it seemed so pat that Dean would rush out just as John shot not-Ichi. And needlessly traumatic given that shortly afterwards John begins his pattern of leaving them behind as he goes off to hunt. It's also kind of sad to see the first lie, that John promises there will be a day when he doesn't have to leave. I'm fairly sure that even if he had lived to see the demon killed, John would never have stopped hunting. And by that point, of course, his sons didn't need him to.
Artwork wise, still not thrilled. For example on page 3 both the hunter and John look identical when sitting in the car talking. Dean still looks much too big for the 4 year-old he was. I did, however, like the scene where the hunter and John talk at the end. That would have been a beautiful scene on film.
Overall, still a "meh" for story and artwork, and ambivalent about the additional character details being revealed.
On a different topic I found this discussion about class differences on MySpace and Facebook quite fascinating if very U.S.-centric which one of the commenters points out. Makes me wonder how LJ fits into that.
I was definitely grabbed by the topic on the first page, Dean abandoning Sam and John, fed up with their mobile lifestyle and believing that by going Sam would have to become the focus of John's attention. Ouch. It seems to me this could have been an interesting, ongoing storyline. Instead it's patly resolved by Dean finding John's journal (a different journal, I would assume than his hunting journal which appeared to be a hunting resource rather than a personal diary).
Unfortunately the continuity issues seem to continue. On page 2 John is told that a demon killed Mary, yet in S1 when he tells Sam the news, Sam seems surprised. That never made sense to me, as I figured surely they had known this for some time. Sam and Dean encounter demon possession in episode 3 after all. Of course Sam seems surprised by some of the information of Mary's death in "Home" so perhaps it's only Sam who didn't know about it. It could be that John and Dean would avoid recounting the details to him.
Nice to see Ellen introduced and it's reasonable that John met her and visited the Roadhouse early on, thus explaining Dean and Sam's failure to remember her. Given what Dean ended up seeing, maybe he also blotted it all out.
I can't say I really related to John's initial conflict about his hunt, and that he wasn't a killer. The heeler didn't seem human and John had been in the military after all. When the story added in the twist that the heeler was now a shapeshifter, John's hesitation seems much more understanable, since he had to take the hunter's word alone for what had happened. But to me that made the transition worse, to think that John would hesitate before with less reason and then hesitate so little when things became so much more ambiguous. What's worse is there would have been no confirmation he did the right thing, since in Skin the shapeshifter retained Dean's form once dead. (It also raised the problems I had with Skin in that Sam seemed to realize at once, for no reason I could identify, that Dean had been replaced. At least the hunter had more to go on about what had happened.)
What was good about that sequence was to introduce the level of paranoia John must have begun living with (and passed on to his sons) about what was out there. Little wonder Dean has such contempt for law-enforcement.
On the other hand, it seemed so pat that Dean would rush out just as John shot not-Ichi. And needlessly traumatic given that shortly afterwards John begins his pattern of leaving them behind as he goes off to hunt. It's also kind of sad to see the first lie, that John promises there will be a day when he doesn't have to leave. I'm fairly sure that even if he had lived to see the demon killed, John would never have stopped hunting. And by that point, of course, his sons didn't need him to.
Artwork wise, still not thrilled. For example on page 3 both the hunter and John look identical when sitting in the car talking. Dean still looks much too big for the 4 year-old he was. I did, however, like the scene where the hunter and John talk at the end. That would have been a beautiful scene on film.
Overall, still a "meh" for story and artwork, and ambivalent about the additional character details being revealed.
On a different topic I found this discussion about class differences on MySpace and Facebook quite fascinating if very U.S.-centric which one of the commenters points out. Makes me wonder how LJ fits into that.