When Anita Blake Says "Arise and Serve Me," It Could Mean Any Number of Things

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

Lock up your sons! Chris from the ISB is back with another issue of "Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter: The Laughing Corpse: Executioner", a title that never fails to amaze me with its sheer number of colons.

Let's talk editing here. Chris points it out, and I agree: this comic has been going on for thirty-one issues now, and there are still massive dialogue panels explaining what, exactly, Anita is doing--made even more insulting to the reader by the fact that Anita also tends to explain things we've just seen to the other characters, who I can only assume are meant to be readers-by-proxy. Overall, it has a feeling of speaking down to the audience, as if LKH assumes that her readers are so dumb or her prose so lofty that she must have frequent "YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?" moments to let us catch up.

Likewise LKH does not seem to realise that comics have, um, pictures. That, or she is overly thrilled by her own deathless prose and seems to feel that no reader can understand the true flavour of the original novel if the comic does not incorporate vast chunks of narration. By now, one would think that LKH would understand this medium, considering how deeply she has involved herself with the editorial process of this thing.

In other AB:VH:tLC:E news, Linkara, comic reviewer at That Guy With the Glasses, promised viewers an Atop The Fourth Wall review of the Anita Blake comic a while back. It's going to be interesting to see how many of his criticisms run parallel with Sims'.

Comments

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

there was a podcast interview that I found not too long ago where she ranted about how there's no point in doing an adaption unless it's 100% faithful to the source.

See, I have fits over this kind of things. It is possible to get something that is really good without holding true to every letter of the original. For that matter, sometimes running in a different but similar direction of the original results in better entertainment for everyone.

I wonder if LKH clings to her verbiage because she's terrified that her stuff doesn't say the things that she really wanted it to and that someone will see it and create something based off it that is much better than she could ever achieve.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Not to mention, it puts a huuuuge restriction on the director/artists that are adapting this in that they can't even put their own stamp on things. Wow, way to quash other people's talents in one fell swoop, Laurell.

At this rate, I don't think there will ever be a telemovie/tv show, simply because she can't cut the cord. Screw this whole, "My characters are my friends but they don't have voices of their own so I have to speak for them, I have to stand up and say no! This isn't good for us!" thing, she just needs to flat out admit that she's a control freak and this scares off anyone from wanting to work with her. Given how popular Vampire Diaries and True Blood are, LKH just shot herself in the foot by pulling the plug.