Map of the official language forms of Norwegian municipalities as of 2007.
Norway, a country of 5 million people,
has 2 official written spellings/dialects, Bokmål & Nynorsk. Failed
attempts to merge them over time mean that a spectrum between them has
formed, with many variant forms being used. Norway’s largest newspaper
for example, uses a pre-1938 version of Bokmål.
Michael is on his own here, having left the rest of the team because he feels like there’s no place for him anymore. He’s having a rough time, travelling on his own, stealing food because he has no money and no one to turn to. Desperate, he decides to check out a research institute for “paranormals” (people with superhuman powers), even though he’s afraid it will be crooked somehow. His paranoia gets a boost when two seemingly nice guys who give him a ride turn out to be criminals who try to trick him into using his powers to kill one of their enemies. Eventually, DP-7, another team of paranormals, gets involved.
This definitely has the storytelling elements of the time that some current readers might not like, like loads of inner monolog, but if you like comics from this era, those things are just another set of storytelling tools. I enjoyed this. It packed a lot of story and character development into a single issue. The New Universe might not have worked out in the long run, but it can be fun to see the more deliberate worldbuilding that’s going on in these series, and how they were trying to portray more grounded and complex superpowered characters.
Not gonna lie, i skimmed probably the first half of this issue because the violent Christian fanatic thing is not something i want to read about these days. It’s too real, much scarier than any of the vengeful ghosts or monstrous spiders that normally make up the threats in this series. The art continues to be great, though. There’s a revelation at the end that could change the context of the story in a significant way. I would prefer the spooky things going on here to remain mostly unexplained. I enjoyed the first five issues so much, i’m gonna choose to be optimistic about where the series goes from here.
With this issue, the series concludes. The setting – a small airport isolated by a blizzard – is IMO the strongest aspect of the story. Initially, i was interested in the main characters, but they sort of get overshadowed by the horror as it goes along. There were sometimes when the action wasn’t all that clear. In this issue, a key moment had me confused because the characters were reacting to something that I couldn’t see on the page. Even after I’d figured out what must have happened (from the context of the following pages), I flipped back and still had trouble identifying how the event was depicted. Idk, maybe other readers saw it.
I would not be surprised if this got adapted to film. The use of the setting seems like something a director would love to play around with.
I had the most fun reading this one, out of the short stack of comics that i picked up on Saturday. Obviously it’s pretty light in tone overall, but it takes place during the Dominion War, and, in some scenes, it does recall some of the dire tone that period of DS9 had on tv. By the end of the issue it’s confirmed, as you no doubt suspected, that there’s more to the dog than there appears, but we’ll have to wait for further issues to find the truth.
I picked this one up mainly because I loved the cover. I also enjoyed the story. Post-apocalypse worlds don’t do much for me any more, but the interaction of these characters was fun to watch. The teaser at the end indicates that the series will go into darker territory than i’m currently interested in, but i’m glad i gave this a chance.
A few years ago, I saw a documentary about how cults manipulate people. When it talked about tactics like creating and us versus them mindset, using lots of special terms to re-define reality, demanding loyalty, and making it seem like the costs of straying from “the truth” were disastrous, I wondered “How is that different from regular religion or politics?” This book goes into the overlap between dangerous cults and more benign parts of “normal” society. Particularly, it’s about the language, or the linguistic strategies, that they all employ. Mainstream religion, trendy exercise programs, and pyramid scheme marketing might not be true cults, but they are very often cult-ish. The book does a good job of pointing out that there is a degree of cult-ish language in our culture at large, and it’s good to be aware of how it can affect our perceptions. I thought this was great. Written well, in a style that’s easy to follow.
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