BT07 – Deep Thoughts

Action Philosophers: Giant Sized Thing #1 (Evil Twin) [collects #1-3]
w. Brian Van Lente; a. Ryan Dunlavey 

Writing		New reader?
Art		Non-comics reader?

Action Philosophers: Giant Sized Thing #2 (Evil Twin) [collects #4-6]
w. Brian Van Lente; a. Ryan Dunlavey

Writing		New reader?
Art		Non-comics reader?

A faboo series idea — present the biographies, thoughts and philosophies of great thinkers over the ages in an irreverent comic book style format.  Van Lente does an excellent job of distilling down some nasty philosophical concepts into an easy to understand narrative, and Dunlavey’s art provides entertaining visual cues for the same.

The first volume works best — the thinkers chosen there (Plato, Nietzsche, Bodhidharma, Ayn Rand, Thomas Jefferson, St Augustine, Freud, Jung, Joseph Campbell) seemed to lend themselves more readily to the concept.  The second volume is still quite readable with the folks it talks about (Marx, Machiavelli, the Kabbala, Descartes, Sartre, Derrida, Wittgenstein, Aquinas, Kierkegaard), but feels a bit more forced (“running out of deep thinkers here, guys!”).  There’s a third (and final) volume coming out soon.

A nice intro to philosophy and philosophers, and something that non-comics readers won’t even notice is actually a comic book.

The Boys: The Name of the Game, Vol. 1 (Dynamite) [collects #1-6]
w. Garth Ennis; a. Darick Robertson 

Writing		New reader?
Art		Non-comics reader?

When the super-heroes start demonstrating that “absolute power corrupts absolutely” — the government calls in “the Boys,” an enhanced group of bruisers to sow them with great power comes great responsibility … or else.

This is Ennis, of course, so the “corruption” generally involves sex, drugs, more sex, and casually inflected “collateral damage.”  And teaching them a lesson generally means some brutal violence and wicked social commentary.  The tale is told mostly from the perspective of a new recruit, “Wee Hughie,” whose girlfriend is killed in passing by a super-hero pursuit; but there’s a nice parallel thread with a very nice young teen metahuman who finds herself promoted up to the top-tier team — and learns just what those folks are like when they’re not issuing press releases and saving the world.

Wickedly funny, brutal and abusive, it’s triffic fun, too.  Even non-comics readers will find it both outrageous enough to amuse and a great poke at the super-hero genre.