Jules Winnfield (Pulp Fiction) vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin (WWE): "WHAT?!"

 

Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction vs. Sheetal Awchar: "It's the Same Ballpark"

 

Pulp Fiction: What Does Donald Trump Look Like?

 

Tim Lambesis from As I Lay Dying

 

"Happy!" by Grant Morrison

BOOK TITLE: Happy!

AUTHOR: Grant Morrison

YEAR: 2017

GENRE: Graphic Novel

SUBGENRE: Crime Fiction

GRADE: Pass

Disgraced detective turned contract killer Nick Sax completes an assassination of mob boss Mr. Blue’s sons. During the final moments of the confrontation, one of the sons tells Nick the password to a bank account full of laundered mafia money. Just as Mr. Blue’s henchmen are about to extract the password from him via torture, an imaginary blue unicorn haunts Nick’s psyche and agrees to help him out dangerous situations on the condition that he rescues small children from a porn studio. Will Nick Sax become the hero he was meant to be or will he selfishly reject Happy the horse every step of the way?

This graphic novel is incontrovertible proof that not all protagonists have to be saints in order for the audience to cheer for them. Nick Sax is a vulgar, selfish, negative alcoholic who would rather waste his life away than use it for good causes. Seeing as how this is a redemption story, Happy the Horse has a long way to go in order to convince Nick to see the light. The two of them get into schizophrenic arguments that make outsiders feel uncomfortable and downright frightened to death. When the big payoff finally happens, it feels right. Some would criticize Nick’s newfound reasons as being selfish yet again, but that just goes to show how stonehearted a broken man like him can be. To me, that’s gritty and realistic, which is what all detective novels should be like, imaginary horse aside.

Speaking of Happy, I enjoyed his characterization as well. He’s a goofy, lovable, lighthearted ray of sunshine in a world covered in darkness and beer. Sometimes the reader needs a break from all of the R-rated horror and Happy will provide that relief through his personality alone. In truth, Happy is the last line of defense for childhood innocence since he was one of the kidnapped children’s imaginary friend at one point. Once he’s gone, the whole world turns to poison. Imagination is the most powerful tool we have and it took a lot of it to incorporate Happy’s character in a believable way. Good job in that department, Mr. Morrison!

I don’t have many complaints, but I do have one about Nick Sax’s back story as to why he acts as coldly as he does. While it is a tragic story about his family that would make any reader tear up, it seems forced and cliché, like it somehow excuses Nick’s behavior by virtue of its mere existence in the storyline. I’ve seen this trope used many times before and it only numbs me to the real tragedy of the much larger story. But as I said, this is a minor complaint since it didn’t actually derail the story in any way. It’s just a flaw that needed to be pointed out, that’s all.

All in all, this was a fun little graphic novel and I can easily see why Syfy would want to make a TV show out of it. Sometimes it’s fun to root for the antihero, especially when a magical flying horse evens him out. That’s the trick with the antihero: he can’t be worse than the villains he’s fighting. Otherwise, there’s nothing to believe in. Nick Sax’s redemption story is believable to me and that’s why I’m giving this graphic novel a passing grade despite his clichéd character history.

Doorstoppers

Discrimination is wrong, bottom line. But is it so wrong to discriminate against a book based on its size? Books that are so huge that you could beat someone to death with them are ever so affectionately known as “doorstoppers”. Not only are they five-hundred or so pages long, but they’re also printed on gigantic sheets of paper. Shit man, you could probably use the pages as window curtains if you so desired. Or if you wanted to give somebody a blanket party, you could rip out one page and beat the guy with the rest of the book. For books that are less than 200 pages and printed on smaller pieces of paper, the same kind of discrimination is true. People automatically assume that shorter reads are going to be literary flops. Not just flip-flops, not just belly flops, but big fucking flops when it comes to sales and popularity. The point of all these size jokes is not simply for a cheap segue into penis length. Those kinds of jokes are way too easy to tell and I will not sink below to that level. Ah, to hell with it, the bigger the book, the smaller the author’s penis! Authors with shorter books are growers, not showers. There, are you happy? The real reason for discussing the topic of doorstoppers is to decide whether or not judging a book by its size is unfair to the author. I say yes, it is unfair, because doorstoppers are still capable of having a quick reading speed. A lot of celebrity memoirs are written with a quick style and they’re big enough to give the faces on Mt. Rushmore reading material. In fact, there’s a book on my blog that could very well qualify as a doorstopper despite it only being less than 300 pages long. That book would be “Once Upon a Nightwish” by Mape Ollila. It’s a biography of a heavy metal band and it doesn’t use an overwhelming number of slick descriptions. The same thing is true about “Hitman” by Bret Hart when it comes to descriptive language. The difference is, “Hitman” reads so slowly that it takes god knows how many minutes to get through one single page. You won’t see that book on my blog anytime soon. The point of this blog is to send the message of not judging a book by its size. In other words, don’t have page envy. My self-published book “Red Blood, White Knuckles, Blue Heart” is only 176 pages long and it’s printed on six-by-nine paper. It’s a grower, not a shower. Thanks for listening to this very sexualized blog entry about a topic that never gets discussed in the classroom. Usually whenever book size is brought up in an educational setting, the response is akin to something like, “Too bad!” It’s even worse when reading pace is mentioned.

　

***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“I’m not the goddamn weak link!”

-Daniel Bryan-