Hugos: Graphic Story
Jun. 17th, 2015 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowThis was a difficult category for me. Of the nominees, the one I most wanted to like just didn't quite gel, and the one with the cleverest central idea - well, I didn't enjoy it. Since nominees in this category are often segments of long-running stories, they often feel unfinished (on one end) or hard to get into because of unread prior material (on the other). Anyway:
#5: No Award. I browsed maybe a month's worth of the "Zombie Nation" webcomic, and saw nothing remotely worthy of a Hugo nomination.
#4: "Sex Criminals". A very clever and original (as far as I know) idea, but not at all to my taste.
#3: "Ms Marvel". The central character is appealing, but the handling of the cultural issues seemed a little superficial to me. That the nominated segment ended with the reveal of her first nemesis (and thus on a cliffhanger) doesn't help. I did like the fact that she lost her first major fight, regrouped, and went back in - although I'm not sure how much time elapsed between round one and round two, and I think that matters.
#2: "Rat Queens". A pretty good treatment, with some original dashes, but of a fairly standard D&D-ish setup: each adventurer team has one each of the standard classes (Warrior, Cleric, Mage, Rogue) - and the originality of the individual characters doesn't quite make up for that.
#1: "Saga". This is the only one of the stories I'm ranking that isn't a first volume; this one's volume three. Ordinarily, that would be a bit of a negative, but the story was self-contained enough to be understandable. The POV switches gave me a little trouble - there are at least four different factions involved - but they also helped fill in context. It's not the best graphic story I've read, even in the last five years, but it's pretty good, and I'll be seeking out volumes one and two.
#5: No Award. I browsed maybe a month's worth of the "Zombie Nation" webcomic, and saw nothing remotely worthy of a Hugo nomination.
#4: "Sex Criminals". A very clever and original (as far as I know) idea, but not at all to my taste.
#3: "Ms Marvel". The central character is appealing, but the handling of the cultural issues seemed a little superficial to me. That the nominated segment ended with the reveal of her first nemesis (and thus on a cliffhanger) doesn't help. I did like the fact that she lost her first major fight, regrouped, and went back in - although I'm not sure how much time elapsed between round one and round two, and I think that matters.
#2: "Rat Queens". A pretty good treatment, with some original dashes, but of a fairly standard D&D-ish setup: each adventurer team has one each of the standard classes (Warrior, Cleric, Mage, Rogue) - and the originality of the individual characters doesn't quite make up for that.
#1: "Saga". This is the only one of the stories I'm ranking that isn't a first volume; this one's volume three. Ordinarily, that would be a bit of a negative, but the story was self-contained enough to be understandable. The POV switches gave me a little trouble - there are at least four different factions involved - but they also helped fill in context. It's not the best graphic story I've read, even in the last five years, but it's pretty good, and I'll be seeking out volumes one and two.
