Word: novelizations
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...movie; the other comes from the alt-auteur world of the small comix press. The first, The Fountain, written by filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (?, Requiem for a Dream) and drawn by Kent Williams, arrived in late 2005 from Vertigo/DC in the form of a high-end, full color hardcover graphic novel (166 pages) with a price ($40) that reflects its luxurious production. The other book, Ganges #1 by Kevin Huizenga, co-published by Fantagraphics Books and Coconino Press, looks like an indie comic book - a really nice one - with 32 large-sized pages, two colors (black and blue), a stiff paper...
...Whatever the case, The Fountain graphic novel certainly reflects its ambitious origins. It spans 1,000 years, from the Spanish conquests of the New World in the 1500s, through today, and up until 2500 when we are imagined to be flying through the cosmos in very large, clear bubbles. Through the past, present and future appear the same two lovers, Thomas and Isabel, though in different guises and circumstances. The sequences weave in an out of each other like a dream as in each one Thomas searches desperately for a panacea that will save his endangered beloved and allow them...
...text message saying, "I've got your daughter." In a country where truth is often weirder and more gruesome than fiction, few writers can compete with the stories on the evening news. The chilling exception is Miyuki Miyabe, one of Japan's most popular authors. In Crossfire, her third novel to be translated into English, Miyabe's heroine, Junko, sets out on a killing spree through the suburbs of Tokyo to avenge a young couple's death. Junko has pyrokinetic powers-she incinerates her enemies by releasing a burst of energy that turns them into piles of ash. The story...
...Miyabe doesn't hide her literary inspirations. When the investigator tells a colleague of the horrors she's seen, he responds, "This isn't a Stephen King novel. Would you lay off?" Like King, Miyabe grounds her paranormal happenings in the nitty-gritty details and constraints of the real world. Junko can light a cigarette from across the room using willpower, but she also waitresses at a local café to pay her rent...
...this kind of reality-based writing that sets Miyabe's novels apart-and that has helped make her one of Japan's wealthiest authors. Readers in English may be less enthused by the translation of Crossfire, which makes Miyabe's prose sound less natural than it is in Japanese. Still, even in translation, it's a powerful and satisfying mystery. Miyabe details her characters' every thought, no matter how cutthroat or compassionate, as they argue with their families, berate themselves, fall in love and earn a living. By the end of the novel, the reader understands just how hard Junko...