In Continuum.

I can't say that I actually grew up with all the Disney movies. I loved The Lion King, but I couldn't care less about all the Disney princes and princesses. At a young age, I found those fairy tales to be childish stories to fool young children. Even as a young child, I refused to see myself as a young child, which I suppose, can be a good thing after all. Still, I knew the basics of the basics, and I knew that Snow White lived with seven dwarves, and she also had to battle an evil witch that gave out poisoned apples. I never liked Snow White, not exactly because of the fact that she is the worst looking Disney princess, but I was also uncomfortable with the seven dwarves staying inside the same house as a princess - what's up with that? Then I found out about the original version compiled by the Grimm Brothers, the original Walt Disney in the ancient times. In the original story, the seven dwarves were really evil dwarves, and Snow White actually had a sister called Rose Red. Rose Red represented summer, while Snow White represented the winter. The depiction of Rose Red above is that of James Jean, famous for his covers for Fables. Oh, I love Fables, and let me just say that you are already a good enough graphic novel if you take the time draw, if you know what I mean. 

Comics and I have been inseparable since young. My sister had a lot of group tuition in the past in the Hougang area, and there were times when she'd be a couple of minutes late, and I wasn't exactly the most patient kid in the neighborhood. What my mother did to shut me up back then was to give me a few dollar notes and then direct me to a bookstore nearby to buy comic books. So there I would be amidst rows and rows of comic books, picking them off and then paying for them at the counter. I started off with Doraemon and Master Q (老夫子) comics, though the latter is actually quite pointless and thrashy. Doraemon is definitely one of the building blocks in my life, because it made up much of my imaginary world, with everything based off the pages of the comic book, for the most part. I loved the idea of a magic pocket, a magic door, a time machine in the drawers. I pretended to climb into my desk drawer once, and I also managed to dislodge the drawer accidentally, spilling its contents. I related very well to Nobita, the main character in the story, the kind of kid that loved to read comic books and to sleep the day away. It's not that my grades were particularly awful or anything, but the idea of having a machine cat as a friend living in the same house was, well, welcoming. 

Master Q was just simply pointless, though I am not sure why I bothered with its comics in the first place. I mean, most of the comics weren't just unfunny, they were vulgar as well. Most of the vulgar words were replaced by dollar and hex signs, but the readers knew pretty much what he was talking about. I remember the author venturing into an adventure story once, but they all paled in comparison with Doraemon's adventures into the prehistoric times and the future. Let's face it, when it comes to comics, no one in Asia can measure up to the greatness of Japanese manga. Nothing in Asia compares to the kind of comic books that they have in Japan, with the variety and the details they put into the characters as well as the stories. I mean, have you read Singapore comics before? They are probably some of the most poorly written stories in the entire industry, and a complete waste of those paper used to print in my opinion. I remember a book my friend lent to me in high school, and I was halfway through the book before I couldn't take it anymore. The story aside, the characters looked completely the same. Just look up pictures of the series, Return of the Condor Heroes. Every male character looks the same, just with a different hair, and the same with the female characters. There are basically three types of faces the artist plays around with, and it just shows lazy and sloppy drawing, in my opinion. 

The story and the drawing are the two most important factors contributing to a good comic book, in my opinion. You can't have a brilliant story with a sloppy artwork, and you can't have a a comic with brilliant artwork and a sloppy story line - same thing. It is great if the two has a great marriage, and that is usually the case in most great comic books out there. Japanese manga places a lot of emphasis on both aspects, and the result is a multi-billion dollar industry around the world. I was a fan of Japanese manga when I was younger, the way that their stories are always so engaging and interesting. It defines an entire culture by itself, a world away from reality that sucks the readers in without even trying too hard. Yet, as do most serialized comic books out there, Japanese comics are often boggled down by ambition and the public demand. So many comics are either too long, or that they lose steam towards the end of the series. I started off with book one of Detective Conan, and the story has yet to go anywhere after fifty books or so. Shaman King began with a powerful punch to the comic world, and then ended with an ending so bad that I couldn't be bothered to finish it at all. There are, no doubt, great comic books out there still being churned out from Japan. But I suppose, for the ones that I have read, they tend to lose heat and depend too much on cliches and predictable storytelling techniques that it becomes boring. Oh, suddenly our protagonist has a hidden magical skill that'd miraculously defeat the enemy! Predictable. 

I don't know when I got myself involved in American comics, since I've never been a fan of Superman, Spiderman, and all those man-s. I am not a fan of superheroes with superhuman powers, it just seems way too easy somehow. This man can teleport, that man can lift a mountain. That man cannot be destroyed, this man can shoot lasers out of his eyes. It gets a little tiring, especially with characters like The Hulk, knowing that he is virtually indestructible. He lifted Thor's hammer, after all. The point is that, like many other comic books that I have read, serialized comic books seem to suffer from the same fate, using the technique of deus ex machina to complete the story. Then the world of graphic novels revealed itself in the form of a giant yellow smiley face with blood splattered across its face. Yes, I started off with the greatest graphic novel of all time, and it is sad to say that no graphic novels or comic books have matched its greatness just yet. It kinda sucks sometimes to know that I started with the best, and that nothing has matched up well enough ever since. But a few has come close enough over the years, and my love for comic books was revived all over again. 

So I got to know about Watchmen from TIME's top 100 novels of the twentieth century, the only graphic novel in the list. So that got me intrigued, like any other "the only" in any list out there. So I went to a bookstore one day and bought the book without even flipping through it, since it was wrapped in plastic. Mind you, I bought this book way before the movie was even announced to be made, which means that it wasn't because of the hype or anything. Anyway, Watchmen opened up the various possibilities of comic books as a medium. Different from ordinary books, this time it infused painted art with a narrative, and everything came together and made sense. Over the years, I went around collecting even more graphic novels. Some worked, some completely missed the mark, the same thing with books. I noticed a few drawing styles along the way that appealed to me, while some just turned me off just a little bit. One of the main reasons why I didn't like The Sandman series, despite the rest of the world disagreeing, is the way things are drawn in the first few books. I understand that the series changes a couple of artists along the way, and perhaps that is why we have such a variation in styles. Still, the unorganized nature of the stories just serves to make the reader disorientated. And it is not helped by the fact that the story has little to no relation with each other most of the time. 

There is a type of comic which I like to call the "Orgy", which is a bunch of storybook characters thrown together in the same story. There is something about weaving these different characters into the same story that is so endlessly fun and alluring, and I've been in love with that ever since. Graphic novels like Marvel 1602, Kingdom Come, they all involve a bunch of characters, thrown together into different situations, though they wouldn't normally be associated with each other. That is when Fables comes in, recently introduced to me by a very dear person. Fables is a little different from the other comic books in the sense that they don't involve comic book characters, but fairy tale characters. The Big Bad Wolf, Snow White, Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk, the Blue Boy, the three little pigs, and all those characters. They have been forced out of their own world, or the Homelands, into our world due to evil forces. It is still a series, but it is going to end some time next year with the 12th and last book. I bought five in a row, not because I actually know what the story is about, but I based everything purely on a recommendation and the cover art. I like comic books to put in at least a little effort in the art, you know? As much as people appreciates abstract, there are times when straight forward beauty just, well, works. 

So, I have put myself down the long dark road of collecting every book in this series, and so far I love it. It's one of those evil evil urges inside you that you just have to learn to curb sometimes. You know, the urge to see the numbers at the spine of the books to run in a numerical order, everything from the beginning to the end, you know how it is. Wish me luck down this long dark journey. I don't expect myself to reach the end with a lot of cash left to boot, but it's all going to be worth it I'm sure. At least, it'd be easy on the eyes, with all the drawings and everything.