A Game of Thrones #1

[lordultimus]

12 out of 36 pages.

Warning for gore and some nudity.

Comments

[laughing_tree]

Why is Chris Samnee tagged?

This adaptation takes such pains to be novel faithful. It's shame then that the artwork is so pedestrian and the translation to a different medium is so blandly exact.

Okay, I realize that sounds kind of contradictory, but there's an important distinction between being faithful to the content and being faithful to the execution. This does both; I appreciate the former but the latter is to its detriment.

[cyberghostface]

To me one of the biggest issues is the moving such a dense book to the medium. At 22 pages or so a month it moves at a snail's pace. Same thing with Marvel's The Stand.

[laughing_tree]

On the one hand, sure. On the other, how many people buying this wouldn't already know the story anyway? For something like this, I imagine the primary interest for most readers is seeing a work they like get adapted, not in what happens next. It's a different set of priorities, one where pacing is a lot less relevant.

Original graphic novels would probably have been a much better format than monthly comics though, yeah.

[cyberghostface]

Well I didn't even bother with GoT aside from the Sandor issues (and those more or less confirmed my initial thoughts since it was basically two chapters per issue) but with The Stand I approached it as someone who read the book and was a fan of SK and I eventually dropped it midway through the second arc because of how slow it was in monthly increments.

On a related note I think the comics for 'The Hedge Knight' were great. The original story is a novella (so the comic was only five or so issues) that's lighter in comparison to the main series and it's more of a traditional fantasy adventure and IMO it lent itself really well to the medium.

[lordultimus]

"Why is Chris Samnee tagged?"

Deleted. My bad.

[reveen]

Yeah, this art isn't bad per se, and the colouring is pretty damn good. But I just feel that ASOIAF warrants a less comic-booky art style. The Last Unicorn comic had a pretty similar art style, but there are enough little differences that I can't even really explain that make me think that would work way better. Or for something more realistic, whoever did the cover art for the trade up there would be great. I would prefer something even more artsy, but whatever.

And that flashback sequence with Danaerys just eats. Like, what the fuck, do you have to dump all that shit on us right away? If you're going to have flashbacks why not only pull them out when they're directly relevant to the characters and let us piece them together? Like, when Robert and Ned are in WInterfell's tombs then give us the one with Robert killing Rhaegar.

But no. Don't worry about establishing Danaerys and the setting she's in through the art before we know her history. Just dump all of it on us all at once. The reader needs to know this semi-relevant background information RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.

[byc]

Catelyn seems to be drawn very young.

[michaelsaint]

This art is something..... I especially love how they added the open cleavage of Lyanna Stark in the background of the panel with Robert and Rhaegar fighting at the Trident. (I assume that is supposed to be Lyanna) I am sure a woman of the North would have worn clothing with that much exposure...

[lordultimus]

That's something common to period pieces nowadays, sadly. I was watching the most recent Magnificent Seven, and when I was watching Haley Bennett's character I remember thinking, "If someone in the Old West really showed that much cleavage, everybody would probably think she was a prostitute."

[locuatico]

To quote Sandman's Hob Gadling:
"I mean, that's the thing about the past that people forget. All the shit. Animal shit. People shit. Cow shit. Horse shit. You waded through the stuff. You should spray 'em all with shit as they come through the gates."

I accept your general point

[chortles81]

Although if you're commenting on the climate instead of regional/cultural norms -- the latter admittedly makes the following moot -- it might have been summer around the time of her death (the year before Daenerys mi' birth by which time summer had begun).

Re: I accept your general point

[michaelsaint]

Good point. It might have been summer. But I think most characters would dress in their normal or similar attire even in different climates.

I mostly think the drawing was a cheap attempt to put boobs in the panel.

It guess it just frustrates me they would reduce a character like Lyanna to, well, just mostly boobs.

Re: I accept your general point

[chortles81]

I'm guessing that "normal" attire would vary when the climate was so random that a less-than-two-month warming lent that year its name "of the False Spring" even while agreeing re: what was probably going on in the actual panel, though I imagine we can also chalk it up to the excessive exactitude in adapting A Game of Thrones without accounting for likely readers having probably already read the subsequent novels with Lyanna's further development.

[lordultimus]

Fixed the page size, sorry for the inconvenience.