My Whims Are Annoying

Every so often I get masochistic whims to do things that I know would be a bad idea. For example. Recently, I had an urge to go out and read/reread the Drizzt Do'Urden Forgotten Realms books. (I haven't read all of them, but a good many were out around the time I was an angsty teenager, so...well...)

Now, for the record, I don't actually HATE the books or even the character. They're kind of like most of Mercedes Lackey Valdemar books for me, in that they're so incredibly good at channelling the angst and wish-fulfillment that tends to attract pre-teen and teenaged fantasy readers and even now can be a nice guilty pleasure when I want to recapture my youth.

Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of reading series in close succession, so I usually come out of it wanting to hit Drizzt with a shovel. (The problem with wallowing in teenaged angst as an adult is that pretty quickly you start to remember why you like being a goddamn adult, thank you very much.)

This time, I decided to try something different and thought: hey, I'm a comic book fan. There are Drizzt comic books. Maybe I'll try those! So I got ahold of the Homeland trilogy and read them and...honestly...they're not that bad.

Unlike, say, the Anita Blake comic which highlighted everything I found irritating about those books, I actually thought the comic version of the Dark Elf Trilogy worked very well.

I didn't actually want to hit Drizzt with a shovel!

Part of it is probably the space constraints. Also, the lack of those really fucking annoying journal entries at the beginning of the chapters. God, I hated those. Fortunately, there's no room for that in the comic! Also, as per the angst, it's actually fairly well handled too.

Of course Drizzt DOES get angsty, to be fair, he does have some reason to have angst. But where, in the books, said angst seems to encompass a whole chapter, in the comic, he's angsty for maybe a panel. Then it's more killing things with pointy swords!!

I have no quarrel with the killing things part. :-)

It doesn't hurt that I like the art. Drizzt is cute, his sisters are pretty (though I'm not sure what to make of Vierna's braids. I didn't quite imagine even the slightly less evil drow priestess looking like Pippi Longstocking, but oh well), Roddy McDowell looks a bit too much like a giant dwarf instead of a human, but for the most part I can't really complain.

I was kind of disappointed in Zaknafein's initial appearance actually, as he was probably my favorite character as a kid, (I like people who channel their depression and alignment malfunction into stoic homicide?) but somehow, around the time he got killed off and zombified he got hotter. Alive-Zak, not that hot. Zombie-Zak? HOT.

...I'm not sure what that says about my taste in men, but there you go.

But yeah, it's remarkable what a change that a lack of annoying inner monologue can make in my appreciation of a character. :-)

(I still think Artemis Entreri is more fun though, heh)