{"id":2124,"date":"2016-01-01T22:44:13","date_gmt":"2016-01-02T06:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2124"},"modified":"2016-01-01T22:44:13","modified_gmt":"2016-01-02T06:44:13","slug":"review-my-pal-splendid-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2124","title":{"rendered":"Review: My Pal Splendid Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs are (among other things), the creators of a well regarded but somewhat obscure comic, <em>The Trouble With Girls<\/em>, that is a spot-on send-up of heroic serial fiction. I mention it because there are elements of that sort of satire here in <em>Splendid Man<\/em>, but more rough and clumsy.<\/p>\n<p><em>Splendid Man<\/em> reads much more like fan fiction than <em>Girls<\/em>.\u00a0 In fact Splendid Man is pretty much Mary Sue fan fiction.\u00a0 The POV character finds himself cast in the role of the best pal of Splendid Man, a direct Superman stand-in.\u00a0 It&#8217;s never clear exactly why Splendid Man would spend time with our Mary Sue, or why we are interested.\u00a0 Jones and Jacobs eventually get better at this.<\/p>\n<p>A fan of Superman and Jones and Jacobs &#8211; like me &#8211; can find things to divert themself. It&#8217;s interesting to see a snapshot of their writing skill at the time.\u00a0 One can see little quirks and stylings that remain as they mature.\u00a0 The structures of the stories are well executed.\u00a0 Seeing how their later writing animates these skeletons is instructive.<\/p>\n<p>The two authors are also quite knowledgeable about comics in general and the Superman mythos in particular. It&#8217;s interesting to see the in-jokes and commentary on the comics that they incorporate. That encyclopedic knowledge is, again, better deployed in their work to come.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, it stands as a snapshot of attitudes and biases of the 1980&#8217;s.\u00a0 The Mary Sue spends a lot of time smoking and drinking in ways that I found cheerfully anachronistic.\u00a0 In addition, the attitudes toward gays which were probably considered controversially compassionate when the stories were written have become quaint.<\/p>\n<p>As anthropology, the stories are recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs are (among other things), the creators of a well regarded but somewhat obscure comic, The Trouble With Girls, that is a spot-on send-up of heroic serial fiction. I mention it because there are elements of that sort of satire here in Splendid Man, but more rough and clumsy. Splendid Man [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2124"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2129,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2124\/revisions\/2129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}