Scan barcode
leafyshivers's review
3.0
For those who don't know:
"Set in the near future, eXistenZ depict a society in which gaming designers are worshipped as superstars and players can actually enter inside the games.. The name of the game is eXistenZ – a technology so advanced that it uses biology to transport players into gaming experiences beyond the bounds of virtual reality. eXistenZ taps so deeply into players' fears and desires that it blurs the boundaries between reality and escapism." [from the inleaf and back cover]
Two point five stars from me, but that rounds up. I am rating this based on its quality as a stand-alone, that is, without considering that it's based on a film. [b:eXistenZ: A Graphic Novel|1787804|eXistenZ A Graphic Novel|David Cronenberg|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223623018s/1787804.jpg|1786726] wears a more-or-less obscuring veil of surreality the whole way through, and while I don't consider that necessarily bad style for a graphic novel, it was rather hard to read. I managed to follow the action (not sure if I'd call it a plot, and the departure from that is admirable) only on what felt to me a basic level. Try as I did to determine what was going on, I was not always able to connect the relation of two side-by-side frames when they were split by a totally unwarned-of saccade from one scene to another. Fine in a movie; confusing in a book.
The artwork here demands mention, and adulation. Scoffield takes the graphic novel through his illustrations to a level of realism I've never encountered in a graphic novel. It's very movie-like which, I gather, is the aim. And it's undeniably gorgeous. Gorgeous, as well as appropriate. It evokes the shadowy world of 'virtual?... or... reality?' with almost chilling efficiency; we can't make out everything that's happening, and we're not sure if the characters inside the frames can, either. Again, though, I have to say that the close-ups and the extreme shading in many frames are frustrating to me. You're in a world with quite a few objects foreign to our own: bioports, Pink-fones, Game Pods and so on. There is a handy glossary of these in the beginning. But in the course of the story, I find myself needing to jump a few frames ahead to learn what exactly an earlier frame depicts, and that took away from my own enjoyment.
Altogether, this is one of those rare times when you need the movie as a starting place to enjoy the literary version. I have not seen Cronenberg's film, and I know I would have found this to be a far richer reading experience if I had.
"Set in the near future, eXistenZ depict a society in which gaming designers are worshipped as superstars and players can actually enter inside the games.. The name of the game is eXistenZ – a technology so advanced that it uses biology to transport players into gaming experiences beyond the bounds of virtual reality. eXistenZ taps so deeply into players' fears and desires that it blurs the boundaries between reality and escapism." [from the inleaf and back cover]
Two point five stars from me, but that rounds up. I am rating this based on its quality as a stand-alone, that is, without considering that it's based on a film. [b:eXistenZ: A Graphic Novel|1787804|eXistenZ A Graphic Novel|David Cronenberg|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223623018s/1787804.jpg|1786726] wears a more-or-less obscuring veil of surreality the whole way through, and while I don't consider that necessarily bad style for a graphic novel, it was rather hard to read. I managed to follow the action (not sure if I'd call it a plot, and the departure from that is admirable) only on what felt to me a basic level. Try as I did to determine what was going on, I was not always able to connect the relation of two side-by-side frames when they were split by a totally unwarned-of saccade from one scene to another. Fine in a movie; confusing in a book.
The artwork here demands mention, and adulation. Scoffield takes the graphic novel through his illustrations to a level of realism I've never encountered in a graphic novel. It's very movie-like which, I gather, is the aim. And it's undeniably gorgeous. Gorgeous, as well as appropriate. It evokes the shadowy world of 'virtual?... or... reality?' with almost chilling efficiency; we can't make out everything that's happening, and we're not sure if the characters inside the frames can, either. Again, though, I have to say that the close-ups and the extreme shading in many frames are frustrating to me. You're in a world with quite a few objects foreign to our own: bioports, Pink-fones, Game Pods and so on. There is a handy glossary of these in the beginning. But in the course of the story, I find myself needing to jump a few frames ahead to learn what exactly an earlier frame depicts, and that took away from my own enjoyment.
Altogether, this is one of those rare times when you need the movie as a starting place to enjoy the literary version. I have not seen Cronenberg's film, and I know I would have found this to be a far richer reading experience if I had.
More...