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To reward myself for surviving the work week - which entailed amongst other things, several difficult meetings, negotiations, and putting out fires - it also entailed a difficult personal trainer session - he had me stand on this air ball and lift weights at the same time, considering I have troubles walking and chewing gum at the same time - this was a challenge, but I digress... I bought the second issue of the two part Dru comic.
I loved this comic, but I won't be the least bit surprised if I was amongst the few that did.
It is not a plot heavy comic, actually the plot that is there is fairly simplistic - the comic is a character sketch. It is in a way an actor's exercise - a method actor's. Let me explain, because unless you've taken a course in method acting - you'll have no idea what I am talking about. My high school theater professor, Max Brown, was a method fanatic. If you want to know what he was like? Just listen to James Marsters Q&A's on acting - they say almost the same things. When I listen to Marsters, I hear my high school theater teacher. Uta Hagen and Stanislaski were Max Brown's idols. We spent entire classes doing method acting exercises. At any rate - whenever we got a role, regardless of the role, Max would ask us to write an entire back story for the character. Imagine our lives as this character. Find an emotional pain in our past to build into that character. I remember writing twenty pages on
Sally Cato in Auntie Mame, who she was, what she did, what she liked and thirty on Tituba in The Crucible (another role that I played - and yes, I went to an all-white high school, depressing but true). The exercises made me a better writer, if not a better actress.
This two part Drusilla comic reminds me a great deal of those acting exercises. What Lynch and Juliet Landau have done is write about what lies inside Drusilla's head, what makes Dru tick. The plot is that Dru has entered a sanatorium or insane asylum, at the same time that WRH has more or less sent LA to Hell to punish Angel. We aren't really told why she's at the asylum - because Dru herself doesn't know why. We are almost completely inside Drusilla's head. We do not know anything that Dru herself does not know. And the sanitorium and people inside it to a degree serve as a metaphor for Dru's own state of mind, her own hell - which is well her mind.
This quote at the very end of the issue sums of it's themes, intent, and purpose:
Do I believe in Actual Hell. One's own mind is actual enough. - C.S Lewis (1898-1963)
( Review of Dru Comic...or why I enjoyed it and how I perceived it )
I loved this comic, but I won't be the least bit surprised if I was amongst the few that did.
It is not a plot heavy comic, actually the plot that is there is fairly simplistic - the comic is a character sketch. It is in a way an actor's exercise - a method actor's. Let me explain, because unless you've taken a course in method acting - you'll have no idea what I am talking about. My high school theater professor, Max Brown, was a method fanatic. If you want to know what he was like? Just listen to James Marsters Q&A's on acting - they say almost the same things. When I listen to Marsters, I hear my high school theater teacher. Uta Hagen and Stanislaski were Max Brown's idols. We spent entire classes doing method acting exercises. At any rate - whenever we got a role, regardless of the role, Max would ask us to write an entire back story for the character. Imagine our lives as this character. Find an emotional pain in our past to build into that character. I remember writing twenty pages on
Sally Cato in Auntie Mame, who she was, what she did, what she liked and thirty on Tituba in The Crucible (another role that I played - and yes, I went to an all-white high school, depressing but true). The exercises made me a better writer, if not a better actress.
This two part Drusilla comic reminds me a great deal of those acting exercises. What Lynch and Juliet Landau have done is write about what lies inside Drusilla's head, what makes Dru tick. The plot is that Dru has entered a sanatorium or insane asylum, at the same time that WRH has more or less sent LA to Hell to punish Angel. We aren't really told why she's at the asylum - because Dru herself doesn't know why. We are almost completely inside Drusilla's head. We do not know anything that Dru herself does not know. And the sanitorium and people inside it to a degree serve as a metaphor for Dru's own state of mind, her own hell - which is well her mind.
This quote at the very end of the issue sums of it's themes, intent, and purpose:
Do I believe in Actual Hell. One's own mind is actual enough. - C.S Lewis (1898-1963)
( Review of Dru Comic...or why I enjoyed it and how I perceived it )
