Stan Lee (1922 – 2018)

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Stan Lee © Jeff Vinnick/The Globe and Mail

The unstoppable force behind Marvel, the person responsible for putting the “hero” into “superhero”, transforming the erstwhile walking cardboards with ten commandments written on them into human (or godly) beings, full of foibles, insecurities and vices, but at the same time always striving to become better and to do better.

Lee as few others understood the human need for telling stories, for heroes, and for heroic journeys. He was the \co-creator of Spider-Man, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man, the X-Men, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, Black Panther, and Ant-Man – as well as many other superhero characters. He was also a tireless advocate of introducing comic superheroes to the wider public, and his efforts brought us the wonderful recent Marvel superhero movie onslaught, irrevocably changing the comics’ place and magnifying their significance in pop-culture.

Piotrek: I’ve re-watched the first Captain America today with my Dad and the usual Stan Lee cameo made me smile. How many more did they manage to prepare? Probably just Captain Marvel and the second Infinity War movie…

Ola: Apparently all 2019 Marvel movies will have Stan Lee cameo. It’s become such a feature of the Marvel movies that it’s difficult to imagine a movie without his appearance 😉 As John Romita put it in one of his interviews,

He’s a con man, but he did deliver.

He was one of the rare giants that transform their chosen field irrevocably – a facilitator, a face, an moving force behind the scenes, an impresario.  He led a full, adventurous life that brought us much joy and inspiration.

Thank you, sir, and farewell!

‘Nuff said.

Brian Azzarello, J.G. Jones, Lee Bermejo, Before Watchmen: Comedian/Rorschach, 2013

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Before Watchmen

Author: Brian Azzarello (writer), J.G. Jones, Lee Bermejo (illustrations)

Title: Before Watchmen: Comedian/Rorschach

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 256

Thank gods for libraries! Because if I’d bought this, driven by nostalgia, authors’ fame, or some misplaced need for adventure, or a revisit of the universe before HBO’s TV series scheduled for next year, I’d have been furious. All right, I knew the Watchmen prequels were a shameless money grab, there was no doubt about it. But I also hoped for some kind of tribute, a homage, or a thoughtful reimagining of the ideas and social commentary presented by Moore and Gibbons in the story and characters from Watchmen.

Watchmen

Need I say more? I probably ought to 😉 So, first things first, Moore’s and Gibbons’ Watchmen are on my list of favorite graphic novels of all time. Gritty, subversive, digging deep into the American superhero mythos and collective identity, Watchmen became at once the grist and the mill of the pop culture, simultaneously giving it lasting imagery and the tools to analyze it. We should probably do a Two-shot post on Watchmen here at Re-Enchantment, but because our views on the work of Moore and Gibbons are very similar, there wouldn’t be much suspense or tension. We might only have some differences of opinion regarding certain characters and plot devices (the fated pirate story, ekhm…), but our overall reviews would be quite alike.

I have been circling around Before Watchmen for a while now, at first dismissing this idea as a blatant and ill-conceived effort to capitalize on Moore and Gibbons’ work – and DC’s already done more than enough bad things in this regard. However, when I saw the Comedian/Rorschach book in my local library, I decided to finally give it a chance and overcome my prejudice – after all, I thought, Azzarello of 100 Bullets and Batman fame wouldn’t butcher Moore’s ideas.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

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The Women in the World of Witcher – Extended Edition

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The Witcher! Monster-slaying character from computer games, soon to be made into a Netflix series starring Henry Cavill… but, also, as more and more people in the English-speaking world begin to realise, a book series by Andrzej Sapkowski. Well, actually, as some of you might be aware, the books predate games by almost two decades. The Witcher saga, which gave Sapkowski World Fantasy Award (Lifetime Achievement, 2016) and Gemmell (2009), is finally fully translated into the language of Shakespeare, so it’s a good time to check it out before we get a chance to see the Netflix adaptation. One of the reasons it’s worth your time – and a good topic to discuss during Witch Week – is a multitude of female characters. Many of them are strong women, active, and extremely important for the plot, which is set in a realistic European-medieval fantasy world where gender balance is a bit more equal than in our history, and not only due to the existence of powerful sorceresses. And that is what we want to discuss today, for the general review of the series we invite you to go here. We will try to keep the text spoiler-free, at least in regards to the major events, as our opinions about major characters will be visibly informed by our knowledge of their actions and fate.

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Witch Week Day 3 – Re-Enchantment’s view on women of Sapkowski’s Witcher Saga

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We are proud to announce that our contribution to the exciting Witch Week is live, both on Calmgove’s and Lizzie’s blog. We strongly encourage you to go there, read and comment on what we believe to be a very interesting topic 🙂

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Someday soon, an extended version will be posted here, but don’t wait that long 😉

Thanks again for making us part of that fascinating event!!

Odds and ends

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Piotrek: As Ola recently realized, Re-E have just reached 100 subscribers! It’s even 103 now 🙂 Thank you all very much, it’s such a pleaser to see the audience widening… We’ve already had an anniversary post this year, but this is a nice occasion to give our thanks to all the people who, from time to time, spare us a few moments.

Ola: Yes! Thank you all!!! 🙂 We’ve also been recently nominated to The Versatile Blogger Award – thank you, Briennai/Alex! However, since it involves talking about ourselves, we’ll stick to our regular fare and keep reviewing books 🙂 Or else you all might just run away or fall asleep from boredom 😉

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Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone (2012)

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Shadow and Bone

Author: Leigh Bardugo

Title: Shadow and Bone

Pages: 358

After reading The Language of Thorns and finding it a light, well-written and quite entertaining read I decided to push my luck a bit and actually read the trilogy that The Language of Thorns is a spin-off of. I am not happy to say that I won’t be completing that task – the first installment of the series, Shadow and Bone, was more than enough for me.

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Witch Week is coming!

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Hi All,

As Halloween is coming, and with it all things magical and scary, it’s high time for some Samhain-related content! Lizzie at lizzierosswriter.com and Chris at Calmgrove were so kind to invite us to participate in a yearly blogging event, Witch Week – many thanks to both of you! This year the event runs from 30th October to 6th November and thus, besides Halloween, includes also Guy Fawkes Day :).

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This year’s theme is Fantasy and Feminism, and we at Re-enchantment decided that it’s a wonderful opportunity to take a closer look at the female characters in the world of Witcher. As you know, we’re both fans of Sapkowski’s saga, and we’re eagerly awaiting Netflix’s adaptation of his books to the small screen, hoping it to be more along the lines of HBO’s The Game of Thrones or the universally acclaimed games than the previous, horrible Polish adaptation.

Cool posts will be appearing throughout the week on both Chris’s and Lizzie’s sites, so don’t forget to visit 🙂 Our own discussion is scheduled to appear on November 2nd, and will be re-posted here on Re-enchantment a few days later in a director’s cut 😉 It shouldn’t come as a surprise, really, that our post was originally too long to appear in its entirety during the Witch Week event – we always write loooooooooong posts, especially the results of our discussions are lengthy, as each of us wants to have the last word 😉 But if after Witch Week you still are interested in the full effects of our collaboration, you’ll be able to read them here :).