And Now For Something Completely Different

I live in Canada, and do not understand local sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Everywhere/We Are The 99% movement. Canada has a shortage of workers (in the oil sands and mines, so they're cold and blue-collar and much less fun than protesting in sunny, gorgeous Victoria), and a dearth of corporate 'fat cats' controlling our economy.

If anyone can explain it to me in a manner that takes me from point A (American economic upset) to point B (global pro- . . . democracy, I think?) without undue rhetoric, I'd be much obliged.

In the meantime, I've been reading lots of comics. DC's relaunched universe, with The New 52, primarily, though also some of Fables. Fables is interesting, as it's award-winning, and has a somewhat-related TV series out this fall, Once Upon A Time. I find I like how much of the storytelling can be done through the purely visual part, and the many threads that can go on at the same time. There's not a heck of a lot of introspection, but it also happily lacks the sort of long descriptive paragraphs that drove me away from Tolkien, substituting gorgeous art.

Writing for comics is very different from writing prose. Warren Ellis and Neil Gaiman both manage both fantastically, though Neil Gaiman can apparently write for any medium he turns his hand to: the novelization of the mini-series he did for BBC, Neverwhere, evokes the same mood and imagery scene by scene. The audience walks away from both with the same feelings, which ought to be the aim of every translation between media (adaptations are tautologically different).