Finally, something I've read that evokes some
true emotion.
Supreme Power #12, by
J. Michael Strazcinski was written well and its four concurrent storie-lines culminated brilliantly.
First of all, Strazcinski took advantage of the medium. Some writers just take a cinematic approach, which can be very nice (and one might even expect it from someone like Strazcinski, who conceived of and wrote much of Babylon 5), but it's great when a writer uses the intrinsic attributes of the form of the comic book,
words and pictures, to tell the story.
Basically, the comic's story unfolds from 4 different perspectives simultaneously using four different long horizontal panels on each page.
The main story (so far) of
Supreme Power is that there is an Earth just like ours. One day a superman-like event happens. A space craft appears in the sky and there's a baby in it, just like the classic superman story. Where it changes is that the government takes the baby from the rural family who initially finds him (-yes, Strazcinski even goes to this length of similarity, creating a more "what if" type story). The military raises the child and feeds him propaganda and lies to him in order to be able to control him. Eventually he catches on and leaves the government.
Meanwhile, 4 or 5 other people come out of the woodwork who also have extraordinary powers. They are all connected, somehow, by the initial superman-like event.
Meanwhile, the government has been experimenting with the alien DNA and in their infinite wisdom (Straczinski must have had our current administration in mind) decides to use people on death row for their experiments.
There is a successful DNA meld with one of the prisoners, who easily escapes prison with his new-found super-strength and he is now a super-powered serial killer on the loose.
This issue culminates in him (the serial killer) killing a prostitute out in some cabin in the middle of nowhere.
Anyway, it gave me chills.
Over the past month or so, I've also been reading
Mario Livio's book on mathematics,
The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World's Most Astonishing Number. I've finished it without once having the serious compulsion to write about it, which kind of attests to my overall take of it.
I agree that Phi (pronouced
fee) is indeed an astonishing number, but I think its story could have been told better.
After having read great books about science, physics and mathematics such as
Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and the End of the Universe, or
The Elegant Universe, both of which are written clearly and beautifully, I guess maybe I expected too much.
Basically,
The Golden Ratio felt like it was written with this formula: [interesting fact] "and then" [interesting fact] "and" [interesting fact]. There was no thread that kept me wanting to know more.
He spent a great deal of time debunking prior claims of the golden ratio appearing in historical art and architecture, such as the pyramids of Giza or in the works of my favorite abstract painter,
Piet Mondrian (I was kind of hoping Mondrian had utilized the golden ratio, since I eventually plan on having tattoos referring to Mondrian and the Golden Ratio, but alas, he did not). I would have been more interested in examples of those who did use it and the significance, if any, of those instances, but I guess he had to fill those 253 pages with something.
Ah well.
The following are the tidbits of information I found particularly interesting:
Pythagoras was a contemporary of Buddha and Confuscius. I find it interesting that the east/west dichotomy started so long ago. While Buddha and Confuscius were looking inward for answers, Pythagoras was looking at the outside world.
Plato imagined that all of matter was composed by small particles, and that new matter was formed from reactions between different types of matter. The specifics of this theory were all wrong, but the basic premise is fundamental to modern physics. Wow. Good job, Plato.
A relationship I found between my personal life and the Golden ratio is that the animal that symbolizes my birth zodiac, the ram, grows its horns in a logarithmic spiral (a mollusk also grows its chambered nautilus home in this pattern, as well as many plants' leaf patterns and the descending flight pattern of Peregrine falcons). Oh, so the Logarithmic spiral - what does IT have to do with the golden ratio? Well, according to Livio, they go "hand in hand." See the edges of a logarithmic sprial fit precisely over the edges of the infintely looping Golden Rectangle. If I had time, I'd fine images to show you, which would make it more comprehensible.
A quick explanation of the Golden Rectangle.
A golden rectangle is a rectangle whose sides are in ratio to one another in the golden ratio(approx. 1.61803). If you were to make an equilateral sqare out of the edge of a golden rectangle, the remaining part of the rectangle would then be golden rectangle. And you can do this process over and over until it's so small the natural laws of physics don't really apply anymore.
So, yeah, you can tell by my enthusiasm that I'm a little more into the phenomena of the Golden Ratio than the literary merits of this book.
I just started reading Colleen McCullough's The October Horse last night. I'm excited about that.
bhofmeister13