17. Beautiful Lego

Book: Beautiful Lego

Author: Mike Doyle

Number of pages: 267

What I’m watching: TV: The League

What I’m playing: Skyrim

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            When I was growing up, nothing could make me lose all sense of time quite like Legos. Whether I was adventuring or battling with my band of Lego people or crafting some new design for a fort or flying car, I would spend hours playing.¹ I still have a bunch of Legos. My fiancé and I recently date-nighted building the Millennium Falcon set. So, a coffee table book of Lego art? I’m über excited.

            It’s hard to not just show a hundred pictures from Beautiful Lego and say, “Holy crap! That’s amazing!” But…

Holy crap! Can you imagine the scale of that sculpture? It’s a city of skyscrapers on a mountain surrounded by all those teeny village houses. The detail! It looks incredible. That is definitely worthy of the cover art. I also love Micah Berkoff’s NES.

He took something I love and recreated it artistically using another something I love.
            The book gives a survey of many different artists’ works and includes a few words from some of them about Legos. Its cool seeing all the different things people do with Legos: what they build, what pieces they use and how, the scale they use, their style. Ramón and Amador Alfaro Marcilla mention listening to music while crafting their Lego art and having that influence the piece’s “mood” (6). I totally get music playing during a longer delve into my Legos. Sometimes, the artwork can be a bit creepy, like one model of Shakespeare or the Marcilla Brothers’ “The Doll.”

The diversity in artists within this book not only demonstrates all the different approaches and styles of LEGO art, it showcases all the different subjects that people choose to LEGO-ify. Even if I’m not always crazy about the finished project, some of my other favorite subjects found in Beautiful Lego include Harley Quinn, Audrey II, The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, V, Bilbo Baggins with Gollum, Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse, Stephen Hawking, and these guys²:

            It’s also fun finding unique Lego pieces being used in the artwork. A glow-in-the-dark magic wand creatively becomes a star on top of a Christmas tree. Parts of one Bionicle warrior (I’m pretty sure at one point I owned all of them) help build an awesome-looking archer.

 

It’s like a Where’s Waldo!

            The only problem with a book of Lego sculptures is that the pictures only display one angle of 3-dimesnsional art. There’s more to see than can be shown by the pictures. Like in the sculpture “Stairway,” I found another picture of it online and learned the big guy’s got a hole going all the way out his back.

            There was a huge section in Beautiful Lego about spaceships. Unexpectedly, I wasn’t super excited by them. I was more interested in some of the cars. I mean, building Lego cars was the coolest! Wheels were the best.

Reading Beautiful Lego, I get the sense that the wide variety of Lego artwork in the book is hardly wide at all, but a mere tip of a titanic iceberg. Hell, I’ve built Lego art.

This was supposed to be a recreation of Notre Dame de Chartres (a modest one, because my sources were limited). But then I got pictures from the internet mixed up and based the face of the church off of Notre Dame de Paris. So it’s inspired by both. Whoops. I also like to create fantasy creature mounts for my Lego people.

            Like I said earlier, Beautiful Lego is chock-full of amazing pieces of art.³ Too many to show all of them, but there’s a really cool Pegasus, an adorably itty-bitty duck, and a guy vacuuming a ghost, because with Legos, you can build whatever you want.

Verdict (Is the book staying or going?):

 

 

Notes

1. Less fun was the huge amount of time it also took to clean up. Picking up a mountain of Lego pieces off of carpet was the worst.

2. I certainly wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition to appear twice in a row.

3. Or should I say block-full?

 

Works Cited

Doyle, Mike. Beautiful Lego. San Francisco: No Starch Press, 2013. Print.

 

Lego Artwork Credits

(in order of appearance)

Contact 1: The Millenial Celebration of the Eternal Choir at K’al Yne, Odan, Mike Doyle (2013)

Nintendo Entertainment System, Micah Berkoff (2009)

The Doll, Ramón and Amador Alfaro Marcilla (2008)

“Nobody Expects…The Spanish Inquistion!” Iain Heath (2011)

Family Portrait, Nathan Proudlove (2011)/Kathrienna, Eero Okkonen (2011)

Stairway, Nathan Sawaya (2009)

Ford Hot Rod, Dennis Glaasker (2012)/Solar Flare – 1960 Impala Wagon, Lino Martins (2008)

Cathedral de Notre Dame, Sam Shircel (2010)

Fire Dragon/Lizard-Rider, Sam Shircel (I Don’t Remember)

16. Knightfall, Vol. 1

Book: Batman: Knightfall, Volume One

Author: Doug Moench, Chuck Dixon, and Alan Grant

Number of pages: 635

What I’m watching: TV: Spoils of Babylon, Bones, 30 Rock, Community, Portlandia, The League

Movies: Constantine, Inception, The Perfect Host, Full Metal Jacket, Batman Begins, Pocahontas, Company (2011 Stage Recording)

What I’m playing: Bulletstorm, Oblivion, Rainbow Six Vegas, Iron Brigade, Flowerz, Journey, Skyrim

 

            I think I first heard about Knightfall from some Top 10 Batman graphic novel list on the internet. But it’s freaking Batman so it’s probably going to be awesome no matter what.

So, I already knew that this was the original “Bane breaks Batman’s back” story arc.¹ What’s lame is that the back cover references The Dark Knight Rises. You know what, not everything Batman is awesome. I’ll say it: I didn’t like that movie. Why the hell doesn’t Bane blow up Gotham once he’s got the bomb? Why does he sit with his thumb up his ass for months driving the bomb around Gotham? It made absolutely no sense. I’d have more to complain about but I haven’t seen it since theaters so I forget. Oh wait: Robin Drake?! Whatever…what I didn’t already know is that Knightfall (1993) is the introduction of Bane. That means Bane is younger than I am and that all the Bane episodes of Batman: TAS were some of the first Bane stories.

            Being the first story of Bane explains why Knightfall opens with a 50-page story of Bane’s whole pre-Gotham life. Born and hardened in a prison with a life sentence, Bane envisioned and strived toward a mentally and physically perfect self. So, originally, Bane was both a genius and a strongman. So often, I feel, the former gets forgotten.

In prison, he overcomes his fear, which is coincidentally represented by a bat. Bane hears about Batman from another inmate and is immediately obsessed with the need to take down Batman. I mean, I get how fighting Batman represents overcoming his fear, but I think having Bane’s fear be a bat is too easy.

            Well, it’s page 47 and I finally see Batman, and he looks awesome.

Sometimes artists get a little weird with their character depictions. Really, everyone looks great. Bane and The Bat’s first confrontation blew my mind, occipital style.²

Sometimes, the artwork is funny, too.

And yet, as much as I love the character Det. Bullock, what the hell is he wearing?

He looks like the lovechild of Dick Tracy and a clown. And speaking of clowns, Batman takes down some thugs named the Manklin Brothers. Are their first names Larry, Curly, and Moe?

            Anyway, Bane’s plan to defeat Batman is to loose all the Arkham villains out into the city. Batman then has to essentially run a gauntlet of rogues, wearing himself and his spirit down, allowing Bane to step in at the right moment and crush Batman. A smart plan? Yes, but kinda cowardly in my opinion, especially since Batman was already ill at the start of the story.³

            So, the physical book itself is a story arc built from several Batman comic series. Unfortunately, that means I’m picking up in the middle and I’m a little out of the loop on some things. Like who’s Jean Paul, and why is he hanging out with Robin?  It sounds like I missed Bane beating up Killer Croc and Riddler getting pumped up on Venom while fighting Batman. It’s not too much that I can’t follow, but they’re things I would’ve liked to see. At one point Batman mentions Vicki Vale like she died, but I looked into it online, and I guess he just dumped her. There are a handful of other characters that come and go who I don’t recognize: Film Freak, Cornelius Stirk, Lt. Kitch, Leopold, and this person who pops up:

I thought maybe she’s Batgirl. Turns out the thugs she’s beating up don’t recognize her either, so I don’t feel so bad about it. I wasn’t sure how far along the Batman storyline was in the early 90s. Was Barbara Gordon still Batgirl? Nope. She shows up later in Knightfall as Oracle, which makes sense because there were a few references to The Killing Joke which I picked up on. Speaking of being chronologically confused: with all the tension and headbutting between Batman and Robin, I was certain that Robin was Dick Grayson. Nope again. It’s Tim Drake. Dick shows up later as Nightwing. Going to back to the girl in purple and blue for a moment: looking at her makes The Hawkeye Initiative come to mind.⁴

Anarky pops up for an issue or two, looking like the Spanish Inquisition.

Bane sounds a little like Ivan Drago.

What’s more, near the end of Knightfall, Bullock references Rocky.

            In a nutshell, Bane’s gauntlet works and he defeats Batman by breaking his back but decides to let Batman live. That Jean Paul guy turns out to be Azrael, some kind of trained assassin from a religious order. Jean Paul takes on the Batman mantle to keep Gotham in order, but seems to be reckless and takes things too far. He builds some kind of super-suit to battle Bane. Meanwhile, at stately Wayne Manor, Bruce Wayne is recovering until he discovers that a close doctor friend and Tim’s father have both been kidnapped. He leaves the country on a search for them with Alfred. In a final confrontation, Jean Paul almost kills Bane, but leaves him for GCPD.

            Knightfall provides a lot of action, a great showcase of the rogues gallery and the Batman family, awesome art, and great stories. Zero sharks, though.

 

Verdict (Is the book staying or going?): Staying.

 

Notes

1. The cover’s kind of a giveaway, anyway.

2. Maybe it helps that blue is my favorite color.

3. It is kinda lame seeing Batman so weak right off the bat.

4. Look it up.

Works Cited

Moench, Doug, Chuck Dixon, and Alan Grant. Batman: Knightfall, Volume One.

            New York: DC Comics, 2012. Print.