I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Astropia was picked up by an American distributer earlier this year. My copy arrived a few days ago, and the story of a minor Icelandic celebrity who is assimilated into RPG culture was as enjoyable as I remembered. Now, would a region 1 distributer please license Faintheart, which is only available as a region 2 PAL disc?
Another recent arrival is Loituma’s Things of Beauty, which includes the “Ievan Polka.” It might sound vaguely familiar.
Well, the chick’s cute, anyway. But I’m kind of worried by that “Great comic book storytelling!” blurb. Is it that the storytelling is schlocky and the reviewer’s trying too hard? Or the storytelling is actually GOOD, and reviewer is condescending?
I have no idea what that critic meant. (Never take professional critics of popular culture seriously — e.g., who’s a better judge of anime, Charles Solomon or SDB?) The plot is nowhere near Alan Moore complexity, but it’s an adequate framework for the protagonist’s discovery that nerds are estimable people.