I’ll be the first to admit that I entered the graphic novel game far later than everyone else I know. Sure, I indulged in all the old superhero comics of old as a child, from Batman to Green Lantern, but never really got into them with the same fervor as my friends. With Watchmen, my curiosity was piqued – and now, I’m hooked.

In all honesty, my interest was partly driven by the soon-to-be-released movie adaptation. That seems to have given the story some legs, making it far more accessible to the general public; from what I can tell, everyone and their mother has a copy of Watchmen these days. I’m not normally one to jump onto these sort of bandwagons, but I was ultimately convinced by my friends that this was no ordinary graphic novel.

Going in, I had low expectations, most likely jaded by my childhood comic experiences. But it took very little time for me to realize just how wrong I was. Alan Moore’s narrative is absolutely amazing. The amount of depth he can fit in to each panel is constantly surprising. This is partly due to his parallel style of narration, which drives the novel. At many points in the novel, Moore follows multiple characters in multiple locations, intertwining all their experiences together through dialogue that curiously fits each and everyone at the same time. I’d go so far to say that this is what made the book for me; it’s just so damn well written.

What really confirm this are the documents Moore includes at the end of each of Watchmen’s 12 chapters. Each document generally consist of a few pages or clippings from some sort of publication or book in the Watchmen universe. Oftentimes, they supply a bit of backstory, enhancing what’s been conveyed within the chapter, and giving it a context. Other times, the documents serve to foreshadow future chapters. But what makes these documents so necessary and so intriguing is the amount of detail Moore puts into them. It doesn’t just seem as if Moore is including a number of different documents to further his tale – instead, he acts as a literary chameleon, adopting a new style – a new persona – for each of the documents he includes. It’s just so well done that one might actually believe these were written by someone else entirely; it means Moore’s doing his job as a storyteller. And it means he’s doing it damn well.

More so, the plot is equally as captivating. These aren’t your mum and dad’s classic superheroes – these are heroes with crushed dreams, mid-life crises, and countless moral struggles. This isn’t to say they don’t still kick some ass; instead, all these things add another layer of depth and meaning behind the action. It’s definitely a welcome change, and makes readers so much more involved – and oftentimes, sympathetic – with the characters Moore creates. While I’m looking forward to the movie, if there’s one thing I can suggest, it’s read this first. There’s just so much in Moore’s writing that can’t be conveyed on film, you’d be doing yourself a disservice not to read this first.

I really can’t stress enough how much I loved Watchmen. Everything about it was just so well executed, especially considering the limited experience I’ve had with the medium thus far. I think I’ve found my new hobby over the Christmas break.

I think you’d have to be a fool to believe that the internet has any semblance of privacy to it. Oral language doesn’t stick in the air – there’s no permanence to it. Once you take those words and record them in a concrete state, no amount of burying can completely eliminate their existence. You just have to know where to look – or, in the internet’s case, Google.

This particular topic was one point of interest for this semester’s final Journalism assignment, where I looked at both the advantages and disadvantages of the internet as a social medium, and whether it can ever truly replace oral communication. It’s the sort of thing haughty men like myself talk about when sipping Cognac and cleaning my monocle by the fire. Riveting, indeed.

That being said, I thought it incredibly amusing to see a forum post the other day, where the original poster posed a simple question: stalk me. By any means necessary, we were given permission to dig up whatever info we could about this person, going simply by their user name, and info previously posted around the fora. I think the OP was surprised to find me rummaging through their trash a short time later.

OP: Your subscription to National Geographic is expiring soon. And those chips are high in trans-fats.

Joking aside, I was honestly surprised as to just how much info I was able to uncover. But a short time later, I had posted said user’s full name, age, location, school, program of study, likes, dislikes, and email. Apparently, he really likes robots, too. And I all I had to go off of was a totally unrelated forum handle.

By means of smart Googling, it becomes child’s play to find the most detailed of information for almost any given person. Once you have their name, and possibly their email, you instantly have access to all their hotspots, all their identities. Everything about them can be pieced together into a nice little package – which may come in handy if I choose to date them at a later time. Kidding?

This is all information that, when vocalized, seems innocuous enough – disposable, even. While we may forget names and birthdays, likes and dislikes , the Internet doesn’t.

It puts me in a particularly difficult situation. Based on both my own opinions, and my choice of career, I think it’s important to have a certain degree of transparency, both in-person, and on the internet. On forums, I don’t care much for obfuscating my personal information, because I’d ultimately like to encourage people to talk and communicate with me. This in itself is one of the internet’s greatest strengths.

But what about the information not necessarily supplied by me? A quick Google on my own name shows competitive Cross-Country running results dating back almost four years. While not particularly interesting information, it could have very well been something far more serious. This is where the area of internet security becomes hard to deal with, since it’s information that is beyond my control. And once it’s there, it’s not so easy to get off.

For the most part, I don’t mind sharing bits of my life with the internet, as long as it’s me that’s doing the sharing. But at the same time, I don’t want such information to be abused. Obviously, there’s if the cyber-stalking thread is any indication, this is an obvious area of concern.

Unless you’re a lady, that is – I’m single.

This evening I had the pleasure of interviewing the wonderful Ryan North, author and artist Dinosaur Comics. For those that haven’t read it, it’s a rather humorous and witty webcomic, but one with a catch – the panels never change.

One might think this particularly restricting – almost counter intuitive – to the design of a comic, but after almost five years, North has proven he can be incredibly versatile within the confines of a static image. At first glance, the series has but three characters – T-Rex, Dromoceiomimus, and Utahraptor; but through the magic of off-panel conversation, everyone from Shakespeare to God have graced its plot.

I admit, I was nervous going into the interview; there’s me, a lowly, first-year Journalism student, interviewing someone who’s not only 10 years older, but has a degree and his masters – in computer science, no less. But as North put it, he’s just a guy, who happens to draw some pretty popular comics. And with that, the walls of apprehension came tumbling down.

Interviews, like relationships, go much more smoothly when you’re comofortable with the person you’re talking to. In this case, North was just the sort of guy I liked conversing with; incredibly knowledgable with computers, and technology in general, we talkeed everything from Project Wonderful, to gaming on the Wii. Throw in numerous amusing anecdotes on life and school from the both of us, and you’ve got yourself an exciting interview. Not to mention, it was just that cool knowing what makes the mind behind Dinosaur Comics tick.

I’ll be writing the full profile in the next couple of weeks, for a Toronto-based magazine and website known as FutuReale, and most likely posting it here as well. This is mainly due to issues with the way FutuReale displays their articles online, which stem from their tendancy to use a less-than-accesible, flash-based design for serving content. Posting here not only makes it available to webcrawlers like Google, but gives me the ability to syndicate it to the masses. My masses.

Stay tuned. Unless I feel the urge for more Thai food. The place we ate dinner was damn good.

Those who’ve read my Broken Social Scene concert review had the pleasure of viewing a few of the pictures I took that night. Initially, I was supposed to get a press pass for the show; two calls to Arts & Crafts later, and nothing materialized. In the end, I had to smartly hide my camera beneath my coat, effectively smuggling it into the show. Apparently, any camera with a removable lens is, by default, being used for professional – and potentially lucrative – purposes.

In smuggling my DSLR in, I was hoping to get some superior shots of the evening, in comparison to those wielding their point-and-shoots. A DSLR has some significant advantages in concert situations like these, making it far more ideal – in particular, vastly better sensors, far more suitable for low-light situations, and much better glass.

Yet, there was one downside to this flaw – my choice of lens. The 17-35mm L f/2.8 Canon lens is currently the best I have, and a very solid wide-angle lens at that. It would have been perfect for the show – had I remained at the front of the stage, before a number of obnoxious fans pushed me back. Now 30 some-odd feet back from the stage, that focal rage was no longer going to cut it, and the resulting pictures reflected that.

In the aftermath, it was actually one of the first times I missed having a trusty point-and-shoot by my side. In this sort of situation, I would have benefited from one feature in particular – optical and digital zoom. Even 30-feet back, I would have been able to get some fairly decent, close-up shots – a fair tradeoff for a bit of extra noise, I’d say.

My point is that it’s very hard to determine what sort of situation you’ll be shooting in at concerts. If all had gone according to plan, my position at the beginning of the show would have proved perfect for my 17-35mm’s focal range. Of course, from where I ended up, shooting with a range above 100m would have worked as well. This makes it very hard to determine what lenses are the best for a such a situation, and even then, whether an SLR is even necessary.

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My current love affair is a Canon 50mm f/1.2 L-series lens. I’m a sucker for both sharpness and depth of field, and this lens has a definite abundance of both. Not only would this get me some really superb and shallow portraits, but the f/1.2 would be absolutely amazing for indoor scenarios, when natural light is desirable. Of course, it comes in at a wonderful price tag of around $1,400 – as much as I paid for my Canon 30D body. Yet, it’s the absolute best Canon 50mm you can get, and it may prove better to save up a little longer for this, than going for Canon’s 50mm f/1.4 – which is four times less money. Yikes.

So, in the span of about a week, our government has fallen apart.

I spent most of last week working on final assignments for a number of my Journalism classes. Over a period of about five days, I didn’t sleep. Or if I did, it left next to no time for my regular news reading rituals. If only I could absorb current events by osmosis.

I woke up Saturday morning to find that Harper’s minority government was no longer. Instead, it was being threatened by some ungainly, Franken-political monster – a coalition government, headed by the bumbling Stéphane Dion, and the benevolent moustache himself, Jack Layton.

According to many people, this sort of action is just plain wrong – even illegal they say – with Dion simply capitalizing upon dissent within the House of Commons to make amends for his party’s horrible showing this past election. Whether or not this is true of Dion, the fact still remains – the creation of such a coalition government is not even remotely illegal.

Judging from both the countless Facebook groups that have popped up in recent days, and a number of numerous blog postings and letters to the editor, people simply have no clue how exactly our government works.

Firstly, much like the U.S election witnessed in early November, Canadians do not vote for their prime minister. It is, instead, elected Members of Parliament which votes are counted towards. From there, these MP’s participate in a confidence vote, which gauges support for the new Prime Minister. If there is not enough support from the House of Commons, the Prime Minister usually resigns. Otherwise, the power he retains is useless, without MP’s to support him.

In this case, the important thing to note is that a coalition government has only been proposed. Nothing will actually happen until the confidence vote occurs next Wednesday. Both the Liberals, NDP and Bloc are prepared to vote in favour of a coalition government, thus removing Harper from power. This is perfectly legal, and part of the way Parliamentary Democracy is set up.

What is potentially illegal, if not unconstitutional, would be for Harper to suspend the 40th parliament. This would mean a disruption of a Parliamentary Democracy, and allow Harper to retain power, until yet another election would be called. This essentially amounts to a decision by Harper to preventing the opposition parties from democratically gaining power.

There’s a superb article on the topic in today’s Toronto Star, and it would be amazing if everyone would at least read it, before passing opinions based purely on bias and personal opinion.