{"id":19750,"date":"2010-02-06T14:47:06","date_gmt":"2010-02-06T20:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/?wpsc-product=the-gypsy-lounge-by-jason-lex"},"modified":"2010-02-06T14:47:06","modified_gmt":"2010-02-06T20:47:06","slug":"the-gypsy-lounge-by-jason-lex","status":"publish","type":"wpsc-product","link":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/?wpsc-product=the-gypsy-lounge-by-jason-lex","title":{"rendered":"The Gypsy Lounge by Jason Lex"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This book makes so much more sense as one coherent story. Look, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve gotten to the point where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m fairly sick of most superhero comics. There are exceptions, of course, but not many. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m especially sick of most indie attempts at superheroes, as they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re usually so much like the real thing that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pathetic, or they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just parodies. Parodies were fun for a while, but they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re so easy to do and there are so many of them that you really have to do something different to stand out in the crowd. Anyway, all that being said, I was pretty surprised with how much I liked this comic. Scratch that: I loved this comic. Every once in a while I would come out of my state of awe from the art and read the dialogue, and then that would impress the hell out of me too. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s focus on the art for a second. I hope my crappy scanner does it justice, but what you have are fluid, cartoony characters combined with pictures. I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have thought that it would work, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incredible. The dialogue is as real as can be under the circumstances, and there was never a moment that I lost the impression that this could all be happening, which is saying a lot considering some of the circumstances. Jason says in the back of the book that this is something that he worked on for years, tweaking certain things, discarding others, building up others, and it shows. This reads like a labor of love and just about everything in it is done confidently, which makes all the difference in a book like this. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to do superheroes in this day and age you have to know what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing and it helps a whole lot if you have something new and fresh to add, and Jason has both things going for him. Have I mentioned the story yet? A young girl, the daughter of a failed superhero, decides that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tired of being poor and becomes a supervillain. She steals the assignment of an established supervillain because she figures the payoff will be bigger, but finds that she can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go through with it. This leads to her being targeted by every supervillain around, and the rest of the book is basically one long chase scene, but much, much more complex. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure how many more good things I can say about this. I really thought that I would be mildly amused at best, but this really blew me away. Did I mention the dynamic cast of characters, most of which are either still around or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153unaccounted for\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? I hope he keeps this up, and if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s any justice in the world doing so will make him rich and famous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"_wpsc_stock":"4","_wpsc_price":"13.95","_wpsc_special_price":"13.95","_wpsc_sku":"","footnotes":""},"product_tag":[],"wpsc_product_category":[4747,5701],"wpsc-variation":[],"class_list":["post-19750","wpsc-product","type-wpsc-product","status-publish","hentry","wpsc_product_category-comics","wpsc_product_category-jason-lex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/wpsc-product\/19750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/wpsc-product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/wpsc-product"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/wpsc-product\/19750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fproduct_tag&post=19750"},{"taxonomy":"wpsc_product_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwpsc_product_category&post=19750"},{"taxonomy":"wpsc-variation","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwpsc-variation&post=19750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}