Hate Crime Laws

So, originally, I was going to give you a background on Mormonism (the religion of the two boys who murdered Matt Shepard), but I realized that it might spawn the very terrible things that this play rallies against. 

So instead, I'm going to talk about the good things that came out of this tragedy: Hate Crime Laws.

When Matthew Shepard was killed (due to his sexual orientation), his murderers couldn't be tried for hate crimes.  Mainly because Wyoming didn't have any hate crime laws, and the federal hate crime laws didn't included sexual orientation.

I wasn't really sure if we'd seen a picture of him yet. 

But I liked this one, with him smiling.

It was a rough road from there on out for what has become known as the "Matt Shepard Act."  Wyoming, inevitably, didn't pass any hate crime laws, but they were split exactly even when one was proposed.  During Bill Clinton's presidency, an amendment was proposed to extend hate crime laws to include violent acts against homosexuals, woman and persons with disabilities.  Despite Clinton being in favor of it, the bill could not get past the House of Representatives.

The "Matt Shepard Act" was officially drafted and introduced in 2007.  It passed in both the House and the Senate, but President Bush said that he would veto the act, and it lost support and steam.

It wasn't until 2009, when President Obama was in office, that the bill really took off.  Obama supported (and eventually approved) the law and both the House and the Senate approved it with large margins.  Obama signed the bill on October 28, 2009, over ten years after the death of Matt Shepard.

The law now protects people attacked for race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability, amended from the original 1969 law.  This is the first law that protects the rights of Transgenders.

Review Me Twice- The Lesser Evil Pt. 1

I really like a lot of things about this book.  I like that it's in black and white.  It's very stark and makes it interesting because a lot of graphic novels are done in color.  I also like that a lot of the characters are very... alive.  They're stopped, but often in mid-motion, which gives you a good sense of how they move and act, outside of their words.  Sometimes I feel like GN characters are posed for every frame, but I never got that sense in this book.

However, some of the assets can be downfalls.  While I liked the black and white motif, it was very hard to tell the difference between characters for most of the GN.  It was very dark and shadowed and really made the whole thing harder to read. 

The drawing in it was definitely talented, but I feel like Smith's talent lies more in the backgrounds than the people.  There were some amazingly detailed drawing of cities and ships and all sorts of things.  And while I did like the "mid-motion" feel of the characters, they were also very blocky in a way.  (If you ever watched the show Reboot as a kid, Smith's characters drawings were very much the same feel, as if they could only move in certain planes.)  It doesn't necessarily take away any from the book, but it does encourage that "I can't tell the difference between characters" problem.

The story line is good too, though not my particular cup of tea.  It's very political and really shows the power struggle going on in this universe.  But the drawing gets in the way of this story line.  Since it's so hard to tell the difference between the characters, it doesn't help when you have so many of them.  And names weren't used that often, making it that much worse.  I do LIKE the story line however (and would probably appreciate it lots more if I were politically inclined at all.)

While the concept of this graphic novel was good, I feel like these are a few, but vital, reasons that are keeping it from being great.  Also, a side note, if you're going to read it, pick up a hard copy of it.  I think part of my "hard to see" problem may have derived from the fact that it was an e-copy of the book.

One of the most important things in designing/writing a graphic novel is layout. (Remember yesterday?) The juxtaposition of one thing to another makes all the difference in the world. Choosing whether to use a wide shot or a close-up or cropping certain things can be difficult. But Shane Smith does this very well. Many of his pages use the same format (four wide-length, short-height panels of equal size per page) but this gives the more impact to the pages that are different.

I agree with Cassy that his drawing forte comes in backgrounds, not in people. I sometimes got a weird Uncanny Valley vibe that you get from emotionless faces. (Sometimes I heard the dialogue in my head in the Xtranormal voices. That's not good. It's robotic and distracting.)

There was a great mechanism closer to the end of the book where a character is using a letter to express his feelings and also explain the next few steps of the plot. It was much better than, for example, just going through the motions of the narrative ("we went here then we did this then this happened and I told someone how I felt about it"). That was very well done, I thought.

This is absolutely not my type of fiction. I never would have picked this book up on my own. Yes, I like space settings, but not so much the political story lines. (I admit it: I don't like Star Wars. Sorry.) That said, it wasn't bad. It's a cohesive story with well-built characters (in the literary sense, not the visual sense, as I mentioned before).

I would like to take a brief moment to thank Shane for sharing his book with us. If you have published a book that you would like us to review, email us at ReviewMeTwice [at] gmail [dot] com, or tweet us @ReviewMeTwice.

Favorite Political Books

No! Don't run away! We promise not to get overly political. The reason we're talking about our favorite political books today is because this week's review book, Unwind by Neal Shusterman, has the (extremely politicized) issue of abortion at its core. "Unwind" refers to the compromise made between the two sides of the debate... but more about that on Friday.

My favorite political book is probably actually Wide Awake by David Levithan, but since it doubles as my favorite LGBT book and we've already covered those, I'm going with America: The Book by Jon Stewart. It was kind of a four-way tie, because I've read this, Earth: The Book by Jon Stewart, I Am America and So Can You by Stephen Colbert, and Colbert's children's book, I Am A Pole (and So Can You). Tough choices.

The best thing about this (and Earth) is the format. This book is in textbook format! I have thought for a long time that more books need to be written in textbook format. It's a convenient, effective way to present information that is improved by the perfect photo or infographic in just the right place.

The trouble with political humor books is that they can get outdated pretty quickly. Example: this book was published in 2004. Do you guys remember 2004? (Of course you do. If you didn't, you'd be either comatose or under nine years old, and neither of those groups are this blog's target demographic.) That was the year Cassy and I graduated high school and started college, so it seems like a lifetime ago to me. But even politically speaking, that was before a black American president was a thing. That was before Sarah Palin did... much of anything. That was the year Kerry ran against Bush Jr. That was only three years after 9/11. Okay, enough examples; it was almost a decade ago, you get it. My point was supposed to be, Jon Stewart is good at making jokes and commentary that aren't just timeless (or as close to timeless as you can get when your fodder is current events) but are also informative.

So what is Cassy's favorite political book, you may ask?  Cassy, who really has zero interest in politics and even less interest in reading about them?  Well, clearly my favorite political book is Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin.

Ok, before you get on my case say, "OMG, that's not political!  That's fantasy!" Well, ok, yes, technically this is a fantasy book.  BUT not all politics are necessarily American politics, or even real politics for that matter.

The general idea in GoT is that Cersei, the queen, wants to be in power.  She wants to control everything, which is pretty much the reason she marries her husband, King Robert, who controls all of the seven kingdoms.  Cersei's family, The Lannisters, are an extremely powerful and influential family, that is the power behind the power.  And none of them are really the people that you want to have dealings with.

Cut to the Starks, a good family who lives in Winterfell.  Eddard in the King of Winterfell and if Cersei is evil incarnate, Eddard doesn't seem to have an evil bone in his body.  He wants what's good for the kingdom and his family (all six of his kids and his wife) are just like him.  Working for the greater good.

There is intrigue and betrayal and everyone, everyone, is attempting to control the throne.  Control the throne, control the kingdom.  And as if the people IN the seven kingdoms trying to control it wasn't enough, let's add some Dragons.  Daenerys Targaryen is in the East, riding towards the seven kingdoms, ready to claim the birthright that was taken away from her.

This book, this series really, is all about who controls what.  It's all about manipulation and who holds the power and playing politics (after all, Cersei only married Robert so she would be queen, not because there was any actual love.)  It's all about who you know and who holds what position and who can and can't be trusted.  So if you think this book isn't about politics, you need to reread it.  You might have missed the point.