From Eroica with Love, v1
May. 14th, 2011 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraI am miles behind on book logging and have a whole host of half-done posts. So, this is about a volume of manga that I read last year, and is entirely for me.
When I heard about this series, I was iffy because of the shoujo art style. I had, at this stage, already bailed on a few other shoujo series and this seemed like yet another assortment of overly pretty men and covers I felt embarrassed toting around in public (I am aware this is my own issue, although society doesn’t help) and, in addition, none of my sources ever seemed to have anything before volume 7. On the other hand it is apparently a timeless classic and I had also already read and enjoyed fanfiction for it (this is mostly Yuletide’s fault, but due to various early adopters there is a limited area of crossover between Eroica and old-school slash fandom somewhere around The Professionals that I had also encountered), and so I eventually managed to order volumes 1, 2 and 3. And liked them. And then CMX closed down and in a fit of rather expensive acquisitiveness I ordered the next ten, most of which I still haven’t read yet, but I grabbed them out of my house during my recently allotted forty minutes with a suitcase and Civil Defence, so here you go. I'll recap the first three, and then plunge headlong into the new stuff.
Volume one is an interesting example of the advantages and disadvantages of serial story-telling. On the one hand, you get ongoing feedback on your story and can change it without wasting vast amounts of time on disliked characters; on the other, these disliked characters cannot be edited out from your already published work. So this series starts off with three improbably named psychic teenagers (Leopard Solid. Sugar Plum. Caesar Gabriel), who were probably planning on fighting crime in a fairly obvious fashion, when Earl Dorian Red Gloria (Eroica), the notorious international art thief, shows up in impeccable late 70s fashion (he is modelled on Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin and yes, he has his own blimp) and runs away with the narrative. The second chapter in the first volume introduces the ideal antagonist for Eroica, Major Klaus von dem Eberbach, an intelligence officer for NATO, and although Caesar lingers on for a bit (the Earl hits on him, he takes to his bed in shock with a book titled “How to deal with unwanted gay advances”, and then the two of them end up snogging in matching drainpipe jeans after quoting Catullus, although they are then tragically separated etc etc), the psychic teens otherwise drop out completely, unlamented.
What you end up with is the Major, doggedly and rather tactlessly doing his job despite an alphabetical series of incompetent subordinates and the distractions posed by Dorian, with their various plans intersecting in narratively useful ways. This volume, for example, takes off when the Earl escapes with Caesar in a Lamborghini, and Klaus promptly chases him down the autobahn in a tank; which, inevitably, leads to them all stranded on an island in the North Sea, with the Earl and Klaus hugging a hypothermic Caesar between them and singing WWII German tank songs in gothic font. Once this is sorted, the next chapter has the Major seeking to retrieve microfilm (this is all gorgeously period) from where it has been hurriedly hidden under the skirt of a statue of Achilles (“You mean a *khiton*”, Klaus says disparagingly, gritting his teeth on yet another cigarette); unfortunately, Dorian also has plans for the statue, but when it is shipped it from the UK to France after Dorian steals it, the liner it is on is sea-jacked, and the Italian government is reluctant to pay the demanded ransom (“Save the proletariat instead of a luxury liner!” a protest sign reads), so Klaus and Dorian are forced to team up to find the statue. The beginning, obviously, of a beautiful friendship.
When I heard about this series, I was iffy because of the shoujo art style. I had, at this stage, already bailed on a few other shoujo series and this seemed like yet another assortment of overly pretty men and covers I felt embarrassed toting around in public (I am aware this is my own issue, although society doesn’t help) and, in addition, none of my sources ever seemed to have anything before volume 7. On the other hand it is apparently a timeless classic and I had also already read and enjoyed fanfiction for it (this is mostly Yuletide’s fault, but due to various early adopters there is a limited area of crossover between Eroica and old-school slash fandom somewhere around The Professionals that I had also encountered), and so I eventually managed to order volumes 1, 2 and 3. And liked them. And then CMX closed down and in a fit of rather expensive acquisitiveness I ordered the next ten, most of which I still haven’t read yet, but I grabbed them out of my house during my recently allotted forty minutes with a suitcase and Civil Defence, so here you go. I'll recap the first three, and then plunge headlong into the new stuff.
Volume one is an interesting example of the advantages and disadvantages of serial story-telling. On the one hand, you get ongoing feedback on your story and can change it without wasting vast amounts of time on disliked characters; on the other, these disliked characters cannot be edited out from your already published work. So this series starts off with three improbably named psychic teenagers (Leopard Solid. Sugar Plum. Caesar Gabriel), who were probably planning on fighting crime in a fairly obvious fashion, when Earl Dorian Red Gloria (Eroica), the notorious international art thief, shows up in impeccable late 70s fashion (he is modelled on Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin and yes, he has his own blimp) and runs away with the narrative. The second chapter in the first volume introduces the ideal antagonist for Eroica, Major Klaus von dem Eberbach, an intelligence officer for NATO, and although Caesar lingers on for a bit (the Earl hits on him, he takes to his bed in shock with a book titled “How to deal with unwanted gay advances”, and then the two of them end up snogging in matching drainpipe jeans after quoting Catullus, although they are then tragically separated etc etc), the psychic teens otherwise drop out completely, unlamented.
What you end up with is the Major, doggedly and rather tactlessly doing his job despite an alphabetical series of incompetent subordinates and the distractions posed by Dorian, with their various plans intersecting in narratively useful ways. This volume, for example, takes off when the Earl escapes with Caesar in a Lamborghini, and Klaus promptly chases him down the autobahn in a tank; which, inevitably, leads to them all stranded on an island in the North Sea, with the Earl and Klaus hugging a hypothermic Caesar between them and singing WWII German tank songs in gothic font. Once this is sorted, the next chapter has the Major seeking to retrieve microfilm (this is all gorgeously period) from where it has been hurriedly hidden under the skirt of a statue of Achilles (“You mean a *khiton*”, Klaus says disparagingly, gritting his teeth on yet another cigarette); unfortunately, Dorian also has plans for the statue, but when it is shipped it from the UK to France after Dorian steals it, the liner it is on is sea-jacked, and the Italian government is reluctant to pay the demanded ransom (“Save the proletariat instead of a luxury liner!” a protest sign reads), so Klaus and Dorian are forced to team up to find the statue. The beginning, obviously, of a beautiful friendship.
