One Complaint

[DoomHat]

First off, I want to establish that by and large, I love the book. However, I would like to know if anyone else shares my feelings in regards to the first four or so chapters. Those feelings being disgust, loathing, revulsion, and any more potent synonyms there of.
It’s like Brian wrote the first 20 something pages when he was twelve, slept on it, and began anew when his skills as a writer matured without bothering to go back and do any revision.
Seriously, the only thing that gave me the will power to forge ahead to the good part was my ardent refusal to let thirty of my hard earned dollars and the hellish adventure that is any great distance traveled via the Austin public transit system go to waste!
I found myself rearranging sentence structure and replacing lines in my head as I read just to keep my eyes from rolling out of their sockets.

Huff, well now that’s out of my system... Off I go back and read the book again so that I might
a) see the error of my ways and feel the fool for ever doubting Mr. Clevenger’s mighty ways
-or-
b) feel my justifications magifed and put the book down so I can move onto some Bradbury… or perhaps “A Confederacy of Dunces”, as it has been often recommended to me.

[BlackMageFF1]

I thoroughly enjoyed the first chapter, but it all went down hill from there, up until "Driving Mr. Nuklear (Crazy)"

[Althane]

The first few chapters are of a lower quality than the rest of the book, but I assumed it was on purpose, with the changes in characters, like it was just a starting out comic book that wasn't quite sure of what it would be.

[Kurosen]

Yeah. I've said this before elsewhere, perhaps on this forum, but the narrative structure acts as a kind of history of the comics medium. It starts off kind of clumsy and goofy, but over time it grows into something that can support more complex characters. To what degree that "succeeded" is hard to say. In any case, it's rather stupid to write a book in a way that can intentially put off readers in the beginning, the very place where you're supposed to be roping them in. But, what the hell

[Sharmandra]

The Mechanikill fight was great, then it slowly dropped and slowly got better again. I got bored of Crushtacean after a while. Still the second best book I ever read though.

[Skyshot]

Just for the record, I've spent about ten years studying writing and developing my skills, and even mildly amateurish writing makes me cringe and die a little inside. I'm one of the pickiest people I know in that regard. Nuklear Age's opening chapters did not make me cringe and die inside, mainly because I got part of the joke. I didn't recognize the "history of comics" thing, but the "weakness" in the writing was obviously intentional -- it's the reason this strip and the one following are funny. You're supposed to laugh at the subtle self-deprecation.

In a way, I almost liked the style there more than the style of the rest of the book.

[DoomHat]

You know, I actually suspected that was the case, but disregarded the notion as somewhat insane for reasons Mr. Clevenger now acknowledges...

I guess I just underestimated his artistic integrity. Surviving that first stretch on into Benny’s really gave me a strange sense of pride as a True Believer. So I suppose that’s were the silver age is meant to begin.

Is there somewhere we can find this timeline? I’d like to know more about this symbolic development.

[Skyshot]

Wikipedia seems to have some information. And I wouldn't be surprised if Brian's written a summary article somewhere on Nuklear Power.

Basically it's Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, Modern Age. Also, you might find this quote informative:

Originally Posted by Kurosen

[Atomik Lad] has long hair because he is the foil to Nuklear Man. Nuke represents the classic Golden Age hero in all respects. Sparky is the Silver Age and more modern hero. He has longer hair, he has a Spider-Man-like outfit, his powers are random and strange instead of classical and archetypal. Sparky's hair is brown because Nuke's is blond. Sparky is thin/wiry because Nuke is large and in charge.

[Sharmandra]

I never caught on to the whole thing about Gold, Silver age etc. I loved Mechanikill because it was stupid silly, the restaurant was funny to an extent, Crushtacean was funny for like the first 3 times he was alive.

As i described it to my friend ( the numbers aren't exact, just approximations)

The first 50 pages are an introduction. The next hundred are funny. The middle is hilarious. The next hundred are a cool serious action.The last 50 pages are actiony heroic depressing in a good way. .

Thats not to say the end doesn't have funny parts or vice versa, it was just a general representation of the flow of the book.