Amoras
Busy day, today! I’ve been reading a new comic book series the last year called Amoras. It’s a six book series that tells a Suske & Wiske story in a dystopian future. There’s time travel, crime, death, blood and a fair amount of cursing and swearing. Suffice to say, it’s definitely not meant for kids. I really like the storyline and how it looks. A while ago I saw on Facebook that the Stripmuseum (comic museum) in Groningen would show an exhibition of Amoras pieces.
Since I am now the proud owner of a museum card, I decided it was time to go see. I asked Gert if he wanted to come as well, but he declined. So, this morning I made my way to Groningen. I arrived around lunch time and felt a wee bit peckish. The Stripmuseum is located above the McDonalds. So rather than go look for a place, I just hit the Mac for a quick and easy lunch.
After, I got my ticket for the museum and started looking around. I began with the regular collection that was divided into themes. First there was a section on comic art used in music and theater posters, other promotional imagery and album covers. Then it led me chronologically through the development of comics in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Once through all that, you end up on the top floor where there’s space for the changing exhibition. Which in this case was the Amoras one. It was interesting to see the process. There were many storyboards, sketches, and line-art pieces from all six of the books. The only thing I thought was a shame was the order of display. They went mostly by sort of art, and then chronologically. So, storyboards book one, storyboards book two and so on, then sketches book one, sketches book two, rinse and repeat. I would have liked to see the order from idea to end product. So the storyboard for a page, then its sketch, the line-art, and then the coloured page. So you can really see how it changes before getting to its final point.
When I got out, I made my way to the centre of the city to meet up with Gert and see X-Men: Apocalypse. I’d heard some bad stuff about it, but I liked it. The build-up wasn’t always strong enough. I didn’t notice, for instance, that the end battle was the end battle until it was a good bit underway. And I would have liked to see a bit more detail on the origin of Apocalypse.
Then it was time for some dinner. We decided to go to the Frietwinkel. This is a fairly new place that does fries. It’s all about the organic and the fresh. They literally cut fries from fresh potatoes right there instead of using frozen pre-cut fries. And they serve fries with pulled chicken. Which is fucking delicious. The place also looks rustic nice with old stools, crates on the walls and such.
Right after that we went back to the Pathé. This time to see the Angry Birds movie. It’s not very good. The only thing I found quite funny was this one scene, a homage to the slow-down-time-in-the kitchen scene in the previous X-Men movie. And they also did a sort of homage to that scene in X-Men: Apocalypse. So that was a fun coincidence. Other than that, it’s a generic animated kids movie.
And not just a queue to get in the museum, no, the queue to get a ticket. Every minute or so, yellow-jacketed hosts would let another handful of people through to the queue at the door where they could go in to buy their tickets.
Disappointingly it was not allowed to take pictures in the museum. Not even just flash-less pics, no, not at all. This did not stop us from sneaking in a few phone pictures anyway.
After a well deserved break, we got back on the tram, the right one this time, and headed for the city center. From there it was just a few minutes to get to The Book Exchange. We dove straight into the basement where they keep the scifi and fantasy books. I picked out some Star Trek books and then went around the room alphabetically. I found several books that had been on my list, or are sequels to works I have. I found Elizabeth Bear’s first books (the Jenny Casey trilogy) that I’ve been wanting. I found the follow-up to C.F. Bentley’s Harmony and also the sequels to Robert Sawyer’s Hominids. I’ve been looking for these last two for ages! They also had a fun Stargate book, and two Kim Harrison books that I still needed. And, in a surprise, twist, part four in that trilogy I got at the local thrift store on Wednesday…
A quiet hour later, we both had our arms full of books and decided to call it quits for now. With packed bags we stood outside and quickly agreed to skip the American Book Center for today. We walked back towards the city center. Gert bought himself a pink waffle with sprinkles. (I tasted, it’s ridiculously sweet)
I met up with Jeroen near the station in Assen and we walked to the Museum. Along the way it started raining, and it got so bad we stopped for about ten minutes to hide out under an overhang in front of a realtor’s office.
There were many educational wall panels detailing mummification and its rituals through the ages, which was very interesting to read and see. The floor layout was bit weird as it all circled around which led to some confusion at some points which way to go and what we had already seen.
