Graphic Novels of Anita Blake

I have to say I really like Anita as a character. She is a strong female heroine with a tough personality. Though, at the same time, she is hard to figure out. Sometimes she is tough, and will tell the toughest vampire she's ever encountered to bug off, while other times she is scared and appears weak. I'm not sure if this is how she is portrayed in the novels as well, but as far as the comics, this is how I see her. I think maybe the author is trying to show her faults, as every hero/heroine is supposed to have. Though, sometimes I don't think it always works. In some situations she would be right at a vampire's throat with a knife, and other times she would give in and call them her 'master.' Perhaps, it was her intellect helping her through a situation, but still I didn't like it. As mentioned in class, she has this thing for penguins. I think this might be the author's way of showing her humanity, but I think it ruins the mood of the character. I think that maybe it would be okay to show the penguins while she slept, to display her weaknesses that she shared with no one. However, whens she wears the penguin outfit and goes out in the public with it, it seems to show her weaknesses to everyone and that seems to show more inconsistencies.

Another thing I could criticize about Anita Blake is that there were a lot of things that were not explained and it was sometimes unclear what was going on. There were many instances were there was a lot of dialogue, but you couldn't tell what action was going on while they were speaking. The movements might try to be shown, but still it was hard to figure out. Also, there was a lot of things Anita would mention in her dialogue boxes that just wasn't explained. For instance, I still am not quite sure what a 'gris-gris' is. I don't believe it was ever explained. A lot of times I think the author assumed that the readers knew what all these vampire/zombie-lore terms were.