(no subject)
Aug. 14th, 2008 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prysmicdorkI am slowly flocking and private-ing bits of my journal, I think the public face is going to be fannish, with random bits of other public worthy squee, friends only for some real life stuff (I've made a filter for people who know me in rl) and private for others (this was prompted by rereading entries which now seem so blatantly young/depressed/etc that I'm not sure I'm super comfortable with having them public - not deleting them, but just shoving them into the closet for the moment, it does seem somehow journaling dishonest, but lj always walks a weird public/private line and having them out there tips me more toward discomfort at the moment).
I'll do one of those "this journal is somewhat friends-only" posts when I get caught up and post to that filter, on the off chance I missed adding someone (or there are multiple journals and I've added the wrong one).
Not that this will effect how this journal seems on the whole, as I am an entirely dismal failure at the whole enterprise anyway! (If they would only just make some kind of neural interface, the web would never be safe from my vast internal ramblings, esp. now with the swimming which allows for a vast distractionless opportunity to navel gaze, ha ha).
Recent Entertainments:
Runaways (the comic): Love it up through the end of Joss's run (v2 issue 30), but have reservations about the new team starting in Sept (even if Vaughn is up to his usual HORRIBLE tricks - how I have not forgiven him for certain things in Y, which I have still not managed to read the last issue of) so I won't be regularly buying that until I see how the new guys handle things (but all of the stuff previously published is gold, even the crossovers).
Wonder Woman (the comic): Started with volume three (whatever that means, it was the most recent of reboots), which started out horrid, nearly unreadable through several guest writers who had been brought in from the "outside" (tv writer, novelist etc), who didn't seem to quite get how to do modern comics except in a stupidly cheesy way (particularly the first guy, there were endless lines of dialogue of things like "but of course I am WONDER WOMAN" and endless iterations of the characters basic facts - I know the serial books struggle mightily with this because you never know which issue will be someone's first issue and you don't want to alienate them with a lack of information, but part of writing these books is maintaining that balance and most of the so called volume 3 issues I've read failed mightily with this.
Then came Gail Simone, like a breath of fresh, well written air and lo I read a decently written Wonder Woman comic that didn't make me hate every facet of her mythology and characterization and I almost cried! So um yeah, WW is probably joining She-Hulk and a very few other titles as comics that I actually shell out for.
Which are She-Hulk, Powers (I don't know if I even like it anymore, but I kind of need to see what happens to Deena, so), Kabuki (which is being published at a rate of about one issue for year, so I frequently forget about its existence, Astonishing X-Men (for Joss's run, but Warren Ellis is apparently taking over now, and given my fondness for his run on the Authority, I'm giving him a chance), Serenity (there is a new mini series out, but I haven't read it, but it's out and the covers made me cry :( ) and Supreme Power (if he ever puts out another issue). So yeah, not much.
I was reading Fables, because I really like the concept, and some of the execution, but great swaths of it piss me off, so I can't actually pay for it, despite my love for Snow, Bigby, Cindy and various others. It's the kind of thing I'd love to read in a class, to talk about the possibility of the stories it tells, as well as the sad, sad failures (oh Snow, how Willingham has marginalized you). If you like fairy tale retelling, check it out from the library or something, because intriguing yes, infuriating, yes (the basic premise is that characters from fairy tales have escaped into our world after their own worlds were invaded by a conquering army). The first part is a bit clunky, but the writing does eventually loosen up.
I'll do one of those "this journal is somewhat friends-only" posts when I get caught up and post to that filter, on the off chance I missed adding someone (or there are multiple journals and I've added the wrong one).
Not that this will effect how this journal seems on the whole, as I am an entirely dismal failure at the whole enterprise anyway! (If they would only just make some kind of neural interface, the web would never be safe from my vast internal ramblings, esp. now with the swimming which allows for a vast distractionless opportunity to navel gaze, ha ha).
Recent Entertainments:
Runaways (the comic): Love it up through the end of Joss's run (v2 issue 30), but have reservations about the new team starting in Sept (even if Vaughn is up to his usual HORRIBLE tricks - how I have not forgiven him for certain things in Y, which I have still not managed to read the last issue of) so I won't be regularly buying that until I see how the new guys handle things (but all of the stuff previously published is gold, even the crossovers).
Wonder Woman (the comic): Started with volume three (whatever that means, it was the most recent of reboots), which started out horrid, nearly unreadable through several guest writers who had been brought in from the "outside" (tv writer, novelist etc), who didn't seem to quite get how to do modern comics except in a stupidly cheesy way (particularly the first guy, there were endless lines of dialogue of things like "but of course I am WONDER WOMAN" and endless iterations of the characters basic facts - I know the serial books struggle mightily with this because you never know which issue will be someone's first issue and you don't want to alienate them with a lack of information, but part of writing these books is maintaining that balance and most of the so called volume 3 issues I've read failed mightily with this.
Then came Gail Simone, like a breath of fresh, well written air and lo I read a decently written Wonder Woman comic that didn't make me hate every facet of her mythology and characterization and I almost cried! So um yeah, WW is probably joining She-Hulk and a very few other titles as comics that I actually shell out for.
Which are She-Hulk, Powers (I don't know if I even like it anymore, but I kind of need to see what happens to Deena, so), Kabuki (which is being published at a rate of about one issue for year, so I frequently forget about its existence, Astonishing X-Men (for Joss's run, but Warren Ellis is apparently taking over now, and given my fondness for his run on the Authority, I'm giving him a chance), Serenity (there is a new mini series out, but I haven't read it, but it's out and the covers made me cry :( ) and Supreme Power (if he ever puts out another issue). So yeah, not much.
I was reading Fables, because I really like the concept, and some of the execution, but great swaths of it piss me off, so I can't actually pay for it, despite my love for Snow, Bigby, Cindy and various others. It's the kind of thing I'd love to read in a class, to talk about the possibility of the stories it tells, as well as the sad, sad failures (oh Snow, how Willingham has marginalized you). If you like fairy tale retelling, check it out from the library or something, because intriguing yes, infuriating, yes (the basic premise is that characters from fairy tales have escaped into our world after their own worlds were invaded by a conquering army). The first part is a bit clunky, but the writing does eventually loosen up.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 07:39 pm (UTC)I keep thinking this - it would be so useful! I have all these thoughts, then I finally sit down to post something, and I end up saying about a paragraph's worth of stuff and getting bored or forgetting the rest. ;)
Runaways is completely awesome, isn't it? I did prefer it before Joss took over though, I have to say. while his stuff was great, he changed some of the characters' voices in a way that I thought made them feel not quite like them. And yeah, never forgiving BKV for the end of Y - The Last man either!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 08:42 pm (UTC)Reading Runaways and then those first WW issues made the bad writing even glaringly worse, because Vaughn really is a really good writer, just, argh, his endings! (I've sort of come to terms with the Alex thing, but Gert on top of that! I mean, who else was going to be my identifying character? :( )
The bit before Joss's (and the crossovers with Young Avengers) were my favs, and I'm kind of shipping Nico/Karolina bigtime (the Xavin thing kind of bothers me, both Joss's "answer" about Xavin's gender and how the new guy Terry Moore is constantly referring to the character as "he" - Terry Moore gets more credit for being gay friendly than I think he deserves, his own series Strangers in Paradise had a lot of weird plot elements concerning the character's sexuality, despite the lesbian pairing that was supposed to be the core, they both had long and intense relationships with men that always seemed to get much more play, rather than the forever UST between them).
And heh, yeah, Joss tends to Jossize things a lot, doesn't he? And sometimes it's good when the characters don't really have such specific voices (X-Men) and sometimes it makes things a little more generic, when the characters were already so specific (Runaways). Plus I was a little eh on the whole storyline (I guess I prefer them in LA and/or struggling with the Marvel world, rather than kind of pointlessly outside that).
no subject
Date: 2008-08-16 02:13 am (UTC)And hee, Nico/Karolina for the win!
But yeah, the Xavin thing bothers me too. I was rereading Joss's run the other day, and then I went back an reread soem of the stuff immediately before that, and two things really struck me. Firstly, that I'd got used to the way Joss was writing them, and I was enjoying it, but that seeing how they were before, I found I really missed that. It's what you just said about Jossizing it, which I love when Joss is doing that with his own characters, but it really bothered me in this case, and I found I kept being all "Wait, he/she wouldn't say that!".
And the other thing was how much I didn't like what he'd done with Xavin. He seems to have simplified the whole situation, and given us an easy answer that feels way too easy, and it just doesn't work for me, because I really liked that they were playing up how complicated and sort of fucked up it was before.
I don't know anything about Terry Moore, so I'll take your word on it until I see for myself. I'm a bit worried about him taking it over now! I've heard of Strangers in Paradise but never read it. Would you recommend?
Ok, my comment became an essay, sorry! ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-03 10:43 am (UTC)I am still so bummed over Gert. And the worse thing is, Brian Vaughn is ALWAYS doing this, creating awesome characters that I love and adore and then killing them in ways that seem stupid and pointless and sour me on whatever series it is he happens to be writing (UM. I may still be excessively bitter about Y the Last Man D:) But admittedly I am not up on the new team (I think the guys who started right after Joss?) so maybe they've done something to rectify, I dunno.
Nico/Karolina vs. Karolina/Xavin was one of the storylines that drives me NUTS. One couple has awesome natural chemistry and seems like they'd be really good for each other, the other feels kind of forced and all over the place and includes some skeevy gender/sexuality issues and yet I have the feeling that Nico/Karolina isn't going to go anywhere (partially this argh is also based on the rumor that Terry Moore's run was going to have a male only Xavin, which is such a weirdness to me because as I recall Karolina does explicitly call herself a lesbian, I think? And thus having her involved with a character who identifies as a man is really, ugh. Which I felt less of when they were playing more along the lines of Skrull gender is weird and undefined and maybe either/or, which yes, Xavin is an ALIEN so why not go there? But I shouldn't be bad mouthing the new team without reading what they actually did, so.)
Um, not really? I dunno, Terry Moore gets tons of GLBT props for Strangers in Paradise and yet in the little of it I've read (a trade or two) the female characters spent more time being involved with men than each other and I think their relationship is often more of a triangle involving this one guy and I found the series to be too melodramatic and kind of a let down, but again, I didn't read all of it and you might take it differently, so if you do end up reading and liking it, let me know!
Actually the best lesbian comic I've ever read was called Dykes to Watch Out For, although it's a strip based comic, rather than issues/graphic novels. And I read it probably eight or so years ago (and many of them were written much earlier then that), so it might come off as a bit dated, but I remember just really enjoying it, beyond even the omg queer characters yay! (it's by Alison Bechdel, she whom the Bechdel test is named after)
And this rambling post wouldn't be complete without an attempt to pimp what I think is the best female comic running - Wonder Woman. Seriously, it is so so good at the moment and for the first time in the history of it's run being regularly written by a woman (Gail Simone, who is awesome) and it includes SO many female dominated storylines that I just chortle happily (and she has real friendships with women and is so brave and awesome and heroic).
ANYWAY.