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beccatoriaOKAY SO. Here's some stuff I oughta have at least sort of talked about lately - sorry to bunch it all up in a big post, but cut-tags and giant underlined titles should help you find the portion of interest! :) Picking and choosing your lj-cut is HIGHLY recommended! :p
WEEKS OF CATCHING UP:
First up, TELLY!
ONCE UPON A TIME
So, I started watching this show. I actually...am kinda falling for it, which is strange since after watching the first episode my feelings were decidedly more mixed. And still are to an extent. Essentially, I think it deals in a lot of really high concept ideas that will require subtlety and skill to pull off with any degree of justice, and that might just end up looking really dopey if they screw up (issues of parent/child separation, adoption, found families, personality, genetic essentialism, free will, and that's just to start).
I just felt like it was higher concept than it needed to be and I wasn't really that sure that put an extra burden on the writing and performances I wasn't sure they'd live up to.
But frankly, as each episode goes by, it's not that I'm becoming convinced it's a mindblowingly fantastic show, but more like...it keeps not failing? It's like it's doing solid work every week and I haven't had a eureka moment where I declare my undying love for it and never look back, but I'm also leaving each episode with a little more faith. Or I'm just being drawn into the emotional web and leaving my objectivity behind. Who knows!
The point is, there's a lot to like here for a viewer like me. I really enjoy unusual family structures, mythic/symbolic/cyclical narrative conventions, stuff which is scifantastical, and leading ladies. And hey, whaddaya know, this show has all those things, including three women getting top billing, and a young boy being the fourth character in that quadrangle. Plus Rumplestiltskin as the most important adult male, who breaks convention by not being any kind of romantic interest and provides the tantalising possibility of being a narrative tool to allow more nuance in the morality of the Evil Queen.
So, yes. I am watching it. It is pretty. Eventually I would like to vid it, if it keeps on not letting me down.
PARKS & RECREATION
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chaila43 made me watch this show. THAT WAS VERY NICE OF HER.
I really want to have like, stuff to say? Beyond that I've seen maybe eight episodes now or something and I think they are all fantastic?
But apparently my brain processes this show in pure squee and all I want to do is yell quotes at you all. WHATCHA GONNA DO WITHOUT TIDES, PERU? WE GOT THE FRIGGIN' MOON!
Um, basically it is pure joy. Leslie Knope is so adorkable and geeky yet competent and loving. I never feel the show is being cruel when it laughs at her, it's being affectionate. I've never seen the show (and again, I've only seen like 8 eps!) succumb to cheap cringe humour or cruelty.
IT'S LIKE MAGIC AND IT WARMS MY SOUL. AND I WANT TO GO TO COLLEGE AND TAKE "WOMEN'S LASERS" TOO.
SUPERMAN: MAX FLEISCHER ANIMATED SERIES
I've just started watching this but it's fascinating. They're 10 minute animated episodes from the very early 40s, like only a few years after Superman was invented. So it's a real early piece of, well, geeky history, I guess. The great thing is that they're all in the public domain. This Handy Wikipedia Entry will not only give you some history, but towards the end of the article there's a list of all the "films" including links to an Internet Archive page where you can stream or download a copy.
They're really beautifully animated for the time - a kind of very early Disney style that's very strange to see with a superhero. It's also almost entirely silent. There's very little talking, a lot of background music and sparse sound effects. I think this spins out of the influence of the silent era. It's fond of the convention of using shadows to depict dramatic events, for instance.
This is also the first place you'll ever see Superman flying, I think because it was easier to animate, but it was first in a long line of things that would cross back into comics from their televised, derivative counterparts (including Batgirl and Harley Quinn off the top of my head?) It's such early Superman that Ma & Pa Kent don't even exist yet.
It's...just really fascinating and oddly soothing. It's a lot more interesting to watch than I thought it would be.
OKAY, ON TO COMICS!
WONDER WOMAN
So I already posted my feelings about the whole Zeus as her dad thing. I pretty much have those same feelings now. I was very pleased to see that there was no rape or dubious consent involved and that everyone involved knew what was going on. That could have been a dealbreaker for me. I also think that tying her more directly to her greek-god backdrop may insulate her from lesser writers with no idea how they should treat her or what they should write about. Honest, my first reaction to hearing about the clay origin was pretty much exactly what Zola's was - "Huh. Weird." Of course my second reaction wasn't to throw it away in disgust but to go, "Okay then, let's see how that works!" and it works just fine, but I feel compelled to confess that regardless.
Bottom line is, I guess, I genuinely do think that "demigoddess" is an easier and more relateable concept. Not because it's better, not because she suddenly has a Dad, just because it's a less challenging idea because people are more familiar with the concept. And there are positives to that (fewer floundering writers, fewer people going, "eww weird, too much thinking," and wandering away) and negatives (it's...well, less challenging, and on a topic it's probably a good thing to challenge people about). And does all of this come down to the fact that Wonder Woman "needs" a less challenging concept because she's already competing with, you know, being a woman? Oh, absofuckinglutely and it sucks, but it is what it is and it's done and it wasn't awful.
I feel more conflicted about the loss of Themiscyra and her people as a a family that loves and adores her unconditionally. I'm not ready to say that it's a terrible narrative choice - there will always be alternate takes on everything in a 70+ year old shared universe, this is just one more and it's not one I think is unthinkably awful. It even makes some sense given the narrative direction, and it's also not like Diana is suddenly reviled and the entire island is under the influence of Strife (who is hilarious by the way. I love how she just wanders around drinking and making nonchalantly appalling comments that cause things to fracture even more). But...I viscerally miss that feeling that Diana had a loving and supportive home in the same way I viscerally miss the Clark/Lois marriage.
But I am still definitely on board with this series. I'm learning that this is a controversial opinion, but I really adore this more warrior-based Wonder Woman. I really want gladiatorial acoutrements incorporated into her known accessories, I think it would do a lot to visually identify her. I will hate it if killing becomes in any way casual or standard procedure for her, but I do hold very dear to her character, that she is willing to do so when necessary and I think it is a fantastic and fascinating dividing line between her and Superman and Batman (and most other DC heroes).
The one thing I do feel that the series needs to address, though, is the fact that her iconography is very tightly bound up with the concept of truth. I think that Azzarello is trying to tell a very pared down story and in general I'm willing to wait for answers, but here we have DC's avatar of truth - the woman who never lies, who carries the ultimate avatar of truth at her hip - and she has just discovered that her own life has been entirely built upon a lie, that she has believe the biggest lie about herself. I actually think that's fascinating and narratively rich in its dissonance, but I do hope it's explicitly commented upon.
OTHER NEW 52 DC STUFF
I continue to enjoy most of the comics I'm reading on at least some level. I haven't wanted to drop anything yet (although I have stopped reading K's copies of the Legion comics in despair). I flicked through the Red Hood comics in the store just out of morbid curiosity and was surprised people found #2 better than #1 in terms of sexist bullshit because okay, it didn't do so badly on the Starfire front (because she had like three lines), but the fawning air hostess was just stupid and the cracks about the lolz-disgusting-fat-woman-smelling-bad-in-certain-areas was just so unnecessary it nearly made me actually put down the comic in surprise/disgust. #3 got an even shorter flip through so I'm not really qualified to comment except the ending made me laugh out loud because Jason Todd is such a precious manpainy douchebag, and I'm pretty sure that's not the reaction I was meant to have.
After defending it, I was pretty disappointed when Catwoman fridged a character I really enjoyed in #2. I was super disappointed in that, but still liked other elements and came back for #3. While I'm not defending the fridging (like I said, pretty annoyed), given that it happened, I was surprised at how well I thought it was handled in #3. I really felt like Catwoman was responding genuinely and in an interesting way. The way she loses it because, of all things, the bad guy killed Lola over things. Not money or drugs or territory, just stuff, just the pointless stuff she likes to steal for fun, because...that's all it is, fun, right? It was actually interesting to see Catwoman's worldview - the same one that allows her to shrug off her firebombed apartment as no big deal because it's just things, because it's just a bit of petty theft, it's dangerous but it's fun - so directly and powerfully challenged. And to see her get that and realise it's her fault. So I'm pissed that we aren't getting the great supporting female character I thought we were getting, and I hope that Catwoman's supporting cast expands from basically just being Batman, but #3 was actually really well done, I thought. A lot more raw and believable than I was expecting.
Demon Knights continued to be hilarious, brilliant fun all the way up until the slightly gratuitous shock ending of #3. But it's had so much great stuff, I'll wait that out. I guess I wasn't wrong when I said it might be the thematic replacement for Secret Six in the New 52, so I suppose now we need to see if they can balance the darker elements of that series with the, um, lighter twisted humour of the tone so far. IN OTHER NEWS, #3 CONFIRMS THAT SHINING KNIGHT IS WELSH. I AM PLEASED BY THIS. I FIND THIS RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS. And am not translating all her "untranslated" lines back into Welsh in my head. No siree, not at all. Srsly though, that's awesome. Also, I find myself uncertain of what pronoun I should use for the character. She's biologically female but lives as a man, and loudly rejects the notion that she is a woman, however, I'm genuinely unsure whether Shining Knight is transgendered or genderqueer and engaging in gender performance - from the little I've seen so far, the act of being recognised as a woman and then contradicting that expectation both verbally and in terms of dress/action is something that Shining Knight enjoys. Which of course does not mean that Shining Knight would not prefer to be referred to as "he", but I'm, um, not sure, so I guess I'll wait and see what convention the comic establishes and/or a clearer indication of the character's wishes. Cus honestly, if nothing else, I'm just not very aware of the accepted norms in this area.
However, I do think it's worth noting - is the T in LGBT finally getting some representation in mainstream comics? (I know that Shining Knight has appeared previously but briefly in supporting role in limited series and I'm uncertain whether the reasons for crossdressing were so explicitly tied to issues of transgendered/genderqueer identity).
I feel like with #3 of Batgirl I finally have a grasp on where the book is going and the tone, which is good. I still feel Mirror is a slightly weak villain, but I'm starting to really understand Babs' headspace. I know some thought it was out of nowhere, but for something that could easily have come off as arbitrary, I thought the entire sequence with Nightwing was quite beautiful and sad.
Finally, Batwoman is totally fucking gorgeous. I mean, the scene where she's drowning and remembering different points of her life, and the style is switching between the painted style the artist uses for Batwoman, the linework style used for Kate Kane, and the more brief, blocky, newspaper strip style used for Kate as a child. And it's a comic about the dance (political, romantic and familial) between four different women. How is that now awesome?! I still miss Greg Rucka's dialogue, but nowhere near as much as I thought I would, and I notice it less now than I did in the first issue.
Okay, that's not everything I'm reading, but it's what I felt like babbling about at this point.
MOVING ON! OLD COMICS!
52 (THE WEEKLY COMIC FROM 2006, NOT THE RELAUNCH)
Okay, so, in addition to reading New Comics, I have been continuing to, slowly, read some Old Comics, including "52". Now, I gotta explain briefly what that was. About five years ago, DC did this whole thing called "Infinite Crisis" which I talked about earlier, someplace on my LJ, and didn't really think was that awesome cus it was just...so much stuff and so little meaning, plus it screwed with Wonder Woman, man! But anwyays, after that finished, every single comic jumped to "one year later" where things were all different and stuff, and they launched a limited series that would come out once a week (rare in comics), and run for a year, and it would detail what happened during that missing year. Also during that missing year, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (and many other major heroes) weren't active, they were, for various reasons, taking a step back from Heroing.
So it's this 52 issue series about a bunch of b-list characters, written by four different guys and drawn by a bunch of folks too, to keep to the crazy schedule, and frankly, it's pretty fucking fantastic.
Like, I went into it not really expecting to get anything out of it but marginal entertainment but ended up completely enthralled.
Unfortunately, at 52 issues, it's not a fast read, although I do think it's a fairly standalone one, as long as one's aware that there was some kind of giant reality-altering catastrophic world-breaking "event" that just happened and now no one knows what the hell to make of it or what it was and where the hell are the Big Name Superheroes in this time of crisis!!
It mixes wildly divergent stories that all feature b- or c-list characters, but represent all the genres of the DC universe. I'm probably missing some but off the top of my head there's Animal Man, Starfire and Adam Strange's cosmic space voyage, Ralph Dibney's fucked up demonic, mystical spirit-journey-road-trip, Booster Gold's scifi time adventure, Black Adam's smash it up top level superheroics, That Dude With The Pipe Who Invented The Metal Men And Whose Name Escapes Me being stuck on the supervillain island of insane inventions, Renee Montoya's noir PI street-level investigation of the Religion of Crime and John Henry Irons' ideological and technological war with Lex Luthor.
Which I'm sure all sounds like an insane mish-mash of crap and it kind of IS, except for all the ways that most of the plots begin to interrelate and cross paths and influence each other. Not every one all the time, but enough that it feels it matters, that you feel it is the story of a missing year as well as the story of these characters, but not so much it feels forced.
If I'm being critical, I guess that the Animal Man story felt less connected than most, and the Black Marvel family storyline was fairly brutally concluded in a way that makes sense, but still feels like something of an emotionally manipulative reset. However, the Ralph Dibney story was clever and strange and brilliantly sad in its conclusion, and the Renee Montoya story was just amazing and I'll talk more about it in a minute when I talk about her own mini series. Mix that with a bunch of other plotlines that certainly did enough to make me care about them, occasionally threw in a genuinely unexpected twist (Booster Gold's), and connected in cleverer ways than I was anticipating (not that I'm good at guessing that type of stuff) and it really is a cracking good read.
I was thoroughly surprised and impressed.
RENEE MONTOYA: FIVE LESSONS IN CRIME
Okay, so, like I said above, I was really, well, moved by Renee's story in 52. It was just such a redemptive, sad, empowering arc. When she's desperately trying to pull Charlie up the side of the Himalayas and just...GAH *flails*. It's such a perfect transition to her being The Question I can't even. It's great. I'll be really sad if she's not The Question in the New 52 anymore because it means this story won't have happened (which is fine, I can still read it, but it's beautiful), and if she ever becomes The Question again I doubt it'll be as good. She's so hard, and so lost, and so determined.
So of course, I went on and read her mini series which focuses more on her quest to investigate the Religion of Crime.
Frankly, and I hate to say this, because I generally love Rucka's writing and I know that Renee Montoya is one of his babies, but...it was a disappointment.
I didn't really learn anything new about the Religion of Crime (honestly I'm still not sure why they have werewolves, but whatever), and while the structure is hypothetically interesting - forcing Renee to experience each of their sinful commandments as she investigates them - it fails in execution. The only one that works is Greed. That was genuinely interesting, to characterise Renee's need to protect Kate as something she covets with no right, to be pushed into theft and lies in service to that, when Kate herself points out she didn't ask. It's tragic too, because Renee is so fucking in love with Kate Kane, and...I'm genuinely not sure quite the degree to which Kate loves her back. I mean, she does, I know she does, but also, I can see her with other people - and I think that's not entirely based on the fact that she has a new girlfriend in her own book either. But I think Renee might make do with drunken one night stands and meaningless flings for the rest of her life as she irons her not-good-enough shirt every time she sees Kate again and lies to herself about why.
So wait, where was I? Oh yes, other than that moment, the other "lessons" felt...forced or not genuine. Or like I wasn't learning anything about the character or the plot in a short mini series. They didn't function as short adventures. And then we end on a genuinely interesting cliffhanger that...as far as my brief investigations can tell, is not resolved? Or might be resolved as part of some other huge event? I dunno, man. I just...you can't LEAVE a character there. Plus it's just horribly unsatisfying to end the series just as it stopped dragging.
So yeah. I didn't like it much. This makes me sad. :(
ZATANNA
I read Zatanna's ongoing series. It only started in 2010 or something and it got canceled with the reboot (Zatanna is now in Justice League Dark) so it only had 16 issues. It was...kind of fun? I LOVED the setting with her as a stage magician in places like LA and Vegas and Paris, showing off actual skilled technical stage magic in addition to her actual magic. The adventures themselves were reasonably interesting (with the exception of the one that played on Palindromes which was hilarious and a very clever concept) with a strong supporting cast that clearly never got a chance to have their stories told (particularly Mikey who "magic won't stick to" and the police dude whose dad turns out to be that demon), which was pretty frustrating, to be honest.
Basically it was an average comic raised up to good by a fun setting and an usual "civilian life" setup that actually got some attention (the world-famous magician thing), but ultimately because it got canceled before half the long-term character plots set up ever paid off, it's kind of a frustrating experience.
AND NOW, AN AUDIO DRAMA!
BATMAN: NO MAN'S LAND BY GRAPHIC AUDIO
Okay, so, 10+ years ago, DC did this huge event thing where Gotham got destroyed by an earthquake and spent a year as a "No Man's Land". Honestly I could never be bothered to read it for a host of reasons not limited to the fact it sprawled through a gabillion different titles, went on for a really long time, and because K read some of it and said it was super cool at first but eventually started to really drag. So I skipped it.
But I heard that Greg Rucka had written a novelisation which I figured would cut through my issues with it being sprawling and spread out and had vague plans to read it someday.
Then I found out that Graphic Audio had made a two part audio play of the book.
Now, I would add that to anyone who did read the original, I have no idea how abbreviated this is from the novel which itself I know focuses on only specific parts of the story from the comics, in addition to adding greater focus on the police department. However, not having any preconceptions, I absolutely loved this.
Seriously, it was really, really good.
Nearly all the voice acting is top notch, the sound effects are really evocative and the tale itself is epic yet complete, there's a sense of story with no loose ends the way there often is when trying to navigate comic books. Characters have complete arcs. It's emotionally brilliant. I even enjoyed Batman and I hate Batman. I mean, okay, part of why I enjoyed him is because the story acknowledges all the ways he is unfair and cruel, and then pulls you in enough to understand why he's being unfair and cruel, but I never felt the book was saying to me, "this is why he's secretly a heroic and good friend," but rather, "and this is why he's better than the villains, but he's a pretty awful friend".
The voice actor who plays Oracle is...unfortunately one of the ones I'm least sure about. Fortunately, that means that I find her passable half the time (when she's being more, err, cheerful) and brilliant the other half of the time. The story about the legacy of Batgirl, between Oracle, Huntress and Cassandra Cain is really amazing. The reaction to Babs seeing Helena in the costume, Helena's abandonment of it, Batman's ineptitude in all things, Babs passing the mantle to Cassandra, but equally Cassandra's relationship with Helena; Helena's demanded but unnecessary contrition...it's all just stellar, stellar stuff.
The other thing I was impressed with was how pitch perfect Joker was. It's hard to know how much to play the humor - it's so whacked out it's often hard to believe that it's not (a) affected by the Joker or (b) affected by the writer, but this is a fantastic Joker and it shows the original introduction of Harley Quinn to the comics universe from the animated one, and it underscores exactly the truth of their relationship and why Harley is a nihilistic character who drew a brutal hand.
Two Face also gets a great turn and, hell, everyone does. The entire story of the GCPD - the desperate choices they face in such a situation, where they are literally reduced to gang-tagging their territory like everyone else but with a series of moral restrictions no one else has.
Just, seriously, I thought this was aces, I really recommend you listen to it if you are in any way interested in a story about post-apocalyptic, I mean, post-earthquake cut-off-from-the-rest-of-the-world Gotham and her inhabitants BREAKING YOUR GODDAMNED HEARTS.
...and that's it. I'm done. Nothing more to babble about!
WEEKS OF CATCHING UP:
First up, TELLY!
ONCE UPON A TIME
So, I started watching this show. I actually...am kinda falling for it, which is strange since after watching the first episode my feelings were decidedly more mixed. And still are to an extent. Essentially, I think it deals in a lot of really high concept ideas that will require subtlety and skill to pull off with any degree of justice, and that might just end up looking really dopey if they screw up (issues of parent/child separation, adoption, found families, personality, genetic essentialism, free will, and that's just to start).
I just felt like it was higher concept than it needed to be and I wasn't really that sure that put an extra burden on the writing and performances I wasn't sure they'd live up to.
But frankly, as each episode goes by, it's not that I'm becoming convinced it's a mindblowingly fantastic show, but more like...it keeps not failing? It's like it's doing solid work every week and I haven't had a eureka moment where I declare my undying love for it and never look back, but I'm also leaving each episode with a little more faith. Or I'm just being drawn into the emotional web and leaving my objectivity behind. Who knows!
The point is, there's a lot to like here for a viewer like me. I really enjoy unusual family structures, mythic/symbolic/cyclical narrative conventions, stuff which is scifantastical, and leading ladies. And hey, whaddaya know, this show has all those things, including three women getting top billing, and a young boy being the fourth character in that quadrangle. Plus Rumplestiltskin as the most important adult male, who breaks convention by not being any kind of romantic interest and provides the tantalising possibility of being a narrative tool to allow more nuance in the morality of the Evil Queen.
So, yes. I am watching it. It is pretty. Eventually I would like to vid it, if it keeps on not letting me down.
PARKS & RECREATION
chaila43 made me watch this show. THAT WAS VERY NICE OF HER. I really want to have like, stuff to say? Beyond that I've seen maybe eight episodes now or something and I think they are all fantastic?
But apparently my brain processes this show in pure squee and all I want to do is yell quotes at you all. WHATCHA GONNA DO WITHOUT TIDES, PERU? WE GOT THE FRIGGIN' MOON!
Um, basically it is pure joy. Leslie Knope is so adorkable and geeky yet competent and loving. I never feel the show is being cruel when it laughs at her, it's being affectionate. I've never seen the show (and again, I've only seen like 8 eps!) succumb to cheap cringe humour or cruelty.
IT'S LIKE MAGIC AND IT WARMS MY SOUL. AND I WANT TO GO TO COLLEGE AND TAKE "WOMEN'S LASERS" TOO.
SUPERMAN: MAX FLEISCHER ANIMATED SERIES
I've just started watching this but it's fascinating. They're 10 minute animated episodes from the very early 40s, like only a few years after Superman was invented. So it's a real early piece of, well, geeky history, I guess. The great thing is that they're all in the public domain. This Handy Wikipedia Entry will not only give you some history, but towards the end of the article there's a list of all the "films" including links to an Internet Archive page where you can stream or download a copy.
They're really beautifully animated for the time - a kind of very early Disney style that's very strange to see with a superhero. It's also almost entirely silent. There's very little talking, a lot of background music and sparse sound effects. I think this spins out of the influence of the silent era. It's fond of the convention of using shadows to depict dramatic events, for instance.
This is also the first place you'll ever see Superman flying, I think because it was easier to animate, but it was first in a long line of things that would cross back into comics from their televised, derivative counterparts (including Batgirl and Harley Quinn off the top of my head?) It's such early Superman that Ma & Pa Kent don't even exist yet.
It's...just really fascinating and oddly soothing. It's a lot more interesting to watch than I thought it would be.
OKAY, ON TO COMICS!
WONDER WOMAN
So I already posted my feelings about the whole Zeus as her dad thing. I pretty much have those same feelings now. I was very pleased to see that there was no rape or dubious consent involved and that everyone involved knew what was going on. That could have been a dealbreaker for me. I also think that tying her more directly to her greek-god backdrop may insulate her from lesser writers with no idea how they should treat her or what they should write about. Honest, my first reaction to hearing about the clay origin was pretty much exactly what Zola's was - "Huh. Weird." Of course my second reaction wasn't to throw it away in disgust but to go, "Okay then, let's see how that works!" and it works just fine, but I feel compelled to confess that regardless.
Bottom line is, I guess, I genuinely do think that "demigoddess" is an easier and more relateable concept. Not because it's better, not because she suddenly has a Dad, just because it's a less challenging idea because people are more familiar with the concept. And there are positives to that (fewer floundering writers, fewer people going, "eww weird, too much thinking," and wandering away) and negatives (it's...well, less challenging, and on a topic it's probably a good thing to challenge people about). And does all of this come down to the fact that Wonder Woman "needs" a less challenging concept because she's already competing with, you know, being a woman? Oh, absofuckinglutely and it sucks, but it is what it is and it's done and it wasn't awful.
I feel more conflicted about the loss of Themiscyra and her people as a a family that loves and adores her unconditionally. I'm not ready to say that it's a terrible narrative choice - there will always be alternate takes on everything in a 70+ year old shared universe, this is just one more and it's not one I think is unthinkably awful. It even makes some sense given the narrative direction, and it's also not like Diana is suddenly reviled and the entire island is under the influence of Strife (who is hilarious by the way. I love how she just wanders around drinking and making nonchalantly appalling comments that cause things to fracture even more). But...I viscerally miss that feeling that Diana had a loving and supportive home in the same way I viscerally miss the Clark/Lois marriage.
But I am still definitely on board with this series. I'm learning that this is a controversial opinion, but I really adore this more warrior-based Wonder Woman. I really want gladiatorial acoutrements incorporated into her known accessories, I think it would do a lot to visually identify her. I will hate it if killing becomes in any way casual or standard procedure for her, but I do hold very dear to her character, that she is willing to do so when necessary and I think it is a fantastic and fascinating dividing line between her and Superman and Batman (and most other DC heroes).
The one thing I do feel that the series needs to address, though, is the fact that her iconography is very tightly bound up with the concept of truth. I think that Azzarello is trying to tell a very pared down story and in general I'm willing to wait for answers, but here we have DC's avatar of truth - the woman who never lies, who carries the ultimate avatar of truth at her hip - and she has just discovered that her own life has been entirely built upon a lie, that she has believe the biggest lie about herself. I actually think that's fascinating and narratively rich in its dissonance, but I do hope it's explicitly commented upon.
OTHER NEW 52 DC STUFF
I continue to enjoy most of the comics I'm reading on at least some level. I haven't wanted to drop anything yet (although I have stopped reading K's copies of the Legion comics in despair). I flicked through the Red Hood comics in the store just out of morbid curiosity and was surprised people found #2 better than #1 in terms of sexist bullshit because okay, it didn't do so badly on the Starfire front (because she had like three lines), but the fawning air hostess was just stupid and the cracks about the lolz-disgusting-fat-woman-smelling-bad-in-certain-areas was just so unnecessary it nearly made me actually put down the comic in surprise/disgust. #3 got an even shorter flip through so I'm not really qualified to comment except the ending made me laugh out loud because Jason Todd is such a precious manpainy douchebag, and I'm pretty sure that's not the reaction I was meant to have.
After defending it, I was pretty disappointed when Catwoman fridged a character I really enjoyed in #2. I was super disappointed in that, but still liked other elements and came back for #3. While I'm not defending the fridging (like I said, pretty annoyed), given that it happened, I was surprised at how well I thought it was handled in #3. I really felt like Catwoman was responding genuinely and in an interesting way. The way she loses it because, of all things, the bad guy killed Lola over things. Not money or drugs or territory, just stuff, just the pointless stuff she likes to steal for fun, because...that's all it is, fun, right? It was actually interesting to see Catwoman's worldview - the same one that allows her to shrug off her firebombed apartment as no big deal because it's just things, because it's just a bit of petty theft, it's dangerous but it's fun - so directly and powerfully challenged. And to see her get that and realise it's her fault. So I'm pissed that we aren't getting the great supporting female character I thought we were getting, and I hope that Catwoman's supporting cast expands from basically just being Batman, but #3 was actually really well done, I thought. A lot more raw and believable than I was expecting.
Demon Knights continued to be hilarious, brilliant fun all the way up until the slightly gratuitous shock ending of #3. But it's had so much great stuff, I'll wait that out. I guess I wasn't wrong when I said it might be the thematic replacement for Secret Six in the New 52, so I suppose now we need to see if they can balance the darker elements of that series with the, um, lighter twisted humour of the tone so far. IN OTHER NEWS, #3 CONFIRMS THAT SHINING KNIGHT IS WELSH. I AM PLEASED BY THIS. I FIND THIS RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS. And am not translating all her "untranslated" lines back into Welsh in my head. No siree, not at all. Srsly though, that's awesome. Also, I find myself uncertain of what pronoun I should use for the character. She's biologically female but lives as a man, and loudly rejects the notion that she is a woman, however, I'm genuinely unsure whether Shining Knight is transgendered or genderqueer and engaging in gender performance - from the little I've seen so far, the act of being recognised as a woman and then contradicting that expectation both verbally and in terms of dress/action is something that Shining Knight enjoys. Which of course does not mean that Shining Knight would not prefer to be referred to as "he", but I'm, um, not sure, so I guess I'll wait and see what convention the comic establishes and/or a clearer indication of the character's wishes. Cus honestly, if nothing else, I'm just not very aware of the accepted norms in this area.
However, I do think it's worth noting - is the T in LGBT finally getting some representation in mainstream comics? (I know that Shining Knight has appeared previously but briefly in supporting role in limited series and I'm uncertain whether the reasons for crossdressing were so explicitly tied to issues of transgendered/genderqueer identity).
I feel like with #3 of Batgirl I finally have a grasp on where the book is going and the tone, which is good. I still feel Mirror is a slightly weak villain, but I'm starting to really understand Babs' headspace. I know some thought it was out of nowhere, but for something that could easily have come off as arbitrary, I thought the entire sequence with Nightwing was quite beautiful and sad.
Finally, Batwoman is totally fucking gorgeous. I mean, the scene where she's drowning and remembering different points of her life, and the style is switching between the painted style the artist uses for Batwoman, the linework style used for Kate Kane, and the more brief, blocky, newspaper strip style used for Kate as a child. And it's a comic about the dance (political, romantic and familial) between four different women. How is that now awesome?! I still miss Greg Rucka's dialogue, but nowhere near as much as I thought I would, and I notice it less now than I did in the first issue.
Okay, that's not everything I'm reading, but it's what I felt like babbling about at this point.
MOVING ON! OLD COMICS!
52 (THE WEEKLY COMIC FROM 2006, NOT THE RELAUNCH)
Okay, so, in addition to reading New Comics, I have been continuing to, slowly, read some Old Comics, including "52". Now, I gotta explain briefly what that was. About five years ago, DC did this whole thing called "Infinite Crisis" which I talked about earlier, someplace on my LJ, and didn't really think was that awesome cus it was just...so much stuff and so little meaning, plus it screwed with Wonder Woman, man! But anwyays, after that finished, every single comic jumped to "one year later" where things were all different and stuff, and they launched a limited series that would come out once a week (rare in comics), and run for a year, and it would detail what happened during that missing year. Also during that missing year, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (and many other major heroes) weren't active, they were, for various reasons, taking a step back from Heroing.
So it's this 52 issue series about a bunch of b-list characters, written by four different guys and drawn by a bunch of folks too, to keep to the crazy schedule, and frankly, it's pretty fucking fantastic.
Like, I went into it not really expecting to get anything out of it but marginal entertainment but ended up completely enthralled.
Unfortunately, at 52 issues, it's not a fast read, although I do think it's a fairly standalone one, as long as one's aware that there was some kind of giant reality-altering catastrophic world-breaking "event" that just happened and now no one knows what the hell to make of it or what it was and where the hell are the Big Name Superheroes in this time of crisis!!
It mixes wildly divergent stories that all feature b- or c-list characters, but represent all the genres of the DC universe. I'm probably missing some but off the top of my head there's Animal Man, Starfire and Adam Strange's cosmic space voyage, Ralph Dibney's fucked up demonic, mystical spirit-journey-road-trip, Booster Gold's scifi time adventure, Black Adam's smash it up top level superheroics, That Dude With The Pipe Who Invented The Metal Men And Whose Name Escapes Me being stuck on the supervillain island of insane inventions, Renee Montoya's noir PI street-level investigation of the Religion of Crime and John Henry Irons' ideological and technological war with Lex Luthor.
Which I'm sure all sounds like an insane mish-mash of crap and it kind of IS, except for all the ways that most of the plots begin to interrelate and cross paths and influence each other. Not every one all the time, but enough that it feels it matters, that you feel it is the story of a missing year as well as the story of these characters, but not so much it feels forced.
If I'm being critical, I guess that the Animal Man story felt less connected than most, and the Black Marvel family storyline was fairly brutally concluded in a way that makes sense, but still feels like something of an emotionally manipulative reset. However, the Ralph Dibney story was clever and strange and brilliantly sad in its conclusion, and the Renee Montoya story was just amazing and I'll talk more about it in a minute when I talk about her own mini series. Mix that with a bunch of other plotlines that certainly did enough to make me care about them, occasionally threw in a genuinely unexpected twist (Booster Gold's), and connected in cleverer ways than I was anticipating (not that I'm good at guessing that type of stuff) and it really is a cracking good read.
I was thoroughly surprised and impressed.
RENEE MONTOYA: FIVE LESSONS IN CRIME
Okay, so, like I said above, I was really, well, moved by Renee's story in 52. It was just such a redemptive, sad, empowering arc. When she's desperately trying to pull Charlie up the side of the Himalayas and just...GAH *flails*. It's such a perfect transition to her being The Question I can't even. It's great. I'll be really sad if she's not The Question in the New 52 anymore because it means this story won't have happened (which is fine, I can still read it, but it's beautiful), and if she ever becomes The Question again I doubt it'll be as good. She's so hard, and so lost, and so determined.
So of course, I went on and read her mini series which focuses more on her quest to investigate the Religion of Crime.
Frankly, and I hate to say this, because I generally love Rucka's writing and I know that Renee Montoya is one of his babies, but...it was a disappointment.
I didn't really learn anything new about the Religion of Crime (honestly I'm still not sure why they have werewolves, but whatever), and while the structure is hypothetically interesting - forcing Renee to experience each of their sinful commandments as she investigates them - it fails in execution. The only one that works is Greed. That was genuinely interesting, to characterise Renee's need to protect Kate as something she covets with no right, to be pushed into theft and lies in service to that, when Kate herself points out she didn't ask. It's tragic too, because Renee is so fucking in love with Kate Kane, and...I'm genuinely not sure quite the degree to which Kate loves her back. I mean, she does, I know she does, but also, I can see her with other people - and I think that's not entirely based on the fact that she has a new girlfriend in her own book either. But I think Renee might make do with drunken one night stands and meaningless flings for the rest of her life as she irons her not-good-enough shirt every time she sees Kate again and lies to herself about why.
So wait, where was I? Oh yes, other than that moment, the other "lessons" felt...forced or not genuine. Or like I wasn't learning anything about the character or the plot in a short mini series. They didn't function as short adventures. And then we end on a genuinely interesting cliffhanger that...as far as my brief investigations can tell, is not resolved? Or might be resolved as part of some other huge event? I dunno, man. I just...you can't LEAVE a character there. Plus it's just horribly unsatisfying to end the series just as it stopped dragging.
So yeah. I didn't like it much. This makes me sad. :(
ZATANNA
I read Zatanna's ongoing series. It only started in 2010 or something and it got canceled with the reboot (Zatanna is now in Justice League Dark) so it only had 16 issues. It was...kind of fun? I LOVED the setting with her as a stage magician in places like LA and Vegas and Paris, showing off actual skilled technical stage magic in addition to her actual magic. The adventures themselves were reasonably interesting (with the exception of the one that played on Palindromes which was hilarious and a very clever concept) with a strong supporting cast that clearly never got a chance to have their stories told (particularly Mikey who "magic won't stick to" and the police dude whose dad turns out to be that demon), which was pretty frustrating, to be honest.
Basically it was an average comic raised up to good by a fun setting and an usual "civilian life" setup that actually got some attention (the world-famous magician thing), but ultimately because it got canceled before half the long-term character plots set up ever paid off, it's kind of a frustrating experience.
AND NOW, AN AUDIO DRAMA!
BATMAN: NO MAN'S LAND BY GRAPHIC AUDIO
Okay, so, 10+ years ago, DC did this huge event thing where Gotham got destroyed by an earthquake and spent a year as a "No Man's Land". Honestly I could never be bothered to read it for a host of reasons not limited to the fact it sprawled through a gabillion different titles, went on for a really long time, and because K read some of it and said it was super cool at first but eventually started to really drag. So I skipped it.
But I heard that Greg Rucka had written a novelisation which I figured would cut through my issues with it being sprawling and spread out and had vague plans to read it someday.
Then I found out that Graphic Audio had made a two part audio play of the book.
Now, I would add that to anyone who did read the original, I have no idea how abbreviated this is from the novel which itself I know focuses on only specific parts of the story from the comics, in addition to adding greater focus on the police department. However, not having any preconceptions, I absolutely loved this.
Seriously, it was really, really good.
Nearly all the voice acting is top notch, the sound effects are really evocative and the tale itself is epic yet complete, there's a sense of story with no loose ends the way there often is when trying to navigate comic books. Characters have complete arcs. It's emotionally brilliant. I even enjoyed Batman and I hate Batman. I mean, okay, part of why I enjoyed him is because the story acknowledges all the ways he is unfair and cruel, and then pulls you in enough to understand why he's being unfair and cruel, but I never felt the book was saying to me, "this is why he's secretly a heroic and good friend," but rather, "and this is why he's better than the villains, but he's a pretty awful friend".
The voice actor who plays Oracle is...unfortunately one of the ones I'm least sure about. Fortunately, that means that I find her passable half the time (when she's being more, err, cheerful) and brilliant the other half of the time. The story about the legacy of Batgirl, between Oracle, Huntress and Cassandra Cain is really amazing. The reaction to Babs seeing Helena in the costume, Helena's abandonment of it, Batman's ineptitude in all things, Babs passing the mantle to Cassandra, but equally Cassandra's relationship with Helena; Helena's demanded but unnecessary contrition...it's all just stellar, stellar stuff.
The other thing I was impressed with was how pitch perfect Joker was. It's hard to know how much to play the humor - it's so whacked out it's often hard to believe that it's not (a) affected by the Joker or (b) affected by the writer, but this is a fantastic Joker and it shows the original introduction of Harley Quinn to the comics universe from the animated one, and it underscores exactly the truth of their relationship and why Harley is a nihilistic character who drew a brutal hand.
Two Face also gets a great turn and, hell, everyone does. The entire story of the GCPD - the desperate choices they face in such a situation, where they are literally reduced to gang-tagging their territory like everyone else but with a series of moral restrictions no one else has.
Just, seriously, I thought this was aces, I really recommend you listen to it if you are in any way interested in a story about post-apocalyptic, I mean, post-earthquake cut-off-from-the-rest-of-the-world Gotham and her inhabitants BREAKING YOUR GODDAMNED HEARTS.
...and that's it. I'm done. Nothing more to babble about!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2011-11-22 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 04:08 pm (UTC)I definitely need to find myself some Leslie Knope icons!
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Date: 2011-11-22 02:34 am (UTC)Also, nice to hear that about Graphic Audio. We distribute some of their audiobooks for the library market (haven't done this one, though personally I'm a fan of Greg Rucka's novels) and I do hear that they are really fantastic.
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Date: 2011-11-22 04:15 pm (UTC)Then the fourth episode wasn't quite as overall great, but had some really strong character moments for Emma.
The Graphic Audio thing was totally brilliant! I listened to another of their DC titles - one about Wonder Woman, though I can't remember what it was called. And honestly that one wasn't very good, but that was down to the fact it was a mediocre story, not the production values or acting quality. And No Man's Land, like I said, was just brilliant. Like good enough I'd recommend it to someone who's not a huge Batman or comics fan. Like, not to a person of no geeky persuasion at all, but I do think it stands alone really well and serves as a good introduction to a lot of the supporting cast of the Batverse.
I haven't read Greg Rucka's novels (though I hear they are good), but his comics are almost uniformly excellent (which was why I was disappointed in the Renee Montoya mini series I mentioned, cus it's a rare example of him missing the mark).
Seriously, though, distribute them with pride!
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Date: 2011-11-22 04:40 pm (UTC)Then the fourth episode wasn't quite as overall great, but had some really strong character moments for Emma.
YES YES TO ALL THIS. I love a good tomboy, but it's an overused trope and they actually made it work and it didn't feel like posturing or cliched territory. And I agree about the softness and the edgier parts of her personality both being in character. I'm ready to see more!
And Emma--while I was watching her give that snippet speech about fairy godmothers not existing to Cinderella, I thought it was a total Kara Thrace moment. Which, as you can imagine, is HIGH PRAISE from me. Hee. Again, it was not the most original dialogue/sentiment, yet Morrison delivered an authority to that moment that rang true for me.
And Rucka--if you'd like to give his novels a shot, Shooting at Midnight is soo fantastic. I think you'd really love it. Not just one but two fascinating and fantastic (twin) heroines. It's connected to his Atticus Kodiak bodyguard series, but was designed to stand-alone.
Here's a brief summary of it that I posted on my journal for an entry about anti-heroines a while back:
Bridgett Logan (of Greg Rucka's Shooting at Midnight): Bridgett drives fast cars and shoots fast guns and she's too hot for most men and women to handle (she's bisexual). She's a former junkie, who lives an enigmatic lifestyle, and her main role in Rucka's novels is as girlfriend to his hero, PI Atticus Kodiak (whole series is great by the way). But she's so much more than just the girlfriend, and in Shooting at Midnight she steps up and takes center stage for most of the action, willingly walking back into the drug life to help a friend because she made a promise. It's harrowing and the bonus is that her twin sister, a nun, is equally kick-ass.
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Date: 2011-11-23 08:38 pm (UTC)Thanks for the book rec - I may well check that out, especially if I can find an audio adaptation, but maybe regardless. That character sounds SO MUCH like the type of character he writes in comics it's hilarious. Fortunately, he also writes that type of character so well.
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Date: 2011-11-23 10:10 pm (UTC)I hear his Tara Chase/Queen & Country graphic series is fantastic too. He once said Katee would make a good Tara, which amused me because of the similarity of the character names.
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Date: 2011-11-22 03:05 am (UTC)Leslie Knope! You have a Parks & Rec tag! (Okay you have lots of tags, but still). The joke is her competence! The Ron Swanson Scholarship! The Big Three: Denmark, Botswana and the moon! All the things!
But also, why are you not here anymore? That part is sad. :( But Leslie Knope!
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Date: 2011-11-22 04:18 pm (UTC)I feel Parks & Rec deserves a bigger presence in my tag list. Possibly I should have tags such as "The Ron Swanson Scholarship" and "what are you gonna do without tides Peru?!" I WILL WORK ON IT.
But also, why are you not here anymore? That part is sad.
I agree. I keep thinking really hard in case it stops being true, but so far my success rate has not been promising. Leslie Knope is saving me from utter despondency!
I NEED ICONS.
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Date: 2011-11-22 01:05 pm (UTC)Mostly, *hugs* I've missed you!
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Date: 2011-11-22 04:19 pm (UTC)*hugs* I missed you too!
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Date: 2011-11-23 02:29 am (UTC)Nice to see both DC and Marvel represent
http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lio3w1Vo9g1qcev9fo1_500.png
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Date: 2011-11-23 08:48 pm (UTC)And that link is hilarious, though I'm wise to your evil game, and shall not be tempted to read Marvel! :p
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Date: 2011-11-23 03:18 am (UTC)I'm guessing you haven't seen Season 1 of 'Parks & Rec'? Because it struggled mightily finding it's voice in the first season and Leslie was often laughed *at* because she wasn't very bright.
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Date: 2011-11-23 08:45 pm (UTC)And nooooo, I haven't seen season 1 of Parks & Rec, but I have been warned against it and was told that it was kind of mean, and probably I would hate it. Which honestly, I heard before I'd watched any of it and I think it was part of what put me off just jumping in later because I didn't know if I wanted to invest in a show that I couldn't go back and check out all of, plus it just made me wonder how true it was that it was awesome now? So yeah, I don't think I'll be watching that, tragic as it is that there is now less Leslie Knope for me to enjoy... ;)