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Hey Kids! Comics!
Just read JLA #100.
Aaaahhh. That's better.
Claremont is gone, having pimped his fucking book, and the book is immediately approx. six hundred percent better. The dialogue is natural, even after you spot the "twist" and go back and read it all again from a new perspective. (I spotted it about a third of the way through, though mostly through meta-reasoning and attunement to narrative devices - why, thought I, are they intercutting the events of Yesterday with the events of Today? Why not a simple flashback? Unless something happens at the end of Yesterday that casts a new light on the events of Today ... and given who's just turned up in the Yesterday thread... Then when Wonder Woman turned up at the UN, pleading for help because the JLA could not fight this new menace, it clinched it.) Even the throwaway lines in the background somehow clicked better than the dialogue in the whole previous arc, and managed to justify Faith's departure to that God-damn Doom Patrol book (if she's even going - everybody else has secret identities and such, can't she be in two books? Maybe she's going to commute, I don't know). All in all an interesting story of manipulation and subterfuge on a scale previously unheard-of. Joe Kelly shows Claremont how to do a launch tie-in right. I will probably buy Justice League Elite, especially since it appears to be a 12-issue Maxi-Series rather than a new open-ended monthly.
I really want to know more about the character called "The Hat".
In other news: Keith Champagne writes a reasonable issue of The Legion, though the opening was a little confusing - coming in running with no real re-cap makes it seem like you've missed an issue - and the whole story seemed to happen just to change Wildfire's costume and make him more tragic boo hoo. But still, an enjoyable issue.
I find that Travelling Man have indeed included Identity Crisis, as well as "Justice League: Another Nail", both of which I am enjoying and probably would have bought if I'd seen them in the shops. Not so keen on them doing it without asking, though. May have to have words.
Teen Titans (comic, not cartoon) is still good; Geoff Johns is still doing that thing where he manages to keep track of, and account for, all the histories. I don't know if he only takes series that he's a fan of already, or if he's just one of those rare writers who does his homework, but any writer who remembers that Bart Allen and Rose Wilson were briefly teammates following the Zero Hour event in 1993 is okay in my book. Plenty of writers are up on the books from when they were kids, but the specifics of the last ten years or so seems to pass a lot of them by. That particular Titans was not particularly popular, and tends to be ignored, but it was all good Wolfman. How many people remember that Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and Impulse were ever on the same team?
Speaking of Kyle, his swan-song is still going strong. Marz is telling a good tale, and it's good to see Kyle being written by somebody who remembers he's an artist. I'm loving the whacked-out constructs that Kyle forces out while he's woozy from a neurotoxin dart. Most Lanterns would likely fall back on simple beams or bubbles, but not our Kyle. He's still going with the many-fingered beasties, the psychedelic swirls, the freaky hallucinations made flesh. When all else fails he resorts to drawing a giant cartoon boy, visualising it from scratch - start with a simple circle, then guide lines for the face... good stuff. But maybe that's just me. I didn't used to like Marz, dismissing his writing as a series of soundbites loosely strung together, but either he's improved or my standards have dropped. Either way he's preferable to the last guy who, while not actually bad, didn't - I feel - get what Green Lantern is supposed to be about. He was all, "Grim and gritty, grr, make Kyle dark dammit," and I find myself not caring. The only thing that I find dissatisfying is Marz's apparent desire to "bring things full circle", with the reappearance of Major Force (Kyle's first Big Name tussle, and the man who killed his girlfriend). Jesus. How many times has this guy been killed now? I can recall at least twice by Guy Gardner alone. But I guess when you die that many times it becomes more believable, not less, for it to continue...
Yeah, speaking of: Hal Jordan's return is taking a circuitous route. The Spectre-based JSA arc has resolved with Jordan not, as I expected, returned to Human form, but rather resuming the mantle of the Spirit of Vengeance - he had previously tried to change it around to Redemption, but it just wasn't working out. Writer Johns sowed hints that maybe this is the actual path to Redemption, that perhaps Jordan was previously being selfish and doing what he thinks is right in order to redeem himself, at least on some level. By sacrificing his personal redemption - bowing to God's will, enacting vengeance in order to save his friends - he may well achieve it. Because that's almost always the case in stories. There's no indication as to where the Jordan thread will be picked up next; hopefully it'll be back over in Green Lantern. Because I am interested in how it's resolved, even if I'm more fond of Kyle than Hal.
heh. Spent some time poking around that "Artistic License" column after I found Kyle's page; it's pretty cool. He usually manages to come up with a design that carries a lot of the same "feel" as the original costume while being n times better (usually with sensible shoes, which is apparently one of the artist's personal bugbears). As well as a cool-looking Superboy I found this proposal for Mr Sinister. Somehow he's managed to make the old master planner look funky, without actually changing very much.
Ah - here, too, is a potted history of Ms Marvel.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ghostbritain recently asked me who this woman was walking around in Ms Marvel's costume, when the erstwhile heroine should by rights be wasting away in a hospital bed without a mind. Well, apparently her comatose period didn't last as long as was thought - Prof X fixed her head, and she's been bumming around space with the Starjammers, using a different name, costume, powerset and origin (!). She's now using the old costume with a different name (Warbird). AND KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE.
Aaaahhh. That's better.
Claremont is gone, having pimped his fucking book, and the book is immediately approx. six hundred percent better. The dialogue is natural, even after you spot the "twist" and go back and read it all again from a new perspective. (I spotted it about a third of the way through, though mostly through meta-reasoning and attunement to narrative devices - why, thought I, are they intercutting the events of Yesterday with the events of Today? Why not a simple flashback? Unless something happens at the end of Yesterday that casts a new light on the events of Today ... and given who's just turned up in the Yesterday thread... Then when Wonder Woman turned up at the UN, pleading for help because the JLA could not fight this new menace, it clinched it.) Even the throwaway lines in the background somehow clicked better than the dialogue in the whole previous arc, and managed to justify Faith's departure to that God-damn Doom Patrol book (if she's even going - everybody else has secret identities and such, can't she be in two books? Maybe she's going to commute, I don't know). All in all an interesting story of manipulation and subterfuge on a scale previously unheard-of. Joe Kelly shows Claremont how to do a launch tie-in right. I will probably buy Justice League Elite, especially since it appears to be a 12-issue Maxi-Series rather than a new open-ended monthly.
I really want to know more about the character called "The Hat".
In other news: Keith Champagne writes a reasonable issue of The Legion, though the opening was a little confusing - coming in running with no real re-cap makes it seem like you've missed an issue - and the whole story seemed to happen just to change Wildfire's costume and make him more tragic boo hoo. But still, an enjoyable issue.
I find that Travelling Man have indeed included Identity Crisis, as well as "Justice League: Another Nail", both of which I am enjoying and probably would have bought if I'd seen them in the shops. Not so keen on them doing it without asking, though. May have to have words.
Teen Titans (comic, not cartoon) is still good; Geoff Johns is still doing that thing where he manages to keep track of, and account for, all the histories. I don't know if he only takes series that he's a fan of already, or if he's just one of those rare writers who does his homework, but any writer who remembers that Bart Allen and Rose Wilson were briefly teammates following the Zero Hour event in 1993 is okay in my book. Plenty of writers are up on the books from when they were kids, but the specifics of the last ten years or so seems to pass a lot of them by. That particular Titans was not particularly popular, and tends to be ignored, but it was all good Wolfman. How many people remember that Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and Impulse were ever on the same team?
Speaking of Kyle, his swan-song is still going strong. Marz is telling a good tale, and it's good to see Kyle being written by somebody who remembers he's an artist. I'm loving the whacked-out constructs that Kyle forces out while he's woozy from a neurotoxin dart. Most Lanterns would likely fall back on simple beams or bubbles, but not our Kyle. He's still going with the many-fingered beasties, the psychedelic swirls, the freaky hallucinations made flesh. When all else fails he resorts to drawing a giant cartoon boy, visualising it from scratch - start with a simple circle, then guide lines for the face... good stuff. But maybe that's just me. I didn't used to like Marz, dismissing his writing as a series of soundbites loosely strung together, but either he's improved or my standards have dropped. Either way he's preferable to the last guy who, while not actually bad, didn't - I feel - get what Green Lantern is supposed to be about. He was all, "Grim and gritty, grr, make Kyle dark dammit," and I find myself not caring. The only thing that I find dissatisfying is Marz's apparent desire to "bring things full circle", with the reappearance of Major Force (Kyle's first Big Name tussle, and the man who killed his girlfriend). Jesus. How many times has this guy been killed now? I can recall at least twice by Guy Gardner alone. But I guess when you die that many times it becomes more believable, not less, for it to continue...
Yeah, speaking of: Hal Jordan's return is taking a circuitous route. The Spectre-based JSA arc has resolved with Jordan not, as I expected, returned to Human form, but rather resuming the mantle of the Spirit of Vengeance - he had previously tried to change it around to Redemption, but it just wasn't working out. Writer Johns sowed hints that maybe this is the actual path to Redemption, that perhaps Jordan was previously being selfish and doing what he thinks is right in order to redeem himself, at least on some level. By sacrificing his personal redemption - bowing to God's will, enacting vengeance in order to save his friends - he may well achieve it. Because that's almost always the case in stories. There's no indication as to where the Jordan thread will be picked up next; hopefully it'll be back over in Green Lantern. Because I am interested in how it's resolved, even if I'm more fond of Kyle than Hal.
heh. Spent some time poking around that "Artistic License" column after I found Kyle's page; it's pretty cool. He usually manages to come up with a design that carries a lot of the same "feel" as the original costume while being n times better (usually with sensible shoes, which is apparently one of the artist's personal bugbears). As well as a cool-looking Superboy I found this proposal for Mr Sinister. Somehow he's managed to make the old master planner look funky, without actually changing very much.
Ah - here, too, is a potted history of Ms Marvel.
ghostbritain recently asked me who this woman was walking around in Ms Marvel's costume, when the erstwhile heroine should by rights be wasting away in a hospital bed without a mind. Well, apparently her comatose period didn't last as long as was thought - Prof X fixed her head, and she's been bumming around space with the Starjammers, using a different name, costume, powerset and origin (!). She's now using the old costume with a different name (Warbird). AND KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE.
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