New X-Men: Childhood's End Vol. 3 and, Also, Casablanca
So I got the vol. 3 trade of New X-Men: Childhood's End about a week ago, as I mentioned at the time. Now, you might remember I was a little disappointed with the second volume, as the first was pretty much all about the school's response to M-Day/Decimation and really fleshed out the world of the school, providing some really great insight into the relationships the students had with each other and with the faculty, and the formation of the core team, while the second volume focused much more closely on said core team and was kind of overrun with plot. And I wasn't really all that interested in plot. I'd have much preferred, oh, a six-issue long slumber party or something.
There's more plot in the third volume, of course, but it's nicely balanced with character moments. And we get to inhabit not only the school, but a lot of the corners of the Marvel Universe with which I was previously unfamiliar. Plus Iron Man and Ms. Marvel show up, and one gets a sense of how the arc fits in with the overall Marvel timeline, in particular Civil War.
Emma continues to have a lot of great moments, as she usually does in this series (even more so than Astonishing, I think). We see the different ways that the guilt that Scott mentions at the end of Torn plays out has its effect on her, and the knowledge that Cassandra Nova is inside her head throughout this storyline, whispering doubt into her mind, just makes the whole thing that much more chilling, I think. I particularly love the moment when Hellion says "I don't want to bury any more of my friends!" and that's all it takes--despite the danger, she opens up the part of his mind that controls his power in order to allow him to reach supersonic speeds (or more supersonic than his normal speed; I'm not really sure what Hellion's powers are). Emma's buried far too many students, too, as evidenced by the fact that she's currently being haunted by Negasonic Teenage Warhead and all.
The Cuckoos exist in this pretty much as an extension of Cerebra, but that is enough to earn them a few panels and teenagers being trusted with huge responsibility is one of my kinks (there's a reason why I'm reading this title).
And, erm, what really sells the volume for me is the memorial service at the end is the memorial service at the end led by Kitty (you can even see the Star of David hanging from her neclace). I'm sure for a lot of people the sentimentality might have been over the top, but you have to understand that I eat that thing completely up; the umbrella scene in "The Prom" always makes me tear up and the first time I watched Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights I was balling at the end. So I found the naming of the names very moving and poignant. It was nice to hear (or, well, read) Sophie and Esme being remembered, and, to be honest, the list is incredibly useful as a canon resource. If only I had it prior to writing "The Flower Garden (of a Vicious Ice-Cold Bitch)."
I also saw the ending to Casablanca for the first time today. I'd seen the beginning several times, but never managed to get to see the end of the film. I knew what happened, of course, so it's not like there was any surprise, but I just sat there and marveled at how iconic every single moment was. I've read Umberto Eco's essay on it as a cult film, of course, so that naturally influenced my watching, but every moment was just so--rich and thick aren't the right words, because I think it's less a feature of the text itself than what it has become. But the people who made the film were either very smart or very lucky.
(Honestly, I'd resisted Eco's reading of it as a cult film, because calling what's generally considered to be the second greatest movie of all time "cult" just seems strange. But it does seem to share that "either very smart or very lucky" element with a lot of other cult films, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show.)
There's more plot in the third volume, of course, but it's nicely balanced with character moments. And we get to inhabit not only the school, but a lot of the corners of the Marvel Universe with which I was previously unfamiliar. Plus Iron Man and Ms. Marvel show up, and one gets a sense of how the arc fits in with the overall Marvel timeline, in particular Civil War.
Emma continues to have a lot of great moments, as she usually does in this series (even more so than Astonishing, I think). We see the different ways that the guilt that Scott mentions at the end of Torn plays out has its effect on her, and the knowledge that Cassandra Nova is inside her head throughout this storyline, whispering doubt into her mind, just makes the whole thing that much more chilling, I think. I particularly love the moment when Hellion says "I don't want to bury any more of my friends!" and that's all it takes--despite the danger, she opens up the part of his mind that controls his power in order to allow him to reach supersonic speeds (or more supersonic than his normal speed; I'm not really sure what Hellion's powers are). Emma's buried far too many students, too, as evidenced by the fact that she's currently being haunted by Negasonic Teenage Warhead and all.
The Cuckoos exist in this pretty much as an extension of Cerebra, but that is enough to earn them a few panels and teenagers being trusted with huge responsibility is one of my kinks (there's a reason why I'm reading this title).
And, erm, what really sells the volume for me is the memorial service at the end is the memorial service at the end led by Kitty (you can even see the Star of David hanging from her neclace). I'm sure for a lot of people the sentimentality might have been over the top, but you have to understand that I eat that thing completely up; the umbrella scene in "The Prom" always makes me tear up and the first time I watched Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights I was balling at the end. So I found the naming of the names very moving and poignant. It was nice to hear (or, well, read) Sophie and Esme being remembered, and, to be honest, the list is incredibly useful as a canon resource. If only I had it prior to writing "The Flower Garden (of a Vicious Ice-Cold Bitch)."
I also saw the ending to Casablanca for the first time today. I'd seen the beginning several times, but never managed to get to see the end of the film. I knew what happened, of course, so it's not like there was any surprise, but I just sat there and marveled at how iconic every single moment was. I've read Umberto Eco's essay on it as a cult film, of course, so that naturally influenced my watching, but every moment was just so--rich and thick aren't the right words, because I think it's less a feature of the text itself than what it has become. But the people who made the film were either very smart or very lucky.
(Honestly, I'd resisted Eco's reading of it as a cult film, because calling what's generally considered to be the second greatest movie of all time "cult" just seems strange. But it does seem to share that "either very smart or very lucky" element with a lot of other cult films, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show.)