Comics! (I wasn't dead, I was reinstalling my Operating System & Vidding)
OH HEY THERE INTERWEBS. So I haven't been around much lately partly because I have been vidding like a crazy person to try and get a vid done in time to procrastinate and then panic about whether or not I want to submit it to WisCon (but don't worry, I've decided to - if I can stop fiddling with it), and partly because some software in my OS broke during an update and instead of trying fix it I decided to upgrade to the newly released long-term support version because I thought, hey, my OS is years old now. This is the new long-term support version that focuses on stability and stuff. Now's the time! So I painstakingly backed stuff up, prepared, etc., and at first I was very pleased. The main issue I had to fix last time (stuff with my audio drivers) sorted itself out immediately on installation. I was so happy. Then I discovered it had shipped with a glaring problem for people with integrated Intel graphics cards whereby the eyecandy shiny desktop animations cause endless crashes and I'm having to use the boring 2D oldskool desktop with no fancy dock or desktop cube or multiple wallpapers or anything. *plays tiny violin* I'm mostly pissed about this because having investigated I know exactly what the problem is. I need the newest build of mesa, which they just need to pull over to Ubuntu and spin out as an update for people like me, but even though this has been identified for weeks no one has bothered doing it yet. I am...disappoint. And considering installing a virtualbox so I can experiment with compiling it myself, since it seems...super complicated to compile. :/
SO ANYWAY THAT'S ME.
In the meantime, have some thoughts on comics - spoilarz obvs:
1) Swamp Thing. Damn, Swamp Thing, you're...really good. Like good enough I now want to go back and see if I can get the Alan Moore run from my library in order to see who the hell this Anton Arcane dude is. Abby's dad, right? Speaking of Abby, I just...*flails* that was awesome. I love how this comic keeps setting itself up to do something faily then totally flipping it back around. Like, oh, great, her brother is the Avatar of the Rot, oh no wait, it's her after all! Oh, but that means she turns into an angsty monster queen Alec will probably have to kill or depower, hoshit no it doesn't, baby! And just...the art is gorgeous, the world is rich, it's creepy and compelling and Romantic (thematically, hence capitalisation) as hell. It really is just excellent right now.
2) Earth 2. I was originally really excited for this, then increasingly nervous as information became available, talking about the Earth 2 Trinity and how EVERYONE WAS DEAD JIM. I was...pretty irked at fridged Lois, fridged Amazons, etc. Honesty, having read it though, given that EVERYONE REALLY IS DEAD JIM, I'm sort of fine with that. There's a difference between killing Lois as a means to create drama and a darker, angstier Superman and killing Lois as (okay yes backstory to) part of the same story where you're killing Superman a couple pages in to create drama for the world you're building. Sure, I'm disappointed that I won't get to see kickass Superman/Lois scenes or non-sad-making Amazons in that comic, but it does neatly clear the way for a new cast instead of yet moar Trinity stuff. Cus honestly, how many Batmans do we need? So I'm way more all right with it than I thought I'd be. It's about everyone dying not about fridging people so the Trinity can become ultra violent and angsty like I was worried about.
Plus the final full-page image, when taken with the caption is hilarious. Possibly unintentionally. The Flash, lolz.
Plus the art is just spectacular. Nicola Scott needs to draw my life.
3) Worlds' Finest. Okay, potentially controversial opinion time. I'm...not really a huge fan of George Perez's artwork. I get that he's been around forever and is really important and stuff but I just...it's not a style I love. Or that I hate, I just...it's there. But I did enjoy this comic. I'm a little concerned they'll play out Karen's relationship with Michael as totally mercenary rather than more complex than that, but not overly given she is supposed to be heroic, and I'm interested to find out more about their missing five years, and what the hell will happen now Karen's resolved to start publicly tearing up the place...
Again, there's controversy in this one, namely the clarified death of the original Helena Bertinelli. I don't blame people for being upset about that. Quite honestly, given that I didn't think her imminent return was in any way likely because there was another Helena going around as the Huntress who was already using that name as an alias, I actually take a slightly different message from this. Before, there was every reason to believe that "Helena Bertinelli" never even existed and was only ever an alias used by Helena Wayne, making it weirdly coincidental for her to ever show up. Now we know that she did in fact exist as a real person. And given her head isn't shown on a pike, and all we hear is a wistful second-hand tale of how she died, I would actually argue that it's a lot easier to bring her back. It's as simple as suggesting she faked her death and went into witness protection for blabbing on her family's mafia ties.
That said, I don't think that's likely to happen any time soon, and as someone who recently discovered a love of Helena Bertinelli, I'm comfortable saying the loss of her sucks and I understand why people with a more longstanding devotion to her are devastated. I just don't think this additional piece of information is any kind of additional nail in the coffin - as I said, in some ways it actually makes it easier since it cements the fact she was a real, existing person at one point. Which is more than we can say for poor Donna Troy.
4) The Manhattan Projects. Okay so, I got the first one on the recommendation of my local comic shop dude, and I was...well, intrigued I guess. Bascially I see what the art is trying to do but I'm not in love with it and I kind of felt the "wacky weird science" undercut the darker, stranger future that was being hinted at through the interstitial excerpts from "The Recorded Feynman". But, I was also intrigued by the story - again something I felt was undercut by the overly atomic-steampunk-comic-book weirdscience of the background world - of Oppenheimer, on whom the first issue focused. That was a foreboding, troubling tale and I was...fascinated to see how it interwove with the emergent future of those textual glimpses in "Recorded".
So issue two comes out and while the weirdscience is toned down to slightly more acceptable levels, there's really nothing about Oppenheimer. The interstitials continue to be intriguing, but instead I'm stuck with a fictionalised Richard Feynman as protagonist, and dude's basically an egotistical milquetoast jerkface I could care less about and the story is suddenly not about the physics!horror impossible!future of infinitely branching Oppenheimers ushering in a weird, new era, but rather about how in the alternaworld asshole nazi scientists and asshole american scientists both want an ends-justifies-the-means future of shiny tech and space travel and honestly it just starts to feel ironically ("ironically"?) jingoistic in a way I feel isn't all that original.
Both are stories that tease a future that is strange and frightening, compelling, but ultimately - as far as we can tell - morally neutral, but quite possibly created due to horrors wrought in the present. This is interesting. But...it was far more intriguing in the first issue than the second.
I'll keep reading but I'm no longer as intrigued.
5) Saga, on the other hand, is straight up totally freaking awesome ot the point I don't even wanna talk about it, I just want the NEXT ONE. Somehow it's this fantastic dark/light scifantasy world where the ~horrors of war~ exist hand in hand with the Rocketship Forest which might actually just be a Rocketship Forest.
SO ANYWAY THAT'S ME.
In the meantime, have some thoughts on comics - spoilarz obvs:
1) Swamp Thing. Damn, Swamp Thing, you're...really good. Like good enough I now want to go back and see if I can get the Alan Moore run from my library in order to see who the hell this Anton Arcane dude is. Abby's dad, right? Speaking of Abby, I just...*flails* that was awesome. I love how this comic keeps setting itself up to do something faily then totally flipping it back around. Like, oh, great, her brother is the Avatar of the Rot, oh no wait, it's her after all! Oh, but that means she turns into an angsty monster queen Alec will probably have to kill or depower, hoshit no it doesn't, baby! And just...the art is gorgeous, the world is rich, it's creepy and compelling and Romantic (thematically, hence capitalisation) as hell. It really is just excellent right now.
2) Earth 2. I was originally really excited for this, then increasingly nervous as information became available, talking about the Earth 2 Trinity and how EVERYONE WAS DEAD JIM. I was...pretty irked at fridged Lois, fridged Amazons, etc. Honesty, having read it though, given that EVERYONE REALLY IS DEAD JIM, I'm sort of fine with that. There's a difference between killing Lois as a means to create drama and a darker, angstier Superman and killing Lois as (okay yes backstory to) part of the same story where you're killing Superman a couple pages in to create drama for the world you're building. Sure, I'm disappointed that I won't get to see kickass Superman/Lois scenes or non-sad-making Amazons in that comic, but it does neatly clear the way for a new cast instead of yet moar Trinity stuff. Cus honestly, how many Batmans do we need? So I'm way more all right with it than I thought I'd be. It's about everyone dying not about fridging people so the Trinity can become ultra violent and angsty like I was worried about.
Plus the final full-page image, when taken with the caption is hilarious. Possibly unintentionally. The Flash, lolz.
Plus the art is just spectacular. Nicola Scott needs to draw my life.
3) Worlds' Finest. Okay, potentially controversial opinion time. I'm...not really a huge fan of George Perez's artwork. I get that he's been around forever and is really important and stuff but I just...it's not a style I love. Or that I hate, I just...it's there. But I did enjoy this comic. I'm a little concerned they'll play out Karen's relationship with Michael as totally mercenary rather than more complex than that, but not overly given she is supposed to be heroic, and I'm interested to find out more about their missing five years, and what the hell will happen now Karen's resolved to start publicly tearing up the place...
Again, there's controversy in this one, namely the clarified death of the original Helena Bertinelli. I don't blame people for being upset about that. Quite honestly, given that I didn't think her imminent return was in any way likely because there was another Helena going around as the Huntress who was already using that name as an alias, I actually take a slightly different message from this. Before, there was every reason to believe that "Helena Bertinelli" never even existed and was only ever an alias used by Helena Wayne, making it weirdly coincidental for her to ever show up. Now we know that she did in fact exist as a real person. And given her head isn't shown on a pike, and all we hear is a wistful second-hand tale of how she died, I would actually argue that it's a lot easier to bring her back. It's as simple as suggesting she faked her death and went into witness protection for blabbing on her family's mafia ties.
That said, I don't think that's likely to happen any time soon, and as someone who recently discovered a love of Helena Bertinelli, I'm comfortable saying the loss of her sucks and I understand why people with a more longstanding devotion to her are devastated. I just don't think this additional piece of information is any kind of additional nail in the coffin - as I said, in some ways it actually makes it easier since it cements the fact she was a real, existing person at one point. Which is more than we can say for poor Donna Troy.
4) The Manhattan Projects. Okay so, I got the first one on the recommendation of my local comic shop dude, and I was...well, intrigued I guess. Bascially I see what the art is trying to do but I'm not in love with it and I kind of felt the "wacky weird science" undercut the darker, stranger future that was being hinted at through the interstitial excerpts from "The Recorded Feynman". But, I was also intrigued by the story - again something I felt was undercut by the overly atomic-steampunk-comic-book weirdscience of the background world - of Oppenheimer, on whom the first issue focused. That was a foreboding, troubling tale and I was...fascinated to see how it interwove with the emergent future of those textual glimpses in "Recorded".
So issue two comes out and while the weirdscience is toned down to slightly more acceptable levels, there's really nothing about Oppenheimer. The interstitials continue to be intriguing, but instead I'm stuck with a fictionalised Richard Feynman as protagonist, and dude's basically an egotistical milquetoast jerkface I could care less about and the story is suddenly not about the physics!horror impossible!future of infinitely branching Oppenheimers ushering in a weird, new era, but rather about how in the alternaworld asshole nazi scientists and asshole american scientists both want an ends-justifies-the-means future of shiny tech and space travel and honestly it just starts to feel ironically ("ironically"?) jingoistic in a way I feel isn't all that original.
Both are stories that tease a future that is strange and frightening, compelling, but ultimately - as far as we can tell - morally neutral, but quite possibly created due to horrors wrought in the present. This is interesting. But...it was far more intriguing in the first issue than the second.
I'll keep reading but I'm no longer as intrigued.
5) Saga, on the other hand, is straight up totally freaking awesome ot the point I don't even wanna talk about it, I just want the NEXT ONE. Somehow it's this fantastic dark/light scifantasy world where the ~horrors of war~ exist hand in hand with the Rocketship Forest which might actually just be a Rocketship Forest.