Reading Wednesdays
Meme from 
bcholmes:
What are you reading now?
I'm still reading For Love Alone by Christina Stead. I will probably finish it today or tomorrow, though, so hey, there will be a new answer for the new year.
What did you just finish reading?
Icon: A Hero's Welcome and Icon: The Mothership Connection by Dwayne McDuffie (writer) and M.D. Wright (artist). In 1869, an alien escape pod crash lands in the Deep South. The first person it encounters is a slave woman, so it reconfigures its inhabitant as a black baby. In the mid-90s, Augustus Freeman IV is a wealthy, successful, and fairly conservative lawyer, when his home is broken into by a bunch of teenagers. In chasing them off, he reveals his superpowers -- much to the fascination of one of the kids, Raquel Ervin, who comes back to talk him into becoming a superhero -- an icon. She, of course, becomes his sidekick, Rocket.
I have the same problems with the art that I do with most superhero art, although the "acting" -- facial expressions, posture, character positioning in frame -- is very good. What really shines here is the writing. You get a real sense of the characters (Augustus is stern, reserved, sometimes slightly pompous; Raquel is brash, intelligent, and courageous), the plot is quick-paced, and the dialogue is snappy. The comic is part of the shared Milestone universe (Milestone being a creator-owned company and he first African American-owned company in comics) so McDuffie didn't have to shy away from issues of race, gender, and class. The reception Icon receives is often very different from that of his obvious analogue, Superman; we find out in the first issue that 15-year-old Raquel is pregnant, and there is no convenient miscarriage. Volume two also features a hilarious parody of Marvel's blaxsploitation superhero, Luke Cage, and which later expands to include all of Marvel's male African American superheroes. (All three of them.)
I wish the Milestone universe had featured a female hero as the lead for any of its title, but this really is Raquel's story as much as Icon's. As frustrated as I am that she's only the sidekick, it's notable that she is marked as a clear audience -- and author -- stand-in: She is the human character, she is the one who initiates the superheroic action and creates the superhero identities (and costumes), she wants to be a writer, she is idealistic in aspiration and practical in action. Also notable: both volumes of the series pass the Bechdel test. Apparently, the series continues, but has not been further collected for trade publication.
The last work of prose I finished is Eileen Chang's The Fall of the Pagoda, which I also talked about last time. But I have been reading it (or "reading" it, mostly it's been put aside for other, available-in-ebook things) since February, so it's good to be done. This is the first novel Chang wrote in English, only recently made available. It is, like a lot of her work, heavily autobiographical -- in this case, the outlines and many of the events match details Chang would disclose in explicitly autobiographical material. It follows Lute from the age of about five to fifteen, in an aristocratic family in Shanghai before WWII. The focus is generally on interpersonal dynamics: Lute spends most of her time with the servants, is enthralled by her mother and aunt (who run off to Europe for most of the book, but return when they run out of money so her mother can get a divorce), is disinterested in and then disgusted by her opium-addicted father and stepmother, resents and loves and competes with her younger brother. I found the pace really picked up for the last third or so, when Lute is in her teens, although that may be just because I dedicated myself to finishing it in a couple of long reading sessions.
What do you expect to read next?
Definitely one of the available Milestone collections, Hardware or Static Shock. If I end up rereading my 2012 favorites so I can post about them, then Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity; if I feel like reading something I haven't read before, maybe Frances Hardinge's Gullstruck Island? Or maybe something from the embarrassingly long shortlist of Things in My TBR Stack That I Really Want to Read Right Now.
Your turn! Post about books. You know you wanna.
cups brewed at DW
bcholmes:
What are you reading now?
I'm still reading For Love Alone by Christina Stead. I will probably finish it today or tomorrow, though, so hey, there will be a new answer for the new year.
What did you just finish reading?
Icon: A Hero's Welcome and Icon: The Mothership Connection by Dwayne McDuffie (writer) and M.D. Wright (artist). In 1869, an alien escape pod crash lands in the Deep South. The first person it encounters is a slave woman, so it reconfigures its inhabitant as a black baby. In the mid-90s, Augustus Freeman IV is a wealthy, successful, and fairly conservative lawyer, when his home is broken into by a bunch of teenagers. In chasing them off, he reveals his superpowers -- much to the fascination of one of the kids, Raquel Ervin, who comes back to talk him into becoming a superhero -- an icon. She, of course, becomes his sidekick, Rocket.
I have the same problems with the art that I do with most superhero art, although the "acting" -- facial expressions, posture, character positioning in frame -- is very good. What really shines here is the writing. You get a real sense of the characters (Augustus is stern, reserved, sometimes slightly pompous; Raquel is brash, intelligent, and courageous), the plot is quick-paced, and the dialogue is snappy. The comic is part of the shared Milestone universe (Milestone being a creator-owned company and he first African American-owned company in comics) so McDuffie didn't have to shy away from issues of race, gender, and class. The reception Icon receives is often very different from that of his obvious analogue, Superman; we find out in the first issue that 15-year-old Raquel is pregnant, and there is no convenient miscarriage. Volume two also features a hilarious parody of Marvel's blaxsploitation superhero, Luke Cage, and which later expands to include all of Marvel's male African American superheroes. (All three of them.)
I wish the Milestone universe had featured a female hero as the lead for any of its title, but this really is Raquel's story as much as Icon's. As frustrated as I am that she's only the sidekick, it's notable that she is marked as a clear audience -- and author -- stand-in: She is the human character, she is the one who initiates the superheroic action and creates the superhero identities (and costumes), she wants to be a writer, she is idealistic in aspiration and practical in action. Also notable: both volumes of the series pass the Bechdel test. Apparently, the series continues, but has not been further collected for trade publication.
The last work of prose I finished is Eileen Chang's The Fall of the Pagoda, which I also talked about last time. But I have been reading it (or "reading" it, mostly it's been put aside for other, available-in-ebook things) since February, so it's good to be done. This is the first novel Chang wrote in English, only recently made available. It is, like a lot of her work, heavily autobiographical -- in this case, the outlines and many of the events match details Chang would disclose in explicitly autobiographical material. It follows Lute from the age of about five to fifteen, in an aristocratic family in Shanghai before WWII. The focus is generally on interpersonal dynamics: Lute spends most of her time with the servants, is enthralled by her mother and aunt (who run off to Europe for most of the book, but return when they run out of money so her mother can get a divorce), is disinterested in and then disgusted by her opium-addicted father and stepmother, resents and loves and competes with her younger brother. I found the pace really picked up for the last third or so, when Lute is in her teens, although that may be just because I dedicated myself to finishing it in a couple of long reading sessions.
What do you expect to read next?
Definitely one of the available Milestone collections, Hardware or Static Shock. If I end up rereading my 2012 favorites so I can post about them, then Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity; if I feel like reading something I haven't read before, maybe Frances Hardinge's Gullstruck Island? Or maybe something from the embarrassingly long shortlist of Things in My TBR Stack That I Really Want to Read Right Now.
Your turn! Post about books. You know you wanna.
cups brewed at DW