Genius vs. Genius: Bishie hair, two PhDs, one hot MESS
Look, this is just a hot mess.
Everyone has bishie hair, the inks are heavy, Jocasta's pose is awkward, Cassie's looking a bit...more mature, as we shall say.
But I can't decide if this is completely batshit awesome or horrible. I am literally in no man's land about this, deeply buried in a philosophical and existential conundrum ( Read more... )
Everyone has bishie hair, the inks are heavy, Jocasta's pose is awkward, Cassie's looking a bit...more mature, as we shall say.
But I can't decide if this is completely batshit awesome or horrible. I am literally in no man's land about this, deeply buried in a philosophical and existential conundrum ( Read more... )
One of the many things I miss about the old scans_daily were the posts of the handful of classic (and never-reprinted) Bane material that showed how nuanced and awesome a character he could be. Far more complex and cerebral than I'd ever expected from one of the living icons of 90's excess, or so he seemed to me for years and years. I'd love to find those issues for myself, especially as most readers and writers alike have forgotten the kind of character he could be.
Gail, thankfully, has not, and has developed him beautifully. Throw in the fact that I'm rather crushing on Scandal myself, and you have the makings of one of the best comic pairings I've seen in recent memory.
Not to mention a brilliant addition to the little-explored idea of platonic relationships, much like Rucka did for Renee with Harvey and Vic. I love that sort of thing, it just doesn't happen often enough.
Rambling now. Point is, agreed on SECRET SIX.
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Yeah, Heffie, I actually was thinking of you when I wrote this post because I knew that SS #10 would probably remind you of Renee and Harvey. Bane and Scandal are a less totally-fucked-up-on-opposite-sides-of-the-law-and-doomed-to-end-in-tears-and/or-rage version of Harvey and Renee, aren't they?
I'm not crushing on Scandal, and I didn't really care for the "Scandal decides that being (temporarily) attracted to the stripper that doubles for Knockout is okay" scene - that read as a little too cloyingly sweet for me, and I like the Secret Six better when sweetness is tempered with their trademark bitter - but Ragdoll, Thomas, Floyd, and platonic!Scandal/Bane will pull me in every single month.
You never responded to my comment and question to you regarding the Thor film!
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Yeah, it really makes me long for the thought that Greg will find some way to get Harvey and Renee back together on some level other than stalker/stalkee should the Question and Two-Face ever meet up. Dang it, it can't end with "Half A Life," it just can't! They were too good together! In their totally fucked-up way as you so perfectly describe!
Well, I am rather attracted to lesbians and drag kings as it is (which has, as you might imagine, resulted in a story or two), and those issues where Scandal's in a suit...? Yeah, cloying as it may have been, GUH.
I didn't? Egad! *checks back* Oh! I thought you were speaking rhetorically. No, if they're going full Asgard with this first movie (bringing him to Midgard with the AVENGERS film, I believe), I'd think they'd HAVE to include Sif at least, if not Enchantress and/or Hela! I just can't imagine them not. It's a Marvel Studios film too, and so far they've been pretty strict about sticking to canon characters.
Balder, I don't know about. But again, if we're going full Asgard with the first movie, I think it'd be a safe bet that we'd have the full Marvel Thor cast of gods.
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I know, I and I need to! Shit, I should just get all the back issues that aren't reprinted and get the rest of the trades and have myself a marathon read. The bits I've read are really some of the best PAD moments I've seen.
Also, as someone who--prepare your mouth for gaping in horror--has never read the Walt Simonson THOR run, I anxiously await Marvel getting off their butts and putting those trades back in ding-dang print! ARGH.
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So, I realize that I have probably not read all of Harvey and Renee's on-panel appearances together. Could you give me a list (title, issue, etc.)? I have a feeling that I'm missing some stuff here.
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I dunno about issue titles and number specifically. As far as I know, they were ALL done by Greg Rucka, and the majority can be found in the trades of NO MAN'S LAND (esp. 2 and 4, IIRC) and GOTHAM CENTRAL vol 2: "Half a Life."
Beyond that, there was DETECTIVE COMICS # 755, the one where Harvey crashed Jim Gordon's retirement party. They only really share a panel or two together, where Renee tries to talk reason to Harvey. I think he just replied, "Not now, Renee. You look nice, by the way."
And then there's the ill-fated "This Issue... Batman DIES!" issue where Harvey writes and draws his own mary sue comic book, with Renee as his own sexy Girl Friday character. Very strange issue. I remember Greg telling me once at a con how he had a whole other plan for that issue, and man, I'd love to have read that one. Alas.
And then there was one more moment in GOTHAM CENTRAL where the cops visited Arkham and there was one panel of Harvey screaming for Renee to come back and talk to him. Which was weird, considering it was the cured, bald, post-Hush Harvey.
Which, by the way, was his ONLY appearance between HUSH and FACE THE FACE; I understand Loeb made it so no one could use Harvey until Loeb himself wrote some next big story arc that never came to pass, so we got Robinson coming in the One Year Later story to bring it all back to status quo in a lazy, cheap way. Can you just imagine the story potential of Renee (on her way to becoming the Question, or afterward) meeting up with a cured Harvey? Such a waste!
Beyond that, I don't think there's anything else. Unless, of course, Mr. Rucka himself sees fit to correct me. :)
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YES. Thank you. Eggsactly. Because THAT is Marvel's utterly unprecedented and unique (in the TRUE sense of the word) spin on Norse mythology, and THAT's the essential core spirit of what makes the House of Ideas the House of Ideas.
As he is friended to this journal, Mr. Rucka may very well see fit to add to this discussion!
And then there's the ill-fated "This Issue... Batman DIES!" issue where Harvey writes and draws his own mary sue comic book, with Renee as his own sexy Girl Friday character. Very strange issue. I remember Greg telling me once at a con how he had a whole other plan for that issue, and man, I'd love to have read that one. Alas.
THIS I have not read. What title did this occur in? My god, I knew that I was missing out on good stuff!
Loeb. Heeey, I was thinking the other night about Loeb and Rulk, and I was struck with a BRILLIANT thought! You know who the ANTI-LOEB is?
Christopher Priest.
You want to know why?
Because when Priest was writing the Black Panther book -- and Priest is obviously and with good reason a HUGE T'Challa fanboy, and wrote T'Challa as the brilliant strategist and incomprehensibly intelligent tactician that he should be -- Priest made sure that although T'Challa could outthink and outfight almost everyone in the end, occasionally T'Challa got a righteous beatdown.
You know what the pure distillation of this was?
When Iron Fist showed up in Priest's Black Panther run for the second time and handed T'Challa his ass. Because Priest had too much integrity to pull a Loeb; he KNEW that if you put those two together, no matter how much you love T'Challa, it's Danny that's going to win and he's going to win HARD. So there was that epic fight between Danny and T'Challa, and that fight took up AN ENTIRE ISSUE, and T'Challa had nightmares about it afterwards because it was one of the single most severe beatdowns that T'Challa has ever had to endure, and he had to endure it from a friend that he deeply respects. OUCH.
Screw it. I'm posting that fight tomorrow. It's too awesome not to show.
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I think you're really onto something with Priest being the anti-Loeb. Additionally to your point, Priest is NEVER one to employ the Hollywood-style hackery that Loeb is wont to pull, with cliche dialogue and one-note characterizations. If only Priest had the mainstream appeal (or had been given more of a chance for mainstream appeal) that Loeb unfortunately has.
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Terry and James easily surpass Bane and Scandal in intimacy, but that's partly because they had, oh, over a hundred issues and almost ten years real time for their friendship to deepen, and it was already pretty intense by X-Force #30. That scene towards the end of X-Force when Feral slices out Terry's vocal chords and James goes BATSHIT in rage, and then X-Force #91, where Terry goes missing in San Francisco for a day because she's so depressed over losing her powers and is actually thinking about suicide, and then she finally comes home late at night from an AA meeting, and she's thinking to herself "Jimmy will know the moment I turn the key in the door, he'll wake up and know it's me before the key even turns in the lock," she opens the door, and there he is, of COURSE he's awake and waiting for her, and he hugs her SO HARD. It's a GREAT depiction of one of those silent and incredibly emotional hugs that friends give each other when they're about to break in body and soul, a full on total body embrace. It's SO intense. It breaks my heart every single time I see those panels.
That reminds me. I need to get off my ass and do my series of The Ballad of Theresa Cassidy & Jimmy Proudstar posts, and I can already hear aj and lyssie telling me to hurry up, get off my ass, and DO THEM.
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As someone pretty well totally unfamiliar with X-FORCE and these characters, I would greatly look forward to such a Ballad post!
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They're another two that are technically platonic now but far too entwined in each other's lives to ever be totally separate. I mean, I can't even CONCEIVE of an issue of anything in the Wildstorm verse where Grifter and Zealot don't show up together, and when they DO show up alone without the other, the other is so intensely invoked by their absence that it only reinforces the intimacy they have. But they're on a whole other level than any friendship we've discussed here; they're unlike anything that I've ever encountered in any other fictional medium, PERIOD. I've never seen the like in film, literature, TV, or any other comic. They're SO opposite in so many ways - he's obnoxious, mercurial, cocky, greedy at times, bitingly funny, stubborn, drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, swears, and despite all that he has an unshakeable set of morals at his core. She's superhumanly (literally) disciplined, immaculate, thinks of her body as both temple and instrument and thinks of her art as death (death if it was made a high art, that is), she's an alien, she's remote, not prone to emotional outbursts, doesn't need anyone or anything, doesn't give a fuck about money or material possessions, exhibits a sense of humor rarely, and yet...they need each other, they complement each other perfectly on so many levels. Even visually. When you think "Grifter," don't you automatically think "Zealot" and vice versa? I do.
Dude was in a WHEELCHAIR with a crippling injury and he STILL found a way to rescue Zealot when she almost went down for the last time in Wildc.a.t.s. 3.0. Dude hijacked Ladytron's body, put together a crack team of heavy duty operatives, and composed a seven-issue tone poem to Zealot made up of equal parts violence, huge explosions, and raw, unfettered LOVE.
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