all i wanted was a fucking pepsi
so much work! bah! also, I have a meeting at 4 pm today. Who schedules a meeting at 4 pm on a Friday? Who even does that? pfui!
So in between writing up the minutes and putting together the agenda for our next board meeting, I am going to talk to you about Blue Beetle, because few things have made me as purely happy as reading this series has. I can't even count the number of times I literally laughed out loud or made squeaky high-pitched noises of glee while reading. (I am almost, but not quite, completely done - I'm told there is a sixth volume due out in March of next year, but what I read came to a nice stopping point, and I don't want to wait until March to talk about it.)
I think I've mentioned before that I'm not big into comics, for a number of reasons. The short version is
1. I have a lot of trouble parsing the artwork, and so miss a lot of stuff and have to work harder to get the whole story
Specific to superhero titles:
2. the ridiculous morass that is multiple decades of canon I will never be able to catch up on (though I must admit, one of the things comics have in their favor is the sheer hilarious ludicrousness of canon at times - for example: a. Summers family drama, which is never not funny, despite my dislike of what they actually did with the third Summers brother when they finally got around to it; b. the origins of Conner Kent, aka, Superboy, which is always fun to explain to people who don't know it.)
3. the open-ended nature of the canon, plus the endless retcons, AUs, reboots, and crossover "events" that mean knowing any story completely is nearly impossible
4. the variability of storytelling quality (though I have to say, the writers' disregard of canon and characterization makes me a lot more sanguine about ditching stuff I don't like and ignoring stuff I don't know than I would otherwise be)
5. the endless and seemingly gratuitous angst
6. the long list of fridged women
7. the endless reservoirs of manpain
And that was pretty long for a short version. Sorry.
So what I'm saying is, I guess, that it's a lot of work to even get me to agree to read a comic (Tiny Titans excepted, because come on, I don't even want to know people who aren't charmed by Tiny Titans), and I come to comics with a lot of my own obstacles in place, but Blue Beetle pretty much rode roughshod over all of them and didn't, like Fables, sag in the middle so badly that I've completely lost interest, and didn't, like Y: The Last Man, botch the ending so badly that my rage and bitterness mean I haven't been able to reread the series, which prior to the ending I loved a lot. *cough*
Basically what happened was, I saw an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold and it featured a high school kid named Jaime Reyes, who is also the Blue Beetle. I liked him and I posted about him and many, many people commented saying how awesome he is and how much I would like his book, which had sadly been canceled, and thus, had an endpoint. And was also partially written by John Rogers, whom you may know as the showrunner on Leverage.
As someone said in those comments, Jaime is like Xander if Xander had had confidence back in high school.
How could I resist that?
It's really nice that you guys know me and my narrative and character kinks so well, because man, I LOVED these books.
Why did I love these books? Let me count the ways:
1. Jaime Reyes is ADORABLE. He's smart, geeky, and genre-savvy, but not consumed with insecurity or teen angst. He's sensible. His big dream of ultimate power is to become a dentist so he can pay for his little sister's college education and buy his grandma a nice house. He fights supervillains with SCIENCE (more on this below). He's the level-headed one of his trio of friends, the one who sorts out their problems and keeps them from spiraling out of control. He's a good person before he ever becomes a superhero. I draw a million sparkly pink hearts around him.
2. He tells his family about his superpowers. No having to lie to everyone he loves and turning into an obnoxious asshole because of it! No secret identity shenanigans! No angst over keeping his best friends out of the loop when they might be in danger.
3. Not only does his family know, but his family is AWESOME. They're loving and supportive and when the need arises, they kick ass on their own, not waiting around for him to rescue them. They don't harp on his mistakes but they also don't let him get away with any bullshit, either.
4. PACO AND BRENDA! ZOMG! SO AWESOME! Paco and Brenda are Jaime's BFF and they are awesome in their own right. Paco goes out and gets Jaime the tech support any superhero needs, and Brenda is their Hermione - scary-smart and ruthless and always willing to stand up for herself and her friends and what she thinks is right. Also, good lord, that kiss during the fight was totally hot. I ship it! But I also ship them as a trio, because yes. BFF OT3!
5. I don't know if you've noticed this, but the cast is FULL of characters of color - Jaime and his family are Mexican-American and they live in El Paso and deal with what that means for Jaime and how it influences the way he perceives and interacts with the rest of the world.
6. There are also some awesome women - there's the aforementioned Bianca Reyes, Jaime's mother, Brenda, his BFF, Traci 13, who becomes his girlfriend, and Tia Amparo, who is Brenda's aunt and also a crime boss. Plus, Milagro, Jaime's little sister, and his grandmother, who are both awesome in their own ways.
7. I've mentioned my irritation with heroes who fail to kill etc., but I'm giving Jaime a pass on this because a. he's 16 years old; b. he's got super lethal alien tech grafted to his spinal column, and he's trying to keep control of it and not let it use overwhelming force when he can figure out other ways to stop bad guys; c. and following on that, he's trying not to get eliminated by other superheroes for being a bad guy because the super lethal alien tech is basically a killing machine that pings them as evil; and d. he doesn't angst and moan about it.
8. He doesn't angst at all. Jaime Reyes has no manpain. He has pain, and it hurts, but because he still remains able to empathize with other people's pain without making it about himself, it never tips over into annoying manpain territory. This lack of angst is super-refreshing.
9. He uses SCIENCE to stop bad guys, and I swear to god, I laughed so hard in delight that I had to put the book down for a moment last night when Dr. Polaris is monologuing at him about the monopoles and asks if he'd like to know what it all means, and Jaime says "I'm only saying yes out of scientific curiosity." even though he's got this super lethal alien tech at his disposal, he's still using his brain (and the Scarab's) to figure out the best way to solve a problem.
10. His mentor, the Peacemaker, is hilariously brusque and un-mentor-like (and yet a decent mentor for all that). And also occasionally frustrated at being surrounded by teenagers. (His invitation to Tim to go for a beer and Tim's, "I'm not even old enough to vote" followed by the Peacemaker's facepalm made me laugh and laugh.)
11. KHAJI-DA! The Scarab, that bit of super lethal alien tech that is grafted to his spine, becomes a character in its own right. Okay, mostly a character who wants to eliminate any threat that comes close, but still! Jaime's influence is such that Khaji-Da exercises free will and throws off his programming.
12. He's not a particularly good fighter when he gets the armor, and while he improves, he's not miraculously a spectacular fighter. Also, he sometimes doesn't have the right quip at the right time, but sometimes his banter is hilarious. And he appreciates banter, which is a point in his favor.
and to make it a baker's dozen,
13. Batman likes him! How often does that happen? *snerk*
So anyway, there are 13 reasons that you, too, should read Blue Beetle (and if you're interested, drop me a line; I might be able to hook you up with some source). If you already have, you should come and squee in my comments, and also point me to fic where Jaime et al. are being AWESOME, because I need to read me some more of that. And also icons. I need an icon, I think.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/247566.html.
people have commented there.
So in between writing up the minutes and putting together the agenda for our next board meeting, I am going to talk to you about Blue Beetle, because few things have made me as purely happy as reading this series has. I can't even count the number of times I literally laughed out loud or made squeaky high-pitched noises of glee while reading. (I am almost, but not quite, completely done - I'm told there is a sixth volume due out in March of next year, but what I read came to a nice stopping point, and I don't want to wait until March to talk about it.)
I think I've mentioned before that I'm not big into comics, for a number of reasons. The short version is
1. I have a lot of trouble parsing the artwork, and so miss a lot of stuff and have to work harder to get the whole story
Specific to superhero titles:
2. the ridiculous morass that is multiple decades of canon I will never be able to catch up on (though I must admit, one of the things comics have in their favor is the sheer hilarious ludicrousness of canon at times - for example: a. Summers family drama, which is never not funny, despite my dislike of what they actually did with the third Summers brother when they finally got around to it; b. the origins of Conner Kent, aka, Superboy, which is always fun to explain to people who don't know it.)
3. the open-ended nature of the canon, plus the endless retcons, AUs, reboots, and crossover "events" that mean knowing any story completely is nearly impossible
4. the variability of storytelling quality (though I have to say, the writers' disregard of canon and characterization makes me a lot more sanguine about ditching stuff I don't like and ignoring stuff I don't know than I would otherwise be)
5. the endless and seemingly gratuitous angst
6. the long list of fridged women
7. the endless reservoirs of manpain
And that was pretty long for a short version. Sorry.
So what I'm saying is, I guess, that it's a lot of work to even get me to agree to read a comic (Tiny Titans excepted, because come on, I don't even want to know people who aren't charmed by Tiny Titans), and I come to comics with a lot of my own obstacles in place, but Blue Beetle pretty much rode roughshod over all of them and didn't, like Fables, sag in the middle so badly that I've completely lost interest, and didn't, like Y: The Last Man, botch the ending so badly that my rage and bitterness mean I haven't been able to reread the series, which prior to the ending I loved a lot. *cough*
Basically what happened was, I saw an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold and it featured a high school kid named Jaime Reyes, who is also the Blue Beetle. I liked him and I posted about him and many, many people commented saying how awesome he is and how much I would like his book, which had sadly been canceled, and thus, had an endpoint. And was also partially written by John Rogers, whom you may know as the showrunner on Leverage.
As someone said in those comments, Jaime is like Xander if Xander had had confidence back in high school.
How could I resist that?
It's really nice that you guys know me and my narrative and character kinks so well, because man, I LOVED these books.
Why did I love these books? Let me count the ways:
1. Jaime Reyes is ADORABLE. He's smart, geeky, and genre-savvy, but not consumed with insecurity or teen angst. He's sensible. His big dream of ultimate power is to become a dentist so he can pay for his little sister's college education and buy his grandma a nice house. He fights supervillains with SCIENCE (more on this below). He's the level-headed one of his trio of friends, the one who sorts out their problems and keeps them from spiraling out of control. He's a good person before he ever becomes a superhero. I draw a million sparkly pink hearts around him.
2. He tells his family about his superpowers. No having to lie to everyone he loves and turning into an obnoxious asshole because of it! No secret identity shenanigans! No angst over keeping his best friends out of the loop when they might be in danger.
3. Not only does his family know, but his family is AWESOME. They're loving and supportive and when the need arises, they kick ass on their own, not waiting around for him to rescue them. They don't harp on his mistakes but they also don't let him get away with any bullshit, either.
4. PACO AND BRENDA! ZOMG! SO AWESOME! Paco and Brenda are Jaime's BFF and they are awesome in their own right. Paco goes out and gets Jaime the tech support any superhero needs, and Brenda is their Hermione - scary-smart and ruthless and always willing to stand up for herself and her friends and what she thinks is right. Also, good lord, that kiss during the fight was totally hot. I ship it! But I also ship them as a trio, because yes. BFF OT3!
5. I don't know if you've noticed this, but the cast is FULL of characters of color - Jaime and his family are Mexican-American and they live in El Paso and deal with what that means for Jaime and how it influences the way he perceives and interacts with the rest of the world.
6. There are also some awesome women - there's the aforementioned Bianca Reyes, Jaime's mother, Brenda, his BFF, Traci 13, who becomes his girlfriend, and Tia Amparo, who is Brenda's aunt and also a crime boss. Plus, Milagro, Jaime's little sister, and his grandmother, who are both awesome in their own ways.
7. I've mentioned my irritation with heroes who fail to kill etc., but I'm giving Jaime a pass on this because a. he's 16 years old; b. he's got super lethal alien tech grafted to his spinal column, and he's trying to keep control of it and not let it use overwhelming force when he can figure out other ways to stop bad guys; c. and following on that, he's trying not to get eliminated by other superheroes for being a bad guy because the super lethal alien tech is basically a killing machine that pings them as evil; and d. he doesn't angst and moan about it.
8. He doesn't angst at all. Jaime Reyes has no manpain. He has pain, and it hurts, but because he still remains able to empathize with other people's pain without making it about himself, it never tips over into annoying manpain territory. This lack of angst is super-refreshing.
9. He uses SCIENCE to stop bad guys, and I swear to god, I laughed so hard in delight that I had to put the book down for a moment last night when Dr. Polaris is monologuing at him about the monopoles and asks if he'd like to know what it all means, and Jaime says "I'm only saying yes out of scientific curiosity." even though he's got this super lethal alien tech at his disposal, he's still using his brain (and the Scarab's) to figure out the best way to solve a problem.
10. His mentor, the Peacemaker, is hilariously brusque and un-mentor-like (and yet a decent mentor for all that). And also occasionally frustrated at being surrounded by teenagers. (His invitation to Tim to go for a beer and Tim's, "I'm not even old enough to vote" followed by the Peacemaker's facepalm made me laugh and laugh.)
11. KHAJI-DA! The Scarab, that bit of super lethal alien tech that is grafted to his spine, becomes a character in its own right. Okay, mostly a character who wants to eliminate any threat that comes close, but still! Jaime's influence is such that Khaji-Da exercises free will and throws off his programming.
12. He's not a particularly good fighter when he gets the armor, and while he improves, he's not miraculously a spectacular fighter. Also, he sometimes doesn't have the right quip at the right time, but sometimes his banter is hilarious. And he appreciates banter, which is a point in his favor.
and to make it a baker's dozen,
13. Batman likes him! How often does that happen? *snerk*
So anyway, there are 13 reasons that you, too, should read Blue Beetle (and if you're interested, drop me a line; I might be able to hook you up with some source). If you already have, you should come and squee in my comments, and also point me to fic where Jaime et al. are being AWESOME, because I need to read me some more of that. And also icons. I need an icon, I think.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/247566.html.
people have commented there.