red-eyed toddlers with exploding dice
So, I have another round of essays due in and this time my procrastination has taken the form of X-Men geekery. Which I was fine with. Until I started having Thoughts.
What I thought was this: the only long-standing comic book character I can think of who ages properly - who gets fat and middle-aged and whines about the past and celebrates horrific birthday milestones and looks old - is John Constantine. Why is this, world? Why? I mean, I know that it's because fifty-somethings who wheeze in spandex as the villain runs away aren't cool, but they are ridiculous, and I enjoy that much more. Stop resetting the clock and giving them new adjectives! Show me their horrible later lives!
I want to read about how Batman became the Jacko of superheroes and Tony Stark had a lost weekend with a girl who looked eighteen, and how the government therefore had to distance themselves (again) from the superhero faction. I want to hear about how all the old school Fantastic Four-Spiderman-Superman heroes retired about the same time, and so created a horrible vacuum which the poorly-written baby!X-Men could not fill. I want to know what happens after Scott Summers and Emma Frost retire to their yacht in the Med while Jean Grey becomes a lonely alcoholic after failing to start her own desert cult*. I want to read these things! I want to read about how anti-psychic devices (in my head I call them chatterboxes, because I'm bored and I can) become the new fashionable gadget. I want to read about Gambit's French talk show (how can the charm power lead to anything but television? The advert would just be him telling people to watch and they would). Tell me about Peter Parker becoming Mayor of New York (or link me to more Ex Machina, either way).
Tell me about the Illegitimate X-Men! I would pay silly money to read about a group of twenty-somethings in the year 2031 who fund their own superhero operation by blackmailing their once-famous absent parents. Especially if they were really, really shit.
...stop looking at me like that.
*No, I don't really like her. Why do you ask?
What I thought was this: the only long-standing comic book character I can think of who ages properly - who gets fat and middle-aged and whines about the past and celebrates horrific birthday milestones and looks old - is John Constantine. Why is this, world? Why? I mean, I know that it's because fifty-somethings who wheeze in spandex as the villain runs away aren't cool, but they are ridiculous, and I enjoy that much more. Stop resetting the clock and giving them new adjectives! Show me their horrible later lives!
I want to read about how Batman became the Jacko of superheroes and Tony Stark had a lost weekend with a girl who looked eighteen, and how the government therefore had to distance themselves (again) from the superhero faction. I want to hear about how all the old school Fantastic Four-Spiderman-Superman heroes retired about the same time, and so created a horrible vacuum which the poorly-written baby!X-Men could not fill. I want to know what happens after Scott Summers and Emma Frost retire to their yacht in the Med while Jean Grey becomes a lonely alcoholic after failing to start her own desert cult*. I want to read these things! I want to read about how anti-psychic devices (in my head I call them chatterboxes, because I'm bored and I can) become the new fashionable gadget. I want to read about Gambit's French talk show (how can the charm power lead to anything but television? The advert would just be him telling people to watch and they would). Tell me about Peter Parker becoming Mayor of New York (or link me to more Ex Machina, either way).
Tell me about the Illegitimate X-Men! I would pay silly money to read about a group of twenty-somethings in the year 2031 who fund their own superhero operation by blackmailing their once-famous absent parents. Especially if they were really, really shit.
...stop looking at me like that.
*No, I don't really like her. Why do you ask?