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I am slowly flocking and private-ing bits of my journal, I think the public face is going to be fannish, with random bits of other public worthy squee, friends only for some real life stuff (I've made a filter for people who know me in rl) and private for others (this was prompted by rereading entries which now seem so blatantly young/depressed/etc
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Reading Runaways and then those first WW issues made the bad writing even glaringly worse, because Vaughn really is a really good writer, just, argh, his endings! (I've sort of come to terms with the Alex thing, but Gert on top of that! I mean, who else was going to be my identifying character? :( )
The bit before Joss's (and the crossovers with Young Avengers) were my favs, and I'm kind of shipping Nico/Karolina bigtime (the Xavin thing kind of bothers me, both Joss's "answer" about Xavin's gender and how the new guy Terry Moore is constantly referring to the character as "he" - Terry Moore gets more credit for being gay friendly than I think he deserves, his own series Strangers in Paradise had a lot of weird plot elements concerning the character's sexuality, despite the lesbian pairing that was supposed to be the core, they both had long and intense relationships with men that always seemed to get much more play, rather than the forever UST between them).
And heh, yeah, Joss tends to Jossize things a lot, doesn't he? And sometimes it's good when the characters don't really have such specific voices (X-Men) and sometimes it makes things a little more generic, when the characters were already so specific (Runaways). Plus I was a little eh on the whole storyline (I guess I prefer them in LA and/or struggling with the Marvel world, rather than kind of pointlessly outside that).
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And hee, Nico/Karolina for the win!
But yeah, the Xavin thing bothers me too. I was rereading Joss's run the other day, and then I went back an reread soem of the stuff immediately before that, and two things really struck me. Firstly, that I'd got used to the way Joss was writing them, and I was enjoying it, but that seeing how they were before, I found I really missed that. It's what you just said about Jossizing it, which I love when Joss is doing that with his own characters, but it really bothered me in this case, and I found I kept being all "Wait, he/she wouldn't say that!".
And the other thing was how much I didn't like what he'd done with Xavin. He seems to have simplified the whole situation, and given us an easy answer that feels way too easy, and it just doesn't work for me, because I really liked that they were playing up how complicated and sort of fucked up it was before.
I don't know anything about Terry Moore, so I'll take your word on it until I see for myself. I'm a bit worried about him taking it over now! I've heard of Strangers in Paradise but never read it. Would you recommend?
Ok, my comment became an essay, sorry! ;)
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I am still so bummed over Gert. And the worse thing is, Brian Vaughn is ALWAYS doing this, creating awesome characters that I love and adore and then killing them in ways that seem stupid and pointless and sour me on whatever series it is he happens to be writing (UM. I may still be excessively bitter about Y the Last Man D:) But admittedly I am not up on the new team (I think the guys who started right after Joss?) so maybe they've done something to rectify, I dunno.
Nico/Karolina vs. Karolina/Xavin was one of the storylines that drives me NUTS. One couple has awesome natural chemistry and seems like they'd be really good for each other, the other feels kind of forced and all over the place and includes some skeevy gender/sexuality issues and yet I have the feeling that Nico/Karolina isn't going to go anywhere (partially this argh is also based on the rumor that Terry Moore's run was going to have a male only Xavin, which is such a weirdness to me because as I recall Karolina does explicitly call herself a lesbian, I think? And thus having her involved with a character who identifies as a man is really, ugh. Which I felt less of when they were playing more along the lines of Skrull gender is weird and undefined and maybe either/or, which yes, Xavin is an ALIEN so why not go there? But I shouldn't be bad mouthing the new team without reading what they actually did, so.)
Um, not really? I dunno, Terry Moore gets tons of GLBT props for Strangers in Paradise and yet in the little of it I've read (a trade or two) the female characters spent more time being involved with men than each other and I think their relationship is often more of a triangle involving this one guy and I found the series to be too melodramatic and kind of a let down, but again, I didn't read all of it and you might take it differently, so if you do end up reading and liking it, let me know!
Actually the best lesbian comic I've ever read was called Dykes to Watch Out For, although it's a strip based comic, rather than issues/graphic novels. And I read it probably eight or so years ago (and many of them were written much earlier then that), so it might come off as a bit dated, but I remember just really enjoying it, beyond even the omg queer characters yay! (it's by Alison Bechdel, she whom the Bechdel test is named after)
And this rambling post wouldn't be complete without an attempt to pimp what I think is the best female comic running - Wonder Woman. Seriously, it is so so good at the moment and for the first time in the history of it's run being regularly written by a woman (Gail Simone, who is awesome) and it includes SO many female dominated storylines that I just chortle happily (and she has real friendships with women and is so brave and awesome and heroic).
ANYWAY.
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