(no subject)
It occured to me a moment ago that I am so glad I can read. Here I am scrolling down my Livejournal friends page, information about people and places just flying into my brain through my eyeballs via symbols on the screen. It's effortless. And yet once upon a time this was not the norm. Man!
Anyway, today's moment of gratitude aside:
Justice League #1
Meh. Nothing happened, yo. Also all the characters are suuuper confrontational dickwads. :C Including Superman. Which is like. That is not the Super man I know! But more on that later. phoenixstorm said it best: Everyone can't be Batman.
Swamp Thing #1
Really liking the art, actually. It's American comic book style done right. Nice chisel-y inking and they're clearly getting a lot out of the decorative plant motif. Writing-wise I'm happy, too. Bad Stuff Going Down is nicely creepy. Swamp Thing seems to have a tradition of scoring the most thoughtful writing and it looks to be continued here yaay.
Detective Comics #1
Happy! It's like Batman is back to the Batman I actually enjoyed reading about once upon a time. :3 I was pretty worried with all the promo artwork being blooooooodbloodbloodbloodblood and baby heads but yay there is not so much of that after all! Someone in marketing was just really keen. 8I
Green Arrow #1
Uhhh. Hm. I think I liked Green Arrow about, uh, 60-70% for the beard and Robin Hood outfit? Y-yeah. It's true. Ignoring that - glad to see Queen Industries and I think I detect an inkling of old GA's socialist leanings. This GA is a lot like Batman if he were less emo and more involved in Waynecorp's day-to-day stuff. And wore green. I will check back in on Green Arrow in a couple of years, once he's had time to grow a beard and get bitter about capitalism, pretty much. :D;;
Hawk and Dove #1
Surprisingly in the "okay" camp. The outfits are still terrible. The art is still Liefield. The mutant zombie thing is stupid. Also Dove's Terrible Secret (TM) is...stupid. Um. Okay, actually, Hawk and Dove is a bit stupid. It's a shame. I feel like there is an inkling of goodness there - heroes forced to work together with powers based on violence and pacifism respectively is a good idea but in actuality it's used for stupid.
OMAC #1
siiighhhh I want to like OMAC, I really do. Granted I want to like OMAC solely because Brother Eye is a jerkface AI and I really enjoy AI characters for some reason. But that doesn't change the fact that OMAC himself looks dumb...and his dialogue is really off-putting...and the whole of this first issue is like OH WHAT A TWIST except I already knew the twist - everyone knew the twist, the twist was in your marketing from day one - and would have worked as a movie intro, not a whole issue of a comic that supposed to make me buy the next comic. :C
Stormwatch #1
Okay. Okay, I'm cool with this. Except for angry angry Manhunter, I'm not really cool with that, but it seems like no one ever does Manhunter right. Sometimes an animated show will have a nice spin on him but generally comics don't give him much personality. Except for angry in this case. Um. Back to Stormwatch - lots of interesting powers, hopefully backed up by interesting personalities in issues to come. Writing and art didn't ~blow me away~. Actually, the colouring is a bit...bad. It has that airbrush and only airbrush look to it. Like the colourist is afraid of sharp planes. :/
Men of War #1
God, can a comic be any more boring.
Animal Man #1
Exactly as good as I expected from the sweet cover haha. Art-wise, I see what you do there. Interesting take with the clean defined flat style to push the grotesque nature of the ultra detailed Bad Stuff. People will complain but for the direction Animal Man is headed I think it'll work well. The writing is solid. The final page is nice and creeptastic. 8D
Static Shock #1
YAY.
It's happy and bright and the bad guys are the multicultural Power Rangers on scooters. Static's powers are used in interesting ways - not just LOL I SHOOT ELECTRICS AT YOU, which is what you /expect/ from "electricity" powers. It's refreshing! All those times you were like "but why doesn't he use his powers to lift himself??" Well, this guy does!
Action Comics #1
Grant Morrison's made Superman is a Dick current canonical reality, pretty much. sigh. I see what you're doing. Clark is meek and his alter-ego is confident, yeah, we see. But confident =/= intimidate people left and right, okay. Superman was sort of the...bedrock of morality for the Justice League so to see him, frankly, being a massive douche is a blehhh. I suppose this is Young Superman, yet to learn the ways of goody-two-shoes-ness. But if Justice League #1 is any indication, he never gets over it.
Justice League International #1
Uuuhhh, so, Godiva has a dumb power okay. Hair power is just the dumbest power always. ._. I can only think of terrible Asian ghost movies. :D;; That aside, Booster is fun. They focus on him a bit, I suppose for the benefit of people who have no idea who this leader-guy is. That would have been me if I didn't know certain people! I liked how Batman wormed his way onto the team unofficially. I'm never impressed with "oh noes monsters" bad guys with no set up though. /shrug Hopefully it'll evolve into a fun title with hardly an emo. :3
Batwing #1
Oof, well. Nice art. Very nice art. Batwing's costume is still stupid. Really stupid. No one's gonna take you seriously, here or in Africa, if you have giant flimsy plastic wings that would clearly be non-functional sticking out of your back. So there's that. That aside, it's awkward for DC to try to comment on the African political situation. I'm half Thai and I can barely comment on the Thai political situation without coming off wrong, which is fair, since I'm no more Thai than any other Australian when it comes to ideology. I wouldn't want to be the very white very American writer behind Batwing, attempting clumsily to comment on the politics of a country you probably can't ever know enough about unless you grew up there. I'm not saying black Batman is a bad idea but gritty super-realistic African Batman is probably a bad idea for a comic made by Americans, sold to Americans. I could comment further, disect actual dialogue in the comic, but I won't bother. DC is attempting to tackle a difficult subject but honestly they aren't equipped for it. Sorry, guys. Maybe one day. For now, I watch with morbid interest.
Batgirl #1
Yeeahhh I kind of hated it. The side-step of the whole bullet in the spine issue was clumsy, to say the least. But I could ignore that. Commands to the writer from the DC Powers That Be, fair enough. Gordon family interaction was very nice, I liked that a lot. It was all trundling on basically alright right up to the last page where the grizzled Gotham cop who apparently doesn't know the definition of "murder" points a gun at Batgirl while the supervillain (who just committed murder, yo) is standing right there in the same room. That's just. That is the stupidest thing in comics this last week, alright. THE STUPIDEST. That is characters being idiots solely for the sake of driving a plot - the weakest kind of writing. I'm not interested in the rest of Batgirl's run bases solely on that tweeeest.
So there you go.
Also read recently:
FEYNMAN
Really good. Unfortunately I dated a mathematician for several years, long enough to take everything in FEYNMAN with a huge grain of salt. I recognise some of those behaviours, charming in book form, as potential dickery IRLs. BUT still a really good book about an interesting person and it's entirely possible my dark suspicions are totally off base and the dude was genuinely ~wondiferous~.
Unseen Academicals:
Terry Pratchet, always good. The most difficult Pratchett book I've read though. Like. Multiple points where I had to piece sentences together slowly to work out what he was saying. Still. Solid. More easily appreciated by fans of football, I suspect. :D;;
Also, saw the new Conan the Barbarian last night. I'll save you some time: it's pretty bad. If you were considering it, eh, don't bother. I found it greatly lacking in...Conan-ness.
Anyway, today's moment of gratitude aside:
Justice League #1
Meh. Nothing happened, yo. Also all the characters are suuuper confrontational dickwads. :C Including Superman. Which is like. That is not the Super man I know! But more on that later. phoenixstorm said it best: Everyone can't be Batman.
Swamp Thing #1
Really liking the art, actually. It's American comic book style done right. Nice chisel-y inking and they're clearly getting a lot out of the decorative plant motif. Writing-wise I'm happy, too. Bad Stuff Going Down is nicely creepy. Swamp Thing seems to have a tradition of scoring the most thoughtful writing and it looks to be continued here yaay.
Detective Comics #1
Happy! It's like Batman is back to the Batman I actually enjoyed reading about once upon a time. :3 I was pretty worried with all the promo artwork being blooooooodbloodbloodbloodblood and baby heads but yay there is not so much of that after all! Someone in marketing was just really keen. 8I
Green Arrow #1
Uhhh. Hm. I think I liked Green Arrow about, uh, 60-70% for the beard and Robin Hood outfit? Y-yeah. It's true. Ignoring that - glad to see Queen Industries and I think I detect an inkling of old GA's socialist leanings. This GA is a lot like Batman if he were less emo and more involved in Waynecorp's day-to-day stuff. And wore green. I will check back in on Green Arrow in a couple of years, once he's had time to grow a beard and get bitter about capitalism, pretty much. :D;;
Hawk and Dove #1
Surprisingly in the "okay" camp. The outfits are still terrible. The art is still Liefield. The mutant zombie thing is stupid. Also Dove's Terrible Secret (TM) is...stupid. Um. Okay, actually, Hawk and Dove is a bit stupid. It's a shame. I feel like there is an inkling of goodness there - heroes forced to work together with powers based on violence and pacifism respectively is a good idea but in actuality it's used for stupid.
OMAC #1
siiighhhh I want to like OMAC, I really do. Granted I want to like OMAC solely because Brother Eye is a jerkface AI and I really enjoy AI characters for some reason. But that doesn't change the fact that OMAC himself looks dumb...and his dialogue is really off-putting...and the whole of this first issue is like OH WHAT A TWIST except I already knew the twist - everyone knew the twist, the twist was in your marketing from day one - and would have worked as a movie intro, not a whole issue of a comic that supposed to make me buy the next comic. :C
Stormwatch #1
Okay. Okay, I'm cool with this. Except for angry angry Manhunter, I'm not really cool with that, but it seems like no one ever does Manhunter right. Sometimes an animated show will have a nice spin on him but generally comics don't give him much personality. Except for angry in this case. Um. Back to Stormwatch - lots of interesting powers, hopefully backed up by interesting personalities in issues to come. Writing and art didn't ~blow me away~. Actually, the colouring is a bit...bad. It has that airbrush and only airbrush look to it. Like the colourist is afraid of sharp planes. :/
Men of War #1
God, can a comic be any more boring.
Animal Man #1
Exactly as good as I expected from the sweet cover haha. Art-wise, I see what you do there. Interesting take with the clean defined flat style to push the grotesque nature of the ultra detailed Bad Stuff. People will complain but for the direction Animal Man is headed I think it'll work well. The writing is solid. The final page is nice and creeptastic. 8D
Static Shock #1
YAY.
It's happy and bright and the bad guys are the multicultural Power Rangers on scooters. Static's powers are used in interesting ways - not just LOL I SHOOT ELECTRICS AT YOU, which is what you /expect/ from "electricity" powers. It's refreshing! All those times you were like "but why doesn't he use his powers to lift himself??" Well, this guy does!
Action Comics #1
Grant Morrison's made Superman is a Dick current canonical reality, pretty much. sigh. I see what you're doing. Clark is meek and his alter-ego is confident, yeah, we see. But confident =/= intimidate people left and right, okay. Superman was sort of the...bedrock of morality for the Justice League so to see him, frankly, being a massive douche is a blehhh. I suppose this is Young Superman, yet to learn the ways of goody-two-shoes-ness. But if Justice League #1 is any indication, he never gets over it.
Justice League International #1
Uuuhhh, so, Godiva has a dumb power okay. Hair power is just the dumbest power always. ._. I can only think of terrible Asian ghost movies. :D;; That aside, Booster is fun. They focus on him a bit, I suppose for the benefit of people who have no idea who this leader-guy is. That would have been me if I didn't know certain people! I liked how Batman wormed his way onto the team unofficially. I'm never impressed with "oh noes monsters" bad guys with no set up though. /shrug Hopefully it'll evolve into a fun title with hardly an emo. :3
Batwing #1
Oof, well. Nice art. Very nice art. Batwing's costume is still stupid. Really stupid. No one's gonna take you seriously, here or in Africa, if you have giant flimsy plastic wings that would clearly be non-functional sticking out of your back. So there's that. That aside, it's awkward for DC to try to comment on the African political situation. I'm half Thai and I can barely comment on the Thai political situation without coming off wrong, which is fair, since I'm no more Thai than any other Australian when it comes to ideology. I wouldn't want to be the very white very American writer behind Batwing, attempting clumsily to comment on the politics of a country you probably can't ever know enough about unless you grew up there. I'm not saying black Batman is a bad idea but gritty super-realistic African Batman is probably a bad idea for a comic made by Americans, sold to Americans. I could comment further, disect actual dialogue in the comic, but I won't bother. DC is attempting to tackle a difficult subject but honestly they aren't equipped for it. Sorry, guys. Maybe one day. For now, I watch with morbid interest.
Batgirl #1
Yeeahhh I kind of hated it. The side-step of the whole bullet in the spine issue was clumsy, to say the least. But I could ignore that. Commands to the writer from the DC Powers That Be, fair enough. Gordon family interaction was very nice, I liked that a lot. It was all trundling on basically alright right up to the last page where the grizzled Gotham cop who apparently doesn't know the definition of "murder" points a gun at Batgirl while the supervillain (who just committed murder, yo) is standing right there in the same room. That's just. That is the stupidest thing in comics this last week, alright. THE STUPIDEST. That is characters being idiots solely for the sake of driving a plot - the weakest kind of writing. I'm not interested in the rest of Batgirl's run bases solely on that tweeeest.
So there you go.
Also read recently:
FEYNMAN
Really good. Unfortunately I dated a mathematician for several years, long enough to take everything in FEYNMAN with a huge grain of salt. I recognise some of those behaviours, charming in book form, as potential dickery IRLs. BUT still a really good book about an interesting person and it's entirely possible my dark suspicions are totally off base and the dude was genuinely ~wondiferous~.
Unseen Academicals:
Terry Pratchet, always good. The most difficult Pratchett book I've read though. Like. Multiple points where I had to piece sentences together slowly to work out what he was saying. Still. Solid. More easily appreciated by fans of football, I suspect. :D;;
Also, saw the new Conan the Barbarian last night. I'll save you some time: it's pretty bad. If you were considering it, eh, don't bother. I found it greatly lacking in...Conan-ness.