Two too perfect to bother really reviewing

There a list that I have in my head of all the books I'll be buying the nieces. And the nephews, we don't gender bias in my family. Watching age two and age almost four run around quoting The Paper Bag Princess, and  yelling "hey dragon" at each other makes my pretentious, academic, feminist, intellectual shiver in delight.

Little sister/ Fellow Aunt and I have this thing about "curating your own media", and choosing the texts for yourself that make you feel good, rather than misanthropic. I read Twilight to see what the fuss was about. I read "some" of 50 Shades for the same reason, but couldn't do it (it's not just the content. It's the terrible writing). I wouldn't do up again. Life is too short to read bad books. Life is also too short to not eat the dessert, and not drink the wine.

So when I find books, Graphic or not, that make me genuinely excited to share with the nibblets, I get so happy. So, here are two of them.

Lumberjanes is what happens when you send a whole bunch of girls off to summer camp, and you DON'T make the beautiful and blonde, or make it all about boys and bullying. Or finding your heretofore unknown identical twin sister. If you take a bunch of girls and make them clever, and brave, and silly, and scared, and cranky, and chubby, and aesthetically and sexually diverse, and full of interesting, layered, REAL qualities. You make them real friends, full of loyalty AND disagreements, love AND impatience. And then you let them have all the adventures. Did you get lost in the forest after dark and find some kind of mystical weirdness? You'll get through it together. Have the boys from the all male camp across the lake been possessed by something kind of evil and/ or gross? You can do it together. Three eyes shape-shifting bears? Magical foxes? They deal with it like they deal with canoeing, and crafts, and transgender campers. Like hard-core lady-types, Like Lumberjanes.

This is a camp for hard-core lady-types, complete with instruction manuals (like, literal pages included in the comic) and I freaking LOVE it. Vol 1 and 2,as well as author Noelle Stevenson's Nimona are 10/10's from me. Hello, freaking brilliant gender politics, feminist tropes, and plain old fun. The fact that they swear in punk rock goddesses (What the Joan Jett!) and believe in "friendship to the max" just makes me love them more. Even without added dinosaurs.

Volume three, now in my hot little hands, will be part of our family history and heirlooms. 

Next, Princeless!!!!!!!!

Imagine a kick-ass, clever, fabulous, mixed race Princess whose family shoves her into a dragon guarded tower so that she can be rescued by some stupid, ridiculous, shiny-armoured prince that she'll be forced to marry. Yeah, NO. This Princess is going to make friends with her (female) dragon, rescue herself, and then set off to rescue all of her elder sisters. Hells, Yeah! 

Princeless questions ALL of the fantasy tropes. She goes off to find armour, and finds a half-dwarf best friend (maybe more) Bedelia, who has been stuck under her fathers thumb in his shop pretending to be the dutiful daughter who never wanted anything else. Pfft.

They are both freed from who society wants girls of their sex and rank to be. And they just want to help other girls escape. And not just girls. Princess Adrienne's twin brother, Devon, the only male in the entire family, is as trapped by his circumstances as his sisters. His father wants him to be manly, princely, kingly, and warriorly. And he's not. 

Add in the kind of fuck-ups that 16 year olds get into, the kind of mistakes that people make regarding societies equation of beauty and goodness, werewolf maiden-warriors, pirate princesses, and its a whole lotta fun. Even Adrienne's parents get into the action. The Father who thinks he knows best is going to get his preconceived notions shattered, and mother? Well, I have a strange feeling about the super, secret, black knight who was the Kings mysterious ally way back when. 

10/10. Read it. Buy it. Love it.

WTF Alan Moore!

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/21/superheroes-cultural-catastrophe-alan-moore-comics-watchmen

I made the mistake of reading this interview at stupid o'clock in the morning, and I'm steamed!
Alan Moore, you are an artist and an author whose work I have read and respected, but respectively,
get your head out of your ass!

Moore, tired of being questioned about him work, his undeniably dark, violent, very adult work, has decided to "retire" from public life, and cease to give interviews. His right to do so, no doubt about it.

Where I have my issues are some of his blanket statements  about the entire comic book genre.
Dear Alan Moore, superheroes are NOT a 'cultural catastrophe'. Society and people need characters like this. Throughout the entirety of written human history, there have been superheroes.
Ever hear of Gilgamesh? Or Beowulf? Maybe that Odysseus guy? What about the Arthurian legends, or Robin Hood. They may not be as instantly recognisable as some big guy in blue tights with a giant S on his chest, but they performed the same function. The figure who is more, is other, and outside of ordinary life. He (being honest, it's mostly he) has powers and abilities beyond those of ordinary men, and can oppose evils and injustices that those ordinary men cannot. It is a social and cultural catharsis, not a catastrophe. The catastrophe would occur if humanity ceased to believe in the possibility of the extraordinary. Some amazing anthropologists have written brilliant work about the necessity of socially sanctioned, even organised  times and spaces for taboo behaviour to occur. All the things that can't occur in order to maintain equilibrium and continuum, can occur in story, in play, in the Carnivalesque ( to use Bahktin).

And how telling is it that the harder life is, the more people need stories and hope. Ugh!

Also, I strongly disagree with the statement that they were originally "unambiguously children's characters". Yes, they were a lot more naive and innocent then your work. To my knowledge, Superman has never had a character rape someone to death. And if you don't want someone to comment on the sexual violence prevalent in your work, don't put as much in. Easy.
But to write off the entirety of the mid centuries body of as just for kids is arrogant and blind. It is accessible to children, yes. It is also, and will always be accessible to older audiences. Studies have proven that a child who is too young to understand certain concepts, will simply not see those concepts within the media. An older reader will. Just because it is not all sex and brutal violence, doesn't make it too childish for an adult reader.

Your work, however, is clearly, unambiguously, deliberately only for a select audience. One who can handle the amount of murder, rape,cruelty, and racism, as well as the objectification of all of your female characters.

You helped change an entire genre, and impacted  generations of writers and readers, and as I said, I respect what you've done. But stop being such a disrespectful asshole about anything different to your work. Stop condemning people who choose to  curate their own media in a way that makes them happy.  Stop looking down on all the people who live better live for finding catharsis through the avatar of the superhero, and the story that offers hope and play and resolution and and the stuff we need in our lives and can't always find.

Alan Moore, try a little
Perspective.

DC's New 52: Bat Family Part one (I'm Batman!)

I will quite happily admit that before I discovered DC's New 52 reboot, my batman experience was limited to the movies. I'd re-watched the Burton Batman's dozens of times, and got my hands on all the Nolan films on Blu-Ray. The sheer scope of the DC universe, the 75 years of complex history and interwoven story lines made my head hurt. I mean, how does someone decide where to start? With Bob Kane in 1939? With the Frank Miller Dark Knight Returns? Ugh! Luckily, DC has realised that there was a whole gigantic audience just like me out there, and created a jumping off point for newbies, that, most importantly, DID NOT discard everything.It wasn't just clever (brilliant) marketing, but it gave a whole new scope for expansion and character development. Characters who had aged and grown cynical and calloused were reborn young and hopeful. They were allowed to have greater liberty with gender and sexual stereotypes and mores. There was debate (argument, disagreement, contretemps, and feuding) about certain of these changes, but it worked. DC made a gigantic buttload of money, and a lot of changes in comic book marketing. Marvel attempted their own reboot with Marvel Now, but didn't really manage the same kind of return to start. I mean, some of the Marvel Now titles are FREAKING AMAZING, but it still requires too much previous knowledge to really get it.

Anyway, Batman.

The Bat Family titles take some things for granted. They assume that the reader knows Bruce Wayne's history. Unchangeable facts about fictional worlds and characters who go through multiple incarnations are commonly known as "canon". The Batman canon has as these facts, the Wayne's were murdered in an alley when Bruce was a child. He was raised by the family's butler Alfred Pennyworth. He adopted and trained Dick Grayson as his sidekick. He interacted with Commissioner Jim Gordon, Gorgon's daughter Barbara, Wayne enterprises Lucias Fox, and would ALWAYS find himself running into Selina Kyle (catwoman), Harvey Dent (Two Face), Edward Nygma (The Riddler), Oswald Cobblepot (The Penguin) and the always mysterious and unknown Joker, arguably one of the most fascinating, complex and thought-consuming character in comic book history. 

However, the new 52 reintroduces the history of all of these characters in ways that don't impede enjoyment, or coherent storytelling.

Anyway....Batman?

There are three separate, straight up Batman titles. Batman, Batman: The Dark Knight, and Batman: Detective Comics. It would help if there was a straightforward time or story-type distinction, but there isn't. All three are first wave titles, and there are even cross-overs. It gets more complicated.

Richard "Dick" Grayson, the original Robin, and the only one that most people are aware of, has grown up, left home, an gotten his own book. Now known as Nightwing, he has his own story lines and territory, but still comes home to Gotham to play side-kick, best friend, big brother, ex-boyfriend and voice of reason when needed. *spoiler alert* He later gets un-masked and outed. Unable to be  a masked vigilante, he becomes a spy and goes undercover in 'Grayson". He's currently two volumes in, and doing a good job.

Did you know that there was more than one Robin? Did you know that there was a whole lot?

The Second Robin, Jason Todd, was a street kid, taken in by Bat's after the drug overdose death of his mother. However, Jason always had too much anger, too much recklessness, and never had the discipline that Batman wanted from his, um, disciples. After being tricked into thinking that his mother was still alive, he went after the Joker alone, and was beaten to death. Actually to death. Dead, buried, and mourned. This being DC, he is brought back to life by Batman's ex/ enemy Talia Al Ghul (we'll come back to her later). Understandably pissed that Batman declined to avenge his death, he goes on a bit of a violent, pouty sulk for......well....a few years. He takes up with a few other misfits, and goes looking for trouble in Red Hood and The Outlaws, then post futures end Red Hood and Arsenal (an ex-Green Arrow character, Roy Harper).

Joker history has one of his first appearances as a crime boss known as the Red Hood. It says a lot about Jason's state of mind post rebirth that he takes on both the name Red Hood, and the actual red mask of the guy who killed him, He also makes the decision to use guns instead of non-lethal means to take on bad guys. There is a strong rumour that the upcoming Suicide Squad's Joker, played by Jared Leto, may actually be Jason Todd. I'm half-way convinced. I'd get quite a kick out of it.

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk5nqqWK6_I)

The third Robin, Tim Drake, actually volunteered, and kind of manipulated his way into Robin status.

Bruce was pretty torn up over Jason, and didn't want a new young man to be responsible for. Tim, however, being quite a fantastic detective, ended up putting himself in the way of Batman's enemies, leaving Bat's with the choice to take him in, or let him die. So he Took him in. Whether it was out of respect for Batman's losses, or individualism, Tim was known from the beginning as Red Robin, never just Robin. After a while, he takes off to start his own young Justice League, known as the Teen Titans, but always maintains his ties to Batman. Teen Titans comes under the "Young Justice" family, but Tim makes appearances throughout.

Then there is the current Robin, Damian Wayne. Yes, Wayne. And you know what? I think he is going to need a whole separate blog post, because he is.......complicated. 

Bat Family: Part 2 to be continued.

The meh of marvel masterworks: bring on the Hulk Vol 2

Okay, Brucie. So, far you are not impressing me. Moping out in the desert in your ripped pants is fine, but at least let Banner go to work often enough to feed you both. AND keep you in purple pants

And there is only so many times that Dr Banner can be in the wrong place at the wrong time before someone figures out that there's something hinky going on. I mean, your girlfriends father is the ranking military officer on the base! Dude!

Though to be honest, neither Betty nor General "Thundebolt" Ross seem to be Mensa candidates.   

(  For example, why is he bringing his daughter out to the testing sites? )

So, Bruce decided to build a robot that even the Hulk can't take out, and goes missing. Being found hanging out at the testing sight in his purple pants gets him suspected of communism, but not hulk-ism. Geez.
Giant Man makes an appearence. He and Hulk have a very manly tussle, half naked and very macho. Unfortunately their date gets broken up by Ol' Thunderbolt sending a nuclear missile their way. Everyone survives. Including the pants. Giant Man doesn't even bother to tell the rest of the gang that he found Hulk. Jerk.

Gasp! Plot! Evil Communist Dude steals Banner's aweesomely sciency Robot ( this is the 60's) and a guy  named Talbot (who ends up in Agents of SHIELD played by the flying man fron Heroes) has turned up to see what the frak is up with Brucie. Oh, no. people are going to think that he's a traitor. Thunderbolt, admiring his hetero-normative, all-American cis-gendered masculinity decides that his daughter should set her cap for soldier boy, rather than that *ugh* intellectual nancy.

Evil Communist Dude disguises himelf as Banner to cause trouble and steal stuff. ECD totally steals Betty Ross, just for the sake of it. On the upside, everyone totally saw the Hulk and (Fake) Banner in the same place at the same time. And even though they were both wearing purple pants, they were clearly two separate pairs of purple pants. 

Meanwhile, Teenaged sidekick Rick Jones somehow manages to circumvent top secret military security and protocol to bring Bruce a new set of non-purple clothes, and they scurry off to prove that they were there the whole time and have nothing to do with any of it.


ECD's boss, the self named "The Leader", despite failing to get his hands on BB's stuff, has decided to keep trying to science himself into world domination. Turns out, in a gasp-worthy twist, The Leader was exposed to gamma rays, and turned into an evil super genius. Who is green.
He spends quite a it of time fan-boying over fellow gamma green Hulk, and hoping that they can start a super secret support and/or world domination club. Maybe their theme song could be 'It's not easy being green'?

The Leader decides to science some big pink stretchy bouncy android type marshmallow humanoids. 

Including shrinkable ones, and 500 foot tall ones that make the army bring out their super bombs. Hulk fixes this in a particularly Marvel way.

                                                         
                                                         

Thoughts re. The Hulk Vol. 2.

How many times can Banner get secretly kidnapped by communists and have the army think he's defected, yet still come back to his government contracts?
If the President of the US has been told about Hulk/ BB, why couldn't he at least let some army top brass know, so that they stop arresting him?
How does the Hulk manage to pick up pieces of, like, road or roof and shake it like a blanket in order to take out how convoys?
How do they manage to mess up Betty Ross with Spiderman's super minor character Betty Brandt?
What the heck is up with Betty's hair?

Civil war makes civil hands unclean.....

So, I saw Captain America: Civil War today. 7.5 outta 10.  (10 for T'challa aka Black Panther. He is freaking BRILLIANT)

I'm torn, like the Avengers.
Do I read the Civil War books?
Or do I continue my trek through all the Marvel titles in order????????? It's really fun snacking and snarling about how bad they are.

DC was easy. The New 52 was designed to let new readers jump in. The Marvel Now titles still require a lot of prior knowledge. although Ms Marvel and Hawkeye are both on my Oh Em Gee list. I'd even pick Ms Marvel as my subject if someone asked me to write an academic report on the best comic book currently going. and this is in a world of Saga (review upcoming), Rat Queens (review upcoming), and Bitch Planet, which gave me goosebumps and made me want a new tattoo

I have no idea when I'll be ready to review Bitch Planet. I feel like I need a whole extra year of education, another degree, an exhaustive reading list on interstitial and fourth wave feminism, before I can even begin. 

Do I jump forwards? Or do I treat the MCU as a separate, yet connected entity. I mean, I'm reading Dr. Strange, but I am NOT seeing Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton ( Chiwetel Ejifor can be anything he wants as he is an actor of extraordinary, genre surpassing, mind blowing ability and beauty that escapes socialised aesthetics and instinctive evolutionary choices).

I make myself read every novel a movie or to series is based on before I dive in (Lev Grossman's The Magicians, the Expanse series, Deadpool Classic volume 1-10, the upcoming Outcast....), but long running comic books like the Avengers series are different. There have been so many different writers AND different artists over a time period longer than I've been alive. Each writer, and each artist has left their own touch on the characters, and comics/ graphic novels may be the only type of media which has this kind of long running existence whilst going through so many different perspectives and interpretations. I could consider some pretensions, academic, intellectual reading from a Nietzschian Perspectavism arguement, but Nietzsche pisses me off. and I had to do an entire 3rd year unit on Nietzschian philosopher in literature (I don't know how I managed a high distinction in that).

Maybe Batman is Batman is Batman is Batman? Maybe Nolan's Dark Knight can hang out with Millers Dark Knight, and with all 4 (or arguably 6) Robins and make it work. 

But back to my first question.

Civil War? Yes? No?......

Nailbiter - even better the second time around!

I decided to re-read the first three TPB's of  Joshua Williamson and Mike Henderson's Nailbiter so that it would be fresh in my mind for volume 4. I'm really glad I did. I actually decided to upgrade my original Goodreads ratings. It's clever, scary, funny, layered, and holds up to multiple readings. The artwork is fab. It's clean, almost spare lines in many places, and beautifully, almost cinematically framed. The colour palette is subdued for the most part, letting the blue, blue eyes of some characters, and the violetnt red of blood spatter to leap off the page. I especially love the TPB covers. Simple, but powerful. Creepy enough that I wouldn't be comfortable with it up on my wall.

Volume 1: There will be blood. Oh, yes there will!

Serial killers are clearly a fascination for a lot of people. The sheer number of procedurals on tv, as well as shows like Dexter, The Fall, The Following, prove that there is a rabid audience for all the guts and gore that people can come up with. And WIlliamson is not going to stint on the guts or the gore.

Nailbiter is set in smalltown USA. Normal in everyway, except for the fact that it happens to be the birthplace of sixteen different serial killers. SIXTEEN!

There are a lot of people obsessed with the how's and why's of the 'Buckaroo Butchers', as they are collectively known, and they're pretty fascinating. The Book Burner torched libraries because he was bullied as he couldn't read. The Terrible Two were fraternal twins who targeted other sets of twins. The Blonde would wait until guys catcalled her on the street, then kidnap them and sew their mouths shut. The big gun, however, the headliner, is #16, The Nailbiter

Having been found not-guilty at his trial, Edward Charles "the Nailbiter" Warren has decided to move back home to Buckaroo, where his ex-girlfriend just happens to be Sheriff. Cue a slew of new murders, a creepy masked, machete-wielding mystery, and a crushing history where everybody in town is connected to at least one of the butchers. Cue Sheriff Shannon Crane having to deal with a town ready to string up her ex-bf, missing FBI investigator Eliott Carroll, and uh "special interrogator" Nicholas Finch on the hunt for Carroll. Cue the discovery of a secret underground labyrinth/ jail holding the mutilated Carroll, and it is just the beginning. You'll be as obsessed as everyone else.

Volume 2: Bloody Hands. 

Warning......spoilers are coming. To Be Continued.

It was all extra meh, but here's more meh

Had a week of super extra meh, and really didn't want to do anything other than read something trashy, and re-watch old Stargate episodes. Also, I was up to Avengers #4, and it's totally super extra meh.
I'm not even going to bother going back to volumes 1-3 in order to review them. NOT EVEN FOR YOU! I'll catch you up though......

The O.G. line-up of the Avengers was Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and Giant Man. And his girlfriend/ assistant/ sidekick The Wasp, I'll get to the ugh of that later.

Iron man ran off to have his own book. He gets mentioned occasionally, and at least his super good special friend Tony Stark is still bankrolling the whole thing. Which is good, because things get destroyed a lot. Thor also ran off to have his own book. He sends some friends and villains by occasionally. The Enchantress for example. In this volume she tries to trick Hercules into taking on the Avengers, except honor and a freaking sulphur arrow (!) shut it all down. Hulk was barely around to start with, then threw some big tantrums and ran off (to have his own book). He's busy running around the desert, pining after the daughter of the General who wants to annihilate him, and kidnapping poor Dr Bruce Banner who has nothing to do with the Hulk, no connection whatsoever, totally.

Cap is still feeling sorry for himself. At least he's managing to still hang around to lead the Avengers while he has his own book. There's a lot of flashback and side adventures going on.

Then there is Hank Pym aka Giant man aka Ant Man aka Colossus aka do I even care at this point? Hank was off doing super serious and important scientific research for a while. He rejoined when he managed to frak things up, and get stuck at 12 feet tall. And sulked a lot. But then he scienced stuff, and yay, he's back again. He got some fancy new duds, and a new name, but he's still the same condescending, chauvinist pig he always was. The way he speaks to Janet Van Dyne is super gross. 

PLUS, putting my feminist on, why does she only get to shrink? Is it too unfeminine to let her be a giant too? Why does she have wings, but he doesn't? And the name, the wasp! Seriously! How often have you heard women being insulted by calling them waspish.Plus she spends a lot of time being superficial and self-defeating. UGH. Holy Hannah, Stan Lee. She's a freaking superhero.  Let her be freaking super.

Meanwhile, since half the roster has run away to make more money for Marvel, they've started to fill the ranks with ex-villains. Wanda and Pietro Maximoff were finally able to ditch Magneto, and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and follow their hearts to be heroes.
A big part of vol 4 is about them having to go home in order to get their powers rebooted. Only to discover that their home town has been invaded by an evil alien! Mwahahaha! Said alien wants to steal everones powers so that he can go back home and win a pointless war. Pointless because there is nobody left on either side but frigging robots!

There's also Hawkeye. Oh, Hawkeye. Thank all the gods that you get a costume upgrade. And a personality upgrade. This is cool. This is badass.

. 

. 

This is not. Plus he doesn't even bother to coordinate his quiver with his outfit, Red and yellow? With the purple? Oh Hawkeye. Originally he appeared as an Iron Man villain. A super sexy soviet spy named Natasha aka the Black Widow seduced him into it. He didn't do a very good job at it, and ends up becoming a hero instead. He's still pining over Natasha, but luckily she was brainwashed into the whole thing. So it's okay! Except...... Colonel Fury convinces her to become a double agent for SHIELD, leaving Hawkeye in confusion and despair, thinking that she's gone back to her old ways. We'll just have to see where this goes.

The rest of the volume is taken up by FF villain the Mad Thinker, who has created super hats, and super gloves and shit for his minions, in order to take out the avengers, in order to take out the Fantastic Four. Yep. That's the plot.

Luckily, Hercules has been hanging around (and in Thor's old room, cos, you know, gods), and he is the one thing that The Thinker didn't think of. Also lucky he's around, as Cap (away on a side adventure being mind controlled by Nazi dude in a mask the Red Skull) managed to drop the super powerful Cosmic Cube into the ocean where the freaking Sub-Mariner could find it. Having his usual tantrum, he decides to try and destroy all the submarines he can find. Cos he can. 

Lots of sound effects later, Hercules and Sub-Mariner kind of call it a draw. The cube, of course, gets lost in the confusion. But I foresee further plot.....

I think that's it. Cap should be back at Avengers HQ soon, and he and Hawkeye can sulk together.