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First, the vid: No Handlebars, a really fantastic Ten-is-a-cheerful-psychopath Dr Who fanvid.
Anyway, the remnants of this darn cold meant I was tired and left work early, and I decided to rest up in Perth library. As a result, I read two superhero comics, a genre I don't usually dip into randomly.
First was a Wonder Woman story, "Love and Murder". I'd heard about the "chick-lit" writer Jodi Picoult writing for the comic and was curious to see what this resulted in. The answer? Crap. I mean it wasn't the worst comic I've ever read and a few bits of the plot were interesting, but it was about as subtle as a brick with the constant monologues about how CHILDREN HAVE TO MAKE THEIR OWN DECISIONS and KILLING PEOPLE AND WAR IS BAD. The "lovable rogue" love interest was an annoying skeevy prat, and while I'll admit this isn't saying muh given how unlikeable everyone was, I couldn't help but notice that every single non-white character was unsympathetic (with the possible exception of the girl asking what size coffee she wanted)
"Gee", I thought to myself, "if this is good, maybe I just don't like regular superhero comics".
And then I read "Shellshocked", the first in the new run of Blue Beetle. And it was awesome. I mean it's just a fairly straightforward superhero origin story: regular teenage boy has happy enough life, then he encounters a mysterious object and suddenly he has these weird powers and people are after him and he has no idea what's going on. But it's funny and the characters are fleshed out and interesting, and there's no simple good/bad dichotomy. There was a whole bunch of stuff going on (and a chunk of missing plot we don't see but only hear about) which I assume would probably have made more sense to me if I was more into comic books, but it wasn't horribly frustrating and I got the gist.
Anyway, the remnants of this darn cold meant I was tired and left work early, and I decided to rest up in Perth library. As a result, I read two superhero comics, a genre I don't usually dip into randomly.
First was a Wonder Woman story, "Love and Murder". I'd heard about the "chick-lit" writer Jodi Picoult writing for the comic and was curious to see what this resulted in. The answer? Crap. I mean it wasn't the worst comic I've ever read and a few bits of the plot were interesting, but it was about as subtle as a brick with the constant monologues about how CHILDREN HAVE TO MAKE THEIR OWN DECISIONS and KILLING PEOPLE AND WAR IS BAD. The "lovable rogue" love interest was an annoying skeevy prat, and while I'll admit this isn't saying muh given how unlikeable everyone was, I couldn't help but notice that every single non-white character was unsympathetic (with the possible exception of the girl asking what size coffee she wanted)
"Gee", I thought to myself, "if this is good, maybe I just don't like regular superhero comics".
And then I read "Shellshocked", the first in the new run of Blue Beetle. And it was awesome. I mean it's just a fairly straightforward superhero origin story: regular teenage boy has happy enough life, then he encounters a mysterious object and suddenly he has these weird powers and people are after him and he has no idea what's going on. But it's funny and the characters are fleshed out and interesting, and there's no simple good/bad dichotomy. There was a whole bunch of stuff going on (and a chunk of missing plot we don't see but only hear about) which I assume would probably have made more sense to me if I was more into comic books, but it wasn't horribly frustrating and I got the gist.
