Thorns

So, on the whole, Kick Ass was exactly my sort of film. It's both a straightforward geek-becomes-superhero wish fulfillment and a subversion of it, and the violence was glorious (I quite like violence done right). I agree with those saying that the violence and swearing really aren't worth complaining about, and aren't even extra specially celebrated compared to many other films (the violence looks like it hurts, for good guys and bad). But.

I kept hearing it was good in an over the top puerile sort of way, and was ok with that, but just before watching it found out it was based on a comic by Mark Millar. As it started I was reminded of this, and of how I felt about Wanted.
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One of those things which I've been linked to intermittently and finally gone "Oh, wait, this is cool!": http://www.illdoctrine.com/ the video blog of Jay Smooth, a very cool slightly nerdy hip-hop artist who talks about all sorts of things in a really engaging, intelligent, entertaining way.

..and is also very cute *cough*

As someone with a small soft spot for hip-hop I don't like the way hip-hop culture tends to be portrayed, part of me feels rather uncomfortable with the way that say Nerdcore sets itself up in false dichotomy with "real" hip-hop artists who are assumed to never be nerdy etc themselves. (Which is not to say that's all there is to nerdcore etc, just that I get that vibe sometimes)

And now for something completely different: Really cool viral ad for watchmen in the form of a 1970s tv broadcast, via sonictail. You know even if this movie totally sucks, it will be worth it for stuff like this and the vid material. (I've been an Alan Moore fan long enough to set very low standards for a "good" adaptation)

Finally, as someone with (relatively minor) accessibility issues I was also a bit uncomfortable about all the people crowing about Dick Cheney being in a wheelchair. I wasn't sure I could be bothered posting about it and lo! Deconstructing Cheney's De-Inaugural Wheelchair does it for me. Life is good.

(1st and 3rd links via sparkymonster who's lj I randomly clicked to from somewhere totally unrelated)

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.

So, by sheer coincidence, today I read the "Finding out your parents are supervillains" idea turned into bland yet offensive dreck in "Wanted"(*) and turned into joy and sunshine in "Runaways"(**).

The latter was a little YA and Marvel for my tastes, but I still enjoyed it and will put the next one on reserve. It kind of reminded me of early Buffy, with metaphors about adolescence and it's difficult relationship with authority played large with epic evil and magic powers. I can see why Brain K Vaughan and Joss Whedon are writing for each others projects. You can download the first issue here (you may have to do a search).

(*)Which I have decided is much more amusing if you replace "The Fraternity" with "The Patriarchy" :)
(**)Looks up link. Sees that the planned run is Brian K Vaughan of "Y the Last Man", then Joss Whedon of "Buffy", then Terry Moore of "Strangers in Paradise".
Goes "Oooh".

Brain K Vaughan is cool, I intend to try to get my hands on a copy of his run on "Buffy Season 8" when it's done.

Just read "1602", a graphic novel by Neil Gaiman which recasts the marvel universe into 1602. I really enjoyed it. I read the first few issues at nico_wolfwood's back when it came out but it was much better having the whole thing. I do think he was a little lazy by making it focus even more on white men than the original source, that we he didn't have to write around all the restrictions put on women etc. Personally I think half the fun of period pieces is playing around with the juxtaposition between the characters worldview and our own, he did this a bit (and it was fun) but I would have liked it if he'd done it even more (how would Storm the african princess have faired, for example? Or Wonder Woman, avatar of non christian gods?)

An idea which gave me definite pause was that he explicitly states that America started with the first colonists, and that if they die americas future dies, with the native americans, to me, coming across as the people who used to live there, the caretakers until the Real Americans arrived. It's gotten me thinking about what "America" (or for that matter "Australia") really is. Hmm.