beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I have been reading horror comics all day. I need to remember to stop and do something else more often or it all just gets grimy to think on. Very strong stuff in these stories, skillfully done.

A lot of this first omnibus is Swamp Thing, covering stories I'd seen summarised elsewhere, and now I have read it, it is all so much darker and nastier than the summaries had conveyed to me. ( Read more... )

As far as I can tell from skimming the contents page the Swamp Thing stuff is over now, so, onwards to Hellblazer, and Newcastle.

I started reading the Hellblazer omnibus, Delano 1, so starting at the beginning.
(I used to have a very tatty Hellblazer 2 I acquired when it was wrapped in the cover for Hellblazer 1. Gave it to my brother to sell many years ago. Wouldn't bet on it being readable by now anyways.)

I can tell already this is going to be a different reading experience to Justice League Dark. I've read the equivalent of two issues and I am going to pause and ponder.

Also it isn't just comics as an artform I'm fed up of, the art and layout in these serrve the story in enriching ways I can spend time thinking about. None of that endless empty motion I got annoyed with, new horrors crammed in every panel. As they should be given the genre.

The story is Hunger & A Feast of Friends, and the TV show covered these in one episode. ( Read more... )

The compare contrast with the TV is interesting but the comics are already good.


Going to think on them more.

I have finished reading 1600 pages of Justice League Dark omnibus
and it is possible all the bits I really *like*
are in New 52 Constantine #12.

There's other bits that are good, but for a book that makes a big deal of John and Zatanna's grand tragic doomed love, they barely spend any time on page together, they're just motivated by losing each other a lot.

Nick Necro remains a shiny bit of twisted interesting in a magic soulmates story
that I want to take away from this New 52 nonsense and run away with to keep.

I read 1600 pages, at least 300 of them were annoying rubbish, quite a lot of the rest was fine until you expect it to pay anything off and instead it drops everything to do another story, and all of it is annoying because New 52.

I can only give it 3.5 stars as a whole, but, I am glad to have read all of it, even if the end result is knowing which characters I'd like to see story about.

... this omnibus gives me very little story about anyone, it's so full of Doing Things instead.
It's nice when the art gets an excuse to go all trippy and cosmic and remind you there's no FX budget limit here, but, it keeps on being frustrating storytelling to me.

Like I was liking it when the story built up to John covered in blood having taken the knowledge of all magic into his head declaring he would take over the world
but then the story zigged sideways and just plonked a new ending in out of nowhere
and I still want to see where actual John would go with that, or what Zatanna would have to say about any world he'd build.


And a perpetually frustrating bit is the suspicion it could make more sense if even more individual comics were all lined up for reading with this lot, but 1600 pages bringing together Justice League Dark, some select Constantine, and I don't know how many crossover Events comics, is already rather a lot.


... I am a bit tempted to go buy more Constantine though. I'm sure it would be frustrating too but there would be interesting bits.


I am still unconvinced this particular version of John Constantine should share the name though.

I'm taking Nick Necro and running back to the pool of Good Bits instead.

I think I'm up to page 1200 in this Justice League Dark omnibus
and the religion stuff is... a lot, but interesting enough.

I am glad to be reading though
because Nick Necro is back
and it is deliciously fucked up shippy again.
( Read more... )

I bought a Justice League Dark omnibus because I found a lot of fanfic very interested in Nick Necro
and I have read up to page 435
which has included a lot of Nick Necro.

I was puzzled reading the bits on the internet at how Nick thinks Z and John betrayed him
but reading it all in a row I realised
despite John *saying* threesome
the book thinks Nick is straight.

Well that's a lot more boring as a story.

Like yes betraying a friend and mentor is a story, but, *waves at John Constantine's everything*
they absolutely were shagging.

I'm not convinced this comic is well acquainted with John's everything though.
I mean they're actively remaking it, but I am frequently not impressed with what they're attaching to the name here.

And Zatanna is pretty much reduced to Daddy Issues in a bustier.

Also I am not getting along with superhero comics pacing anymore again. Everything happens so much, on any given page, and yet by page 435 it sure doesn't take many paragraphs to sum it up. People come and go so often it's not always worth memorising the names, yet the book seems to exist to intro them and tell us how the world works in the then new configuration. Crossovers dance across the pages in a splash and then go away to books not covered here. There's no through line, it's too choppy. And the summaries provided by the characters already contradict what I actually read.

Which is occasionally interesting because you learn for sure you can't trust a word out of Nick Necro's mouth and he may well be fooling himself as well, but that is not the only impression it gives.

It's doing a lot with Constantine and Zatanna so I'm glad I'm reading it, but it's mostly making me want to mine it for parts, which is my usual comics reading experience.
( Read more... )


I think this comics team that wanders in and out of crossovers is a reading experience pretty much opposite to the focused one to a handful of characters stories I've been liking most lately.
Like these people are interesting, but only enough to make me want a story about them. Not thus far to feel like I've read one.

Comics require different reading muscles.

... as does this 1622 page book...


ETA several days later: I was either mistaken in my impression or the story realised what bits were interesting. Excellent improvement follows. Several hundred pages later.

Today I am Waiting for deliveries etc

so I started reading the JLI omnibus volume 3.

I have read 120 pages and I think they were all new to me, despite my best efforts to buy them all at the time.

I just finished a section where Captain Cold and Heatwave get stopped by Fire and Ice.
It starts out with them drunk in a bar talking about how their jobs (bookstore and parks) just aren't as exciting as the old days, and grumbling about how superheroes just aren't doing it right since Barry died.
So they go to rob a jewelery store. Politely. While asking the employees to make sure they give them good reviews for the politeness.
But then Fire and Ice are out shopping and stop them.
While they say how much this is and isnt like Barry.

It really seems like Cold and Heatwave don't know how to hang out without crime (and Barry) so they do Fun Crime while complaining about how even the heroes beat you up these days and the villains are all worse. Which is kind of my feeling about a lot of comics too.

It was funny and weirdly sweet.
... and it ends when Cold remembers the 'good old days' usually ended with prison.

Also there's a bit where Fire is hoping to get a reward because she's maxed out all her credit cards and Ice just wants a nice food and a book to read. Modern superhero problems! Well, it's the 90s, perennial superhero problems really.


The other bits, with Mister Nebula the cosmic exterior designer, were probably funnier if you read comics that aren't JLI, but did have a good ending where J'onn figured out what would make him happy aesthetically (Las Vegas).

Clever uses of superpowers that are silly and gross, much better than just hitting things until they fall down.



I was seeing on tumblr lots of Wonder Woman pictures, and there were hardly any I wanted to reblog, because she keeps having a sword. When I was reading the lack of sword was a lot of the point. Lasso of truth, not sword.

... I am grumpy about comics whenever I look in on what comics are doing. So I will continue to hang out in Omnibus territory.

then i only get grumpy because my memories usually edited out the sexism and racism etc...

I like the US news headlines today. Those look hopeful. It's nice.

I am not so much liking any headline with a number in it, but, the ones about the vaccine are at least going in the right direction.



I have lately fallen into reading fic of Blue Beetle/Booster Gold, who I have been a fan of for so long they were on the cover of the first comic I remember buying. Canon has not always been kind to them. But in fanfic they get time to get older and cope with middle aged problems and just hang out with their friends, all of whom are alive for reasons that dont need exploring at this juncture. It's a big multiverse. Everybody lives.

It is a whole bunch of feels reading all of that. There is one I read last night where Beetle gets a heart operation and Booster looks after him. Another about that time Booster was on life support and Beetle looked after him. And one with a whole big argument about that time Superman died and the guys were both badly hurt.

... fanfic tends to add the comfort to the hurt/comfort equation canon starts.

I dont know why I'm finding it compelling to read about people the story dismissed as small time also rans having people sized problems with world shaking epic sized problems going on in the background.

... okay, phrased like that I maybe do.

It's kind of depressing when the chance to support each other through major surgery counts as a chance at happily ever after, but, *waves vaguely at canon*.



But then I really lost track of what canon thinks of them lately anyway. I mean I have 'Heroes in Crisis' but I dont know how it fits in with anything.


I feel like by now my fav characters should be, like, maybe fifty? Little bit less? Like they were always older than me but not older-older.

And then their next gens could be wearing the name because maybe the olders dont want to get beat up quite as often these days?

There could be a multi generation history and everyone growing into their own accomplishments without having to erase anyone else.



In fanfic the guys seem to hit forty. Maybe. Mid thirties at least.

... and only in fanfic.


It's disheartening when all the heroes are younger. You hit a point where the stories havent got any suggestions.

... obviously the comic book suggestions can be unsuitable. 'Dress up as a bat' is seldom a socially appropriate solution. But 'channel your grief into making the world better' almost always is.

I dont know.



But I've been reading fanfic and having feels about it for the first time in A While.

Those feels just seem to be about Time and how there is so little and so much.

Rereading old stuff can be a bit of a :-(
like everyone is more sexist than you remember, and more racist than you remember, and it may have been years and everyone on the page seems to be white, and that's... not the happy place good bits version you remember.

Justice League Antarctica was funny because the Injustice League, the bad guys, try and be good guys, get sent to guard Antarctica, and get qttacked by killer penguin-piranhas.
And win. Major Disaster saves rhe day and steps up to be a hero. That was cool.

Unfortunarely every gag on the page relies on making fun of characters for being learning disabled and mentally ill.
( Read more... )

So I did not like this section. Which is :-(



The recurring theme of assorted heroes and villains only doing what they do in pursuit of a steady pay check, that I like.

Also how it swings between super serious (by comics standards) huge fighting and funny bits. People living their lives. Makes them people shaped.



But everyone is meaner than I remember and that's no fun.

I started reading the Justice League International omnibus volume 2
and once again it is and isnt how I remember.
Like, they are saving the world, but they are also being funny about it, and making jokes about how bad the Justice League comics are because the characters are trying too hard to be funny.

I think in my memory I smoothed out the jokes to action ratio so I filled in more fighting between panels.

To be fair though I also remembered and was amused by many of the jokes. There's just a lot of them at once.



Also though: Simon Stagg.
The more I read and remember, the more I think Reverse Flash in the tv show had a defensible point. ( Read more... )

Somewhere before that point a responsible time traveller could very reasonably decide to stop him.

Sure it might be a better idea to get him arrested, stabbing is obviously a problem, but you can see where stabbing him would be coming from.

And Stagg blames it all on a rogue employee and as usual gets no consequences.

As bad guys go he's no Luthor but it appears not for want of trying.

This is the time traveller problem: Flash would bever believe it in the tv show.

... so obviously there should be less stabbing and more criminal prosecutions, solve every angle at once.

Still.


ANYway


The other thing that stood out was Doctor Fate - previously a man, Fate is now a hero usually created when a man and a woman join to make a mystically balanced being, but here represented by just the female half. She's super unsure she should be getting into anything like this, but she saves the world anyway. Is good.

But Guy Gardner is a dick about it.
( Read more... )

The good bits version in my head didnt keep very much of this. I remembered Power Girl getting hit, much angst and woe about that soon, some depowering. But a lot of the chatter is not so amusing later.

Honestly the funniest bit was Beetle falling asleep on Booster and snoring on his way towards danger.
... well he said he was asleep...



None of the ways men treat women are worth remembering
but the women all get stuff to do and take turns saving their team mates.

That bit I remembered.

So I said while writing about the Omnibus that the JLI in my head is the good bits version. So I thought I'd write a bit about what that version is? Only, not meaning the 'edited highlights' version that was the source of it, just meaning, the bits that interest me about these characters, if I'm going to write about them now.

And writing about them now I'd be drawing on their whole history since then, but filtering it for stories as still need told.

The basic Justice League setup where they work within a formal framework of checks and balances, and draw steady pay and benefits for it, I like and would like to keep. No secret government offices engaged in coverups, just places any random walk in all over the world can visit if they're having the kind of problems only a superhero can help with.

The team in my head is

Beetle & Booster
Fire & Ice
Guy Gardner
Big Barda & Scott Free
J'onn J'onnz

And in all cases it's the personalities and relationships I find interesting, not the power sets.

( Read more... )


So I just spent many, many words and about an hour writing only about Beetle and Booster. And there's so much more good stuff in having the whole team.

I mean if I was writing them now they'd end up Beetle/Booster, Fire/Ice with a whole Guy complication, Scott/Barda with Scott being a notably slight man and Barda being a very tall muscular woman. I'm not saying she's trans, but there are certain models of women we don't see so many of on TV. So it would be fun if they're trans, like, both of them, rewriting their own definitions, but it would also be fun if they're cis and just Like That.
But if they're trans, and the shapeshifter is genderfluid, then pretty much the whole team is LGBT?

Except Guy, but there's stories we can use for that. ( Read more... )



Wow that's an hour and a half of typing, I've covered five characters, and there's still more to go.



Scott and Barda are easy though, what I like about their relationship is summed up in a single image, where Barda is carrying Scott upstairs to bed, carrying him slung over her shoulder up the stairs in their little house in the suburbs. ( Read more... )



So that leaves J'onn, and I like the Supergirl version of him, but he's very different in the League. ( Read more... )


So that's pretty much two hours I've been typing and my fingers hurt.


And the League in my head are not as detailed as I thought. I pretty much can go on about Beetle and Booster and then... their friends, the Justice League. Eh, I could talk about Guy too. ... people with their own titles are easier to know than people in a team book? who knew?


But I like how I can tell a lot of stories with how they fit together, even if the only story I can think of for Fire and Ice is that they really like and support each other. I mean, how often do you even see that? Let alone with two women?


So this is what I like about the team in my head, a bunch of sets of partners that can fit together to be a team.

... the actual comics kind of didn't do that.

... the actual comics spent a lot of time on pranks and people being annoyed at each other.

Like, some of that, but mixed in with saving the world, and actually liking each other.




And I can't be having with comics time no more, it tells like two or three episodes a year, it's so sloooooow. They'd get through so much more story at TV speeds. I want to do that.


And also engage with the different attitudes to superheroics and authority that you definitely have in that team. Like, this incarnation work for the UN and within a legal framework, but you've got Guy who wants to ignore it, Booster who leaves it for more money, Fire who kind of infiltrates it? And Scott and Barda who came from a dictatorship and don't want to go back to one. That should all be interesting.


I want to think up meaty stories and then play with these people.


That would be interesting.

I have been rereading the old JLI omnibus
and
the good bits version in my head is much better than this.

Also I remember it as them making jokes while saving the world
but on reread I can understand the reading that says they aee the jokes
and that is annoying.

I have not yet caught up with the issues I was reading though, iirc, so probably the ratio of world saveage goes up later?

It's making me understand the whole thing where Beetle and Booster meet and Beetle thinks Booster is so childish now, because Booster didn't get written as much in other comics so Beetle was more grown up now. Except I'm still sure that was exaggerate. But, I get it.

So now I feel like I'm being grumpy at old friends.

But I understand better how frustrating time travel would be, since everybody is going to still be like this on that page every time you visit, but you are different every time. Nobody fits the same way again. And crankiness ensues.

I shoyld write the stories like they are in my head, that woyld be more fun.

I dreamt a confusing mess, including hair ties you could smuggle the insides of usb drives in, but the last image was Booster and Beetle doing the hug and fly. Like, Booster was annoyed and stomping, Beetle slung an arm around him and leaned in, more and more hug, until Booster acted annoyed at the weight and made them both fly. And then they grinned at each other and went for a flight together instead of stomping off alone.

It was sweet.

And somehow from there my brain went to that time Booster got turned into a tentacle monster.

(Extreme Justice 14 apparently, not afaik referred to after.)

It was part of a time Booster needed a life support suit and replacement arm, and somehow it transitioned him to All Well, and I should see if I have a copy to check what all happened there but that's not the point because I was thinking:

Symbiotic tentacle aliens that give you superpowers and healing
but you have to give them vitamins and play time.

Like, they'll spend all day being your arm if you really like, but they're shapeshifting tentacles at heart, they want some time to just hang loose and explore textures and stuff.

So Booster needed them for life support, but if they do repairing heart injuries then Beetle could too, though that's more reminiscent of Jaime's scarab deal than Ted's life.

And then maybe Guy in his Vuldarian phase is more wearing an alien than being one? He's certainly been injured enough. But his were brain injuries...

So it's not a story yet, but as an alternate setup, powers via prostheses that are actually assistants is a newish spin. Would focus on interdependence and needs.

... and tentacles...

This one says DC UNIVERSE REBIRTH across the top, and also Volume One, which apparently means it just sort of stops when things are getting ominous.

But the magic words on the cover were Ted Kord.

( Read more... )

I won't say I'm hooked, but this is an angle that could work, and what with everyone being more alive than when I quit reading there's all sorts of possibility in it.

But comics are so sloooooow. I don't know if volume two even exists yet, and if it did it would be more likely to put characters further up a tree than to resolve bits yet.

Also, still won't be primarily about Ted.

And never has been about his obvious partnership.

*sigh*



I may read the next bit but may also be tempermentally unsuited to reading an art form that's pretty much the world's longest and most complex WIP.