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Aug. 31st, 2010 12:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runespoorI'll pick up the memes where I've left them off when I've got more time, but I do intend on picking them back up, because there's rambling I want to do, dammit. In the meantime I've written gushy reaction-type thingies for the new comics I've read recently, because I was in that kind of mood.
MY MONTH IN COMICS:
Red Robin #15: FUCK YEAH TIM. I was reading this, and suddenly the strangest thing happened to me: I felt like I had become a Tim fan. The page that prompted that reaction – punching the air and squealing TIIIIIIM, OH GOD TIIIIIIIIM – was this: “Wayne when I talk to the press, Drake when I look in the mirror.” I JUST. FUCK YEAH COMPARTMENTALISING IDENTITIES FUCK YEAH. TIM TIM TIM.
Before I got to that, there'd already been the previous page, where he goes see Steph and “in that outfit, he gets the hormonal tension between the original Robin and Batgirl.” I JUST. TIM THINKING META. I love when he does that. When anyone does that, but for the longest time that was the only thing I truly liked about Tim, and it makes me sososo happy that it's still there and inherent to the character. And also SHIP, so I wasn't going to dislike it.
Other good things: everything with Tam. I really like that girl. The scene in the GCPD, waiting for Gordon to receive them, was very, very good, plus it made me admire Tim's boldness. And it makes perfect sense: for him, Tim Wayne is a tool. It's most convenient for the goal he's trying to achieve to bring the fight to Tim Wayne.
I wonder:
- how those two cops knew how to contact Scarab → I should reread RR14.
- How Bruce would have handled the sniper-going-to-shoot-me-issue. No, mostly likely he'd have come up with a plan that didn't require him to play the game the way Tim decided to handle the issue – not because of the one-year-in-crutches part of the deal, but maybe precisely because he'd have been forced (?) to ask J'onn to impersonate him, and he wouldn't like that.
- How the one-year-in-crutches thing is going to play out, editorially. Is 'Tim Wayne' going to receive a 'miraculous cure' before that time is up? (I really hope not. The whole thing is potentially sketchy enough wrt Oracle without adding fake miracle cures.) Is 'Tim Wayne' going to die to the public eye, à la Bruce deciding it's more convenient if Bruce Wayne stopped existing during BW:Fugitive? Is Niecieza going to keep him in crutches for the twelve issues of RR to come? (Does that mean we can count on Niecieza staying on the title for more than that?)
- How is Damian so kyuuuute, omgNiecieza rite moar hilarious Tim/Damian snarking at each other. Brats.
Things I'm not a fan of: Dick wondering if he's going to ask Vicki to keep quiet about the whole thing. Maybe it's just the idea of Vicki freakin' Vale figuring out the Bat secret that I dislike. (I didn't like Vesper Fairchild getting interested in making Batman a story, either.)
The way Nicieza wrote Steph. Not really bad, just a bit meh. She sounded a lot less distinctive than she does in any dialogue on her own title, I think, but that may have been because Tim was asking something unpleasant.
Things that I JUST *FLAAAAAAIIIIL*: CRUTCHES. TIM IN CRUTCHES. SPIRIT OF DEVIN GRAYSON, ARE YOU THERE. Because, I'm sorry, there is no way you can put any member of the Batfamily, and especially a male one, in CRUTCHES as part of his COVER and avoid the comparison. Other comparisons: 'Tim' getting shot and the bullet supposedly grazing his spine. Babs.
And this is where I'm just a little tiny bit uneasy about this idea. It's an excellent idea. Long-term and 'who would willingly put themselves through such a cumbersome charade'. It's very Tim to pretend to be in crutches for one year for the mission. But, um. There's Babs. Who really did get shot, and really did keep consequences from it. I'm not really comfortable with the idea of faking a disability, even a temporary one. But, again, I think it's perfectly Tim. I wonder if anyone is going to wonder or write about Oracle's reaction. A discussion between Barbara and Tim would be lovely.
Batgirl #13: FUCK YEAH STEPH. I LOVE THIS BOOK. THIS IS MY FEEL GOOD BOOK. Every month, I'm a little bit wary before I start RR (I try to get the two books on pull list on the same day), because, as stated earlier, I am not a Tim fan. So every month, I'm just a little bit concerned to read about Tim. 'What if I read the book and it makes me hate him? I don't want to hate him What if he's being a jerk? I don't like Tim when he's being a jerk.' ← this is how I know I'm not a Tim fan. Characters I love, I love them just as much, or maybe even more, when they're wrong and when they're jerks. It makes me want to shake them and scream at them, but in a 'it's only because I love you that I put myself through this. If I didn't love you, I wouldn't care about your mistakes. So I love you, and I'm furious at you, and I hurt seeing you hurt – and trust me, the way you're doing this, you are going to hurt'. It's a thing.
So anyway, every month I get back home with my Batgirl and my Red Robin. Every month I start my reading with RR. Why? Because I know whatever happens in RR, Batgirl is going to make it all go away. Batgirl is my feel good book.
I LOVE THE FIRST COUPLE PAGES. (also, Steph is in her second semester at uni. *takes notes*) So Steph to go all SRS BIZNESS on something like ping-pong, I love how competitive and how gleeful she is at rocking at something. I love that there are so many people looking at them. Also, I wondered if at one point Steph wasn't going to do something like “You can't defeat me-- because I'm BATGIRL”, which would've been so over the top no-one would've thought anything of it. (typing like a thirteen-year-old on sugar – it's my guilty pleasure, don't judge me.)
btw, I applaud Bryan Miller a lot for making Wendy a member of the cast. Bryan Q. Miller: taking the bad things the Oracle: The Cure mini left all over the characters, and making a good series out of it since'09. May he stay a long, successful time on our beautiful happy series.
I went through a few more FUCK YEAH STEPH, because this is Batgirl, and this is Steph, and I love Steph. Happy fun adrenaline-fueled times! :DDD
And then I squealed so loud the neighbours probably heard me (we have thin walls). THAT LINE WHERE SHE'S THINKING 'DONT BE SO HANDSOME' AT NICK.
I JUST.
Do you have any idea how long I've wanted for one of the Bats to have a love interest or potential love interest or ANY INTEREST AT ALL, REALLY, in their police handler? FUCK YEAH STEPH. THANK YOU BRYAN MILLER. (please to not play an awkward love triangle between Babs-Nick-Batgirl. However, I have a vested interest in superhero-love interest-secret identity, so feel free to get with that one! :D side-note: I would be on a Clark-Lois-Superman flashbacky mini-series so hard, you have no idea how much I want to read stuff with that trope, but read it for real, you know, not just know it happened, read it, with modern sensibilities and all. I may have to start eyeing Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, that's what you're going to tell me?)
Clayface stuff: FUN TIEMS.
I am loving so hard the quipping thing this series has going on. Oh baby, quip at me some more.
Things I'm not fan of: the implied Woman In the Fridge angstily eating away at Nick. :/ Plz don't do that, Bryan Miller. Don't put a fridge in your series, and I'll bake you cookies, okay?
Red Hood: the Lost Days #2 and #3 (because I am amazing and both the stores I usually buy stuff in didn't have the #1 anymore, that's what happens when you don't ask Helpful Comicshop Guy to put sth aside for you):
Okay, so this book is basically porn.
Nuff said.
No, actually, I want to stay I feel like I'm reading Jason again, which is very very nice. I really like this Talia, I hope she sticks around and we can swap her with Tomasi and Morrison's Evil Rapist Talia.
Another thing that made me ponder gender and sexuality and power dynamics: the scene between Talia and her right-hand guy, when he asks her what she's planning on doing with Jason and he thinks she's making a really big fucking mistake. She tells him the only reason she's not beating him unconscious is because they're sleeping together, and he retorts that it's the only reason why he's saying it at all.
That got me pondering. Because I've worked for over a year in a family enterprise; it had been founded by the woman, and her husband was her employee. She was also more qualified and older than him. And there was a scene, once, where they argued (work stuff) and she told him 'no, when we're at work, you don't talk to me like. I'm your wife, but I'm also your boss, and when your boss tells you [I don't remember the rest of the argument]'. (which was somewhat nonsensical, but it's not the issue.)
It made me stop when I read the Talia stuff. They were sleeping together, and so she was treating him differently, even though they were talking work stuff (mostly, though he was putting his shirt back on, iirc, so not exactly a professional setting). But beating your lover unconscious = domestic abuse. Which gives: huh.
Then again, beating your employee unconscious isn't right either. Except when you're a bad guy, apparently.
Other comments: Judd Winick likes his Boss/Second-in-Command interactions. I approve.
Ten to one they're sleeping together so Talia's interest in Jason doesn't look even more wrong.
MY MONTH IN COMICS:
Red Robin #15: FUCK YEAH TIM. I was reading this, and suddenly the strangest thing happened to me: I felt like I had become a Tim fan. The page that prompted that reaction – punching the air and squealing TIIIIIIM, OH GOD TIIIIIIIIM – was this: “Wayne when I talk to the press, Drake when I look in the mirror.” I JUST. FUCK YEAH COMPARTMENTALISING IDENTITIES FUCK YEAH. TIM TIM TIM.
Before I got to that, there'd already been the previous page, where he goes see Steph and “in that outfit, he gets the hormonal tension between the original Robin and Batgirl.” I JUST. TIM THINKING META. I love when he does that. When anyone does that, but for the longest time that was the only thing I truly liked about Tim, and it makes me sososo happy that it's still there and inherent to the character. And also SHIP, so I wasn't going to dislike it.
Other good things: everything with Tam. I really like that girl. The scene in the GCPD, waiting for Gordon to receive them, was very, very good, plus it made me admire Tim's boldness. And it makes perfect sense: for him, Tim Wayne is a tool. It's most convenient for the goal he's trying to achieve to bring the fight to Tim Wayne.
I wonder:
- how those two cops knew how to contact Scarab → I should reread RR14.
- How Bruce would have handled the sniper-going-to-shoot-me-issue. No, mostly likely he'd have come up with a plan that didn't require him to play the game the way Tim decided to handle the issue – not because of the one-year-in-crutches part of the deal, but maybe precisely because he'd have been forced (?) to ask J'onn to impersonate him, and he wouldn't like that.
- How the one-year-in-crutches thing is going to play out, editorially. Is 'Tim Wayne' going to receive a 'miraculous cure' before that time is up? (I really hope not. The whole thing is potentially sketchy enough wrt Oracle without adding fake miracle cures.) Is 'Tim Wayne' going to die to the public eye, à la Bruce deciding it's more convenient if Bruce Wayne stopped existing during BW:Fugitive? Is Niecieza going to keep him in crutches for the twelve issues of RR to come? (Does that mean we can count on Niecieza staying on the title for more than that?)
- How is Damian so kyuuuute, omgNiecieza rite moar hilarious Tim/Damian snarking at each other. Brats.
Things I'm not a fan of: Dick wondering if he's going to ask Vicki to keep quiet about the whole thing. Maybe it's just the idea of Vicki freakin' Vale figuring out the Bat secret that I dislike. (I didn't like Vesper Fairchild getting interested in making Batman a story, either.)
The way Nicieza wrote Steph. Not really bad, just a bit meh. She sounded a lot less distinctive than she does in any dialogue on her own title, I think, but that may have been because Tim was asking something unpleasant.
Things that I JUST *FLAAAAAAIIIIL*: CRUTCHES. TIM IN CRUTCHES. SPIRIT OF DEVIN GRAYSON, ARE YOU THERE. Because, I'm sorry, there is no way you can put any member of the Batfamily, and especially a male one, in CRUTCHES as part of his COVER and avoid the comparison. Other comparisons: 'Tim' getting shot and the bullet supposedly grazing his spine. Babs.
And this is where I'm just a little tiny bit uneasy about this idea. It's an excellent idea. Long-term and 'who would willingly put themselves through such a cumbersome charade'. It's very Tim to pretend to be in crutches for one year for the mission. But, um. There's Babs. Who really did get shot, and really did keep consequences from it. I'm not really comfortable with the idea of faking a disability, even a temporary one. But, again, I think it's perfectly Tim. I wonder if anyone is going to wonder or write about Oracle's reaction. A discussion between Barbara and Tim would be lovely.
Batgirl #13: FUCK YEAH STEPH. I LOVE THIS BOOK. THIS IS MY FEEL GOOD BOOK. Every month, I'm a little bit wary before I start RR (I try to get the two books on pull list on the same day), because, as stated earlier, I am not a Tim fan. So every month, I'm just a little bit concerned to read about Tim. 'What if I read the book and it makes me hate him? I don't want to hate him What if he's being a jerk? I don't like Tim when he's being a jerk.' ← this is how I know I'm not a Tim fan. Characters I love, I love them just as much, or maybe even more, when they're wrong and when they're jerks. It makes me want to shake them and scream at them, but in a 'it's only because I love you that I put myself through this. If I didn't love you, I wouldn't care about your mistakes. So I love you, and I'm furious at you, and I hurt seeing you hurt – and trust me, the way you're doing this, you are going to hurt'. It's a thing.
So anyway, every month I get back home with my Batgirl and my Red Robin. Every month I start my reading with RR. Why? Because I know whatever happens in RR, Batgirl is going to make it all go away. Batgirl is my feel good book.
I LOVE THE FIRST COUPLE PAGES. (also, Steph is in her second semester at uni. *takes notes*) So Steph to go all SRS BIZNESS on something like ping-pong, I love how competitive and how gleeful she is at rocking at something. I love that there are so many people looking at them. Also, I wondered if at one point Steph wasn't going to do something like “You can't defeat me-- because I'm BATGIRL”, which would've been so over the top no-one would've thought anything of it. (typing like a thirteen-year-old on sugar – it's my guilty pleasure, don't judge me.)
btw, I applaud Bryan Miller a lot for making Wendy a member of the cast. Bryan Q. Miller: taking the bad things the Oracle: The Cure mini left all over the characters, and making a good series out of it since'09. May he stay a long, successful time on our beautiful happy series.
I went through a few more FUCK YEAH STEPH, because this is Batgirl, and this is Steph, and I love Steph. Happy fun adrenaline-fueled times! :DDD
And then I squealed so loud the neighbours probably heard me (we have thin walls). THAT LINE WHERE SHE'S THINKING 'DONT BE SO HANDSOME' AT NICK.
I JUST.
Do you have any idea how long I've wanted for one of the Bats to have a love interest or potential love interest or ANY INTEREST AT ALL, REALLY, in their police handler? FUCK YEAH STEPH. THANK YOU BRYAN MILLER. (please to not play an awkward love triangle between Babs-Nick-Batgirl. However, I have a vested interest in superhero-love interest-secret identity, so feel free to get with that one! :D side-note: I would be on a Clark-Lois-Superman flashbacky mini-series so hard, you have no idea how much I want to read stuff with that trope, but read it for real, you know, not just know it happened, read it, with modern sensibilities and all. I may have to start eyeing Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, that's what you're going to tell me?)
Clayface stuff: FUN TIEMS.
I am loving so hard the quipping thing this series has going on. Oh baby, quip at me some more.
Things I'm not fan of: the implied Woman In the Fridge angstily eating away at Nick. :/ Plz don't do that, Bryan Miller. Don't put a fridge in your series, and I'll bake you cookies, okay?
Red Hood: the Lost Days #2 and #3 (because I am amazing and both the stores I usually buy stuff in didn't have the #1 anymore, that's what happens when you don't ask Helpful Comicshop Guy to put sth aside for you):
Okay, so this book is basically porn.
Nuff said.
No, actually, I want to stay I feel like I'm reading Jason again, which is very very nice. I really like this Talia, I hope she sticks around and we can swap her with Tomasi and Morrison's Evil Rapist Talia.
Another thing that made me ponder gender and sexuality and power dynamics: the scene between Talia and her right-hand guy, when he asks her what she's planning on doing with Jason and he thinks she's making a really big fucking mistake. She tells him the only reason she's not beating him unconscious is because they're sleeping together, and he retorts that it's the only reason why he's saying it at all.
That got me pondering. Because I've worked for over a year in a family enterprise; it had been founded by the woman, and her husband was her employee. She was also more qualified and older than him. And there was a scene, once, where they argued (work stuff) and she told him 'no, when we're at work, you don't talk to me like. I'm your wife, but I'm also your boss, and when your boss tells you [I don't remember the rest of the argument]'. (which was somewhat nonsensical, but it's not the issue.)
It made me stop when I read the Talia stuff. They were sleeping together, and so she was treating him differently, even though they were talking work stuff (mostly, though he was putting his shirt back on, iirc, so not exactly a professional setting). But beating your lover unconscious = domestic abuse. Which gives: huh.
Then again, beating your employee unconscious isn't right either. Except when you're a bad guy, apparently.
Other comments: Judd Winick likes his Boss/Second-in-Command interactions. I approve.
Ten to one they're sleeping together so Talia's interest in Jason doesn't look even more wrong.
