It's Alive (comics overview - no spoilers beyond what's on the covers)
It's strange but nice not to have an immediate deadline sitting on my head like a lump of concrete. My Yuletide fic is off with a beta (thank you, beta!) so there's nothing I can do about it right now. Nano is over, even though I still have half an epilogue to write.
This means it's time to read all the comics I ignored while writing, writing, writing! Highly recommended - Captain America and Daredevil, though Mr Brubaker hasn't held my attention for Summers! In! Space! and this makes me sad. At the start of November I was bitching about the plotlines in Uncanny and Plain Vanilla X-Men, but they seem to have got it all together now, and, much to my surprise, I'm really enjoying the Messiah Complex crossover epic. It's very early 90s, with thousands of teams running everywhere, Scott throwing tanties, dubious Gambit antics, grumpy Wolverine who really should be hiding out in Dr. Strange's closet with the New Avengers right now, Mr Sinister being ridiculously grand and claiming to know everything, Emma changing costume every five seconds, and lots of explosions.
Also, when I see the kids of New X-Men in their own title, I want to give them chocolate and tell them it will be okay. When I see them - especially Nori, Julian and X-23 - in other X-Books, I want to slap them and lock them in a playpen. Their team dynamics are extremely well-written in their own book, but there's a lot of them, and due time and care doesn't seem to be spent on them elsewhere.
Wolverine's own title? Frankly unreadable, and I'm going to have to stop getting it, yet again. *dreams about the Hama era, even when it was silly* Still, it's not like I'm going to be missing out on Wolverine by cutting out one title.
The assorted Avengers titles that Bendis writes have moments of good-Bendis (good dialogue, interesting characters dynamics, aggressive villains, clever use of powers) and lots of bad-Bendis (shock for the sake of shock, out-of-character bon mots just to make the writer look clever, strange plotting where major plot points are minimised and/or offscreen, too much talking, his strange new habit of adding thought bubbles). The art is quite over the top on the boobs, too - I mean, I like boobs, but not weird free-floating globes each bigger than their owner's head. Unless it's Geography Lass and her pair of self-lighting globes with full relief (mmm, the Himalayas, and the British Empire in pink!) no-one needs to look like that. I miss Alex Maleev's Black Widow.
This means it's time to read all the comics I ignored while writing, writing, writing! Highly recommended - Captain America and Daredevil, though Mr Brubaker hasn't held my attention for Summers! In! Space! and this makes me sad. At the start of November I was bitching about the plotlines in Uncanny and Plain Vanilla X-Men, but they seem to have got it all together now, and, much to my surprise, I'm really enjoying the Messiah Complex crossover epic. It's very early 90s, with thousands of teams running everywhere, Scott throwing tanties, dubious Gambit antics, grumpy Wolverine who really should be hiding out in Dr. Strange's closet with the New Avengers right now, Mr Sinister being ridiculously grand and claiming to know everything, Emma changing costume every five seconds, and lots of explosions.
Also, when I see the kids of New X-Men in their own title, I want to give them chocolate and tell them it will be okay. When I see them - especially Nori, Julian and X-23 - in other X-Books, I want to slap them and lock them in a playpen. Their team dynamics are extremely well-written in their own book, but there's a lot of them, and due time and care doesn't seem to be spent on them elsewhere.
Wolverine's own title? Frankly unreadable, and I'm going to have to stop getting it, yet again. *dreams about the Hama era, even when it was silly* Still, it's not like I'm going to be missing out on Wolverine by cutting out one title.
The assorted Avengers titles that Bendis writes have moments of good-Bendis (good dialogue, interesting characters dynamics, aggressive villains, clever use of powers) and lots of bad-Bendis (shock for the sake of shock, out-of-character bon mots just to make the writer look clever, strange plotting where major plot points are minimised and/or offscreen, too much talking, his strange new habit of adding thought bubbles). The art is quite over the top on the boobs, too - I mean, I like boobs, but not weird free-floating globes each bigger than their owner's head. Unless it's Geography Lass and her pair of self-lighting globes with full relief (mmm, the Himalayas, and the British Empire in pink!) no-one needs to look like that. I miss Alex Maleev's Black Widow.