Story...

I love it when a fan writer pulls off the impossible. One of my favourite slash writers ever is Jane St. Clair (3jane )and I am basking in the brilliance of her latest story. A challenge story: she managed to do an X-Men/Lord of the Rings crossover. I would have said it was impossible but she did it and it's so convincing I was mesmerized. Wow. I can't link to it since it isn't up on her site yet, but I'm sure it will be sometime. It's called "if you go chasing rabbits".

Stuff I've been reading....

I have no itention of confessing how many books I have out from the library right now. They used to have a limit of twelve books per card; book junkie that I am, it drove me nuts. I now have a self-imposed limit of fifty books at a time. Sometimes I manage to stick to it.

Right now, most of the books I have out are graphic novels. Finally, finally they have some good graphic novels in English. They used to have hundreds of French band-desinee albums, which I also enjoy, but I prefer American comics. They still don't have any Sandman, which I find a terrible lack. But they have all sorts of good stuff, including the Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale Batman stories like The Long Halloween and Dark Victory which I have already enthused about here and probably will again.

The downside: the best comics all have long waiting lists. I'm on them. They persist in cataloguing all graphic novels as "juvenile fiction", which may explain why they don't carry Sandman. In some cases, I coudn't tell from the online catalogue whether a certain title was a child's book, a graphic novel, a novelization, or a comic.

So. I'll try to put spoilers under cut tags here. I've been reading:

Ultimates by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. A new take on the Avengers. A more adult take than I've ever seen yet. It was compelling. In some ways, I loved it. In other ways... well, not so much. ( The problem was.... )

Peter Parker, Spider-Man: One Small Break. Written by Paul Jenkins, whom I never read before, that I recall. Drawn by Mark Buckingham, whose art is nice - never really rising above itself, but always adequate and more. This is a reprint of Peter Parker,Spider-Man from issues #27-28 and #30-34. I never read these originally - it was long after the point where I could afford all the Spider-Man stitles, so I gave up entirely. I'm glad I had a chance to read them now. They remind me of the reasons I used to enjoy Spider-Man: the banter, the idealism, the intropsection, the humour. Not so much the action or the plots, though they aren't bad. ( Getting Ahead )

Spider-Girl. Curiosity impelled me to read this, as I wondered who Spider-Girl was. I'd heard she was Peter Parker's daughter, but that seemed odd, since he has no daughter in any continuity I knew. I'd never read an issue because it was written by Tom DeFalco, one of those writers who have made a career in comics without every putting out a really good story in his life. Nor does Pat Oliffe's art do much for me. And you know what? I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. ( Not that I take back what I said about Tom DeFalco, but... )

Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 5 - Public Scrutiny. A trade paperback reprint of Ultimate Spider-Man #28 to 32, from 2003, by Brian Michael Bendis, whose writing I like very much indeed, though I don't think he's at his best with Spider-Man. ( We get lots of Spidey-angst and teenage tribulations, such as the difficulty of getting out of class when an emergency strikes. )

Ack! Excitement on the Smallville front. Oh happy day.

First of all, a debt of thanks to adamliz for linking to the Kryptonisite page that has pictures from Legacy. I usually avoid spoilers, but not this time. I am thrilled. Thrilled. I am excited.

Second, looking at Kryptonsite (which I haven't looked at for a while) had this interesting tidbit:

This week's "Lying In The Gutters" at Comic Book Resources (a comic book gossip column for those of you unaware) makes mention that screenwriter Tim McCanlies (The Iron Giant) may be doing a young Bruce Wayne comic for DC Comics.

The comic would be "looking at the young life of a playboy, thrown out of every private school in Europe with Alfred having to bail him out of a London jail after a bar fight. It looks at Bruce's reluctance to return to Gotham City in order to inherit Wayne Industries."

Interestingly, this is the exact same concept for a Young Bruce Wayne series that was originally pitched by Tollin-Robbins Productions and McCanlies back in 1999, but was scrapped because the Warner movie division said "Batman is ours." Instead, of course, the WB decided to go with a young Superman series, and the rest is history.

We'd, of course, like to be selfish and have Smallville AND Young Bruce Wayne on TV... but since that won't happen, this might be a sign of what could have been. We'll keep you updated if this is true or not.

Now, The Iron Giant is a movie I absolutely love. And there are few characters in fiction I love as much as I love Bruce Wayne. (I'm not calling him that to distinguish him from Batman, I think it's a well-integrated character; though I always wish we saw more of the suave civilian Bruce Wayne in the comic.)

It shows that good ideas don't die, and personally, I'm as happy to see this in comic book form as I would be to see it on TV.