Perfect Dark: Second Front...

About a year ago I was reading a spate of novels (and comics) by Greg Rucka. One of them was Perfect Dark: Initial Vector, the first novel based on the XBOX 360 game "Perfect Dark Zero". Now, I know nothing about the game and don't much care, but I do like Greg Rucka's stories and I particularly like teh way he writes action-hero women, and I quite like his young redhead assassin Joanna Dark - whom I would imagine was invented for the game, and not by Rucka, but my enjoyment of the first book was more than enough to make me want to read the second.

I do love futuristic dystopias - it's set in 2021, when hypercorporations rule the world, a scenario that always makes me think of Rollerball, which is probably the first place I encountered it.

In some ways, I was disappointed by the second book, Perfect Dark: Second Front. Less of the story was about Joanna Dark herself, and since she was wounded for most of the story, she wasn't at her best. Most of the story is about the corporate warfare going on, and about the role of CEO Cassandra DeVries. I did like the antagonist, Li Fan, and her bevy of siblings - I was rather hoping they'd all turn out to be clones or holographic AIs or something. I liked it, I must confess, that most of the main characters in the story were female - or, rather, that it didn't really matter whether they were female or not.

Still, it's a story suitable for an action-oriented video game: no sex, no romance¹, and I should count myself lucky for the relationship stuff Rucka snuck in - like Joanna's problematic relationship with her dead father, a 'son of a bitch' by all accounts.

I'm not sure it counts as a guilty pleasure, because it's all a little more mindless than I'd want it to be, but it was fun. Since I was somewhat disappointed by Rucka's work on the comic 52, it's nice to see him in good form here.


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¹ Okay, maybe a small, infinitesimal, microscopic bit of romantic interest between Joanna Dark and the Carrington Institute security chief Jonathan Steinberg. I'd like to see more of that.

Daredevil: Yellow...

I talk from time to time about the comic book writers and artists who are gods in my pantheon. One of the writers is Jeph Loeb. One of the artists is Tim Sale. I particularly love the work they do together - including the TV show Heroes, where you would recognize Tim Sale's art as the work of Isaac Mendez, or vice versa. They've done some of the best Batman comics ever in The Long Halloween and Dark Victory.

Another of the miniseries Loeb and Sale produced was Daredevil: Yellow, which was one of a group of miniseries like Hulk: Grey and Spider-Man: Blue, the titles being references to the very first stories about these heroes - when Jack Kirby's Incredible Hulk was originally grey-skinned not green-skinned, and Ditko's Spider-Man had a red and blue costume. Similarly, Daredevil's costume was originally primarily yellow - a nice touch for a Man Without Fear.

So this series revisited Daredevil's first days as a superhero, framed as a letter to his dead girlfriend, Karen Page; covering his relationship with his father, the formation of his law firm with his friend Foggy Nelson, tracking down his father's killers, and taking on the first clients - the Fantastic Four. All great fun for a long-time Daredevil lover like myself, and they capture not only the excitement but the innocence of the time. Matt Murdock here has, it seems, managed to forget his doomed love for the assassin Elektra, so that his feelings for Karen Page have a rather sweet first-love aura about them, along with the touch of conflict because Foggy fell in love with her too - and ceded the romantic field to Matt.

And in parallel, we have Matt falling in love with the heady experience of being a superhero.

Comics like this: I love 'em.

Doctor Who: 42..

I loved it for a lot of reasons. ( Most of them to do with characterization.... )

Heroes: How to Stop an Exploding Man...

maaboroshi and I did a lot of screaming and speculating as we watched. I loved it and can hardly wait for next season.

( My main question is... )