Secret Invasion: Runaways & Young Avengers...

Young Avengers has been one of my favourite books - I love the characters: Kate Bishop with her bow and arrow, cute gay teens Teddy and Billy, the half-Skrull Hulkling, and an interesting back story for everyone. The gorgeous Jim Cheung art did no harm, either.

I'm less familiar with Runaways, though I did read the early run of that comic - and enjoyed it. But Brian K. Vaughan never entirely pulled me in, and I kept forgetting characters' names and powers. Then the trip to 1907, while visually interesting, didn't seem to have anything to do with the main theme of the story... I was somewhat at sea.

Because they are all teens, putting them together with the Skrull invasion storyline works well for Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers. I'm becoming more and more impressed with Christopher Yost's writing - his dialogue is snappy and his characterization is delightful. I was delighted to see we have a new Skrull character, Xavin or Xavina. This delighted me (have I mentioned how much I like Skrulls?) but I was confused as to whether Xavin was male or female, and the combination of Skrull physiognomy and manga-style art didn't help. Then I was even more delighted to learn Xavin had been a boy who became a girl for the sake of his Lesbian lover, Karolina. Way cool.

Actually, the art by Takeshi Miyazawa is terrific, and I'm all the happier to learn that Miyazawa is Canadian.

The plot? The kids fight Skrulls: they are outnumbered, outgunned, and disorganized. It doesn't help that one of their number is a lost Skrull half-breed Prince, another a renegade Skrull warrior. But it's fun to read about,and I always enjoy a revisitation of Teddy's Skrull heritage and his identity problems.

Besides, I really loved Molly, a lovely character with great hats, who sometimes reminds me of Katie Power, another superhero I like, though Katie is much younger.

Happy Birthday...

To duncanmac:



Wishing you a wonderful birthday, and a year full of singing, good books, good friends, and happy times.

Califia's Daughters...

I have greatly enjoyed Laurie R. King's mystery novels about San Francisco detective Kate Martinelli. I listened to the audio-book of The Beekeeper's Apprentice, and enjoyed it, too, even though they feature Sherlock Holmes and I came to hate the Sherlock Holmes novels by overdosing on them as a teen. But I like her approach to Holmes - not a copy of Conan Doyle's style or stories, but something new on the theme.

So I was pleased to learn that she was the author of Califia's Daughters, though she used a pseudonym: Leigh Richards. I liked the cover picture, of a woman in an ornate brass helmet overlooking a ruined city of skyscrapers. Yes, I like post-Apocalyptic stories.

So it was a disappointment to not like this book. Two problems: one, there are no ruined cities. It's all rural and bucolic, and I found myself wondering if I have ever enjoyed a story with a harvest festival in it. Is there a harvest festival in Precious Bane? Supernatural? Anyway, the harvest festival here, full of the kind of dances and games you'd find at a Church Fete, interested me not at all.

The second problem: everyone in the book seemed the same to me. Men, women, children, villains, heroes, old people, all seemed to have the same sort of speech patterns and modulation in my head. Once I noticed, I couldn't get past that. It was like a play in which the same actor comes in and out of the story in different costumes, but always does it the same way.

The story: In a post-apocalyptic world, men are a small proportion of the population, both vulnerable and valuable. A man and his son come to the valley that is the central focus of the story, befriend the women there, and stay; with a horror-story of an imperialistic Queen Bess who is invading Oregon. So Dian, protector of the valley, goes to his home to discover the secret that is being hidden in his homeland, and ends up taking on the forces of Queen Bess herself, as an infiltrating warrior.

I didn't much like the story when it was all about the farming, and I didn't like it much more when it was about the low-tech feminazis.

Boring.

Travelling with Torchwood...

This afternoon Beulah and I went into the Singing Pebbles bookstore, which specializes in yoga, New Age, health and diet books, and sells crystals and chant music on the side. We like to drop in there before we go to dinner at the Green Door, our favourite local vegetarian restaurant. Usually one of us buys books. Today it was me. I should have a new mantra: I will stop buying books. I will stop buying books...¹

Anyway, we saw a bumper sticker that said Namaste. This is a Hindi word that means - well, I've seen it translated different ways, but my favourite translation is, "My spirit salutes your spirit." I sign my e-mail and letters with that as my salutation.

I said to Beulah that I should get it for my suitcase. I have a new suitcase - it's shiny and black, and since I don't want it to be one of millions of other black suitcases, I was going to put a good sticker or something on it. I said I wanted something more esoteric or fannish than "namaste", though, and I told Beulah about msmoat's wonderful suitcase, that had a CI5 sticker on it. I told her about having TORCHWOOD INSTITUTE on the backpack I recently took to the UK.

The girl who runs the store heard that, and laughed. "Did you get comments?"

"Some," I admitted.

"Did you get sex with aliens?"

"I hoped, but... no."

"Did you meet John Barrowman?"

"Well, actually, yes."

What fun to encounter someone who knows the show.

~ ~ ~

¹ Hah! Not likely. Not until the money really runs out.

Sarah Jane: Prisoner of the Judoon..

We first met the Judoon in the Doctor Who episode "Smith and Jones", and then they turned up again in "The Stolen Earth". What a joy to see them again in The Sarah Jane Adventures - where the humourless Judoon Captain Tybo plays straight man (er, alien) to Rani and Luke's jokes.

But the joy ( of this story was )

Removable characters...

From the Fannish 5:: If you could erase five characters from any fandom, who would you choose?

1. From Highlander: Ritchie
   
2. From Smallville: Lana Lang. And I loved her so much in the comic!
   
3. From Doctor Who: The Master. Not a Master fan, me.
   
4. From Torchwood: Abaddon
   
5. From X-Men: Rogue. In the movies, she's an embarrassment and a shame to the original, wonderful, character. In the comics, she's superb, but they've written Gambit to be so attached to her romantically, that he has lost something of his separate identity.