Runaways: Rock Zombies...

Runaways: Rock Zombies by Terry Moore and Takeshi Miyazawa was fun. All the Terry Moore Runaway stories are. I was less charmed by the plot of the zombie story, but totally delighted by the characters.

What made the volume for me, though, was issue #10, in which Molly Hayes goes to visit the X-Men, who are hoping she will join them. "Can whoever is inside my head telling me to come to San Francisco please shut up now?" complains Moly, in her big-eared hat. "'Cuz it's giving me a really bad headache." Cyclops and Emma both have excuses for not showing Molly around, so Cyclops delegates the job to Wolverine. Wolverine and Molly don't get along. "Wolverine is a jerk!" screams Molly. "And he smells like beers. I want to go with the tall shiny metal guy. Or the cat monkey guy." But she's stuck with Wolverine.

Cyclops: What's he doing now?
Emma Frost: He's... he's actually visualizing disembowelling you. It's quite disturbing. And she's asking for ice cream.

The best moment is when Wolverine and Molly go to the Danger Room:

Molly: Well, that's the dumbest name ever. What's the dangerous part? Boredom?
Wolverine: It's not turned on, genius.
Molly: I knew that.

So then she gets the Danger Room programmed with pink butterflies and unicorns.

The climax of the story comes when a supervillain kidnaps Molly and Wolverine for revenge on Molly's parents, and, in a very well-written sequence, Wolverine and Molly end up as friends.

Terrific story.

Lentiginous...

I love learning words in English that I didn't previously know. I subscribe to "a word a day" and often do know the words already, but the unfamiliar ones are worth it. In the last few days, I've encountered three new words, from various sources: today it was "lentiginous", meaning "covered in freckles". Are you lentiginous? I am not, but my mother was.

Yesterday the word was ochlophobia, abnormal fear of crowds. I don't have that one, either.

Then there was acnestis, "the part of the body where one cannot reach to scratch." I treasure that one.

Romance...

From Livejournal's Writer's Block: What is your all-time favorite, romantic movie scene? What about it speaks to you?

Mine is from The Russia House, a movie I adored, based on a John LeCarré novel. British publisher Barley (Sean Connery) becomes mixed up in intrigue in Russia, along with a woman named Katya, a Moscovite widow played by Michelle Pfeiffer. He declares his love for her when she's busy making dinner for the kids, translating from the Russian for him, distracted by domestic tasks and the espionage plot they are both in the middle of.

What I love - besides the way the scene is written - is the delightful mundanity of it: her's trying to pour out his heart, but it isn't candlelight and champagne, it isn't a beautiful "Lara's Theme" type vista, it's just an apartment and all in the middle of an adventure.

The scene can be seen here.

More romantic scenes...

Since I posted this morning my answer to the Livejournal Writer's Block question, "What is your all-time favorite, romantic movie scene?" I thought I would answer the same question with regard to other media.

Books

From The Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett; page 440 of the Century edition: the scene fans call "the anvil moment", edited here a little, by me.

...She was no longer ten, and had put to use the years of study and practice. How old, then, was she?

The year he fought his brother, ( they had met. )

The chapter ends: Too late, too late, too late; it had happened.

Comics

In X-Men comics, the relationship between Scott Summers (Cyclops) and Jean Grey (Phoenix) was so long-established I thought it would last forever, nothwithstanding Maddy Pryor. But no: it has been superseded by the love affair of Scott Summers and Emma Frost, formerly the sexpot-villainous White Queen of the Hellfire Club, and I love it. Comics don't often get romance right; but this goes beyond romance, goes to the point where sexual tension becomes plot tension. It isn't even a match of opposites, as you would think. It's a match of equals. It's brilliant.

Its apex for me is a recent comics, from a few weeks ago: Dark X-Men: The Confession, a one-shot by Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost and artist Bing Cansino. It may be difficult to keep secrets from one of the world's greatest telepaths, but Scott has a few, and Emma has been hiding things from Scott - each had secrets so terrible they thought it would destroy the other's love for them.

Hank tells Scott "these secrets will kill us". Tensions mount: Emma is on the point of leaving. So Scott says to Emma, "I don't want there to be secrets between us any more." ( So they have it out. )

Television

The best television romance is that between Veronica and Logan in Veronica Mars. But how to pick any particular scene or moment? All their scenes together are wonderful: picking just one would be impossible.

But their first kiss is remarkable. For one thing, this is a show built on words, clever words, dialogue, plotlines. Logan Echolls is a smart-mouth rich kid, introduced to viewers by Veronica as the "psychotic jackass" of the high school, her best friend's mouthy former boyfriend. He is one of the prime suspects in ( Lilly Kane's murder )

Supernatural: Changing Channels...

With "Changing Channels" the clever-quotient rose. I see that Jeremy Carver ( also wrote... )