Deaths...

30 Day Book Meme: – Day 29 - Saddest character death OR best/most satisfying character death (or both!)

This answer seriously needs a cut tag for spoilers for the Dunnett novels, the Bujold novels, and A Song of Ice and Fire, and others... ( Memorable Deaths... )

Chivalric rings...

There is a jewellry store on the corner where I often wait for the bus. I often make jokes about it (usually in the privacy of my head) because the jewellry in the window is often hideously ugly, the store seems to seldom be open, and I never see anyone in there.

So yesterday (as usual) it was closed, but there was an ad for a ring and pendant in the window that ( caught my eye... )

because they made me think of medieval shields with crosses on them, and set me off into a happy fantasy about Templars and Hospitallers. I don't know if most women choose jewellry with that sort of consideration. I don't usually wear rings, but with these, I could be tempted.

Banned books...

It was pointed out to me today that this is Banned Book Week. Sounds like a reason to celebrate! And as a matter of fact, just yesterday I was reading a book that is apparently... not exactly banned, but not sold in many places because people consider it dangerous or bannable. It's Alan Moore's erotic graphic novel, Lost Girls. I don't usually like sexual material written by men, but this one is pretty damn hot, and interesting in other ways. In odd ways. Alan Moore is always odd. That's why he's good: an original voice and mind. Rare enough in any medium, especially comics and porn.

I instantly added a question to my personal 30 day book meme list: "What is your favourite banned book?" and looked at the lists. Was surprised at how many I'd read - well, just about any significant book has been banned somewhere, somehow, and since Catcher in the Rye is on many lists, I suppose I could point to that. Or Lolita, which I think is beautifully written, though I've never read anything else by Nabokov.

I looked at this list of 16 banned books and was amused to see I'd read all but three, The God of Small Things, Howl, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. Some of them were pretty boring.

Interesting in the comments about banning The Da Vinci Code in Lebanon for being insulting to Jesus: seems to me that's the mindset regarding insults to Mohammed being transferred to Christianity - really, a cultural thing as much as it's religion. And this article has some interesting comments; again, I've read most of the books mentioned, except Zundel and Locke. But they are, generally speaking, citing classics.

Oh course, I love the irony that Fahrenehit 451 is on the banned book lists. (It's a book about book-burning.)

So what's your favourite banned book?

Continuing my quest to read all the Daken stories...

I woke up this morning with that chest cold that everyone I knew had last week. Lucky me. After hanging curtains in my bedroom, I went back to bed and read all those Daken comics I bought yesterday. I'm still missing his appearances in Amazing Spider-Man and Deadpool, but factoring in the material I got from the library (like X-Men: Original Sin), I've read just about all the comics in which Daken so much as waves a claw.

And sometimes barely that, since the list I was working from mentions every time Daken is seen in a random flashback panel, or standing passively with the Dark Avengers for those PR shots of which Norman Osborn was so fond. I got Captain America #48 because Daken was at the funeral, an infinitesimal figure glimpsed from afar. Sometimes after reading a comic I'd have to go back and hunt for the panel in which Daken was hidden.

This exercise gave me a chance to read a bunch of comics I'd missed over the past two years, and try out some new authors. Bit of a treat. There were issues of Dark Reign and Siege storylines that I hadn't read yet, a sort of retroactive fill-in-the-gaps thing. My best 'find' was Greg Pak on The Incredible Hulk.

Somewhere about a year ago something changed with the characterization of Daken. He went from being a rather sulky emo boy with neither humour nor personality, to being the smart-mouthed schemer I know and love today. I haven't quite been able to pin down when it happened: I was attributing it to Marjorie Liu, but it looks more as if the turning point was Giuseppe Camuncoli coming along as artist. I'm not sure how that makes sense: Camuncoli is a master of facial expression, and I love the way he draws Daken, but artists don't usually script dialogue. Perhaps Way's writing is simply getting better with time.

( More detailed comments... )

The Incredible Hulk #603: Smash meets Snikt...

I wanted to do a commentary and picspam on The Incredible Hulk #603, just because I enjoyed it so much. This story is full of father issues.

Now, I don't normally read The Incredible Hulk. I think the only times I've read the Hulk comics is when I got them as hardcovers from the library, and read that wonderful run by Paul Jenkins about a decade ago. I'd never read anything by the current writer, Greg Pak. I think maybe now I'm missing something there. Judging by this, he's well worth reading. This issue came out about a year ago.

The variant cover on the issue I bought wasn't promising. It looked silly.

This wasn't ... Okay, it was on the light side, a contrast to all the dark and depressing Wolverine Origins material I'd been reading about Daken. This was delightful.

So: a monster and an assassin walk into a bar... The big green monster is Skaar, son of the Hulk. The assassin is Daken, ( son of Wolverine. )

Art is the Weapon

I am so embarrassed. I've been listening to and watching the new MCR video and I didn't even recognize Grant Morrison. Grant Morrison! I've even met Grant Morrison. And didn't recognize him. My only excuse is I didn't expect to see him there.



I love the ties between comics and music.