Jack Layton: the aftermath...

Looking at this CBC website made me cry again, a little, but in a good way. I like the orange bicycle. I liked all of it, And I smiled when I saw commodorified.

I begin to think there really is hope - that people will listen to Jack Layton now he's dead in ways they didn't listen when he was alive, when he was the Opposition.

Freedom...

Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are. - Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 - 1822

I got that from Quote of the Day, which points out that today was the day slavery was abolished in the UK in 1833.

A good day, then.

X-Men: Children of the Atom...

Just read an X-Men graphic novel called X-Men Children of the Atom, written by Joe Casey and various artists in 1999-2000. The best art there by a long shot is by Paul Smith. I don't know which artist drew the worst.

It read like something thirty years out of date even then. From time to time I wondered if Casey was actually trying to imitate or parody the Stan Lee dialogue of 1963. If he was, he did it badly.

I wasn't sure what I thought of Joe Casey as a writer; I'm not sure whether I'd read other stories by him. I think I have. They didn't make an impression. This story did: It's full of bad bombastic dialogue, it's horribly overwritten, and at the same time, Casey seems to be writing down to his audience.

It's a retelling of the story of how the original X-Men (Hank, Jean, Scott, Bobby and Warren) came to be at Xavier's school. My suspension of disbelief broke at the initial premise: that Hank, Scott and Bobby just happened to be in the same high school together. It isn't helped that Warren has lines like "Best part of the gig, bro," and calls everyone "baby". There are... too many... elipses... in every balloon. Magneto is pompous and villainous - he talks about 'the stench of humanity', while Xavier is reasonable but oddly sinister. There's a handsome FBI agent who seemed in the end to be no part of the plot at all - perhaps Casey forgot he was in the story?

Chalk it down to yet another inferior blip in the long history of the X-Men.