Generation X: I Have Questions
Mar 19
Still going through ye olde long boxes. Still discovering treasures large and small. Still wondering why I have three completely random issues from that one Vision and Scarlet Witch 12-part maxi-series. Shouldn’t I have, say, 1, 2 and 3, if any? I have 3, 9 and 12. What was my thought process? Why these three issues? If I never read them, do they even exist? So many philosophical quandaries must be endured when sifting through old comics!
That’s not really what I want to talk about, though. Last night, I re-read Brian Wood’s short-ish run on Generation X (#63-75). I’ve always had generally positive feelings about this run — it’s not perfect and it never really had a chance to go very far, but I think Wood captures certain essential aspects of the characters’ voices, some of which weren’t even there ’til he came onboard. Wood initially took over as part of Warren Ellis’ Counter-X Plotmastering, and I recall this being a particularly refreshing change since the issues of Generation X leading up to it are…well, they’re kind of dreadful. To be clear, I’m not talking about early Generation X, but the shaky middle era circa ’98-’99, which concluded with a storyline wherein Monet goes to boarding school and — in a fashion more Scooby Doo than Buffy — slays vampires. Zoinks, you guys!
Wood’s run is tougher and less hijinks-y, but somehow still manages to find time for Jubilee and Chamber to argue over who is more disgusting via a multi-panel debate that encompasses laundry, boxer shorts and toilet-flushing. I appreciate stuff like that.
And yet, as I was reading through last night…so many questions. So many “heys” and “buts” and “ehs?” Some of these are thanks to time and perspective and some are just examples of the mind-prickling minutiae that keeps me up at night. Still, if you have ANSWERS…please do provide!
Calling All Geekblogs: What's Your Scott and Jean?
Mar 17
The Alert Nerd brain trust is pleased to announce a very special Mega-Blog Crossover Event…and YOU can be part of it!
No, not you, Guy Skulking Around the Back Issue Bins in Full Rorschach Regalia. You kind of scare us. For the rest of you geekbloggers, here are the details.
The Date: March 30
The Theme: What’s Your Scott and Jean?
The Background: Such an awesome theme could only have been birthed on Twitter. Simply put, when someone says “that’s my Scott and Jean,” it essentially means “that’s my geek sacred cow.” It’s the issue/coupling/whatever that you pretty much can’t discuss because you are too passionate about it and it makes you too crazy. You might hear perfectly reasonable arguments against said coupling/issue/whatever, but you cannot process them. It’s like That One Thing. It could be something like “Scott Summers and Jean Grey are supposed to be together and that is just how it is.” Or maybe “the new Battlestar Galactica does not exist for me because it is not the old Battlestar Galactica.” Or “The only correct portrayals of Batman are the ones that contain X, Y, and Z.” You get the idea. It’s your nerd mental block.
The Participants: (thus far) Alert Nerd, Fantastic Fangirls, Faust’s Fantastically Fantasmagoric Forum, Geeked…maybe YOU?
Here’s what you do: on March 30 (which, incidentally, is the date that the issue of X-Men featuring Jean and Scott’s wedding debuted), write up a blog post delving into the question What’s Your Scott and Jean? Send your link to sarah AT alertnerd DOT com. We will add you to our master blog post and you can link back to said post. It will be delightful for all involved.
Either that, or it will just cause a bunch of new arguments! Hurrah!
Big Damn Heroines
Mar 12
When Iron Man came out last year, I overheard this exchange between two women:
“The Gwyneth Paltrow part was particularly…blah.”
“Yeah, but that part always is. In those movies.”
The thing is, it doesn’t have to be. There’s a reason why so many people were thrilled about Karen Allen returning to the Indiana Jones franchise: she’s the only co-star who presented Indy with an equal, a fully fleshed-out partner in crime. There’s something to be said for taking “that part” — and let’s be real, we mean “the girl part” — and making it whole and interesting and something more than a collection of sighs and looks and pretty hair. There’s something to be said for making it matter.
But really, this is but a small piece of a more hulking issue in geek moviedom that’s been frustrating the hell out of me for a while now. Simply put, I thought we’d be beyond “the girl part” at this point. I thought that, you know, by the year 2009 we’d be seeing some legit superhero/big-time genre movies with female headliners.
Or, hey…scratch “some.” How about one.
Swamp Thing: Tefe, Not Alec
Mar 04
Confession: back when I was reviewing single issues of comics with some regularity, I didn’t really know how said comics were being received by the nerd masses. Well, at least “the nerd masses” beyond the five guys I went to the local comics emporium with every week.
This was because 1) I didn’t have very much time to dick around on the internet (or at least not as much as I do NOW, apparently) and 2) I didn’t really want my opinions to be influenced by anyone else’s and 3) there wasn’t so much stuff out there. Blogs were not A Thing yet, websites only sort of were, and message boards were…I don’t even know. They were there, but they still felt like something that only ten people actually knew about (and therefore, were probably home to a lot of sentiments I wouldn’t think of expressing anywhere now, not even on a padlocked Twitter account under a clever, not-related-to-my-real-name-AT-ALL alias).
All this is to say I had no idea that Brian K. Vaughan‘s Swamp Thing — circa 2000/2001 — wasn’t all that well-regarded. In fact, I don’t know if that’s even an accurate statement, I just know that it only lasted 20 issues, it doesn’t appear to have ever been collected in trade form, and Vaughan says something on his “farewell” page about how his next series will feature “more likable protagonists.” From what I can gather, some of the grumbling was less about what the series was and more about what it wasn’t: it wasn’t Alan Moore-esque and it didn’t focus on Alec Holland, who most folks think of as the Swamp Thing. Instead, it was all about his prickly teenage daughter, Tefe.
I’m glad that I didn’t know what the general reaction was at the time, because maybe it would have colored my from-the-gut perceptions. And I was totally freakin’ into the Tefe Holland Swamp Thing.
Mighty Jean Leads to Toy Brainwashing
Jan 15Previously, I documented my probably-futile attempts to squelch a potentially dangerous Mighty Muggs obsession. Since then, I’ve given in a tiny bit. I bought the wee Skrull. Someone gave me Pissed-Off-Yet-Still-Cute Princess Leia to go with Chewie. I’m trying to be selective, but I won’t lie — I get a tiny thrill when I can somehow justify purchasing yet another piece of adorably-molded plastic.
Thus my heart skipped a beat — several! — when I saw the magic words “Wave 6: Cyclops and Jean Grey.” I can absolutely justify that purchase. I can justify it several ways, with charts and graphs and excruciatingly detailed essays, and then I can pose them holding hands (well, sort of, all the Mighty Muggs have their digits frozen in a closed-off, claw-like position) and beating up the cute Skrull.
Then I clicked over and saw the picture and the Jean Grey is sort of…weird-looking.
Image from MarvelousNews.com
Like, I don’t know, they can’t get the hair right in this form? Or the shiny smile is perhaps a little manic-looking?
I paused. I thought. Maybe I shouldn’t buy this? Maybe being selective means only purchasing character representations you find absolutely perfect, even if it’s one of your FAVORITE CHARACTERS OF ALL TIME and you want to own ALL REPRESENTATIONS, even the not-perfect ones?!
But, then…okay. I went looking for this image to include with my post and when I looked at it this time, I thought it was kind of cute. Have I been somehow toy brainwashed? Am I trying way too hard to convince myself? Was I just plain wrong in my initial impression? And the lopsided-grin Cyclops is pretty cute regardless, right?
