philippos42

Would it shatter anyone's illusions if I said I'm not actually Greek? I've been using this name for so long that it's just my name at this point.

Looked at myself in the mirror today & thought about what ethnicity I 'look like.' Swedish? (Scots? Sächsisch?) I used to say, tongue-in-cheek, that I was actually 'White Kree,' like Mar-Vell.

Wait, is Mar-Vell in the new Carol Danvers movie? I still haven't seen it. (Is he Annette Bening? I thought she was the Supreme Intelligence. Oh, well.)

Anyway, I am alive, probably; a bit more white in the beard than I like, but I'm here.

Not long ago, I had a conversation about how comic book artists draw women.

More precisely, yesterday an acquaintance made a crack about superheroine bust sizes. And I said some variation on what I often say, that's just an artist's shorthand, whatever. Also some artists are kind of silly. I usually take it in stride.

Today, I was looking at these scans from Legendary Star-Lord. I am suddenly bugged by Kitty's bust size in this issue. Has Medina been drawing her that way along and I just now noticed because of the outfit? Is she sticking out her chest?

I got weirdly angry about it.

So, I looked at some other scans. Yes, Medina draws her that way. The concept art for the new GotG doesn't so much, I think. It's a stupid minor thing.

Her chest is not badly drawn. It's realistic enough. It's roughly in line with other artists. It just suddenly seemed "off" to me. I dug out some All-New Doop issues. Yeah, OK, not that different; I guess I was remembering wrong.

So, a smart remark about cartoon breasts in general somehow led me to get bothered on an artist who's actually drawing them well?

Argh.

Comics.

OK, let's do a post about my recent comics purchases:

Shaft #1 (Dynamite): I'm getting these for the Cowan/Sienkiewicz covers, I admit. Wait, can I afford to do that? OK, a Cowan/Sienkiewicz cover caught my eye, and I decided to give it a shot. This is an OK first issue, with a bit of backstory about a young John Shaft choosing his self-respect over crooked fight promoters. The interior story won me over. Bilquis Evely's art is decent storytelling art, closer to M.D. Bright than to Denys Cowan, and that probably serves the story well. David F. Walker's script is decent enough.

I think the only thing I actually disliked in this issue was an ugly and kind of gory house ad for "Smiley the Psychotic Button." Apparently this is where the Chaos! characters are published now.

Let's see, the next four are from Marvel:

Guardians of the Galaxy Annual #1: In which Bendis and Cho get back together, IN SPACE! Yeah, that's pretty much it. It's what I guess is the present GotG squad: Quill, Gamora, Drax, Rocket, Groot, Flash Thompson in the Venom pants, and of course Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel, who is as I recall the reason I'm even buying this (Bendis!) book.

Also, it has a nice Gamora-centric cover.

We get to see Rocket Raccoon drawn in a style not wholly unlike Frank Cho's Liberty Meadows funny animals, and vaguely Kirbyesque Skrulls, and a bunch of--( look, should I cut for spoilers here? )

Spider-Man and the X-Men #1: I was not planning to get this series. But then I saw it on the stands, and I thought, "Hey, Spidey used to be a schoolteacher! Wouldn't it be cool if he were brought in as a chemistry teacher at the Jean Grey School!" Well, I flipped it open, and that's not what they're doing. Instead, he's some kind of "Special Class Guidance Counselor," brought in as a request of the dead Logan. I bought it anyway, though. It's trying to be funny, mostly. It gets in a jab at super-teams that sit around waiting to be attacked instead of trying to go out and help regular people, which I liked in a meta way.

And today's purchases:

Captain Marvel #10: OK, I wasn't too happy with the Flerken story, but this issue and the last are moving Carol's book into the position of my favorite comic book. This is somehow Carol's 100th solo issue, and it's a little oversized, with David Lopez splitting the book with Marcio Takara and Laura Braga. Parts of the book are narrated by different characters: Kit (Lt. Trouble), Jess (Spider-Woman), and Rhodey (Rhodey), giving natural breaks for artist switching. It says it's "part one of two" but it largely stands alone, even if there's a bit of tease at the end. Lila's still around, and it's pretty fun, even if the supervillain gambit was defeated quickly and implausibly.

Ms. Marvel #10: This is a third of four parts. Not an enormous amount happens outside of "trying to deal with the Inventor, and getting slammed by his machines," but what does happen moves the story forward. Kamala finds out why people are willingly joining the Inventor (it's sad) and Lockjaw gets kidnapped, and lots of fighting. Lots of fighting.

A couple of days ago I decided I'd been sitting around the house too much, and I walked downtown and bought a stack of comics:

Sensation Comics featuring Wonder Woman #1: Wow, I was not real happy with this. I don't like Ethan van Sciver's art in general, and the lead story was illustrated by him. I wasn't really that impressed with either script, either. Lots of weird fight scenes, not a lot of coherent story story, to me. Of course, I may have been in a bad mood because I read it right after three issues of...

Captain Marvel #5-#7: Three issues of this, mostly OK, and I like Tic. But I may have to give up on it. The cat really was a Flerken? That means the raccoon was right? That really changes the whole interaction we saw earlier, and I don't like it. I may be slightly angry about it. I guess that is one way to subvert the Power Girl parallels (blonde flying brick with energy projection and a surly cat).

Ms. Marvel #7-#8: Not bad. I like Kamala in her glasses for reading online, and the way she embraces Lockjaw apparently without knowing who he is. I just wish that the stories were a little denser or more complete somehow.

I think I'm getting a lot more judgemental about print comics than about webcomics. Hmmm.

Oh, hey, I have this blog I could use it.

Um. I have kind of started buying print comics again? But I think that budget-wise, I'm not going to keep it up.

Anyway, last few weeks, in two different trips to the comic shop, I have picked up the first two issues of the new Captain Marvel series, the first three issues of Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk #5 (with all the wide-angle shots, scans of which are what sent me to the comic shop in the first place), a couple of issues of All-New Doop (which is very much in the middle of a giant X-Men story, and rather weird), and an issue of Guardians of the Galaxy which lied to me by putting Carol (Captain Marvel) on the cover.

Yeah, basically this time I decided to go for the related trademarks of Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel. And of course there's Shulkie.

I haven't actually caught up on the Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel series yet. Back in June I bought the first issues kind of to see if I liked them. And I don't hate them (yet), so I went back a couple days ago and got a few more. But I am months behind.

Well, that's a boring post. What did you think of them, philippos? "I don't hate them (yet)."

Yep. Shulkie's the one I hope I keep enjoying, but I think Carol's series is growing on me. Even if it's crossing over with Bendis's Guardians of the Galaxy. I like the GotG emough to tolerate Bendis, I guess? I mean, I mock Bendis, but I'm not boycotting him.

OK, since I've been missing days, a short bonus writing meme post to make up for Saturday--which more or less would have been Saturday's post if I had remembered:

It occurs to me that some of the revamps of major comic book superheroes in recent years are not only, "Why haven't we done that yet?" but a bit of, "Of course they are!" That is, "Of course they are!" if you asked someone with only the barest familiarity with the property.

Wonder Woman is Superman's girlfriend? "Of course she is!" as you might be told by someone unfamiliar enough with the mythos to confuse Wonder Woman and Lois Lane.

Spider-Man is black now? (That is, in the "Ultimate" comics) Hasn't he always been?

Going back a little further, we could add more:

The Avengers work for the government, so they're basically a military outfit? Of course!

And Spider-Man has to be an Avenger, right? Of course he is!

So Spidey is a government employee? Uh....

And having a Robin who was literally Bruce Wayne's son may have been playing with that trope.