some art and a poem

I just finished reading Alison Bechdel's Fun Home for the first time. It's such a great book, and I don't yet have enough distance from it to talk about it, but god. That last page kills me.

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We Go In Search of A Lost Dream, by Fiona Rae. Click to see a larger version. No seriously, click, because it is stunning. You can find more of her work here, and a video on her process here.



From a project called Dispatchwork, by Jan Vormann. Vormann replaces brickwork with his own Lego Bricks. You can find more of his work here.



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I Have Loved Hours At Sea, by Sara Teasdale

I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;

First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.

I have loved much and been loved deeply --
Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,
I shall be tired and glad to go.

Ms. Marvel as a leader; other stuff

So over on CBR, folks are talking about Carol's effectiveness, or lack thereof, as a leader. I said:

Carol is a good leader as written by Brian Reed, and most other writers. She's a bad leader as written by Bendis. His Carol is probably the most indecisive and mild she's ever been. Brian Reed, for all his other flaws, understands that Carol is supposed to be (as the slogan goes), the hard-hitting, high-flying Ms. Marvel and he's increasingly showing her to be the smart, aggressive, never-back-down kind of woman she's always been. He's also, very smartly, had her do a lot of introspection, examining her motives and methods.

I've talked before about Reed's issues on Ms. Marvel, but I strongly believe his treatment of the character is improving. In recent issues Carol has been less wracked by indecision and far more effective. She's starting to win a few, which is so important for this character. At the same time, he's not letting her get away with her more negative impulses - she's questioned her ethics and her tactics, and she's started to face the parts of herself she's ignored for a long time. Reed hasn't stopped throwing her curveballs, but she's getting better at hitting them.

I also said:

I'm starting to think that she needs to get away from Bendis to shine. Even more than she needs to get away from Tony. Under Bendis she's been marginalized as a leader, called a fat cow by Doctor Doom, and shown to be willing to abandon a group of her friends in the middle of a fire fight, in order to protect one friend. Of course, it's possible to put a positive spin on all of this, but I'm having trouble.

I really want Bendis to throw the character a bone during Secret Invasion. Not least because his record with the female characters he chooses to write about is looking pretty grim. Jessica Jones spent most of her time in NA supporting her husband and not doing much else. When she finally gets some agency, it's to take her baby away from Luke. Echo was a non-entity, until Bendis hooked her up with Clint - suddenly she's interesting? The Wasp is just sort of there and in a recent issue she even disappears completely, without explanation. Spider-Woman, well, you know.

Black Widow is the only female character in the Avengers books who gets to consistently be a superhero. I tend to think that's partly because she's a street-level character and a sexy superspy, two of Bendis' favourite types to work with.

When you look at it this way, Carol's ineffectiveness is hardly surprising.

And Carol is a largely ineffective leader in the Mighty Avengers. Her teammates make and execute their own plans, and command seems to rotate from issue to issue. Tony is constantly undermining her, and she hasn't confronted him about it after, what? Twelve issues? She seems baffled by battles as they're unfolding around her, and is constantly surprised. This is frankly bizarre, considering she's a former Air Force major, who operated both as a fighter pilot, and with special ops. She's also been director of security for NASA, headed the superhuman branch of Homeland Security, and currently runs an anti-terrorist strike team through SHIELD. Oh yeah, and in her brief civilian career, she ran a magazine.

This is not a character who should have trouble with command.

Granted, the Mighty Avengers is just stacked with strong personalities, but I don't recall a leader having this much trouble since Black Widow's tenure as chairman. And before that, Scarlet Witch. Hey wait a second, do you think that maybe there's a connection?! What's really vexing is that under Busiek and Johns, Carol ran missions as an Avengers field leader and not only was she good at it, no one questioned her abilities. There is a difference, obviously, between temporary and fulltime command, and yeah the transition can be difficult. I would feel a lot better about Bendis' portrayal of Carol, if he showed her struggling with and then working on her self-doubt, rather than constantly showing her as being inadequate, and knowing she's inadequate.

Please, Gods of Comcis, let Bendis have some awesome plan for Carol. Power of positive thinking, people. POSITIVE THINKING.

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Yesterday I posted some pages from She-Hulk #29, in which we finally find out why Jen got disbarred. I'm mostly satisfied with the explanation, and interested in seeing where PAD takes it.

Proving once again that She-Hulk fans are the best fans (WHY AREN'T YOU READING THIS BOOK?!), posters took the opportunity to geek about: case law, language usage, puns relating to both birds and breasts, and ninja zombie nazi gorillas riding pirate dinosaurs with jetpacks and rocket boots. OMG.

I also posted some scans from Transhuman #2, and it continues to be very, very cool. Jonathan Hickman is telling the story of the development of the transhumanism industry. He frames it within a documentary film about the two companies that first had major breakthroughs. He follows them from initial research, to development, human trials and even their search for funding. It's a really smart book that interrogates the relationship between science and business, tackles all the big ethical questions without getting heavy-handed, and sends up genre conventions.

Remember the test monkeys? (WHY AREN'T YOU READING THIS BOOK?!)