schmevil

I'm so sorry, but this is important.

In the far flung future, Tony should totally have a house in space, right? But should it be a Jetsons-style sky castle, a space station, a ship, or... a martian space castle?

*Actually relevant to something I am ACTUALLY WRITING, AW YEAH.

I'm kind of idly fancasting a story I have no plans to write: Movieverse, if Tony had kids.

The mothers: ( Read more... )


I'm trying to cast Sal Kennedy, who is obviously baby James J. Hansen-Stark's* godfather. I sort of like Edward James Olmos for the part. Or... idk. Name me some actors in their 60s who could pull off genius hippie futurist, mentor to Maya and Tony? (Jeff Bridges would have been perfect).

Yes, I totally built some familial ticking time bombs (in a cave... with a box of scraps). I am aware.


*(The second J stands for something horrible, terrible, so bad it must never be revealed. His parents are assholes like that. Language? Have you seen his birth certificate? Ok, no. That wasn't an invitation).

Rambling about Tony, because he's on my mind again lately. When I say ramble, I mean it. This isn't an essay.



Movie Tony is a fantastic distillation of the entire history of the character. The Tony Stark we meet in Iron Man isn't original recipe Stan Lee Tony, from Tales of Suspense #9. He isn't the Tony Stark we get in innumerable retellings of his origin, or the Tony from his too many reboots and re-imaginings.

Movie Tony is ALL THE TONYS thrown into a characterization blender, with heavy emphasis on the aspects of the character and his history that are topical. Tony's wealth is contemporary--he's super rich, in the manner of Bill Gates (with an even cooler house). His weapons manufacturing has moved from the usual to the fantastic--SI produces the kind of wonderland weapons that come with million, hell, billion dollar price tags are are slowly bankrupting the DoD and the assorted arms of the American military. There's the obvious transistors to arc reactor update, but well, what's the real technological potential of arc reactor technology? Clean energy. And the blowing up of things, but. ( Read more... )

Therapy, ~5500 words
Tony goes to therapy and criminal activity in New York City--and then the world--grinds to a halt. Pre Skrulls, New Avengers era.


( Read more... )

TBC, theoretically

That foreshadowing. Subtle, right? However, I should note that there was going to be a totally awesome scene in which Logan jumped out of a window at Avengers Tower.

[Not an essay! Just some things I've been thinking about.]

The USAF has prescribed amphetamines to combat pilots off and on for decades. They're called go pills, and they're supposed to improve concentration and response time. Couple this with the large numbers of military personal abusing drugs and alcohol both overseas and at home, and there's a plausible, pre-made background for Carol having a history of drug and alcohol abuse. She spent most of her adult life with people who think it's a good idea to give speed to combat pilots, and that drinking to excess is a sign of manliness.

Why then, did Busiek not draw on this for Carol's alcoholism story? It seems like such a missed opportunity, especially since Tony later became her sponsor, because he too grew up in that culture. Carol's alcoholism just pops into existence, already fully formed, and hardly anchored to anything in her history - she's drinking because she needs to take the edge off, and she's not coping well with being back on earth. Well, why is she having so much trouble? ( Read more... )

Does anyone find it strange that Marvel is building a veritable Iron Family of cyborgs, just when they've turned Tony back to his fully human status quo?

Pepper Potts now relies on an arc reactor and (supposedly) pilots and ai-enabled suit. Rhodey is now a cyborg, with weaponry popping out of his arms and legs and who knows where else.

Meanwhile, Fraction has killed Tony's own experiment with human-machine evolution: namely extremis. It's good enough for the sidekick and the love interest, but not for the hero?

ETA: TONYTONYTONYRHODEYRHODEYRHODEY! Holy shamoly hardware! That is all.

So I finally got around to reading Invincible Iron Man #1 and big surprise, it didn't exactly thrill me. I came away from it thinking that Matt Fraction watches way too much bad sci-fi, and doesn't know the first thing about science. You don't have to know a lot about science to write science fiction, but you need to sound like you do. Fraction doesn't. The sci-fi elements in IIM feel fake. Gimmicky. Thoroughly 90's, from the sockless, teenage bio-villain who mouths off to the Establishment, to Pepper's holo-interface.

The absolute nadir for me was the new villain, who Fraction introduced in his now-canceled The Order. Ezekiel Stane is into body-mods, terrorism and sounding like a douche. Observe as he scores cool points with the audience by telling off and then murdering the board of a Big Tobacco company: ( four thumnbnails )

I've come to the conclusion that Stane is essentially Amadeus Cho's eviler half-step-brother-cousin, separated at birth. I've also come to the conclusion that he's really boring. Charmless sociopaths usually are.

Fraction's approach to Tony is very 80's, but aged up and a little pathetic. He's on the verge of a truly sad mid-life crisis, presaged by his inability to stop bragging about his accomplishments and the anvilicious juxtaposition of his dinosaur-ness, with Stane's far cooler, youthier, more effective and cooler ways. Did I say cooler? Because Ezekiel Stane is so cool. His dialog is just so pop-culturally savvy! I feel like I'm reading Iron Man: the Golden Years. Next issue: Tony Stark chases some damn kids of his lawn!

Shockingly, Iron Man: Director of SHIELD was far more to my liking. Roberto De La Torre continues to do a fantastic job with this book. His art is a little more muddy, a little more organic than you would expect on an Iron Man book, but it's immensely effective from a story-telling perspective. He's very much a visual storyteller, using colour, texture, pattern and shifts in perspective to great effect, and he's developed a bag of lite motifs that are spectacular emotional cues.

Carlo Pagulayan penciled the B story and imho his cleaner work suffers in comparison to De La Torre's. Pagulayan's pages lack the psychological punch that De La Torre's have in spades.

This is the first issue after the outstanding Mandarin arc and it's penned by pinch-hitter Stuart Moore. He's done a fantastic job of keeping the characterization and overall feel of the book consistent with the Knaufs' work. I have two complaints though: a) he takes his sweet-ass time in building to an actual plot (though I give him credit for jumping straight into the action); b) he name-drops a beloved Iron Man supporting character who hasn't been seen since The Crossing shat all over the book. Not only is it fan-baiting (naughty!), but it's so random that it's rendered ineffective. I know a lot of fans who are only familiar with the last few years of continuity that will be scratching their heads over that one.

Anywho, not the greatest issue, but solid. I'm very much looking forward to the rest of this arc.

remixredux08 is no longer anonymous. This year I wrote Mighty Dark to Travel (Full Fathom Five), in X-Men Movieverse. The story I remixed is Frosted World, by ms_jvh_shuh.

Reposted to my fic journal:
Mighty Dark to Travel (Full Fathom Five)
Fandom: X-Men Movieverse
Summary: After John is shot, Bobby loses control. (mid X2)
Character(s): Bobby/Rogue, Bobby/John
Word Count: 3333
Notes: I know medicine doesn’t work that way. Roll with the comic book science.

I really enjoyed writing this remix. The original story has several different povs, and I wanted to keep that but make it more explicit - really colour the situation differently in each part. So I added the perspectives of one of the cops who shot at Bobby, John, Rogue and Logan, and Bobby's brother Ronnie. I had the most fun writing the cop, an OC, and writing Rogue, who's in an ugly position in this story. The title comes from an old American blue grass song, and the funky remix title is of course from The Tempest.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that does fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong,
Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.

The idea being that the road that John takes in the film, and that Bobby considers in this story is (duh) a dark one to travel, and this story, with five different povs, goes fully five fathoms deep (in that direction), or attempts to fathom five characters. Not too corny, I hope?

I was also surprised, though not so surprised in retrospect, to find that musesfool was the author of Packing for the Crash (The Black Brothers Variations), the remix of my Salt the Earth. Go read Vic's story, because it's great. It's funny, something about it was so familiar, but I couldn't quite figure out what. ;)

In other remix-y news:

Hijack Me HP is THE BEST THING EVER. Well, you know. Here's the deal: ( Read more... )

I have, of course, subscribed to the feed and am waiting for a special and unique snowflake to fall into my greedy and corrupting hands. Mwa ha.

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I made two Director of SHIELD posts to scans_daily and the comments were mostly free of Ironhate and Civil War wank. It's a Christmas (in spring) Miracle! What continues to bug me, is how hard I as the OP, have to work to keep everything cool when wank threatens to explode. I had a couple of moments of pure, concentrated Intarwebs WTFuckery and just managed to resist the urge to respond with a flame the size of Australia. The community does okay much of the time, but the hand of mod is imo, just a wee bit light. There are times when I just want to share my squee, and don't want to spend the next three or so days a) justifying my squee; b) defending people who share my squee; c) defending people who DON'T share my squee; and d) soothing the savage, mouth-breathing beasts.

No one's twisting my arm - I could technically post and run (and watch the wank roll in), but the whole point of posting to a comm, and not my own journal, is sharing the love. And that's hard to do when posters are calling each other out over a fictional political dustup that happened two years ago. Or questioning each other's morality, based on their taste in fiction.

Not to say that my behaviour is perfect in every which way. There was one post, a month or two back, where I responded to all the constitutionality-of-the-SHRA comments with "LOLZ!1!1111"until they stopped commenting. *g*

And not to say that this is exclusive to scans_daily, because I swear, it's like this almost everywhere online. One second you'll be talking about the latest issue of She-Hulk and the next, the thread's devolved into a panel by panel dissection of Amazing Spider-Man, issue number whateverthefuck, and what Peter said, what Tony said, what Luke Cage said, in a comic that was published TWO YEARS AGO AND HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH SHE-HULK NUMBER 28. And ok, I think that's enough capslock rage for now.

So yeah, more modding on scans_daily. It would be good.

1. I updated my list of Essential Ms. Marvel with some new scan posts. Next I want to concentrate on tracking down articles and interviews. Does anyone have a functional link to the essay "The Rape of Ms. Marvel"? I've read it in the past but recently, it seems like every link is dead.

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2. Continuing from last post on the Iron Man movie, here are the links to the next three interviews in the CBR series.

I Am (Friends With) Iron Man - with Terrence Howard
I Am (Directing) Iron Man - with Jon Favreau
I Am (Producing) Iron Man - with Kevin Feige

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3. Tori Amos' Comic Book Tattoo
Through her many real and apocryphal connections to “The Sandman” -- Amos wrote the introduction to “Death: The High Cost of Living,” references author Neil Gaiman and the Dream King in her music, and is generally thought to be the inspiration for Delirium -- Amos is known to comics fans as one of us. She aims to prove it with the help of editor Rantz Hoseley and Image Comics, who will this summer release “Comic Book Tattoo,” a nearly 500-page deluxe-packaged anthology featuring some of comics’ brightest talents including David Mack, Mike Dringenberg, Jonathan Hickman, Carla Speed McNeil, Laurenn McCubbin, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Ivan Brandon, Callum Watt, Neil Kleid, Christopher Mitten, Elzabeth Genco, Chris Arrant, and Daniel Heard -- all of whom turn in new work inspired by the music of Tori Amos.

It's like fanfic

I'm really excited about this project. The preview art (there's more of it in the link) looks lovely, and I just like the idea of it. I'm not a Tori fanatic but I think that her music has the potential to inspire some really fascinating and beautiful stories - her lyrics sometimes don't make much sense, which I think is an advantage here. Instead of just illustrating stories, they'll be creating stories.

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4. tammylee linked to an article about artists, and what it takes to succeed in the business. As a non-artist I'm always interested to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes, the creative process and the business of art. I was particularly interested to learn about the job (and importance of) the inker.