Beginnings (or How I Lost My Heart to Jean Grey)

First, a little news:

As you may have heard, it was announced today that Disney has bought Marvel for $4 billion (story on CNN over here). I have very, very mixed feelings on this. I have a great amount of love for both companies, but I do not want them mixing. There is a part of me, no matter my loyalty to Disney, that feels that Disney may try to control what Marvel is publishing. I don't want that to happen. I don't want Disney dictating the level of violence that can be used, the amount of cursing, etc. I know it's premature to worry about that, but the thought is in my head.

On the plus side, maybe this means we'll see more of the Gargoyles & Haunted Mansion titles. I've never seen either title in my LCS, but maybe they'll become more prominent. Perhaps we'll see more Disney properties become comics (I'd be up for a Kingdom Heart book, though Square/Enix would have to have a say in that, I suppose).

In any event, it's going to make for an interesting week of podcasts among the comic world, and hopefully, it will be a positive thing for both companies. I'll be sure to bring the latest whenever it's announced.

And now, back to your previously scheduled blogging. . .

So, you might be wondering what got me into comics in the first place. Well, as a kid, my parents bought me a pack of the old Star Comics imprint from Marvel. I don't completely remember what titles were in it, but I do remember it containing a Muppet Babies book & an ALF book (don't look at me that way! It was the 80s!). I also had a couple of film-to-graphic novel adaptations, one for The Secret of NIMH and one for Return to Oz. I wish I knew whatever happened to them.

After that, it was a long time before I officially got into mainstream comics; it didn't happen until my teen years. It was a compilation of my friend Donna and my uncle who got me into comics. My uncle had been collecting comics for a while, and I kind of remember picking up some of them and flipping through them while he was at work.

Donna was into the X-Men books, and after I started watching the 90s X-Men cartoon (again, thanks to my uncle), I started borrowing her books, and then I snookered my mom into buying them for me.

Back then, the X-Men titles were the only books I read. The first storyline I really read was X-Cutioner's Song, the big convoluted crossover among all the X-books that dealt with Stryfe (Cable's clone), the Legacy Virus, & Professor Xavier nearly dying after being attacked by Stryfe. I remember getting these polybagged copies of it at Wal-Mart; it was a pain to find them all, but I did, and after that, I was hooked.

I stayed with the X-titles until around the Onslaught saga; it just seemed too much like jumping the shark for me, and I hated what they were doing to Wolverine at the time (this was post-Fatal Attractions, where he lost his adamantium thanks to Magneto, and he was going feral; I think his nose actually ran away from his face out of frustration with the bastardization of his character).

See, look! His nose ran away!

I didn't get back into comics until about 2002, 2003. I decided to give X-Men another chance, and I stuck with it until a couple of months ago. I did like some of what they've done in the last few years; money and other situations led me to dropping all of my X-books.

However, I've expanded to other books. Fables and Jack of Fables are probably my favorite titles that I buy every month, closely followed by The Incredible Hercules & Deadpool. I ended up with Hercules as a fluke; I had been buying The Incredible Hulk when the Planet Hulk series ended & they shifted from Hulk to Herc. I was just going to give it a little trial, but it quickly won me over. I'll try to show you why you should be reading it in upcoming posts.

I've been a fan of Deadpool since the 90s. I never got to read his initial appearance in New Mutants, but I've loved him from the first time I saw him in X-Force. I love his manic energy, his breaking of the fourth wall, and his love for Bea Arthur (and of Siryn, though that seems to be stuck in the past and not gonna happen again). You'll see some of him in this blog, too.

Other than those books, the other ones I'm picking up regularly are Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Astro City. I like the former, but it's kind of hit and miss; I love the latter, but I'll love it more once Busiek gets back to the regular title instead of the Dark Ages miniseries currently going on.

A Blast From the Past

Do any of you remember this little cartoon?



I used to have the VHS for this, and I watched it quite a bit. I still remember the damn theme song. Just try to get it out of your head! Try! I need to sit down and watch the whole thing and see if it's like I remember.

Stuff You Should Be Reading

Now, I know I haven't talked about my love for the Bat, but I do have a lot of love for Batman, even though I'm largely a Marvel girl. My love probably began with The Animated Series, but I love the books as well, though I don't read them often.

This, however, is my personal canon:


Bat's in the Cradle by *The-BlackCat on deviantART

This is the work of Black Cat, and you should go to her deviantArt page and read all of her stuff. Seriously, it's the best (or nearly best, from the buzz I'm hearing on Batman & Robin) Batman comic around these days. She'll melt your heart with the adorable and make you laugh your ass off as well. Not an easy task.

So, that's a little background on my passion for comics. Up next is a post on Fables #1, and later this week, we'll start the X-Men posts. Hope you enjoy the ride!

Fables #1 - Chapter One: Old Tales Revisited

So, this week, I'm going to kick off our comic venture with one of my all-time favorite books, Fables. I first got exposed to this book via Wizard Magazine, and I was hooked from the start. I've always had a great love and passion for folk tales and fairy tales, so this just hit the spot for me.

This issue of Fables was written by Bill Willingham(creator & writer of the series; you may know him from a few Vertigo books or from his 2004-2006 run on Robin) with art by Lan Medina & Steve Leialoha.

Now, this is the first time I've done something like this, so I'm not 100% sure how far I should go with spoilers, at least with these older issues (I'll definitely avoid them or put up spoiler tags for the newer issues, but that's a ways away yet), so please let me know if you think I'm giving away too much of the story.

Our story opens in the only way a book about fables could: "Once upon a time. In a fictional land called New York City." Yep, we're not in the old fairy tale world, we're in Manhattan, following a cab speeding through the streets. We see the driver being berated for going too slowly by his passenger, and the cab pulls up to the corner of Bullfinch Street and Kipling Street, home of The Woodland Luxury Apartments, home to the well-to-do fables & the Fabletown government.

Let me back up just a smidgen, though. Those street names are part of the reason why I love Willingham and this book. He named them after two prominent writers, one of whom you probably got, Kipling for Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book, Gunga Din, Kim, and many other pieces of work. The Bullfinch is for Thomas Bulfinch, author of Bulfinch's Mythology, a series on mythology and legend. I thought it was especially fitting for this book as the first volume of his work is called The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes.

Alright, back to our story. A young man leaps out of the cab, leaving only a $.25 tip, and he barrels into the Woodland Luxury Apartment. We find out that this fellow is Jack. He's heading upstairs to the office of one B. Wolf, Head of Fabletown Security. Yep, Bigby Wolf, otherwise known as the Big Bad Wolf who terrorized the three little pigs, is head of security.

He looks like he's stepped out of a Bogart film or a Mickey Spillane novel; his office is sparse apart from his trench coat hanging on a hat rack, coffee maker on the sidebar, file cabinet and a cork board covered with notes behind his desk.

Bigby and Jack (who we find is Jack from Jack & the Beanstalk; in later issues, we also find he's pretty much every Jack from every fairy tale & story every written) exchange some verbal spars before Jack tells Bigby that there's been a terrible crime.

Cut to the Business Office of S. White. Snow White has got her hands full this morning, dealing with the marital problems of Beauty & the Beast. It seems whenever they fight, his curse comes back and he starts turning all beasty again. This makes for horrible problems for the Fabletown community, as Snow tells the couple, and she informs them that if he can't get his problem under control or if he can't purchase an appearance concealing glamour from one of the witches, they'll be shipped up north to the farm where all nonhuman fables live.

Through the exposition of this scene, Willingham gives us a lot of crucial info to digest in a matter of a couple of pages. The fables all escaped from some Big Bad called the Adversary; the majority of them only escaped with their lives, leaving their fortunes behind. They manage to live in their little community in the middle of Manhattan by segregating the nonhuman fables from the human fables. And, in one of my favorite moments, we find that although King Cole is the Mayor of Fabletown, Snow is the one who really runs things. Cole glad hands and is the face of the Fabletown government, but as soon as its him and Snow, he always defers to her opinion in all matters. Not exactly the Snow White we're used to from the Disney film, and that's why I love it.

Oh, and one more thing about Snow: never mention the dwarves. We don't find out why in this issue, but in the stand-alone book, 1001 Nights of Snowfall, we do learn the full story. I may post some pages from that, if there's an interest.

We get briefly introduced to Prince Charming, Snow White's ex-husband, and he's pretty much everything you'd expect from a fairy tale prince. He's all flirt and flair, but he's kind of hit rough times. As Snow says, "Apparently, he managed to finally wear out his welcome among even the most inbred elements of European royalty."

And then the story goes back to Bigby. He has some bad news for Snow: her sister, Rose Red, is missing and has possibly been attacked. That's the reason Jack came to the offices; he's her boyfriend, and he found her apartment in a mess with blood everywhere (As an aside, reason #2 that I love Willingham so much is he remembered Rose Red; so many versions of the Snow White story leave her out, and this actually comes into play in the book).

Of course, Snow is greatly upset when she sees Rose's apartment. There's hardly a spot that isn't covered in blood, and written on the wall in blood are the words "No more happily ever after." It doesn't look good for either Fabletown or for Rose.

Bigby instructs Jack to keep Snow out of the apartment, telling him to remove her physically if he has to, and, of course & justifiably, Snow doesn't appreciate that. Bigby investigates the apartment, and in a drawer, he finds a hinge and lock that fit onto the holes he found on the freezer door in the kitchen. We don't know why, but this piece of evidence leads him to arresting Jack. Jack, being the ass he is, tries to fight back, but of course Bigby overpowers him, nonplussed. The issue ends with Snow asking, "Is he the one?" and Bigby replying, "We'll see."

Willingham takes all these stories and the tropes associated with them, and turns them onto their ear. I love how he takes these one-dimensional characters like Snow White & the Big Bad Wolf and makes them into fully-fledged characters that we can relate to. I truly feel the characters are the strongest point to Fables. Yes, the stories are amazing, but I come back for the characters. I know a lot of people feel that Fables is not as strong of a book now as it was when it debuted in 2002, but I just don't feel that way. I can't see myself dropping this book for anything.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this exploration of the first issue of Fables. Please leave me any thoughts or ideas of how I could improve this (I'm just winging it right now until I find my groove), and I'd love to hear any ideas you have for this blog. I'm still working out a schedule of what I'm going to cover each day, and, hopefully, I'll get more into the swing of things shortly, and there will be daily posts.

Off to Neverland!

I'm going to take a brief diversion from my planned route for this blog and talk a little books.

Yesterday, I started rereading J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. I haven't read this book since I was a kid, but the story of Peter and the Darling children has always been a part of my life. It was my dad's favorite book & favorite Disney movie; he always said he was going to be like Peter & never grow up, and he didn't. He always kept that spark of childhood in him, and I try to do the same.

Okay, back to the book. I'm really surprised by how different it is from the films, both the Disney animated film and the live-action one from a few years ago. I'm also really surprised by some of Barrie's phrasing. Part of my surprise is that this is supposed to be a book for kids, and it really doesn't read as one, and the rest of the surprise is at how odd some sentences read. Let me give an example. This takes place early in the book, after Mrs. Darling sees Peter for the first time. Peter leaps out the bedroom window, and Nana, the nursemaid dog, shuts the window, cutting off Peter's shadow.

But unfortunately Mrs. Darling could not leave it hanging out at the window, it looked so much like washing and lowered the whole tone of the house. She thought of showing it to Mr. Darling, but he was totting up winter great-coats for John and Michael with a wet towel round his head to keep his brain clear, and it seemed such a shame to trouble him; besides, she knew exactly what he would say: "It all comes of having a dog for a nurse."

That image of Mr. Darling with a towel round his head while he's doing bookwork just hits me so strangely. I'm really looking forward to seeing what else I've forgotten over the years since my last read, and I'm also interested in seeing how things like Tiger Lily and the Indians read to me now as an adult.

In other news, Episode 5 of World Peace Through Jackie Earle Haley is out, and you can find it on iTunes or wptjeh.com. We were all really upset at the news that Shutter Island has been moved back to February 19, 2010, and the episode is full of our thoughts, angry rants and theories for the pushback.

And I'm just gonna drop this here. I promise that a comic oriented post will be coming soon! It's been a crazy week, and I'm going to be out of town on Saturday all day, but I will get a comic post made before next week.

Welcome!

Hi there! Welcome to my little corner of the blogosphere. My name is Theresa, and I'm gonna be your host on this crazy ride.

First, I feel I ought to explain the title. The title is a reference to Rorschach from Watchmen; it spun out of a joke between me and my friends, the lovely gals with whom I do the podcast World Peace Through Jackie Earle Haley. If you're interested in checking out that podcast, you can find it on iTunes or you can get it through our site, wptjeh.com. Not to be self-serving, I really can't recommend it enough. We have a lot of fun making it, and our discussions about Jackie & his films are really quite interesting.

Well, who am I? I'm a 31 year old self-described geek. I love all things movies & comics, I spend a lot of my time reading, I love to play video games (currently re-addicted to World of Warcraft & loving my undead rogue), and I love discussing all of these things with other people. That leads to this blog.

My main design for this blog is to cover one or two comic books at a time and for us to work our way through them, issue by issue. I hope to analyze them, to discuss how characters have changed over the years (this will be especially prevalent in one of my first titles I plan on covering, X-Men), and I generally want to celebrate the craft of comics.

I will also be featuring interesting movies, people you should know, blogs you should be reading, podcasts you should listen to, and all kinds of other stuff, basically whatever piques my interest.

So, I hope you stick around for the ride. I think it will be a lot of fun, and I hope you find it so, too. BTW, I'm not done yet with setting up the layout here, so changes will be forthcoming.