Clearing Out – Vertigo and Indies
Demon Knights and Supergirl are my biggest piles yet to be claimed. The former in particular surprises me. Paul Cornell! Vandal Savage! Questing for the right for princesses to marry each other!
So the first on this list is technically DC, but it’s not DCU and that’s how I roll:
Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre: Written by Darwyn Cooke, drawn by the amazing Amanda Conner. An origin story for Laurie Jupiter, about growing up with an ex-superhero for a Mom and breaking out on your own. Obviously relevant to me, as a Black Canary fan. [Deuce]
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the end of Season 8, the beginning of Season 9. Also Angel and Faith, which is a season 9 spin off.
Cinderella: Fables are Forever A Fables-universe spy story starring Cinderella and… well, that would be a spoiler.
The Guild – One shot ‘origins’ for the characters of Felicia Day’s web series.
House of Mystery – the last few arcs of Matt Sturges’ fantasy romp. Lots of fun, and definitely a title I miss.
Stumptown: The Case of the Baby in the Velvet Case – The second arc of Greg Rucka’s PI series, so-starring Mim Bracca from Fistful of Rain. Actually, what the hell, I’ll throw in Fistful of Rain in paperback if you want. This is an amazing four-issue story, and contains the best car chase sequence in comics that I’ve ever seen.
Saucer Country: Paul Cornell’s 14 issue story about an alien abductee (also an hispanic woman) running for president. Conspiracies! Aliens! Politics! This is also great.
Clearing Out – Marvel Edition
Addemdum to yesterday’s post: I forgot some:
Green Arrow grab bag – pre52 and nu52. [Rob]
Demon Knights – entire nu52 run. if Batwoman is one of the best nu52 titles, this one, created by Paul Cornell, is another one. A sword and sorcery team book, featuring Vandal Savage (as played by BRIAN BLESSED), Etrigan the Demon, Madam Xanadu, and a host of new characters, including the Horsewoman, Shining Knight (reinvented as a trans man) and Al Jabr. I highly recommend this series!
Marvel Time!
(If you were waiting for my Fraction/DeConnick stuff: sorry that’s going somewhere already.)
Daredevil – volume 3. Deceptively light tone from Waid, seems brash and comicy and then turns it on its head with SURPRISE silver age villains are actually REALLY CREEPY, on top of stress from Matt’s Real Life. Whether the character concept of Daredevil appeals to you or not, the book is constantly well written.
Daredevil End of Days – darker, AU story by Bendis set after Matt’s death, providing a gripping coda to Bendis’ great run on the title.
Punisher – Greg Rucka’s superb run, followed by Punisher: War Zone. An amazing story about a woman whose wedding was destroyed by a mass shooting, arming up and going after revenge. If you like angry women with vendettas, you will love Rachel Alves. Oh, and Frank Castle is in it too.
Fearless Defenders -Misty Knight, Valkyrie, Dani Moonstar and Hippolyta team up to fight mythological bad guys. Marvel’s answer to Birds of Prey is amazing, you guys! This has only just started, so it’s not a huge package. [All going to Kat]
Young Avengers – most (not all, sorry) of Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, along with the new Young Avengers title, which is a fun teen team book with a couple of awesome new characters (Miss America FTW)
Also two issues of Jan ven Meter’s Black Cat mini, but these are #3 and 4 of 4, so I understand if you’re not interested.
Clearing Out – DC edition
So the biggest thing, weight-wise, that I find myself owning and unable to take anywhere, is a big pile of comics. Yay comics! Boo, comics are heavy.
I can, and will of course, dump a pile of them on Goodwill and Housing Works, but I suspect they will never find someone to love and read them, so I thought I’d let you guys have a look see which you would like to buy.
(I’d ask for shipping, and a donation towards the American Red Cross, the HI Fund at GOSH or another charity, should you not wish to donate to those two.)
My huge pile includes:
Batman, Detective Comics pre-52, Batman nu52, mostly written by Scott Snyder, covering the excellent Black Mirror storyline, the Court of Owls, and the mini-series Gates of Gotham. Some wonderful Dick-as-Batman in the pre-52 series.
Pre-52 Gotham including 3 issues of Steph-Batgirl, The Return of Bruce Wayne (Oracle, Jim Gordon, Batgirl) (Fi) and Streets of Gotham
Batwoman, the entire nu52 run, which as far as I’m concerned is some of the best of the nu52 comics available. ALSO Chase 100 page special with background to one of the main characters of the current series. Includes Batwoman #0 signed by Amy Reeder. (Gen)
Supergirl – Kelly Sue DeConnick’s storyline, and the first arc of her nu52 run. I really liked this nu52 story, but dropped it when they took away the things that made her interesting.
Secret Six – the final few arcs on one of the best things Gail Simone has written. [Jen]
Birds of Prey – all pre-52. Not as many as I thought I had, but also by Gail Simone and all very excellent (Gen)
Stormwatch – nu52. Paul Cornell had a good run of this, and I got bored eventually after he left. Read it for Midnighter and Apollo, because they are excellent.
Knight and Squire – GUYS THIS IS EXCELLENT. Paul Cornell’s mini series about the British representatives of Batman inc. (Fi)
Wonder Woman – Pre52 and nu52. Cliff Chiangs art on the nu52 stuff is great.(Kat)
Worlds’ Finest - the entire Huntress mini starring Helena Wayne, and the first arcs of the Power Girl/Huntress Worlds’ Finest title. (Kat)
nu52 grab bag – books I started for a few issues, including Static Shock, Firestorm, a story line about Vandal Savage’s daughter, and Blue Beetle [Jen]
Coming up: Marvel and independents. Ask me for details!
Alright, let’s make this official
I’m going home.
This is not what I wanted, and it’s stressing me the fuck out.
But it’s okay in many ways. I miss Abby. And Charlie. I miss Izzy, and Sam and Lauren. And I hate uncertainty.
New York was the very best thing I could have done for myself. The reasons didn’t pan out, but I am a healthier, happier, more knowledgable person than I was three years ago. And New York, Bank Street, Gotham Girls, Ana and Becca made that happen.
The job I’m leaving is the very best job I could ever have had – the job and my boss and everything about it seemed so perfectly designed for me and my expertise and my personality that me not getting to do it for longer feels like concrete disproof of the existence of narrativium in our lives.
I don’t want to go.
But I can do it.
Now, who wants to buy my comics?
It’s been a very long time
I got some disappointing news this morning. I will talk about it, but I’m not ready for that yet.
But maybe you could leave me writing prompts or distractions in the comments?
Debi Watches Arrow (sydht!) 1.14: The Odyssey
This was a pretty simple episode that consisted nearly entirely of Island Flashback, which is good because it’s about time the filled us in on some island stuff, while a couple of significant changes to the status quo happen in Now Time.
Year End
Things I have done this year:
- graduated from both a masters in education and a PhD in paleontology.
- been a lead classroom teacher for week-long summer camps, and at afterschool.
- taught classes on paleontology, structures, biodiversity, bioluminescence and butterflies.
- found myself jobs, albeit not full time permanent things.
- started dating again, quit dating again, and slowly started thinking about dating again.
- wrote long form fanfiction, and actually started work on the structure of a novel.
- more physical fitness than I’ve ever managed before. Been enthusiastic about a sport!
Things I hope to do next year:
- find a full time job in education.
- attend a historical ball.
- deal with my social anxiety enough to make a real go of the dating thing.
- make a start in actually writing that novel.
- moar skating!
I’m definitely definitely not where I ever intended to be on my 32nd birthday. On the other hand, I’m more or less stable, emotionally. I know who I am, and I know what I love and what I’m good at, and I think I like myself today. I have friends, online and off, I have jobs that I adore, and an amazing living situation with the best roommates I could ask for.
TODAY I am teaching, then going out for an English, then going iceskating. But right now I’m listening to Rock of Ages and dancing in my apartment, because I can.
Snowmanticism
Today is a day of baking smells (cinnamon rolls for breakfast, fresh baked rosemary bread for lunch, cupcakes in a pile waiting for afterwards,) TV catching up, and cursing comic book artists for making outfits that are hard to copy.
It is also a day for looking out of the window at the eiderdown of snow that fell on the city overnight.
We walked through the snow, Ana and I, last night on returning from gaming night in Manhattan. It was early for a gaming night – midnight rather than two – because of the incoming storm that we didn’t want to be stranding by. And as he went into MacDonalds to get himself a snack, vegetarian little me stood outside, snug as an aphid in an afghan, in my Hunter wellingtons, winter coat, and big fluffy wolf hat. I buried my feet into the fluffy virgin blanket and looked up, squinting into the swirl of snowflakes that was making the night that special kind of grey you only get from snow and streetlights.
Up to 85% of all snowflakes have grown around a bacteria at their center, and as I watched them swirl around me, I reflected on what it meant to be surrounded by uncountable things that were once living. Of course, bacteria and other microbes float around unseen and unperceived all the time, but when they’re surrounded by delicate fluffy crystals, it’s hard to ignore it.
I’ve been thinking a bit about life recently, and my definition of it, and I don’t know when it happened, but I no longer think of ‘life’ as a discrete quantity. Not for me the concept of “a life,” separate from the others, and by extension, not ‘my life’ or ‘your life’ or ‘his life,” but a continuum, magical in my inability to sufficiently explain life to start with.
It’s easy to count the life withing this sack of skin as one, but even my body is a complex machine of symbiotics, not just the bacteria I play host to, but trillions of identical mitochondria, genetically distinct from he nucleus that dictates most of my proteins, but as vital to the functioning of this body as anything else.
I’ve been accidentally poking my head into that corner of the internet that deals with the politics surrounding the ‘beginning’ of life, and it doesn’t fit with me. Of course a human cell that divides is alive. Of course we can’t count each cell and call them distinct. Of course genetic distinction doesn’t make distinct lives any more than identical twins are one person. The life in this body isn’t a thing my parents created, it’s part of a thing that they shared with me. And while this body is temporary, and I may or may not share with the next generation in quite the same way, when I stand in the snow, enjoying the moment when trillions of living things are for once visible to my eye, I’m happy to share it with all of them.
Why do we dissect?
Half way between where I sit and the advance guard of Winter Storm Nemo, sits a bucket that contains a lot of formalin and two large freshwater mussels. Also on that table is two bivalve pairs, cleaned out yesterday after we hacked up the mussels inside them.
It was a messy, disorganized process that hit a snag very early on when I handed the kids (aged on a continuous spectrum between 5 and 10) their mussels and told them to prise them open. In the 10 years since I last carried out a mussel vivisection during my undergraduate degree, muggins here forgot about the ridiculously strong adductor muscles that keep the shell firmly closed even in death. What resulted was five straight minutes of me hacking between the shells with a scalpel while fending off such “helpful” instructions as “SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER!”
(Meanwhile, one of our high school interns sliced the second open with no problems.)
At no point did it look like this. Image Credit: University of Wisconsin
Teaching with an age group as diverse as this one isn’t easy. Especially when there are scalpels involved: when the enthusiastic explorers are hacking flesh apart, I find my attention ripped away by younger children who, at the end of a long school day and nearing the end of an even longer school week, are losing their grip on their ‘indoor voice’ button. At the end of the class, one mussel was ripped asunder, and the other neglected and under appreciated.
It certainly wasn’t a textbook example of how a dissection class should go. And even though I’m still improving as a teacher, there are ways in which this class if never going to look like the focused, guided classes I remember from high school and college. And if it ever does, I’ll be doing my kids a disservice.
So why am I ripping animals apart with the help of children as young as five? What could they be getting out of it?
Debi Watches Arrow (sydht!) 1.13: Betrayal
This should have been a really great episode! And in some ways the show’s definitely coming into its own. Tr0uble is, now they’re bringing all the plot threads together it’s becoming obvious which are really thin indeed. So much for Oliver’s character development from a random murderer to someone who feels bad about murder. So much, also, for Quentin being an actual interesting character?
OTOH, the show’s starting to build up towards some things, the Island plot is becoming something approaching mildly interesting, and the grown ups’ plot if becoming the plot of the show.
Sadly, a ridiculously small amount of Thea, and no Mckenna, or Carly, who I always like to see more of.
Theme of the episode: family and friends going behind each other’s backs. Hence: BETRAYAL.