Tag: Marvel

What are you reading Wednesday

Posted November 5, 2014 by in General / 2 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?
Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell, which I mostly enjoyed with some mixed feelings, and The Sleeper and the Spindle, by Neil Gaiman, which has really beautiful art. Reviews of both will, of course, be forthcoming.

What are you currently reading?
The Just City, by Jo Walton. I’m about a third of the way into it now, and very engrossed, although it is driving me to want to find my old copy of The Republic and read up on what it says about art, given the art-focus of several characters. (I mean, I distinctly recall it being rather dismissive of any mimetic art, and sculpture and painting of the human form are definitely that?) Also, I keep peeking at the back for the list of who the characters were as historical figures, and poking through their Wikipedia pages. I feel rather history-deficient about some of them, and I studied Classics and Philosophy!

What are you going to read next?
I should get on with Mary Stewart’s Merlin books, so that’s The Hollow Hills. I’ve also got endless amounts of ARCs to catch up with, of course, so there should be something from that list — Alan Bradley, perhaps.

Comics-wise, I still have Ms Marvel: No Normal and Captain Marvel: Higher, Faster, Further, More to read, so I’m sure they’re coming up soon. And the Black Widow comic, and the Kate Bishop as Hawkeye comic, and… yeah.

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Review – She-Hulk: Law and Disorder

Posted November 5, 2014 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of She-Hulk: Law and DisorderShe-Hulk: Law and Disorder, Charles Soule, Javier Pullido, Ron Wemberly

I’ve been meaning to try some She-Hulk comics for a while, so Charles Soule’s Law and Disorder seemed like a good place to start. And it was: it’s not part of some big overarching plot, although Jen remains part of the superhero world, with super clients, a formerly super-landlady, and apparently a super paralegal as well. Several heroes (and villains) make their appearance, including Daredevil, Tigra, Hellcat and Dr Doom.

It’s a fun book, altogether, introducing what is obviously a story arc for Jen in the form of a mysterious file connected to reality-warping magic (can I just briefly hope that Dr Strange can’t help and instead Jen needs to speak to Billy Kaplan?) as well as the self-contained story of trying to get Dr Doom’s son political asylum. There’s plenty of female characters as well as Jen, and she is in doubt about her worth as a person, an attorney and a superhero. It’s pretty great, reading a book with such a confident female character.

I’m not an enormous fan of the art in this book; Pulido’s work is okay, but not really to my taste, and Wemberly’s art just looks dreadful to me. You get used to it, but it’s still a style I really don’t enjoy.

Overall, though, it’s a fun book, and I’ll be picking up more She-Hulk.

Rating: 4/5

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted November 1, 2014 by in General / 12 Comments

Aaand it’s Saturday again, already! Where does the time go? Here’s my Stacking the Shelves post for this week…

Comics TPBs

Cover of Hawkeye: LA Woman by Matt Fraction Cover of Captain Marvel Higher Faster Further More by Kelley Sue DeConnick Cover of Ms Marvel: No Normal by Adrian Alphona

Cover of Black Widow: The Finely Woven Thread Cover of She-Hulk: Law and Disorder Cover of Red She-Hulk: Hell Hath No Fury

Sooo happy to have these TPBs. It’s awesome that Fraction has focused on Kate Bishop as well as Clint Barton; and of course I’m excited about Captain Marvel. Ms Marvel I’ve been intending to read for ages — I’ve actually been putting the comics covers in my STS posts as each individual issue released on Comixology, but now I own them in proper collected edition! Easier to read. The She-Hulk and Black Widow comics were impulse buys, but I love that I’ve had six superhero comics focusing on women hit my doormat this week. And hey, Captain Marvel film with Carol Danvers announced!

Just please don’t talk to me about the (probable? rumoured? I don’t even know anymore) casting of Dr Strange, because I’m not over the disappointment yet.

Dead tree books

Cover of If On a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively The Lottery & Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

17349743 Cover of The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett Cover of Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

Cover of The Mistletoe Bride by Kate Mosse Review of The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

I came home from visiting my partner last Saturday, and there was a “small” spree. Oops? But I’d never bought anything from the new bookshop in St Pancras before (Hatchard’s), so I had to have a look. And I’ve been meaning to try more Borges and Calvino, and I like Shirley Jackson already, and…

Contributor copies

Cover of Lightspeed: Women Destroy SF ed. Christie Yant Cover of Fantasy: Women Destroy Fantasy ed. Cat Rambo

Nah, I don’t have a story in here (though if you know my name, you can find it somewhere in Lightspeed) — I’m a slush reader for Lightspeed, and Wendy Wagner was kind enough to make sure I got my contributor copies despite not getting my original email response about it. I don’t actually think anything in either volume came through me first, but I did read/rate ~30 submissions for the two collections, so I have done my bit. (I’m on ~50 submissions read/rated for regular Lightspeed!)

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Review – Avengers Assemble: The Forgeries of Jealousy

Posted October 31, 2014 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Avengers Assemble: The Forgeries of JealousyAvengers Assemble: The Forgeries of Jealousy, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Warren Ellis, Matteo Buffagni

The Forgeries of Jealousy is pretty fun. Unlike Science Bros, it does follow through one story arc, based on a recent event involving the Inhumans. I don’t know much about that, but I don’t think you need to. The closest POV character is Anya Corazon, Spider-girl, and she doesn’t seem to have been involved much in the event up to the point where this starts, though she does know what about the situation. Still, the volume follows Spider-girl as she works with the Avengers to rescue her social studies teacher.

There’s a lot of fun banter and some good team-ups — the best being Spider-girl, Spider-woman and Black Widow, though her team-up with Wolverine is kinda fun, and her interactions with Tony Stark and Captain America are sweet. Gotta love the end, with Steve sending her the Avengers Assemble theme song for a ringtone, and asking her not to tell anyone he can use a smartphone (and of course his texts are spelt out properly with punctuation and all).

Overall, I can see why people think it’s a bit of wish fulfilment, but it’s also fun and features a lot of the female Avengers. Kelly Sue always does a great job, and I love the line-up she gives us here.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Avengers Assemble: Science Bros

Posted October 30, 2014 by in Reviews / 4 Comments

Cover of Avengers Assemble: Science BrosAvengers Assemble: Science Bros, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Christos Gage, Pete Woods, Stefano Caselli, Tomm Coker

Although it feels a little disconnected — the TPB is a collection of disparate Avengers stories, rather than any kind of continuous story arc — this is a great book. It’s funny till it’s not, serious in the right places, with some great character moments and a great team. Spider-woman and Hulk make a fun pair-up, while I will never get over Captains America and Marvel being friends and drinking kale smoothies for breakfast, or Tony’s sweet pep talk for Bruce while he’s eating caramel and walnut ice cream. The final story involves the Vision, and it surprised me by linking with Young Avengers and having Vision go to meet one of his sons at the end. Also, I thrilled a little to the scene-setting line: “Outside Wiccan and Hulkling’s House”. I hope Vision likes his son’s boyfriend…

I was a little bemused by Clint apparently dating Jessica Drew, but okay. The story with those two and Natasha was pretty cool, though strongly reminiscent of Amazing Spider-man, with the lizard people and all…

The art is really good, too; I don’t actually remember any of the artists’ names from anything else, but the drawings are really clean and clear, the action looks great, the colours are bright and eye-catching without being garish, etc.

This volume is worth it for “Hulllllk, make me a sandwich”, “hippy peanut butter” and the naked walk to the Baxter Building alone. The rest is extra caramel for Bruce’s depressed ice cream breakfast.

Rating: 5/5

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Review – Winter Soldier: The Bitter March

Posted October 28, 2014 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Winter Soldier: The Bitter March by Rick RemenderWinter Soldier: The Bitter March, Rick Remender, Roland Boschi

I haven’t heard good things about Rick Remender’s work, but I kind of like this run on Winter Soldier. It begins by following Fury and another SHIELD agent during the Cold War, as they begin to go up against the Winter Soldier. But slowly, Bucky’s memories surface in the Winter Soldier, changing the whole course of the story.

Ultimately, it doesn’t change anything about the Marvel universe — Bucky might as well never have resurfaced, really. In a way, that makes this a bit of a cheat: we see a little of Bucky’s struggles against the Soviets who control him, but it doesn’t really mean anything. It doesn’t show us anything about Bucky we didn’t already know. It doesn’t pick up on where we left him in the last Winter Soldier comic, with the love of his life unable to remember who he is. With everything he’s come to care about destroyed.

It’s a fun spy/action story, but nothing more.

Rating: 3/5

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Top Ten Tuesday

Posted October 28, 2014 by in General / 2 Comments

Aaand time for another Top Ten Tuesday! This week it’s a Halloween theme — not my favourite holiday, really; I’m a scaredy-cat at heart. Anyway, here’s the theme: “Top Ten Books/Movies To Read Or Watch To Get In The Halloween Spirit OR Top Ten Characters Who I Would Totally Want To Be For Halloween”. Aaand I’m gonna do the latter. Most of them are comics characters, because actually I’m really bad at visualising characters.

  1. Any Avenger. Comics/movies whatever. Especially one like female!Bucky or the Lady Avengers manips. Not that short red hair really suits me for anyone. Gimme a blond wig and I’ll do Carol Danvers? Scarlet Witch maybe?
  2. Batgirl. From Gail Simone’s run. I’d just need longer hair… lots longer. Like it used to be, in fact.
  3. Storm. Even mohawk!Storm. Maybe especially mohawk!Storm.
  4. A female assassin. Shush, Assassin’s Creed counts for this — there’re Assassin’s Creed books too.
  5. Kate Bishop. Young Avengers! We don’t need to imagine a female Hawkeye; we’ve got one. And I’d have a badass bow.
  6. Lara Croft. She has comics! It counts! Badass bow, again.
  7. Eowyn. Shield-maiden style, of course.
  8. Nazca. From The Lies of Locke Lamora. She’s badass and she should be celebrated.
  9. Zamira Drakasha. Scott Lynch again. Ditto!
  10. Sabriel. Or maybe Lirael. From Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom trilogy!

Lots of kick-butt ladies. I didn’t deliberately pick them to be mostly the ladies who fight; it’s just those are the ones I can see myself doing better. Not such a fan of the long dresses and so on.

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Review – Loki: Agent of Asgard

Posted October 20, 2014 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Loki: Agent of AsgardLoki: Agent of Asgard, Al Ewing, Lee Garbett

I think I needed more of Journey into Mystery and general Thor comics to really understand what’s going on here, but it’s a fun ride anyway. It continues the kid!Loki storyline — except he’s all grown up now, thanks to Billy Kaplan of the Young Avengers. So we get to see Loki living in Midgard, with a fancy apartment and an unfortunate resemblance to Harry Styles. We get to see a bit more of the “new” Loki interacting with Thor, and the continuing saga of many Lokis that is the whole plot with Loki dying and then kid!Loki but it’s not really kid!Loki and —

Yeah, it’s confusing. But Loki’s capers are fun, and no doubt it’s going somewhere brain-twisty and fun. I like young!Loki a lot, and along with all the Hiddleston fangirls, just want to see that he’s been misunderstood and twisted into his role. And more than that, I hope Loki’s still playing with my head. I don’t really think we ever can or should get some kind of solid answer about where Loki stands on the moral continuum. He’s wildfire, unpredictable; the comics do take that aspect of the trickster Loki from Norse myth and play with it most excellently.

Oh, and the scenes with the Avengers in the tower are perfect.

Rating: 3/5

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What are you reading Wednesday

Posted October 15, 2014 by in General / 0 Comments

What have you recently finished reading?
Beauty and Chalice by Robin McKinley, both rereads. I love those books so much. It’s funny to think that I didn’t like Chalice thaaaat much the first time I read it, but it stayed on my mind and now I think it’s probably earned the title of “Comfort Read.”

What are you currently reading?
A huge mess, as usual, but mainly at the moment I’m reading Rose Daughter, Robin McKinley’s other Beauty and the Beast retelling, and Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park — I can’t believe I’ve never read Jurassic Park before. It’s actually better than I was led to believe? And the science is none too bad considering when it was written.

What will you read next?
The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart, probably, and then The Bone People, by Keri Hulme. I’ve got both of them out of the library here, so I need to get on with it. I need to read some of my partner’s comics, too — Thor, Winter Soldier, Loki: Agent of Asgard.

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Thursday Thoughts: Bookish Fandoms

Posted October 2, 2014 by in General / 2 Comments

This week’s prompt from Ok, Let’s Read is about bookish fandoms…

Do you have any experience with fandoms in the bookish world? What fandoms do you consider yourself to be a part of? Have you ever created something pertaining to your favorite books as a part of the fandom (i.e. artwork, music, fanfic, cosplay)? Can you share your creation with us?

I’m less into bookish fandoms than I am into stuff like the MCU, the Young Avengers comics, Captain Marvel, etc. I can’t think of any strictly bookish t-shirts I have, for example — I’ve got two Captain Marvel shirts, some Avengers and Captain America ones, etc, but it’s mostly comics and games. I do like getting involved in events, like The Dark is Rising readathon that happened last year, and I’d have loved to go to the recent anniversary celebration of The Fionavar Tapestry and so on.

If you count Arthuriana as one big fandom, well, I know all the Arthurian songs of Heather Dale off by heart, and have written a bunch of stories and poetry based on the Arthurian legends (usually taking them and skewing it, so I’ve written about Tristan and Isolde from Mark’s point of view, etc).

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