New X-Men: Riot at Xavier's and Assault on Weapon Plus

Riot at Xavier's and Assault on Weapon Plus are volumes four and five of Grant Morrison's New X-Men.

I really loved Riot at Xavier's. The Stepford Cuckoos are so cool, and Emma Frost is both fabulously cool and very human (in her own delightful way). I wished that there was some more about... well, I'll just say the babies, so as not to spoil the plot for anyone. And the whole mutant gang thing is a really cool plot.

Assault on Weapon Plus is quite different (although it still has the same deft dialogue which I really enjoy). Cyclops, Wolverine and Fantomex go searching for the clues to the latter two's past. It's shorter than Riot, and less full of touching moments - it also leaves us on a pretty intense cliffhanger. Next volume please!

Serenity: Those Left Behind (Joss Whedon)

I think this is the first in what will presumably be a series of Serenity comics. It's nicely drawn, with a kind of matte colour pencil look, which I really liked. Interspered in the story are portraits of each of the characters.

While I really love the Serenity/Firefly universe and the series and movie, I found the language, which seems quite natural in the TV series, rather forced when I'm reading it. The occasional Mandarin phrase (which is written in Chinese characters) is difficult to imagine, so instead of their voices flowing through my head, they stop and start. The slang, also, seems rather out of place.

It wasn't all terrible though - a decent story, and I really liked how it was drawn. The dialogue just didn't really click with me.

Birds of Prey: Sensei & Student (Gail Simone)

I'm really getting into Birds of Prey - I loved Sensei & Student . I'm not sure what it is about it - maybe the fantastic women characters? I haven't read any other comics where the women are centre stage, and these women characters are so well drawn (I mean in a character development sense, but I really enjoyed the artwork in this volume as well. Although I admit that as a beginner comic reader, I don't think I really pay as much attention to the artwork as other readers do. I'm sure that skill comes with time.)

I enjoyed the tension in this volume - Black Canary is forced to team up with Lady Shiva, an assassin, and there's also tension between the three 'Birds', as Huntress finds herself clashing with the other two. I found the ending, especially where Huntress is concerned, just a little sappy, but I'm sure it won't stay that way for long. Can't wait for the next volume.

Astonishing X-Men: Dangerous (Joss Whedon)

I read Dangerous a while ago, but for some reason forgot to mention it here. I really enjoyed it - Professor X is portrayed really creepily, I thought, with his own ideas about what constitutes ethical behaviour. The Danger Room comes to life in a storyline that's both an action/adventure, and an exercise in understanding the characters more deeply, and their relationships with each other. Good stuff.

As I can recall, it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger/reveal with Emma Frost. I certainly won't know what's going on for a while, because the library doesn't have the next volume in this series yet. Bah.

Castle Waiting (Linda Medley)

If I had plenty of money to spare, I'd probably buy this graphic novel just because it's so prettily presented. However, not being able to roll around in piles of banknotes of an evening, I got a copy of Castle Waiting from the library, which is how I get hold of most of the books I read.

As one reviewer on Amazon says, this is a wandery story. Very wandery. It's a series of loosely interconnected stories that leap off on tangents, and don't really come to a satisfactory conclusion at the end. There's lots of characters I want to know more about - perhaps there will be a sequel.

Castle Waiting is beautifully drawn - it's a delight to read. There's a lot of humour and personality in its stories, and it's a well designed book - it's a pleasure to rest it in your hands, and turn its pages. I really loved the order of bearded nuns - I laughed a lot throughout that story. A very fun, enjoyable story, easy to pick up and read in spare moments - very good fun, overall.

Mystique: Unnatural (Sean McKeever)

Different artists for this Mystique volume, as there seem to be for all of them - why wouldn't you keep it consistent? Once again, the covers are all soft porn, which I'm beginning to hate.

Anyway, Mystique is once again boobier and thinner, and therefore less convincing as a kick-ass spy. But she's still suitably conflicted about her motives and so on, and there's a good intrigue going on as well, which is fun. Apparently the next volume reveals some things (finally), so I'm looking forward to reading that one.

New X-Men: Imperial and New Worlds (Grant Morrison)

These X-Men volumes were interesting - a vastly more complicated look at the X-Men than I've had before, what with aliens and heaps of characters I'd never heard of. I think for that reason I found these slower to get into than I have other series, but I enjoyed them enough to persevere. I can follow the stories, even if I'm a little confused half the time.

Wolverine: The Brotherhood (Greg Rucka)

I picked up this Wolverine comic because it was written by Greg Rucka, whom I've discovered I like. It was interesting seeing Wolverine outside the X-Men circle.

In The Brotherhood, Wolverine goes on a mission seeking justice for a young murdered woman, and kills plenty of people along the way. Which is basically why you read a Wolverine comic, I guess - to see plenty of panels of Wolverine going psycho with his claws. Rucka writes Wolverine with a lot of humanity as well, I think, while retaining that very taciturn thing. I like it a lot, but will probably read other things before continuing with the series.

Asterix the Gladiator (Goscinny & Uderzo)

In the third volume of the series, the Romans capture Cacofonix, the unbearably awful Gaulish bard, as a present for Caeser. Cacofonix is to be put in the circus to be eaten by lions, and so Asterix and Obelix come to the rescue, infiltrating the circus as gladiators. This is a very jolly volume - I love the way our two heroes completely subvert the games, and Caeser's enraged red face looking down at them.

Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds (Gail Simone)

I really enjoyed reading a comic about women superheroes - it's also the first comic I've read written by a woman, so that was exciting. Of Like Minds was a great jumping in point to this series; the characters' histories are subtly revealed, and it seems like the beginning of an interesting story arc.

I really liked the fact that Huntress, Black Canary and Oracle seemed like real people. I really enjoy reading Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman, but she's very much the perfect woman; everything with her is on a grand scale, and sometimes there's little to relate to. The Birds of Prey - now, they're relatable, and it was enormously fun reading a comic with superheroes that seemed like normal women. I'll be reading my way through all the volumes of this that the library owns.

Wonder Woman: Bitter Rivals (Greg Rucka)

Bitter Rivals was excellent, and a great follow-up to Down to Earth. Wonder Woman is under fire from several fronts, notably Veronica Cale, who's working with Dr Psycho to discredit her. There's lots of deceit, double-crossing, and Wonder Woman is a very down-to-earth and realistic woman, fighting to maintain her integrity. The storyline is built up delicately, and tension rises slowly - a really excellent and thoroughly enjoyable comic.

Mystique: Tinker, Tailor, Mutant, Spy (Brian K Vaughan)

The more I read about comics, the more I realise I don't know. Reviews comment on the story, the art and the colouring - I'd assumed that the art and the colour were the one thing, but it seems not.

I enjoyed Tinker, Tailor, Mutant, Spy more than I did the first Mystique volume. There were a couple of really clunky lines that made me wince ("Argh, my face is melting off!"), but overall the story was good, the dialogue was snappy, Mystique is a nicely complex character, and I loved the final frame of this volume. I also really liked the way she was drawn in this one - yeah, she's still got big boobs, but she's also very muscular, big biceps, and so on. She looks strong, as she should. Tinker, Tailor has a different artist to Drop Dead Gorgeous, so perhaps that's why I liked it better.

I think it's kind of hard to do tense storylines with Mystique as the main character, because the shape-changing thing enables her to get out of almost any situation with ease, which tends to spoil the tension a little. The virus storyline in Tinker, Tailor is done well though, and Mystique does actually get hurt, although not for long.

I find it really weird in these collections how they insert the covers of each individual comic when they begin. The covers are inevitably pin-up style stuff, and it's strange to move from Mystique in the middle of a fight to her reclining on a bed in tight black leather. Her face looks very different in the cover drawings, which bothered me - if you're going to do pin-up covers, can't you at least make it look like the character? Also, what's with the little skull on her hairline?

Overall though, despite the odd irritating moment, this was very enjoyable story - I'm looking forward to reading Unnatural, the next in the series.

Mystique: Drop Dead Gorgeous (Brian K Vaughan)

The title probably gives away the fact that Mystique: Drop Dead Gorgeous contains a lot of skimpily dressed Mystique with enormous breasts. In fact, the shape of her breasts in some scenes was so ridiculous as to be rather annoying.

However, this comic is a pretty cool espionage style thing, with Mystique working undercover for Charles Xavier, despite the fact that neither of them trust each other. While it's not ground-breaking stuff (and I enjoyed the Joss Whedon penned series more than this), it's enjoyable enough, and I'm going to be reading the rest of this series. Or whatever the correct term is when it comes to comic books - not series, I think. Story arc? Volumes? Whichever it is, I'll be checking them out.

More Asterix comics

I'm continuing to read them in order. So, next up is Asterix and the Golden Sickle. This one starts out with Getafix breaking his golden sickle (which he uses to collect mistletoe) right before a druid's conference. Disaster! So Asterix and Obelix travel to Lutetia (present-day Paris, according to Wikipedia) to buy another one from Obelix's cousin, Metallurgix. There's some sickle-trafficking and shady business going on, but all comes well in the end, naturally. I enjoyed this one, although I still think they improve as the series goes on.

Asterix and the Goths is the third book in the series. Getafix heads to his druid's conference, accompanied by Asterix and Obelix for protection. They don't do a very good job, as Getafix is kidnapped by Goths planning to use his magic for their own means. Asterix and Obelix infiltrating the Gothic camp is extremely funny, as is the way in which Getafix plots to get them out of there. My favourite character in this is the poor prison guard who gets more and more furious the more times Obelix breaks down the door of the prison to ask for something. I think this has been my favourite of the first three volumes.

Asterix the Gaul (Goscinny & Uderzo)

I wrote here about my love for Asterix comics, and have decided since then to read my way back through all the books in order.

Asterix the Gaul is a masterpiece brimming with underlying layers that delve to the core of humanity itself...

OK, it's a comic about Gauls who drink a potion that gives them superhuman strength which they use to bash up Romans, and then they have a big feast at the end. But it's enormously funny and clever and brimming with puns and silly jokes. I remember Asterix the Gaul as being one of the weaker Asterix stories, given that it's the first one, but it does everything you want it to do - it sets up the idea of the one Gaulish village holding out against the Romans, introduces all the characters, and you get to see Asterix and Getafix laughing themselves silly after dosing some Romans with a hair-growing potion. Good stuff.

Superhero Comics

I've recently become interested in the world of comics (beyond Sandman, my only real exposure to this medium), partly due to my discovery of a whole pile of excellent feminist blogs that focus on science fiction and comic fandoms. So last week I plunged into a variety of comics, including Wonder Woman, X-Men and Teen Titans.

Firstly, Wonder Woman: Down to Earth . This is a recent Wonder Woman comic by Greg Rucka, and given that the Booklist review on Amazon describes it as an "inventive attempt to make [Wonder Woman]... relevant to current readers", I imagine that it has departed somewhat from previous storylines. Wonder Woman is an ambassador from Themyscria, which seems to be a planet populated by Amazons. She spreads a message of peace and tolerance and in Down to Earth comes up against a group of people who claim she is destroying "family values". Sound familiar? I really enjoyed this, and it's very suitable for a reader who has no knowledge of the characters or their history. I had a couple of "um, what?" moments, like the appearance of Silver Swan, but overall, it was a very fun read, and I really loved the art.

I went on to read Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia , which was a shorter, self-contained story, and much darker than Down to Earth. The cover has Wonder Woman's booted foot on Batman's head, which looks very cool. (I must say that prior to this comics reading, I had no idea that superheroes had so much to do with each other. They all live in the same cities and everything. I had previously thought that they were all self contained stories.) In The Hiketeia, Wonder Woman is bound to protect a young woman who is accused of murder. It's a very touching story, and I really enjoyed it because Wonder Woman seemed much more human. I could see the difficulties she had. Again, I loved the artwork - the aforementioned stomping on Batman's head scene is especially fabulous.

After Wonder Woman (and I'm definitely going to explore the rest of Greg Rucka's stories with her), I grabbed Emma Frost: Higher Learning from the library. It's an X-Men offshoot, although given that my only contact with the X-Men universe is through the movies, I'd never actually heard of Emma Frost (and this slim book only covers part of her school years, so I'm not entirely sure about the full extent of her powers.) Higher Learning was OK. The story was a bit melodramatic, Emma's crush on her school teacher was offputting (she can hear him thinking things like, "she looks so sexy", which was disturbing), and I hated the way she was drawn - even when she's devastated about something, she looks vulnerable and gorgeous, all lips and eyes. Gah.

Still in the X-verse, I grabbed Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men - Gifted , which I loved. I had high hopes for it, given that I'm a big fan of Whedon's storytelling, and wasn't disappointed. All the characters were great, I loved the banter (even mid-battle) and I even enjoyed Emma Frost's character, despite thinking that I'd hate her after reading Higher Learning. The artwork was excellent - I loved it (and wondered how much it had been influenced by the movie characters, especially Wolverine.) Gifted has the Cure storyline which was used (in part) in the recent X-Men movie, and it does it with much more depth and style than the movie. It ends with some tantilising teasers for the next volume, which I can't wait to read.

I'm not quite sure why I picked up something called Teen Titans: The Future is Now , because it doesn't really seem like my thing at all. It wasn't half-bad, but I don't think picking up something that's Volume 4 in a series is a great idea - I found all the characters a bit hard to keep track of, and there were too many references to past events for me to really get into the storyline.

Runaways: True Believers is also Volume 4 in a series, but from the description on the back it seemed like an easier point to break into a storyline. It was fairly easy to get a handle on what had happened before, and everyone's relationships to each other, and it was a fun, tight story.

I think out of all of these, Astonishing X-Men and Wonder Woman were the ones I enjoyed most, and I'll definitely be getting more volumes of these.

Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi)

Persepolis is a graphic novel, an illustrated story, a comic book. But there's no superheroes or magic here - just a rather simple memoir of growing up as a girl and woman in Iran, during the revolution.

I'd read Reading Lolita in Tehran just before I plunged into this, so I was fairly conversant with the recent history of Iran, pre and post revolution, and how it's affected women. But Persepolis is a very different view of that revolution, through a child's and then teenager's eyes.

I loved the spare black and white drawings, the stout little girl who longs to go to a demonstration, and wishes her father were a hero of the revolution. Satrapi portrays horrifying facts and figures in a very simple way - I'm thinking especially of the drawings of bodies layered on top of one another, after a massacre. It's very powerful.

In conclusion - a simple, elegant, powerful story. Satrapi has writtten a sequel, but I've heard it's not as good. I always wonder whether to read such books, usually do, and am almost always disappointed. I may read Persepolis 2 regardless, just for more of those little black and white drawings, marching across the page.