Saturday, August 04, 2012

Brief Thoughts

Okay, a month without posting. Sorry about that. To make up for it, here are some things I've been thinking about recently.

Most of my free time right now has been devoted to Mass Effect 3 (except what's been devoted to watching the Olympics), and I'm right up against the last mission. It's actually timed really well, since I have to start working on stuff for work soon. The only thing keeping me from marathoning my way through it right now is that BioWare announced a new single-player DLC mission coming later in the summer, and I'm not sure I want to try beating the game twice. If I knew when Leviathan was slated to hit, I could make a more informed decision. Arrrgh. First world problems, I guess.

I finally managed to get "Love and Capes" vol. 3 recently, and I've been working my way through it today. It's fantastic as always, and touches on some oddly familiar territory with its real estate subplot, since my wife and I recently bought a house. I got to wondering if Thom Zahler would be willing to do a Superman book if DC offered one, but realized it just wouldn't be the same without the Lois & Clark marriage (or at this point, even a relationship). That led me to think that, like Tom Beland, he could do a great Spider-Man story...except Spider-Man isn't married anymore either.

Which got me thinking about married couples in comics, and...holy crap, there aren't many left, are there? The New 52 broke up everyone but Aquaman & Mera and Animal Man & Ellen Baker. Marvel has Reed & Sue Richards, Crystal & Ronan the Accuser, and the newly-married Northstar & Kyle Jinadu. From what I understand, even Storm & Black Panther are splitsville. Five married superhero couples in the entirety of the Big Two? That's pretty sad. It's getting to be that spouses are as absent in superhero comics as parents.

I really enjoyed "Action Comics" (vol. 2) #12, but I think it's super-weird that New 52 Captain Comet has Conduit's origin.

I'm going to check out the zero issue, but it looks like "Superboy" is going to be the first Superman-family book that I've dropped since "Superman/Batman." Superboy is a cipher, and the tie-ins with Teen Titans and so forth have left him without anything even resembling a supporting cast. I don't feel any connection with him as a character, largely because he has no real personality, and I have pretty much zero desire to read about whether or not he's going to be a hero. He's got an S-shield on his chest (and now, his bicep), of course he's going to be a hero. The fish-out-of-water naïveté is being done much better over in Supergirl, and she's actually got a story going on. Superboy is treading water, and much as I like Tom DeFalco, I don't think he's going to improve much on that.

But I'll give the zero issue a shot. It's only fair. I mean, he wrote Spider-Girl, right?

I really ought to watch "Superman vs. The Elite" one of these days. "All-Star Superman" too, for that matter. And "Justice League: Doom." The list of movies I've not watched because I've been playing Mass Effect all summer is rapidly increasing.

That's good enough for now, right? I've got some thoughts on digital comics I should write up soon. Maybe I'll do that this week.

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