Sensitive Persons

Over on Tumblr I reposted this comic strip.

I wrote: "Funny, this comic actually shows why I hate this ship."

This afternoon, when I logged in to see my Tumblr dashboard I had a message from someone saying "That comment on that comic was unkind and unnecessary."

I sent an apology that also was written in a way that would encourage the message-er to tell me which comment on which comic she didn't like.

My intention in reposting the comic and writing my comment was to point out that even though the artist like the ship and made this comic to be a cute moment in the life of Rey and Kylo Ren, I see it reinforcing why I don't like people shipping Rey and Kylo Ren. Maybe if I had spent more time explaining my reasoning, I wouldn't have received the comment.

I write this because I don't like upsetting people when I'm not trying to upset people.

So, here goes:

I enjoy most of Spatziline's work. Her Star stuff is outstanding and her Ladybug comics make me wish I enjoyed the show more.

I don't like Reylo, never have, and never will.

The comic, for those who didn't see it, has Rey standing next to Kylo Ren. She has something in her hand and is trying to open it. She tells Kylo that she wants to open it without using the force. The top flips up and hits her in the face. "Ouch," she says, probably out of surprise. Beat on Kylo's frowny face. "Heh," Kylo says, smiling. Back to his frown. Rey, with tears in her eyes (happy tears) says, "Holy Force, this is the first time I've heard you laugh."

It doesn't bother me that Kylo laughs at the unexpected, little smack Rey gets when she opens the whatever it is. I've been laughed at when something like that has happened to me and I've laughed at people who have had something like this has happened to others. When it happens to us, we feel stupid and the laughter is a release. When it happens to others, it's like watching a moment in the Three Stooges.

What bothers me is that Rey has never seen Kylo laugh. In Spatziline's comics, Rey and Kylo have a kid who's four or five. So, they've been together for a while. And this is the first time she's ever seen him laugh? Even if this is a different AU, they've been "friends," or whatever, long enough that she feels comfortable with him. So, either he's chosen to never laugh in front of Rey until this moment, or he's never felt humor before now, or he's chosen now chosen to show her some emotion. The first two seems good to me. The third is downright manipulative. Especially in light of The Last Jedi.

After spending most of the movie connecting through the Force, maybe even coming to respect one another, after they fight for their lives together, Kylo Ren starts negging Rey. It's like he's some asshole in a club looking for a warm piece of meat to stick his dick in. And the moment that Rey say no to him (Even though she was more like, "You seem nice and I think we should date and get to know each other before we have sex.) he decides to KILL HER! WHAT THE HELL!? RIGHT!?

And then here's this comic that feels emotionally manipulative. And it's supposed to be cute. And that bothers me. Really bothers me.

I'm not trying to stomp on the things that people like that other people like. I've read the Twillight book and hated every moment of Bella and Edwards "relationship." I see it as abusive. It's not the poor writing and lack of character development that bother me, I've read worse, it's the abuse. But I don't shatter the "love story" that my mom and aunt and sister-in-law enjoyed just because I don't see it the same way that they do. However, when a fanon moment occurs, by an artist or writer that I like, that paints what I see as abuse as something funny and cute, it really bothers me, no matter the intention.

I don't expect it to change anyone's mind about Reylo. Like I couldn't change anyone's mind about the abuse in Harry/Snape stories Or Walker Boh/Ilse Witch stories (from back in the day).

I had to say something. Maybe being curt was the wrong way to go about it though. Maybe.

I should probably post a permanent link to my Preemptive Apology post.

My First Foray Into Fandom

In the world of Daria Fandom Fanfition they have challenges for writing called Iron Chefs.

The topic came over from another discuss, but was turned into an Iron Chef and goes liked this:

Mack visits Jodie at the soup kitchen, Jodie is angry instead of disappointed, upset that Mack gets to take the last few weeks off while she works the most grueling weeks of her schedule. Mack's reasons for quitting, including paying his father off, fall on deaf ears, and he never gets the chance to invite her to Chez Pierre. She breaks it off, and Mack is kicked to the Curb. By the time school starts, everyone knows that Mack is available.

Let the games begin.

My first thought was more along this line, but without the clever ending.

I wanted to one-up the insanity level in my ficlit:

Michael practically stumbled into Mr. O'Neill's empty classroom. Lunch wouldn't be over for another fifteen minutes, but he couldn't take it anymore. All those girls trying to throw themselves at him, it was flattering, but also disgusting and exhausting.

He dropped into his usual desk and put his head down. He tried not to think about it, about anything.

He heard the door open and sighed. Who tracked him down here? Who, besides himself, would voluntarily come into a classroom during lunch? Of course, if the stall in the bathroom wasn't a safe place, why should this be any different?

"Mack," said Mr. O'Neill, "what are you doing here?"

Michael looked up and said, "Nothing. Just relaxing before class."

"So you'll be in here until class starts?"

"If it's okay with you?"

"Of course," said Mr. O'Neill, smiling. "I'll be right back."

Michael thought he heard an "Oh, boy!" come from his teacher as he hurried out the door. It must have been his imagination, though.

He put his head back on the desk.

A minute or so later, the door opened and closed again. The dead bolt snapped into place.

He jerked his head up and saw Ms. Barch leaning on Mr. O'Neill's desk, pulling her blouse out of her skirt. "Skinny," she said, slapping her hand on the desk, "let's get this party started."

"Oh, my," said Mr. O'Neill.

And a thousand fanboys screamed out in fury...

Where the picture is from.

So, Disney bought Marvel, or, at least, it's in the process of buying Marvel.

And my reaction is... meh. As long as Marvel keeps publishing The Incredible Hercules I'm cool, and if it get's canceled it'll be Marvel's fault, not Disney's.

This is the most reasonable reaction I've read, so far.

For the unreasonable reactions just look around, it won't be hard. Comic fans are really, really good at overreacting. (I know because I do it.)

Nothing's going to change at Marvel Comics. Marvel's main office is going to be in New York. It's bullpen will still largely be a boy's club. Creator ownership of material will be frowned upon and only offered to the big boys via Icon. Daredevil will still be blind. Captain America will still be Aryan-looking. The X-Men will still be overrated. Wolverine will still be overexposed. And "One More Day" will still suck 11-day dead beached whale pussy.

What I think we'll see, eventually:

• Marvel hero themed rides and characters wandering around Disney parks.
• The worst Disney will do to comics will "make" Marvel publish Scrooge McDuck archives and expand the Marvel Adventures line, but that'll be it.
• Future movies based on Marvel heroes that don't have deals with other companies will probably be released through Touchstone, if considered too adult for the Disney name.
• Marvel may publish a new line of Disney based comics. (I'd buy a Spider-Ham/Darkwing Duck crossover.)
• Some really good Marvel based cartoons that aren't centered around Wolverine or Spider-Man.
• Marvel Easter eggs in Disney and Pixar movies and vice versa.

I just can't see how being part of a more stable business structure with massive amounts of money and lots of trick to get more money would be bad for Marvel.

Continually Surprised

Logically, I know that there's fan fiction (general, slash, dark, het, 'shipping, whatever) for everything.

I mean, I once read a fan fiction that was a cross-over between Dragon Ball Z and Anne Frank. Yeah, the Jewish girl who hid in an attic with her family as well as others.

Still, never thought I'd find The Dark is Rising slash.

I do find it interesting that the authors tend to make Bran the more... aggressive one (in the way that he's the one who does the pursuing and seduction and such) and not Will. The other way around makes more sense to me, but what do I know? I never before imagined the two of them interested in anyone in a sexual way.

Trans-lash

Like most geeks out there, I've been following the online bitch fest that's come out of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I haven't seen the movie, and I don't plan to. (I saw the first and after watching it I decided that if movies called "Transformers" focuses on a human rather than the robots, what's the point?)

Anyway, lots of people don't like the movie. Lots of people who do like the movie seem to being assholes and using the age-old line, "Well, it's making a lot of money, so we must be right, it's good," to defend their position. (Less often used is the "That's just you're opinion" line, which, when reading a review of anything, is like a huge DUH.)

Because of so many people only reading the first paragraph, or looking at the number of stars, of the negative reviews, Jim Emmerson, of Scanners, wrote about the fallacy of the majority of reactions to what critics have been writing. He should know all about this stuff, he's editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com, so he gets to see all the bullshit comments, as well as the few good ones. (Last year, he wrote that he didn't think The Dark Knight was great, only kind of okay. Here'sa link to all his posts on the subject, but you should start with Under Cover of The Dark Knight to see that sometimes real discussion can take place. I recommend it all, though.)

Which leads me to why I'm getting into this:

Over at The Moviefile Blog, in a post about things the writer enjoyed about the movie, some commenter named damage wrote: "The movie was awsom who cares if it jump around the world it not reality so just enjoy it if your a true fane of the transformers this movie was about the bots." The comment bugs me, not just because of the bad spelling and grammar.

Really, I want to know what a true fan of Transformers is? Seriously, what is it? Is it someone who watches or reads or plays with anything that has the word "Transformers" on it and automatically loves it? Would this damage person enjoy Kiss Players? And if he (I assume it's a he.) didn't, would that mean he isn't a "true" Transformers fan?

Is that the only way to be considered a "true" fan of anything? Just shut up and "enjoy"? So, those SF Giants fans who sit and bitch about the line-up, but watch and cheer at every game, aren't "true" fans? Can a "true" fan never criticize the thing they enjoy?

I'm a fan of The Transformers, but there's a lot of it that I don't like.

The (North) American shows are what I really enjoy. I grew up watching the original cartoon. Beast Wars was a giant step forward in plot an pacing for animated shows. And Animated is just pure fun while keeping characters pretty true to their beginnings.

The ones from Japan that I tried watching, just didn't click for me. Robots in Disguise's "humor" just rubbed me the wrong way and made it hard to watch the show. (Plus, a flying shark, really?) And Transformers: Pokémon really irked me, and that irked-ness spread into it's two successors.

Like I wrote before, I really didn't care for the murky movie that came out in 2007 and, given the opportunity/motivation, can say exactly why I didn't want to see the new one in the theater. If I were to see it, I promise I'd be one of the complainers, too.

I don't collect the toys. I only occasionally buy the comics, but that's very rare. I don't keep up with any of the news and gossip surrounding the franchise. I can only name a few actors and who they played in the original and have no clue about who plays whom in later shows.

Does that make me less of fan of Transformers that this damage guy?

I still drool over the box set that's coming out. (The GI Joe one, too.) I assume he does, too.

So, why aren't I a "true" fan because I didn't enjoy the first movie and don't think I'd enjoy the second movie?

Maybe it's just because I won't accept something as good just because it tickles my nostalgia.

Calvin & Susie & Hobbes & Fans

It's 1:35 PM and I'm sitting at the back computer scanning and I've been here since 11:30ish this morning.

I've finished more than half the stack I started with. Only forty more documents left to scan. 'Course each document is between ten and a hundred pages, so it's longer than I want it to be. The real bitch of it is waiting for the damn documents to compile and separate. The more you have the longer it takes, but it's not a linear progression, but an exponential one; so, I'm limiting each scan group to ten documents.

I've been thinking about the nature of fandom a lot today. Mostly, what's okay for fans to create based on the things they like.

It started with me finding a post at Robot 6 where they linked to this picture (calling it too sweet) and this picture (which they think is creepy).

After reading that, I cross posted the pictures to What's Distracting Us? to see if those who look there thought the second one was creepy. Up to now (1:55), Otis and Heels have responded and both think it's creepy.

I don't. Maybe I've just read (or actually skimmed) too much really harsh slash fan fiction, but to me the strip was kind of sweet and an interesting comment on growing up. I understand why people think it's creepy; it just didn't effect me in the same way.

When I read Heels's response I then asked if this picture is creepy. She said:

I wouldn't say creepy, necessarily, but I still don't understand the point. Why do we need to see them all grown up? Why do we need to make presumptions about the futures of fictional characters? I'd rather not.

Which I hadn't thought about at all. Should we, the people who enjoy stories told in different media, not think about what happens to the characters after the end of the book (or book series), after the TV show gets pulled off the air, when the movie ends, or when the creator of a comic strip (or the creator's assistant) stops making new strips?

What happens to Will Parry after he returns home in The Amber Spyglass? How well did Lindsey's trip to see The Greatful Dead, at the end of Freaks and Geeks, go? Will the city, from Dark City, survive for long without The Strangers? And does Marcie make a move on Peppermint Patty in high school or simply pine away?

I've thought about answers to all of these questions, and many more, since I was little. (Sometimes, I still wonder if Sam and Gus are friends or what happened to the dog that kept asking if other dogs liked her hat.)

Heck, the fan fiction boom started with people wondering about the crew of the Enterprise did after the series ended. (Sure, it soon turned into stories about the love between Spock and Kirk, which gradually became more explicit, but that's not the point.) Some people wanted to explore the lives of intriguing characters, like the Romulan commander who tried to seduce Spock.

(Finally back at my desk. It's 3:54.)

I'm not saying that the endings out there aren't satisfying because, for the most part, they are. What I'm trying to say is that the best endings, for me, are the ones that make me want to know the future of characters. Whether it's the near future or the further future depends on the character. Maybe it's just me.

A commenter at Robot 6 wrote:

Ultimately for me, if Watterson didn’t draw it, it should be considered sacrilege. If you’ve got something you want to say about growing up as an artist, create it yourself. Don’t co-opt the characters you used to love... .

While it's hard to argue that people shouldn't create their own art from the ground up, I think that poster missed the point. None of these images would have been half as strong as they are if they hadn't used characters from Calvin & Hobbes. In pop-culture, Calvin & Hobbes is shorthand for the highs and lows and pure weirdness of being a kid. Without that shorthand, the first image and the comic strip wouldn't have the growing up impact that they have.

Other people out there just have a problem seeing beloved childhood characters doing grown-up things. At least they're drawn as teens, though, right? I mean I would think it was creepy if Susie and Calvin were kids in the strip. I never would have posted the picture and have tried to wipe the image from my mind forever. This one, with them at that age, I think is sweet.

At least, that's what I think.

In going through all of this stuff, I guess I can really appreciate that fans are as diverse as people are.

Watchmen Thoughts

***There are probably
SPOILERS!
Beware.***

So, Watchmen...

I've spent a large portion of the day, at least larger than I should have, poking around and reading the thoughts other comic fans have about the movie. The opinions range from those who thought it was a (near) perfect movie to those who thought it was one of the most awful movies ever made.

I talked to one of my co-workers about the movie, too. He'd never read the book, but went and saw the movie this weekend and he isn't sure what to think about it. He liked it in the beginning, but about halfway though he thinks the movie went crazy. And he hated the end. (He also hated Dr. Manhattan's penis all over the place.) He told me he wants to like it, but he just can't.

Me? Well... it lived up to my expectations, but didn't exceed them.

That is to say, the movie looked really good. Zack Snyder makes films that are fun to look at. To me, his movies are spectacles more than they're anything else. Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes it's bad. For Watchmen, it's sort of a mixed blessing.

Things look like they do in the comic, for the most part. The colors are bright and slick. The world is grimy. Watching (some of the) scene come to life directly out of the comic was fun. Rorschach's mask was amazing. (Although I found it distracting that the rate at which the "ink" flowed got faster when things were tense.)

The story, though, seemed shallow.

Let me put it this way, if I had seen this movie after the first time I read the book, I would have loved it. The movie nailed everything I liked about the book back then. It was dark and dirty. The heroes weren't perfect. Rorschach was a bad-ass. It was violent. When I first read the book, that's what I thought reading an adult comic meant.

I don't think quite that way anymore.

(I'm having a very hard time articulating. Sorry.)

The book was very much about the dark times it was written in, 1986-87. There's a sense of losing innocence to the book. A loss of wonder. A question of lies being (or becoming) truth. Being hurt by truth. Finding humanity that's been lost and losing humanity because of humanity.

That's just a few I can think of here at work. The book is dense. And the movie isn't. (Or at least it isn't as dense.) The movie softly touches a lot of the themes of the book, but it doesn't delve (because of time constraints or other reasons) into the themes like the comic does.

Comics can let readers linger over panels and pages. Comics allow time to reread the thoughts and spoken words of characters. Comics give readers the ability to control time. Watchmen comic thrives on readers being able to do what only comics allow. Watchmen movie just barrels through from one scene to the next forcing views to linger on the absurd slow motion moments in fight scenes (or when Silk Spectre's hair is flowing around her); forcing people to see the moments of Watchmen in set amount of time hurts the plot.

There's so much more to say, but I just don't have the ability to write it.

One thing, though, I really wish they'd had Captain Metropolis found the Crimebusters in the movie and not Ozymandias. Losing Captain Metropolis made the team lose its link to the past. There was no direct juxtaposition of the old and new, which only makes the failure of the team to come together even sadder and gives Ozymandias a huge step toward his ultimate end.

I WAS RIGHT!

Spoilers for Battlestar Galactica!



It's annoying...


...but some people...


...may be pansies...


...and not...


...want to know...


...until they...


...see it.

From Ain't It Cool News:

* He discloses when it was decided that Ellen Tigh would be revealed to be a Cylon. (Remember how everybody thought she was a Cylon when she was miraculously discovered among the fleet? It turns out even the writers didn’t know the real truth at the time.)

And I called it 6 months ago!

Anal Battlestar Galactica

Okay, so this is going to be packed full of spoilers for those who haven’t finished Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica and has some stuff from what’s been out in Season 4, so far, even though I haven’t seen any of the episodes.

That said, I started watching Season 2.0 again last night and there’s a scene in the episode where Chip 6 shows Baltar some of the massacre that took place on Kobol before the exodus. He protests that the gods and humanity lived side by side in harmony on Kobol. The Chip 6 tells him that everything that’s happened before will happen again.

And here I started thinking: 12 Cylon models, 12 Lords of Kobol. Could it be that the Lords of Kobol were Cylons? The Cylons can download their memories and share them with others. If one dies his or her replacement will be along shortly wearing the same face. How does that not appear to be a god to a human?

I’m sure I’m not the first one to notice this or even think too much about it, but since I didn’t want to actually work today, I used the Battlestar Wiki and Wikipedia to compare the 13 Colonies with their zodiac counterparts and the 11 Cylons that we know and the 10 named Lords of Kobol, along with the one who’s not named and is the Cylon God, on a neat little table. I also did one list that lines up the Cylon numbers with the traditional order of western zodiac to see how well that might line up.

Colonies	Astrological Partners	Symbol	My Cylon Pick	Cylon by Number	Comparison God
Aerelon	Aries	Ram	Saul Tigh ?	Brother Cavil Ones	Zeus
Tauron	Taurus	Bull	Brother Cavil Ones	Leoben Conoy Twos
Gemenon	Gemini	Twins	Boomer/Athena Eights	D'Anna Threes	Aurora
Canceron	Cancer	Crab	Galen Tyrol ? (12, according to actor blog.)	Simon Fours	Apollo
Leonis	Leo	Lion	Samuel Anders ?	Aaron Doral Fives	Ares
Virgon	Virgo	Virgin	Tory Foster ?	Natalie Sixes	Artemis
Libris	Libra	Scales	Aaron Doral Fives	?	Asclepius
Scorpia	Scorpio	Scorpion	Natalie Sixes	Boomer/Athena Eights	Aphrodite
Sagittaron	Sagittarius	Archer	?	?	Athena
Caprica	Capricorn	Sea-Goat	Simon Fours	?	Poseidon
Aquaria	Aquarius	Water Carrier	Leoben Conoy Twos	?	?
Picon	Pisces	Two Fishes	D'Anna Threes	Galen Tyrol 12, according to actor blog.	Hera
Earth	**Gaia or Terra**	N/A	N/A	N/A	Cylon God

And so, in the end, I have Athena, the Lord of Kobol who killed herself left without any Cylon to match up.

I also matched Athena up with Sagittaron/Sagittarius. According to my minimal research into the zodiac Sagittarians: "Keyword: "I perceive". Freedom loving, straightforward, extrovert, philosophical, intellectual, fun-loving, arrogant, adventurous, expansive, optimistic. Can be blundering, scattered, careless, jealous, too-serious, tactless."

Huh, sounds to me like Starbuck fits that description almost perfectly. Could she be the final Cylon?

Ron Moore said that final Cylon was not in the "Last Supper" photo, but that could be misinformation. If not, then who could it be?

If I’m right with the gods=Cylons thing, then it’s a woman. But who?
Could Ellen Tigh have been a Cylon? She fits the Sagittarius list as well as Starbuck did. Will she turn up on Earth upset, even though Tigh killed her? After all, didn’t the Three who saw the final five say that the last Cylon model wasn’t in the Colonial Fleet?

Wedding Blues

I keep trying to find a witty way to open this post, which is about comics, for those out of the know, but it isn't working, so I'll go with my first thought:

Why the hell are Black Canary and Green Arrow getting married?

Yes, I know all about their history, from the flirting in early issues Justice League of America to the torture and infidelity of the Mike Grell era to the we-need-to-stay-apart stories in the last couple of years and I still don't want these two to get married.

Even though I could really get into the reason this is a mistake for the characters (Ollie's not going to change, or he will for a while, but when a new writer/editor takes over and is bored he's going to screw something much younger than Dinah. Dinah has a kid who's been trained as a murderer and with her time as JLA chairperson (chairwoman?) she can't be around much ("I'm sorry, Sin, but the JLA needs to head out into space for a while. We shouldn't be gone more than a week or two. Remember that Hot Pockets aren't enough, eat an apple or a carrot every now and then. Oh, and don't kill the neighbor while I'm away.") right now and handing this kid over to a guy with a stupid beard to take care of can't be the best thing for the child.) to get married, the thing that I like most about them being apart is the desire they have for each other by being apart.

I liked that when Black Canary found out Green Arrow was brought back to life that it affected her so much that she felt she had to leave the JSA. I like that it complicated her growing relationship with Dr. Midnight (although I think it could have been handled better). I like that Green Arrow feels a guilty for sleeping with a woman even though he and Black Canary aren't together. I like that when they are together, there's always tension. And I like that, on occasion, they'll jump in the sack together to relieve that tension.

The things that I like most about the relationship Green Arrow and Black Canary have is that they try so hard to stay apart because being together hasn't worked, but neither has staying apart. It's a wonderfully complicated relationship.

And maybe it'll stay that way when they get married. I don't know, but I also don't think it will. I think they'll turn into a well organized crime fighting team in costume and a squishy, happy couple out, sure they'll have argument, but when it's over they'll be all snuggle bunny and cuddle-kins with each other. I'm afraid that Sin will disappear and we'll all pretend that she never really existed because Ollie's kids are so much better developed, why do they need a new one? Hopefully it won't end up being this way, but I think it's a fair way to look at it.

One more thing, since they are getting married, after reading the DC Nation page for this weeks comics, I have to agree that the idea of Black Canary planning a wedding is hilarious. Personally, I think she'd start, realize what a pain it is, and suggest they elope; she was practically raised in a boxing gym, she'd want to get the ceremony over with as quickly as possible so she could move on to, what's supposed to be, the good part. Green Arrow would be the one fighting for a more traditional wedding. He grew up in society, after all, and one is only really married if they are married in front of their friends, a man of God, and God himself in society.

John Stewart, We Hardly Know You

Ragnell the Foul wrote, the other day, wanting to know who John Stewart is. (This is the Green Lantern, not the comedian or the Earl of Mar.)

Here's most of my response:

John Stewart is a builder.

He became an architect because he wanted to build things. He's not satisfied with just designing buildings, though, he likes to get in and actually be part of the building process. He likes to know that he helped to put the forms together so the foundation could be laid. He likes to be able to point to a wall and say that he put the drywall up. And he likes to visit the places he designed and help build to see them being used by people. He designs offices and superhero headquarters, but his real love is designing something families will live in, whether it's a house or an apartment building, or a tenement.

After Hal "quit" the Corps, John saw the Corps as a place to build a brotherhood, so to speak. These people weren't quite a family, but they were all united with a cause of protecting the galaxy. Here were, at the time, 3600 people, each a member of different species, who could work together toward a common goal. This was something that John was always looking for.

Katma Tui was his chance to build a family, the thing he values more than anything else. With her, John could bring new life into the universe and teach that life to value all other life and to bring people together because individuals working as a community are much stronger than individuals working toward their own goals.

The Mosaic World was where John's values were really put to the test. He built a strong community out of groups whose differences were far more than just skin deep as he rebuilt himself. He proved that he can't allow himself to quit.

John's the type of man who can't just do something and then move on. He has to see the consequences of his actions and then attempt to fix them, which was why the death of his wife and the destruction of Fatality's home world hit him so hard; he blamed himself and he couldn't see a way to correct his mistakes. He's the kind of man who knows that upkeep is as important as the initial building.

Honestly, my knowledge of John Stewart isn't that great, compared too many people out there. What I wrote about him is, I think, more the way I want him to be in the comics than he actually is. I know him from his appearances in the early issues of Green Lantern vol. 3, his short stint in the JLA, and the few issues of Green Lantern: Mosaic my brother bought.

My brother was the Green Lantern fan, not me. So, when he decided not to buy Green Lantern: Mosaic, there wasn't much I could do about it. (We were both on very limited budgets.) He did, however, buy a few issues and there's one that convinced me that John Stewart is one of the greatest characters yet to come out of the DCU.

In the issue, Hal Jordan (considered by too many people out there to be the "greatest" Green Lantern) confronts John about what's happening to the humans (Hal sort of ignores that there are about a dozen other species there, too) on Mosaic World. Hal's especially concerned with a woman named Rose, who Hal had (or nearly had, I can't remember) a fling with back in the days he was trying to "find himself" before the Guardians came back, but now she's with John and Hal doesn't like it. He want's to take her back to Earth. John wants to talk with Hal over coffee. They get the coffee and Hal tells John he's gone nuts (which isn't a leap, since John had essentially been raped by the insane Guardian who created Mosaic World). John says he's fine and Hal decides to do a mind scan. John blocks it. Hal picks a fight. So, they fight. I think it was a mental thing. Hal splits himself into dozens of identical copies and advances on John. John splits himself into dozens of different aspects of himself. Where Hal revels in the order and unity, John thrives on knowing that he's more than just one thing. John's a little kid. He's a gang banger. He's a woman. He's a giant fat man (who sounds like Louis Armstrong to me, for some reason). He's a pimp. He's a cop. He's hundreds of different things all in one body. And John's variety beats Hal's uniformity.

(The issue's spectacular. It's science fiction and action and psychology in 22 pages of pictures and word. I wish I owned it. I wish I swiped it from my brother's collection. I didn't though. I guess I'll have to keep looking at shops that are old enough to have back issues from the early 90s.)

I don't follow the newest volume of Green Lantern religiously, but I'll buy it for certain characters. (So far, I bought the one with Batman, the ones with the Cyborg Superman (my favorite Green Lantern villain), the ones where the new Global Guardians appeared. I'll probably buy the Sinestro Corps issues, too.) John appeared in one issue, for about eight panels and that's all I know about it. And what was he doing? He had gone undercover to protect Hal. (Who put a price on Hal's head? How about every women he screwed and then never called the next day? So, that's, what, hundreds of people on Earth and probably thousands more spread across the galaxy.) Then what?

Where's John?

Has he made any appearances since then?

Not that I know of.

Can I give a suggestion to DC about what John should be doing?

How about having him leading a team of Lanterns who are helping to rebuild the civilizations that were hurt during the Rann/Thanagar war? I mean, the Green Lantern Corps does more than just police, right? After being gone for so long, it seems to me that the Corps could use some good will in the galaxy. And then... Well, I don't want to write too much more about what I think should happen, but I know that there's plenty of conflict to be had out there for John and his team.

And I thought that I wrote too much for Ragnell's blog. Jeez. I promise not to write about comic stuff tomorrow, okay?

Quote Of The Day

We’re comic fans, we eat homoerotic undertones for lunch.

From this post at Blog@Newsarama by this poster.