Generally, I try to read a book every week. Of course, it doesn't always line up that way. Sometimes a book takes me longer than a week to read, but it generally balances out to help me meet my goal of 52 books a year.
That was definitely the case this month. I started reading The Count of Monte Cristoin early August and only finally finished that sucker last night!
For those unfamiliar with this classic by Alexandre Dumas, it's a VERY long book. 1200-1600 pages depending on what edition you're reading, or 52+ hours as an audiobook. It's got an intricate plot and some really fun moments, but is, in my opinion, three times as long as it needed to be to tell the story effectively.
A few months ago, I read The Three Musketeersalso by Dumas, and liked it much better. Finishing Monte Cristo felt like an accomplishment though. One of those books that ought to earn me some kind of trophy, like when I read Les Miserables or War and Peace. These tomes are the reader's equivalent of running a marathon.
Despite its length, though, Monte Cristo reads well. The prose feels modern and it's engaging, but I think it's one of those books I'm glad I read, but would never read again. Once is good. :-)
Because Monte Cristo took so long to read, I didn't get to read much else at all!
I finished only two other books, both short.
Domino: Hotshots is trade collection of a run of comics. My coffeeshop carries comic books and I often buy one with my Friday treat coffee. I got the first issue of this one and LOVED it, so I bought the rest of the story. I wasn't already all that familiar with Domino, but I still was drawn right into this story of unlikely allies learning to work together to defeat the big bad. Bonus points for a story that shows a young woman learning to accept and use her own power. Natasha Romanov (Black Widow) makes a guest appearance and really facilitates a nice mentoring/meeting your heroes arc.
2,000 to 10,000 is a practical writing advice book that had been recommended to me several times, when I complain that I am a slow writer and would like to be faster. I appreciated the friendly, encouraging tone of the book and am planning to try some of the advice when I begin my next book (I'm too superstitious to change tactics in the middle of the book I'm writing now). I'll report back as to whether it works for me.
Given that I write alongside a full time job, I probably won't get to 10,000 words a day, but I would settle for moving faster than my typical 250-800 words a day and be happy about it!
How about you? Did you read anything wonderful in September? I'd love to hear about it in the comments. And of course, if you read anything *I* wrote, then I love you even more :-)
I felt as though I had no time for reading in May, but I did manage to finish six books. Now to be fair, three of them were quite short, as in one-hour-or-less time investment. But sometimes short and sweet (or short and kickass, the in the case of Carol Danvers) is just what I need.
I started with The Iceman Always Comes on Tuesday by James Masse. It was suggested to me by a friend who is also an audiobook enthusiast and I welcomed it. Quick, and heart-string pulling, with an old movie kind of feel about it, about a literally ice man (as in the guy who delivers ice to keep your icebox cold) and his quest for justice. Especially nice if you're a fan of underdog heroes.
After that I dived into Main Streetby Sinclair Lewis, the book my First Monday Classics Book Club will be discussing next Monday. At the beginning, I thought I was going to love it, but in the end, I was ambivalent. Some moments that shone and a lot that started to feel like a slog. The main character was, in the end, too passive for my liking.
I picked up Rift by Nancy E. Dunne because she and I will be sharing a table at ConCarolinas here in a few days, and I like to know something about the work of authors I'm going to be working with. I really enjoyed her take on "what if the game is real" and will definitely be checking out more of her work in the future!
The short works helped keep me going during a tough month, with ENDLESS end-of-grade testing in the day job (we have to give each test 3 times this year because of restrictions in place for the pandemic). The Sprite and the Gardener and The Reluctant Dragon both pleased me for their kindhearted sweetness.
I revisted Carol Danvers, AKA Captain Marvel recently for a panel discussion about the character, and re-reading Higher, Further, Faster, More put me in the mood for more of this character as written by DeConnick, so I bought myself volume 2: Stay Fly. Really delighted me. Perfect for my mood.
How about you? What did you read and love this month? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!
I was talking with some superhero-writer-friends online recently (my colleagues at superhero-fiction.com are the bomb!--you should totally check out their work).
We were trying to identify the essence of the appeal of superhero stories. Superhero fans can be pretty hardcore--consuming all the superhero stories the world offers gluttonously and still wishing for more.
So, why is that?
Is it just the wish fulfillment? The wonder of imagining other possibilities for humans beyond what it's actually possible for us to do?
That's certainly part of it, but I don't think that's the heart of it. At least not for me.
When I try to find the core of my attraction to superhero stories, I find it wrapped around feeling small and powerless as a child and longing to be able to do something big--something that would really make a difference.
When I found Peter Parker, I felt like I had found myself.
Underdogs for the win!
Like young me, Peter was physically small, smart, kind of shy, and from a family that struggled just at the border of poverty, but loved each other and took a "we're in this together" "can-do" attitude to the lemons life threw them, without becoming completely saccharine.
He also had a heart to help and an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. He might as well have been raised a Dunaway!
The things that drew me to Spiderman, and, to a lesser degree to other superheroes, are the same parts of myself that drew me to teaching as a career choice, where I have the opportunity for quiet heroics every day, making a difference for hundreds of children.
As I've gotten older, I've remained interested in and excited by superheroes, though the type of hero that appeals to me has shifted.
I find I'm drawn to reluctant heroes these days--heroes who say they just want to be left alone, but someone still get pulled into the fray just in time to save the day. This probably shows my own struggles with remaining engaged and hopeful in a world that gives me a lot of reasons to become cynical and disengaged.
Fighting burnout is half the struggle of this stage of adulthood for me--keeping going even when I can't see the difference my actions make.
Maybe that's why Patricia took the driver's seat in the latest Menopausal Superhero novel.
I just finished a draft of Be the Change, which will become the fourth novel in the series, coming out in 2021.
Right now, it's with my critique partners.
The part of me that comes out in Patricia is the part that fights off burnout by staying connected with young people, being inspired by them (and sometimes being grumpy about that).
Check out this excerpt:
"Suzie made her want to be a better woman, to find her inner hero and do the right thing, even when it hurt. Suzie had been the impetus for her first foray into heroic action, pushing her to save the beauty queen at the mall. She’d also been a large part of the reason Patricia had agreed to sign on with the Department and work with the UCU.
Even coming to Indiana had been as much to please Suzie as out of worry for her missing mother. Would she even be here right now if not for her? Maybe not. That was the awful thing about young people—they cared. And they thought you should care, too. Exhausting."
Maybe that's the heart of superhero for me: they are characters that keep going, even when the going gets tough, the pay is bad, and the results might be unpopular. They fight for right, and I'm always up stories about that kind of heroism.
How about you? What kinds of superheroes speak to you? Is there a type of story or character that you're always up for?
Reading has always been my escape, well, as long as I can remember anyway. But like a lot of readers I've talked to recently, falling into a story has been harder than usual for me during quarantine.
That got worse here at the end of May with police violence leading to protests that became riots. My low-level restless anxiety and imagination full of what-ifs whipped into something larger and harder to ignore. I know a lot of creatives are struggling similarly, with creation as well as consumption of art. I'm managing slow forward progress on my writing still, and am hopeful I can pick up my pace again when the school year ends here in a couple of weeks.
Despite my struggles, I still read eight books in May, and I really liked six of them.
I've read other books by Alexandra, and I know from being there for some of her readings that her work is clever, sexy, and spiked with humor. Chasing the Dragon: A Sherlock Holmes Romantic Mystery was no exception. Her imagined love story for Sherlock Holmes plays beautifully in the known world of those stories while bringing Alexandra's strengths into play. I hope she writes more in this universe!
Bill and I have been on panels together at conventions for a few years now, but I hadn't yet read any of his work. Gidion's Hunt was sweet in a wholesome sort of way, especially considering that it's a story about a teenaged vampire hunter. I loved the family relationships and it looks like Bill has a great foundation for future books in the series in this first volume.
DM Taylor is a writer I know from Instagram. The Reckoning is a time travel thriller with elements of women's fiction. I enjoyed it quite a bit! It took me a little longer to read this one because I read it as a Kindle edition, and I'm suffering from screen-time overload right now, which is making me prefer paper and audiobook reading to ebooks.
I also read three graphic novels this month. Graphic novels can be read quickly, often in a single sitting, and the combination of art with narrative really works to suck me in when my attention is scattered. The Sixth Gun, Volume 3: Bound really pleased me. I read the first two in this series last month and loved the way this volume took the focus to Gord and deepened his backstory. I'm looking forward to reading more in this series!
Newprints and Endgames by Ru Xu were passed my way by my thirteen-year-old daughter who loved them. She's a huge fan of Blue, the main character, and I can see why--she's so forthright, scrappy, and determined. Unfortunately, the storytelling disappointed me in that the narration pulled back from hard emotional moments, avoiding conflict that the story really needed.
The second volume in particular felt rushed, like two books worth of story had been crammed into only one. Still, it evokes a Little Orphan Annie feel in a wonderful steampunk setting and there's a lot to recommend them, especially to younger readers.
My last two reads were disappointments. I'd been looking forward to reading The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. I loved the cover and the premise of a secret society surrounding story and books intrigued me. I had positive memories of The Night Circus, so thought I might enjoy another book by the same author, but it really just didn't grab me at all. All atmosphere (gorgeous, beautifully rendered atmosphere) and no substance. Too light on plot and characterization to keep me, especially under current circumstances.
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse was my First Monday Classics Book Club choice for the month and it was a slog for me. I kind of had a feeling it was going to be, just remembering the kinds of people who touted its praises back in my undergrad years--almost exclusively entitled young men I didn't like all that much. But, still, I tried to go in without bias and give it a go.
I found some beauty and insight in the text, but was left with the overall yucky feeling that I get from reading literary representations of male academics having midlife crises which they overcome by having affairs with far younger women.
There's nothing for me in a story like that. I can't sympathize with the main character, and often can't sympathize with the young woman either because she's a manic pixie dream girl or a complete cypher. Maybe this one was the first novel of this type? I don't know. But it didn't feel innovative or interesting. I've seen this story many times and it's irritated me every time.
Luckily I'm finishing May in the middle of two good books I'll tell you about in June: Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey and The Haunting of the Tenth Avenue Theater by Alex Matsuo.
What did you read in May? What's next on your list? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
If you've been reading these posts, you already know my husband got us a subscription to Disney Plus, so my daughter (age 12) and I have taken on a project of watching all the Disney animated features in order. I'm writing about the movies and our reactions here on the blog.
Since the United States was kind of busy in the 1940s, thanks to WWII, Disney produced mostly collections of short animations during this period. Even though the release dates are largely post-war, the artists must have working on these pieces during some tumultuous times, and the Disney studio did a lot of government propaganda work, leaving less time to develop popular features.
The compilation/anthology movies don't appeal to me as much as the more extended movies that tell a single story. My daughter doesn't mind though. She's a bigger animation fan in general, though, seeking out animators on YouTube in her spare time and drawing still images in the various styles she sees there. So, she enjoyed these more than I did.
The next one on our list was Make Mine Music (1946), and I was disappointed to find that it wasn't on Disney Plus. I know I've seen it because when I read the description on wikipedia, I remembered Casey at the Bat, Peter and the Wolf, Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet, and that one with the singing whale. I'll check back for it in the future. Maybe there's a distribution rights problem or something.
On the other hand, I wasn't at all surprised that Song of the South (1946) wasn't there. That one already felt weird in terms of race depictions in the 1970s when I was a little kid. It would probably be even stranger now.
I told my daughter about it, and we both wished we could have watched it for the animation study, to see if the integration of live action and animation had gotten any better after The Three Cabelleros in 1944. I remember thinking it was pretty amazing at the time, but then I wasn't the animation connoisseur she is.
Having learned about Uncle Remus stories, though, my daughter had an a-ha moment about the reference her dad and I sometimes make to being thrown in the Briar Patch, so hey--educational moment :-)
So, we jumped to 1947 with Fun and Fancy Free, which features several famous names of the era alongside two cartoons: Bongo and Mickey and the Beanstalk. I didn't remember Bongo at all, though I remembered Mickey and the Beanstalk quite well. The retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk has been released in other forms and shown on television over the years, though, so it's entirely possibly that I really never had seen Bongo.
My daughter and I both enjoyed Dinah Shore's reading and singing of Bongo, but were more than a little perplexed at the whole "Bears Say I Love You With a Slap" thing. My daughter's reaction was pretty much: Wait? What? Still, it was a fairly charming story and we enjoyed it, even if we didn't find anything especially memorable about it. We both enjoyed seeing Jiminy Cricket again. He's a charmer, that little bug.
Edgar Bergen introduced Mickey with his dummies Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Now I've never found Bergen's schtick funny, but I tried to hold my tongue and let my girl decide what she thought uninfluenced by me. I guess she's my kiddo, after all, because she also wished they would just hush up with the creepy dolls and staged conversations and get back to the story.
Mickey and the Beanstalk was a charming telling and does a good job integrating the normal personalities of Mickey, Donald, and Goofy into the familiar fairy tale. The giant was such a goofball that he wasn't scary at all. We were happy to see him again at the end, pulling the roof off Edgar Bergen's house and then stomping off into the city to put on the Brown Derby restaurant as a hat.
Next we made it to 1948 and Melody Time, which was a string of music-centered stories: Once Upon a Wintertime, Bumble Boogie, The Legend of Johnny Appleseed, Little Toot, Trees, Blame it on the Samba, and Pecos Bill. I remembered Johnny Appleseed and Little Toot from childhood, and was happy to recognize The Andrews Sisters and Roy Rogers among the narrators.
My daughter knew Johnny Appleseed, too--having had a babysitter in her preschool years who showed that cartoon alongside lots of Veggie Tales to the children when she needed a break. And I'm proud to say that she knows who The Andrews Sisters were, too. She's a fan of an electro-swing rendition of Mr. Sandman, which sent her down a historical music rabbit hole, so she's now probably the only twelve-year-fan of a musical group her great-grandmother used to love.
Among the other stories, we were both mostly just annoyed by Once Upon a Wintertime and couldn't figure out why in the world Jenny and Joe were all cuddly at the end when their disastrous ice skating date should have taught them both that they are ill suited for one another. The music didn't really go with the animation either. It looked slapstick and sounded melodramatically romantic.
Bumble Boogie was fun visually and would have been at home in Fantasia, but it's good that it's short.
The Legend of Johnny Appleseed was way more overtly Christian than I remembered, but still managed to be pretty charming, even though both of us don't usually enjoy art that proselytizes too much. Johnny was just so earnest and grateful for his blessings that it's hard not to like him.
Little Toot definitely benefitted from the Andrews Sisters' talents, because the story is a bit of a muddle. My daughter that Little Toot's parents were the ones were needed a talking to, maybe something about age-appropriate expectations and child supervision.
Trees was really pretty to look at onscreen. According to wikipedia, "To preserve the look of the original story sketches, layout artist Ken O'Connor came up with the idea of using frosted cels and render the pastel images right onto the cel. Before being photographed each cel was laminated in clear lacquer to protect the pastel. The result was a look that had never been seen in animation before." It truly was striking visually! We oohed and ahed over that one, but again we were glad it was short because the poem wasn't very interesting and there wasn't really a narrative hook.
Pecos Bill was the silliest piece. A tall tale story you might hear alongside something about Paul Bunyan or John Henry, it told the story of a cowboy who had been raised by coyotes, wrestled cyclones, and fell in love with a cowgirl named Slue Foot Sue.
We giggled quite a bit during this section, but its silly-ness really brought out how all over the map the tones were in this collection. It was very much a kitchen-sink production, probably having something for everyone since we threw everything in willy-nilly.
Next should have been So Dear to My Heart, 1948, but it too was unavailable on Disney +. So onward we went to The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949. Neither of us was sure why these two stories were paired for release. There's really nothing to connect them, though both are fun in their own way. I remembered both stories with some fondness from childhood. My daughter had never seen either one.
Mr. Toad is about, well, Mr. Toad. He's a madcap frog with an enthusiasm for speed and adventure that gets him into trouble. The portrayal of Toad's mania with the hypno-spinning-wheel eyes was entertaining, as was the whole frog running around the countryside dressed as a country gentleman from the turn of the century.
It was a light and entertaining story and we both enjoyed it, but thought it rather forgettable. (The introduction by Basil Rathbone delighted me, but unfortunately my daughter doesn't know who he is, so we'll have to try some old school Sherlock Holmes on her soon.)
Ichabod was a delight. Bing Crosby was perfect and we were both delighted by the portrayal of Ichabod (already a familiar character to both of us) as socially graceful despite his gangly appearance. The scene where he's dancing with Katrina at the party and stuffing himself with pie without ever missing a step and Brom is trying and failing to switch partners so he can squire Katrina around the dance floor? Priceless. So many moving parts in that scene and all so deftly handled. Brilliant.
Talking afterwards we wondered if Katrina's ploy worked and made Brom work harder to win her heart or not. We hoped that Ichabod found a warm hearth and good food in another town. He was a man of simple enough wants after all.
We're both glad to be done with the anthology pieces now. Check back soon to see what we think of Disney in the 1950s. I'm anxious to see how Cinderella holds up!
Amazon just released a new version of The Tick for prime viewers and I'm so excited! I had it on my calendar as soon as the release date was announced. SPOOOOOON! (that makes more sense if you know who he is: it's a catch phrase).
I've been disciplined though, watching the episodes slowly to make them last. No binging this time. I still have one more before I've finished the released episodes.
The Tick is one of my favorite comic superhero characters. I'm not sure when I first discovered him, but I've enjoyed him in comics, as a cartoon hero, and in both live-action TV versions.
If you haven't met him yet, I recommend checking him out. He's big, blue, and nigh-invulnerable. He's also, well…confused, and oddly naive, and more than a little clueless.
He's got that old-school superhero charm, all wholesome goodness from the school of Adam West's television Batman from the 60s, calling people "chum" and "friend" and "citizen" and assuming that they have good intentions. He trusts that right will come out on top, and believes in capital J Justice.
He finds Arthur, a nervous accountant, to partner with in every iteration. In all the versions, Arthur has been a nebbishy sort, sort of hapless, but smart and with a good heart. In this latest version, he's a little more traumatized by his past and dealing with mental health issues, but he's the same old Arthur. The two play off each other for good humor and that kind of heroism where good intentions and luck serve the heroes as well as actual skill and intel might for another pair.
I love dark heroes with tortured pasts as much as the next girl, but there's something refreshing about the Tick's relentless optimism and confidence. I named my van after him. (It's also big, blue, and a little dense).
It's April and you know what that means: The AtoZ Blogging Challenge! For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.
My theme this year is Places in my Heart, all about the places I've been and loved and that have mattered to me in a lasting sense.
For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too.
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X is for Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
It's kind of funny that I got this far down into the list before I admitted that some of the Places in my Heart are imaginary places. Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters is found in comic books (and TV shows, cartoons, and movies that spun off from those). It's where the X-men trained and formed as a group.
Like the Bat Cave or Stark Tower or the Fortress of Solitude, heroes need a hangout, a home base, and this is it for the mutant crowd. Generally, it's portrayed as the inherited home of Charles Xavier, who besides being a talented mutant with wide ranging psychic powers, is also a rich English boy from the gentry. (It avoids a lot of problems in superhero stories if you write your characters rich, yet without family to object to the way they use those riches).
Like any good superhero facility, it has large spaces for practice fighting and building specialized rooms to deal with the problems that arise while newly powered folk are figuring out how to use and control their gifts.
I, unfortunately, did not develop superpowers during puberty, so I am apparently not a mutant. I'm still holding out hope that the second wave of hormones in menopause will give me something special, though. In fact, I'm writing a whole book series based on that :-). But in the meantime, maybe I'll find out if they need a Spanish tutor at Xavier's. Some of their missions are bound to take them to Mexico or something, wouldn't you think?
One of my favorite things about becoming a published author has been the opportunity to participate in cons. For any readers who aren't quite as geeky as I am: "Con" is shorthand for "convention" as in groups of people with similar interests getting together to partake, talk about and enjoy their hobbies. In this case, we're talking about science fiction/fantasy conventions in particular, where superhero novelists can talk superheroes with other superhero geeks with impunity. In other words: heaven!
There are huge cons like Comic Con International that even make the regular TV news, and there are medium sized and smaller more niche ones across the country. I have limited funds and time, so mostly I've been trying to "break into" the ones more local to me. I've participated in Atomacon, Illogicon, and now: Con-Gregate!
I'm really excited about going to Con-Gregate. If you are anywhere near High Point, NC, you should come, too!
Here's a preview of the awesomeness I get to be a part of and who my playmates will be:
Saturday, July 16: 5:00 p.m. Signing with Alexandra Christian an author of mostly paranormal romance, dark fantasy and horror. A self-proclaimed “Southern Belle from Hell,” Lexxx is a native South Carolinian who lives with a ghost hunter and an epileptic wiener dog. She's a fellow Broad of Broad Universe and a lot of fun to boot. Come by and say hi to us! Saturday, July 16: 8:00 p.m. Broad Universe: Rapid Fire Readingwith Alexandra Christian, John G Hartness, Paula S Jordan, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Gail Z Martin, Misty Massey, Janine K Spendlove, Leona R Wisoker. What I LOVE about RFRs is the opportunity to hear a piece of several different books all in a single sitting. It's a book smorgasbord!
Sunday, July 17: 1:0 p.m. Gender and Gender-fluidity in the Genre with moderator Sharon Stogner, and Maya Preisler. Life in the twenty-first century has come with new definitions of gender. Let's talk about depictions of gender in speculative fiction and how they are changing.
Besides my own sessions, there are *tons* of other sessions on cosplay, fandom, and all things sci-fi and fantasy. You can check out the full schedule by clicking on the banner. Come play with us!
And now I know my ABCs. Next time won't you sing with me?
I'm a compulsive listmaker. In fact, as a student, when I would get bored in class, I would just write down the alphabet, give myself a theme and list words: boy's names, songs I like, places in the world, foods, etc. So now wonder the #AtoZChallenge appeals to me so much. It's like they designed it for me!
Besides having fun writing my posts, I also had a great time reading posts. I revisited old friends who participated with me in past years and found a few new ones. Just like last year, I didn't read as much as I wanted to. April is always very busy in la casa Bryant: my daughter's birthday, my birthday, and, this year: a book launch! So, not as much reading time as I would like (honestly, there never is).
In case you missed any of my posts along the way, or just want to see what I wrote about, here's my abecedarium of Superheroes.
There were lots of others I enjoyed a post or two from but didn't make it back to see the whole alphabet from, but that's what May is for, right? April showers (of blog posts) make May flowers (of discovery).
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This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'll be writing about superheroes I love all month. You can check out other bloggers and see their creative takes on the challenge here.
Don't forget to check out my own superhero stories. Change of Life, book two of my Menopausal Superheroes series just came out a few days ago!
Zorro, or Don Diego de la Vega, has been around for a while. The Mexican Robin Hood was created in 1919 by Johnston McCulley and has been swashbuckling around books, comics, stage and screen (both large and small) every since. He's a man of many faces, and though he's a Mexican hero, he's seldom been played by a Hispanic person (at least in English language renditions).
Usually, he's a rich nobleman in Spanish-ruled California, fighting for the rights of the common man against the landowners and less noble noblemen. He wears a mask, which leaves room for the role to be passed on to other men (as happened in the more recent movie version with Antonio Banderas inheriting the role from Anthony Hopkins).
I first knew Zorro from his old movie persona with Douglas Fairbanks and the 1950s Disney program with Guy Williams, programs I watched in re-runs with my parents. Both of these went with the silly secret identity. I liked this idea that everyone thought de la Vega a useless fop or fool, but really he had the heart of a hero! No one suspects him of the acts of heroism his alter ego accomplishes.
There are resonances with a lot of other heroes with secret identities and deep pockets, from the Phantom to Batman, Oliver Queen to the Scarlet Pimpernel. It's an idea that still resonates for me today: the advantage you can gain from having your enemies underestimate you. And it takes a special kind of brass to let your public identity be the one everyone thinks little of, so you can accomplish your mighty deeds in secret. Zorro is a tricky fox indeed.
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This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'll be writing about superheroes I love all month. You can check out other bloggers and see their creative takes on the challenge here.
Don't forget to check out my own superhero stories. Change of Life, book two of my Menopausal Superheroes series just came out a few days ago!
If you're a comics fan and you've not yet read Runaways, you definitely should. It's a series about a group of teenagers who learn that their parents are supervillains and band together to break out on their own.
Gertrude Yorkes is my favorite of the main characters. She's sarcastic and cynical, as well as smart and capable. Gert's parents are time-travelers. Gert is telepathically bonded to a dinosaur. When they make their escape she takes on the name Arsenic and calls her dinosaur Old Lace, after the classic comedy. Got to love a teenaged character who knows that play/movie and loves it enough to reference in her superhero name!
I tend to like characters with gruff exteriors and hidden deep compassion and love. Gert fits this category. She's skeptical to the point that it causes tension with the rest of her team, but she would fight for any of them, and often does. She spends a lot of time caring for the youngest runaway, a superstrong girl name Molly.
I can't say too much more about Ms. Yorkes without spoiling her character arc for other readers, but she is really something different among comic book heroines. She's not interested in being anybody's eye candy or taking stupid risks. She believes in justice, and not just for herself. She's quite a young woman!
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This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'll be writing about superheroes I love all month. You can check out other bloggers and see their creative takes on the challenge here.
Don't forget to check out my own superhero stories. Change of Life, book two of my Menopausal Superheroes series just came out a few days ago!
Professor X or Charles Xavier is the leader of the X Men, the founder of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. I love him best when played by Patrick Stewart (though James McAvoy is awesome, too), but he's an intriguing character every place I've encountered him.
He's a visionary, with all the moral ambiguity and arrogance that includes. He wants to do the right thing, but has a power that can easily be used to manipulate others. The X Men universe makes great use of that moral struggle in the friendship between Charles and Max (aka Magneto). Magneto sees the inherent bad in people and wants to protect against it; Charles sees the inherent good and wants to trust to it. They're both wrong and right, and are proven so by circumstances, which makes for some good dramatic tensions.
Like Nick Fury, Charles Xavier isn't always perfectly forthcoming about his plans, and what he wears close to his chest might be dangerous to others, despite the best of intentions. He's a great character for ensemble stories like the X Men, because he can be the lynchpin that holds the group together, or the point where loyalties divide.
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This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'll be writing about superheroes I love all month. You can check out other bloggers and see their creative takes on the challenge here.
Don't forget to check out my own superhero stories. Change of Life, book two of my Menopausal Superheroes series just came out a few days ago!
Wolverine has been known by several names, and had several looks depending on who is drawing him. I tend to think of him as Logan, and I always picture him in a bloody teeshirt and jeans (no yellow pajamas for me, please).
When I first discovered the character, in comics, Hugh Jackman wasn't yet associated with him, and he was allowed to be kind of squat and ugly. He's definitely been prettied up now, though I'll give Jackman credit for understanding the character psychologically and mastering some of the iconic poses.
Logan is probably my favorite superhero character, besides those I myself have written. He's an antihero, in that he's not always interested in being a hero and he's willing to use deadly force. I like him because he's got such a relentlessly tough and grumpy exterior, but he's got a marshmallow of a heart when it comes to people who need protecting.
He's an amazing character, with a healing factor (at least in most storylines) that slows his aging and gives writers a long history to play around in. He's been a soldier, a mercenary, a recluse, and a hero. I'll keep reading him as long as they keep writing him.
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This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'll be writing about superheroes I love all month. You can check out other bloggers and see their creative takes on the challenge here.
Don't forget to check out my own superhero stories. Change of Life, book two of my Menopausal Superheroes series just came out a few days ago!
