Are Star Wars Characters Interesting?

– Yes, I think they are. What do you think? Hannah would like to know. (The comments thread is good, and the Facebook conversation referred to on the thread was also good.)

Hannah Reads Books

Today, during the Great Snow of 2014 here in the South, I rewatched the original Star Wars trilogy. I realized, much to my surprise, that I don’t have a favorite character.

Let me explain why I took special note of this. It’s not “They’re all so awesome I just can’t decide.” I do enjoy the movies, I want to be clear on that, I just don’t feel strongly enough about any one character to say he/she/it is my favorite. That’s odd for me. I have a compulsion to determine my favorite character in any of my fandoms. I wouldn’t say it’s something that usually takes a lot of effort, I’ve just always done it.

I saw Star Wars early on but never became a really big fan, and I’m partly inclined to pin it on this character thing. During my formative fandom years, when I was madly in love with…

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Announcements!

This is for everyone, but if you’re collaborating or having a running conversation with me about anything – anything at all, please read this. I’m going to try some things for the next couple of weeks that could benefit us all. There’s a shoutout to Sourcerer and PTM followers in the last paragraph.

We need to observe Feminist Friday here. It’s important. But I am not sure how either Jeremy or I would be at writing the posts. So, here is what I am going to do. Every Friday after work, I’ll do a Feminist Friday roundup, provided I can 3-5 good posts to include.  Any time you write a FF post, be sure and give me a heads-up. I don’t really care how. The smartest way would be a Tweet if you have an account. That gives me an easy way to share the link. I don’t mind you leaving the heads-up on a comment thread, even if the article is about something entirely different. Any form of social media message is better than email for things like this. I don’t always check my email, but I do always look at notifications.

Most evenings, I spend my free time editing the next day’s postings and then either write or network until bedtime. For the next while, I’ll do a late-nite reblog before I shut down. Our last post usually goes in the early evening, and our first post usually mid-morning to noon. That leaves a long period where we’re not posting. It makes sense to me to take 10 minutes to reblog and tag a post so the front page isn’t static for 14 hours. I know enough good blogs at this point to make finding things to reblog easy. After I do this for a week or two, I’ll let you know if it makes any difference in our views. This is sort of an experiment. I’m trying to develop techniques for updating the blog frequently, but doing it efficiently.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by over the last few days. Yesterday was the best day for visits Sourcerer has ever had, and Part Time Monster‘s day was just as good. If you’re following, I appreciate it, and I hope to get around to looking at every one of your blogs eventually. I try to always take a look when I get a follow notification, even if I don’t comment, but sometimes they come in such large groups I can’t keep up with them all.

Injustice: Year Two – A Review

by Jeremy DeFatta

My review for this week is Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo’s Injustice: Year Two #2 digital-first edition (released on Jan. 21), which is the middle third of the print copy of Injustice: Year Two #1, which was released in full on Jan. 15 if my sources are correct. Confused yet? Good!

This is a story meant to upset the status quo and send you reeling. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Injustice in its entirety is a tie-in to a video game by the creators of Mortal Kombat. The comic is intended to be a prequel of sorts to set up the world in which the game is set, and it is a terrifically unfamiliar version of the DC Universe. The basic premise is this: the Joker comes to Metropolis on a murder spree and pulls off his greatest atrocities ever. Superman, who is eternally at war within himself as to what his role among humans should be, finally snaps and kills the Joker in retaliation.

Fast forward a little and you have two factions, Superman’s side dedicated to ending crime and warfare through whatever means necessary, and Batman’s side dedicated to resisting and upholding the old ways. You eventually see Superman presented as a god pushing humanity in (what he sees as) the best direction possible and Batman as a hunted outlaw, always only a few steps ahead of his former friend.

With Year Two firmly under way, Taylor’s exploration of this non-continuity story remains strong. His purposeful character use and raw characterization are perhaps the most consistently pleasing aspects of the story—Taylor understands DC, its appeal, and how to turn this appeal on its head while still telling a powerful story.

Honestly, this is one of the best things DC is putting out right now. The bravery and audacity of shaping Superman into a story’s villain has paid off extremely well, despite Taylor’s own discomfort in doing so. This issue in particular is a step along the way to something greater and sees the shocking introduction of several fan-favorite characters to Injustice.

Go out and find the print copy of this comic at your local comic shop or follow it weekly online. Either way, you are in for one hell of a ride.

Support your local comic shops! Tweet me @quaintjeremy. Let me know your thoughts below.

images copyright DC Comics.

Why I Agreed to The Alliance

I suppose I should explain how I went from saying:

“yeah, we can talk about government surveillance here even though I think that battle is lost and it’s mostly an exercise in educating younger people about how it happened”

to saying:

 “let’s see how many people we can get to add pages to their blogs devoted to keeping tabs on this and keeping in touch with one another.”

I have no illusions about the number of people paying enough attention to what I’m doing here to wonder about that, but there must be a few. Most are people I knew before I started this blog. So here is what changed my mind.