stuff about stuff
24 Sep 2014 12:28![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
domarzione* L'shana tovah and a great 5775 to all. May the new year bring only sweetness.
* Finally got my hands on the first TPB of Ed Brubaker's Velvet, which was everything I could have hoped for. A noirish Bond-style spy thriller where Miss Moneypenny turns out to be the Best Bond Ever while hunting down the murderer of the actual Bond character. So, pretty much right in Brubaker's wheelhouse. I was pleasantly surprised by Steve Epting's art; I'm never going to be the biggest fan of his and he apparently will never learn how to draw people kissing, but I liked his work here a lot. He and Brubaker are simpatico and it shows.
Anyway, it's a story with a badass female protagonist who is also a woman of a certain age, however enhanced, and it's great and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
* Gotham... I wanted to like it more than I ended up liking it. I found it incredibly ham-handed, like the actors had forgotten that they weren't doing theater and didn't need to play to the last row, and extremely overpopulated. There was zero need to introduce everyone in the pilot; it made the story feel cramped and too busy and there was no time to rest between every single impact of the sledgehammer of foreshadowing. Selina Kyle and Ivy Pepper were unnecessary in the extreme, the former given far too much screen time when she does not advance the plot at all. Nygma could have waited until next week, at least, as could have the Montoya-Barbara Kean "Does Gordon know you are B-isexual/-atwoman?" discussion.
Suffice it to say that the Exposition Fairy won this round in a knockout. I'll give it another try because Gotham Central was one of my favorite comics series. But I have lowered my expectations for this show and I'm now somewhat resigned to it being less that series than Batman: Year Minus Twenty.
* Haven't seen Agents of SHIELD yet. I'm curious where they go with things, especially with Ward. I think a respectable redemption arc is possible, but it may require more finesse than the show is capable of mustering. I'm not down with any version that so much as implies that he didn't have choices to make or that he was incapable of making the correct choice at any point, which he did not.
* Finally got my hands on the first TPB of Ed Brubaker's Velvet, which was everything I could have hoped for. A noirish Bond-style spy thriller where Miss Moneypenny turns out to be the Best Bond Ever while hunting down the murderer of the actual Bond character. So, pretty much right in Brubaker's wheelhouse. I was pleasantly surprised by Steve Epting's art; I'm never going to be the biggest fan of his and he apparently will never learn how to draw people kissing, but I liked his work here a lot. He and Brubaker are simpatico and it shows.
Anyway, it's a story with a badass female protagonist who is also a woman of a certain age, however enhanced, and it's great and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
* Gotham... I wanted to like it more than I ended up liking it. I found it incredibly ham-handed, like the actors had forgotten that they weren't doing theater and didn't need to play to the last row, and extremely overpopulated. There was zero need to introduce everyone in the pilot; it made the story feel cramped and too busy and there was no time to rest between every single impact of the sledgehammer of foreshadowing. Selina Kyle and Ivy Pepper were unnecessary in the extreme, the former given far too much screen time when she does not advance the plot at all. Nygma could have waited until next week, at least, as could have the Montoya-Barbara Kean "Does Gordon know you are B-isexual/-atwoman?" discussion.
Suffice it to say that the Exposition Fairy won this round in a knockout. I'll give it another try because Gotham Central was one of my favorite comics series. But I have lowered my expectations for this show and I'm now somewhat resigned to it being less that series than Batman: Year Minus Twenty.
* Haven't seen Agents of SHIELD yet. I'm curious where they go with things, especially with Ward. I think a respectable redemption arc is possible, but it may require more finesse than the show is capable of mustering. I'm not down with any version that so much as implies that he didn't have choices to make or that he was incapable of making the correct choice at any point, which he did not.
