minutia_r

Thing One: Today is a frabjous day, because calathea has posted a new story in the A Very Long Summer series! For the Love of Mike is, basically, the story of Rudy and Mike's wedding, interspersed with flashbacks to various points in their lives together, and . . . if you like Gordon Korman and are not opposed to slash for some reason, you already know you want to read this, so why am I still talking? A very worthy installment, replete with schmoopy moments, with a new original character in one scene that I wouldn't mind reading more about. Also, Rudy's mom continues to be terrifying and awesome. Also, reading about Rudy and Mike's boys makes me want to do more with the Bedes from A Matter of Life and Death.

I do have two very minor complaints, and they are a) everyone in Rudy and Mike's lives immediately thinks Rudy+Mike=True Epic Love Forever as soon as they see them together, and is ready to go on about it at length. Which, okay, but it gets a little wearing. And b) there's a lot of kissing. I like kissing as much a the next girl, but I also like to see it mixed up with other ways of physically demonstrating affection? Other PG to PG-13 ways of physically demonstrating affection, even. Though I am guilty of overusing kissing too, sometimes; it's just such an easy shorthand for love and romance and sex and all of that.

This story probably isn't the best place to start A Very Long Summer if you haven't yet, but hey, the whole series is at the link.

Thing Two: Everyone thinks they can reboot the DC Universe better than DC. To be fair, most of them probably can. Here is Dresden Codak author Aaron Diaz's original and thought-provoking take on the Justice League.

One clever thing he did is say, "Well, Superman has to be Clark Kent, but Green Lantern and Flash have been various different people over the years, so why not make them entirely new characters? Who are a Japanese woman and an Indian man, respectively?"

I like his re-conceptualization of Superman, but the costume redesign absolutely does not say "working-class hero" to me; it says "steampunk" if anything. On the other hand, I like his Wonder Woman costume, but I'm not sure if I can get behind the living statue concept.

What I do like is the connections between the various character's backstories; it gives the whole thing an organic feel and also the sense of a bigger story slowly unfolding in the background.

One thing missing from Diaz's Justice League is Batman; as he points out it never made much in-character-and-continuity sense for Batman to be in the Justice League anyway. But he did reimagine Batman and Robin separately here: "Bruce Wayne is crazy bonkers and has way too much money. Stephanie Brown has nothing better to do I guess." If that's not a high concept, I don't know what is.