ways_back_room | Substitute DE for a New Decade

Substitute DE for a New Decade

Everyone knows about Sherlock Holmes and Avatar and Doctor Who and Supernatural and Harry Potter. But what about the things that you love and that everyone else hasn't read or seen (or even heard of), but should?

I'll start off with Marvel Comics' Nova, the story of a space-faring super-hero who is the last member of the storied Nova Corps (Marvel's surprisingly interesting version of the Green Lantern Corps). It's a little continuity-heavy at times - it grew out of one crossover event and gets sucked into several others - but the stories seem to work on their own, the writing by Abnett and Lanning is crisp and witty, the art is very good, and the hero himself is likeable and about as heroic as anyone I've encountered in a super-hero comic in ages.

ETA: I should probably also mention that DC Comics has reprinted the first 30 issues of The Question in five trade paperbacks, with the last coming this year. It's not just prime canon for my pup, but it's also one of the most influential and highly regarded comics of the 80s, written by Denny O'Neil at his peak.

Your turn.

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As far as I can tell, yes. (I am always trying to find various Abnett and Lanning comics in the libraries, and I always find Abnett novels.)

I think Nicholas and Danny are still technically around (and they were/are, btw, fabulous), but I'm less sure about Skinner and the Andies; I think they may be gone.

(♥♥♥ HOT FUZZ)

I have a special place in my heart for Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Count St. Germaine series. St. Germaine (and the many variants he uses over 4000 years of life) is a noble vampire who is the hero protagonist of all the extremely well-researched historical novels. They are romance novels, when it comes right down to it, so they are escapist reading, but smart escapist reading. They always feature strong female characters (sometimes his lovers, sometimes not) who defy the multiple realistic constraints of the times in which they live. She has a shorter series of novels focusing on Oliva Atta Clemens, a early C.E. Roman lady turned vampire, and Madeleine de Montalia, an 18th century French vampire. I can't provide links, but my favorites are Blood Games (early C.E. Rome), Come Twilight (multiple centuries in the Pyrenees), Blood Roses (Black Plague Europe), and one whose title I can't remember but is set in 9th century Saxony and features a woman who takes on a chatelaine role and is an incredible leader and warrior. The Church, of course, doesn't approve.

THE RED STAR, YOU GUYS

(It's a sweeping alternate universe USSR with industrialized magic and an epic plot, and the art is stunningly beautiful and has loads of strong ladies kicking ass.)

Edited 2010-01-04 17:45 (UTC)

I'm a huge fan of both the book and the movie. I saw the movie first, when it first came out, and then promptly bought the book, and read the entire thing while my mom was trying on new clothes at JC Penny's. Those two bits of canon are awesome.

...uh, and I was like eleven or twelve, so, I probably shouldn't have watched it, because, well, it's pretty damn gory in bits (When they went into the house? OMG ew.), but fantastic.

^_^ I may have to watch that today.

I'm very fond of the Dresden Files books - don't bother with the short lived TV series. They'll never be high literature but they are amusing magical detective pulp fiction and I adore the characters.

Comics wise you could do far worse than Huntress: Year One. The art is pretty and the story is solid, as is the writing. I still get shivers when I read some parts, despite the fact that I've read it about 5 times in the last year.

Also, I don't know that it's terribly obscure, as every time that I reference it, more people say they've seen it, but I find kids' show iCarly hysterically funny, both for children and adults; it's witty and clever, and features one of my favorite characters in anything ever, because I'm not even going to try to pretend I'm not biased here. Sam is the reason I started watching the show and why I continue; she's brash and crass and mean and loyal and a fabulous bully, and she makes me laugh out loud repeatedly.

The rest of my canons are fairly ubiquitous/well known. I mean, Iron Man (though more people should READ THE COMICS, which are made of crack), Hellboy (again, I wish more people read the comics; the BPRD series in particular is spectacularly suspenseful and spooky), True Blood, Sherlock Holmes, National Treasure, M*A*S*H...

I have Star Wars, too, though it is the rarer extended universe variety, which features things like this epic smackdown.

UGHHHH HTML

Edited 2010-01-04 17:56 (UTC)

I'm going to recommend a few canons to everyone.

Kim Harrison's The Hollows series is fantastic, and yet, next to no one has read it, it seems like. Give it a go; Urban Fantasy without the...urm...creepy-huge manbits of LKH...and...there's actually plot. Sorry LKH-muns. I'm from STL, and I will make sure to let you know if I ever meet anyone like she describes to just be running around STL like it's common to have manbits that you could mistake for a third leg. Nothankyou.

I also recommend The Japanese Beetle! because the entire canon is free, and it's available. A lot of it is a mite bit dated, as a lot of what he was doing was based on pop culture when he was writing, but, it's hilarious.

Do it, and then report if it feels different to you! Cause that's what I find so especially fascinating about it all. As for the ewww, my stomach turned most at the communal bowl of water near the beginning. What they found in the house -- well, my friend the Nazgul and I rewatched it (among other things) because she said she wanted to see blood. And I needed to have a look at it before screencapping because I'm using the actor who plays Buliwyf as the PB for my new Milli!charrie currently in the apping process, who is from a completely different book but still has something to say about Arabic civilisation from the middle ages, see above what I said to Flynn.

((So the Buliwyf-alike you're going to see in Milliways in a few weeks, hopefully? Totally is not Buliwyf. He is kind of evil -- beware!))

I saw him in mm, and was like, "Hey!!! That's the Buliwyf!" Then I had to go look at the page. Hee!

I'm taking an Ancient Near East class this coming semester, and well, the professor is new, and I was in his trial teaching class? And he didn't call on any of the women in the class to answer questions, or ask questions. I'm an Ancient History person, and well, I'm sort of taking this class to see if he gets any better. If not, I'm talking with the head of the department and the dean.

Have you read any of the recent Iron Man stuff? I picked up a story from last year that wasn't half bad. Good character play for Tony and Pepper, as well as a holdover from his Director of SHIELD days named Maria Hill. But the plot was an outgrowth of the bad crack that has infested Marvel of late.

Okay a few things that I wicked enjoy that other people might want to check out:

Cairo (http://www.amazon.com/Cairo-G-Willow-Wilson/dp/1401217346/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262628089&sr=8-1). A graphic novel written by a girl I used to game with back in my LARP days. "Set in bustling modern-day Cairo, this magical-realism thriller interweaves the lives of a drug runner, a down-on-his-luck journalist, an American expatriate, a young activist, an Israeli soldier, and a genie as they navigate the city's streets and spiritual underworld to find a stolen hooka sought by a wrathful gangster-magician."

Better Off Ted (http://abc.go.com/shows/better-off-ted). "The show deals with the day-to-day absurdities at a heartless technology company, Veridian Dynamics." I like to believe it's about the corporate offices that created Eureka's Globle Dynamics. Very funny. Very off the wall. Just all around a damn entertaining show.

And of course:
TURTLES FOREVER! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_Forever)
What? You didn't actually expect me to make a rec post and not try to pimp this, did you? If you've yet to see it, and want to, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do.

ALSO!
Anyone BOLD or DARING or...looking to just kill some time, can check out the original Turtle comics here (http://www.ninjaturtles.com/html/comic.htm) for free. Can't beat the price!

Edited 2010-01-04 18:11 (UTC)

Meh. I was reading for a while last year, but I just don't like modern-day Marvel. The most recent anything that I've liked was Cable and Deadpool, and that A) was canceled, and B) is an anomaly in my patterns. I just don't dig anything that they're doing these days. I follow Iron Man enough to know what's going on (or I did, anyway, up to the point where Pepper got her own suit)

Heeee! Actually, the actor wasn't on my radar at all before I asked

corchen to recommend me a PB for this book charrie I was going to app. Tall, long blond hair, handsome, manly, not too young -- yep, he fit the bill. --- And then you looked at the info page, I guess, and found that not only is he not Buliwyf, he is rather evil, and at least a ruthless killer who will sex up women and then shoot them through the eye? Better avoid Urquhart, then.-

As for the professor, there was a story being told at the university here in Munich about a professor of Medieval Latin a few decades back (must have been the 1920s, so could find out which one it was, but am too lazy now) who tried to ignore female students because he thought it was not a good thing, and women belonged in the kitchen, not in a lecture hall. So instead of 'Ladies and gentlemen,' he started all his lectures and seminars and whatnot just with 'Gentlemen!', ignoring the female students utterly. I don't know what he did with their term papers, but as a German professor of the time, I guess he had enough flunkies to foist off grading papers to them, especially grading the papers by female students. So, because he did that, the students played a trick on him. For one of his weekly lectures, none of the male students turned up. At all. So he went up to the pulpit, was ready to go 'Gentlemen!', looked at the students, found no gentlemen, and went majorly 'Errrrrrmmmmmmm'. From then on, the female students did exist.-

urg, it cut off my comment. I was going to say: I read about Iron Man and half follow what's going on, but they haven't done anything to interest me in picking it up on a consistent basis. And the War Machine series was just bad.

^_^ I like that story. I mean, it's awful that a young (mid thirties-ish) professor in (it was) 2009 could ignore the majority of the class, with other professors sitting there and evaluating his performance.

One of the profs specifically mentioned to me that she saw that my hand was up and he was calling on the guy next to me instead of giving me a shot.

Plus...uh, some of his information...wasn't right. >.>

The latter part is what really counts, at the end of the day. I wonder why they hired him after all;it's not as if they didn't notice. But instead of raising a stink straight away, you might try that tactic on him first. Just imagine him coming to an all-female class and going majorly 'Errrrrrmmmmm ...'

The Middleman. Man, I love that show with every fibre of my being.

Hustle OK, so, you know Leverage, right? You know the British woman who was in Coupling? Well, imagine a smooth, tight con-based show with only characters from her archetype in it - the smooth slick planning-everything leader (Adrian Lester), the young, up and coming short-con artist (Mark Warren), the experienced fixer and handyman, the sexy lady, and the veteran American who knows the game inside and out. The victim is always an asshole, there's always a twist, but they've always figured a way out of it. It's excellent.

Being Human. Game On, but with a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost. And oh so many layers.

Family Man. Werewolves! In the 18th century!

Batman: Brave and the Bold is my favourite cartoon at the moment. It's fun and campy, just like the silver age JLA, and it has a musical episode! With Neil Patrick Harris! And Bat/Canary shipping (also Arrow/Canary, also villain/Canary, both of which I also ship)

And Secret Six. If you're going to read a comic set in any of the Big Two, make it Secret Six.

I'll see; I'm not so good with getting a bunch of people to do much of anything. And I've even been in charge of things. Heh.

We'll see how the semester goes; maybe he was just nervous. I dunno.

13th Warrior was a good movie. I'll have to check out the book. I actually was looking at this movie for PB's when I was contemplating Applying Palamedes to the Bar. = ]

In other news, I have a couple of questions regarding how Teja keeps the Forge for Val's benefit. Should I email you or PM you LJ? AIM?

I *SO* heart The Red Star. The art, the story...all of it is just seamless and glorious!

I LOVE Golden Girls. I haven't watched it in forever! This must be remedied.

Don't hit me, but...I don't care much for the Secret Six ongoing. I have no sympathy for any of the characters, even Catman. I liked them a lot more in their BoP guest appearance. (I will admit that I prefer heroes to villains, but Ed Brubaker's Sleeper is about supervillains a lot more dark than the S6, and I love that series.)

I can get behind on you B&B, though. I adore the over the top Aquaman - I am toying with MM'ing him. I think they do a great job with most of the DC heroes they use. And they brought back Baby Plas. That takes guts. (If you have never seen the craptacular Plastic Man cartoon with Baby Plas from the early 80s, you don't know just how much guts. But if you have never seen it, you are lucky. It might be the single stupidest DC animated adaptation ever.)

Yay Aquaman! I've been thinking of MMing him, too. He's amazing.

"What kind of doctor do you think I am?"

"A HERO doctor!"

Also my favourite use of the Canary Cry ever.

Yep. Perhaps he is scared of women? **grins**

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