I'm even being got down by the BBC's wonderfully comprehensive coverage of the 150 years of the Origin/Darwin bicentenary thing, because when they put this much emphasis on Darwin I just see it playing into the hands of the creationists who can't see the difference between prophets and scientists.
Er, anyway, there were new comics today. That's what I originally came here to say. If you are a comics-y person, be warned there are spoilers.
Captain Britain and MI-13 #9 There is a lot to love about this comic. Leonard Kirk does a wonderful job with the interdimensional bits, perfectly capturing the feel of the '60s Ditko Doctor Strange, which is only right and fitting for a story with Mindless Ones in it, while blending it with his own style so that it doesn't look at all out of place in the comic overall, which is quite the achievement. And there are some wonderful bits of dialogue, particularly Brian realising that Alastaire isn't his heart's desire. But, and it's a very big but, there are some key plot points that do violence to the characterisations. Now admittedly, these aren't characters I know outside of Cornell's take on them in Wisdom but he made me fall hard for them there and he doesn't get to make Sid a traitor or Pete a I-despise-you-but-you-used-to-be-my-frie
Nova: The Origin of Richard Rider This is a clip show, basically, with Nova's origin comic and his first superhero team up (with Thor, who is mind controlled so that they can fight before teaming up, because it is 1976 when all's said and done) sandwiched between bread-of-a-few-new-pages. The reprinted comics feel weird to me - they're very similar to '60s comics in style and tone, but somehow even without glaring context stuff it feels naive in a way that the Silver Age stuff doesn't. There's sort of a sense that the writers are writing down, maybe, whereas Stan Lee always strikes you as really being exactly as daft and enthusiastic as he sounds? BTW I'm not valorising the Dark Knight Returns/Watchmen axis particularly here; even the early '80s Claremont/Byrne X-Men is heaps better than this, and Claremont's writing has hundreds of issues. The most lulsy thing is that the similarities to Green Lantern are even more transparently obvious than I would have guessed, from the dying alien passing on his legacy to the green beam that seeks out Richard.
Booster Gold #16 This comic seems to have lost its way a bit since the changeover in creative teams, but this issue helped me put my finger on why: the time travel stuff has become far too teleological. Here we have an Egyptian knife that was only tangential to the plotline it was originally involved in "drawing Booster through time". It may just be a side effect of the decision to take Rip Hunter out of the picture, given that he was Basil Exposition, but it's a view of how time travel works that I can't really get behind on a gut-instinct level. Booster is not Sam Beckett.
Final Crisis #6 Half of Jaime was in two whole panels! And he got an entire speech balloon! Unfortunately, it says "I need some help over here!" rather than the sort of spectacularly awesome thing Jaime should be saying, but at least he's with Alan Scott Green Lantern, which is cool.
Bias aside, I was a bit disappointed with this overall, but really only because Grant Morrison is interested in lots of different bits of the DCU and the ones he focuses on this time round are ones that I just don't care about that much. (In particular, I have shockingly little time for Bats, and even less for Captain Marvel and family, though I can appreciate the use of Tawky Tawny on the intellectual level.) Last issue had lots of Lanterny goodness, but here they're just trapped unable to get back to Earth.
Morrison is very good at nonsensical technobabble that sounds right, I envy him that quite a bit. Darkseid killed Batman, so at least they weren't kidding around with all the RIP stuff I suppose, and then Clark flew in and grabbed him and it was quite slashy for a moment at the end there and you sort of forget how close their relationship is given how they often represent diametrically opposed tones (Skience vs Grim and Gritty I think). Actually, I have little time for either of them individually and almost none at all for their supporting casts, but as icons they work very well and that tension between where they're coming from makes their relationship great.
GLC 32 In which it turns out yet again that the Guardians are idiots, but pleasingingly a lot of Lanterns are sensible about it and quit in disgust! Kyle needs to rent the Guardians the Star Wars prequel trilogy, I think, once Earth comes out of Darkseid's Personal Singularity ('cos all these comics are happening at once, obv), and when George Lucas can expose the flaws in your plan it might be time to reevaluate quite how omniscient and omnipotent and such you think you are. Interesting that Kyle and Soranik are open with each other about what they saw in the Star Sapphire's Shippy Plot Device Helmet, but it makes me ship them less, because I turn out to be annoyingly contrarian. Kryb's Faces-of-Evil bit in this is even more pastede-on-yay than in Booster Gold, which is saying something. It's a shame because if they'd developed it a bit further it could have been an intriguing take on maternal instinct and stuff.
On the reasons-to-be-cheerful front, on my way back from my LCS I passed a charity shop that had the little collection of the very first Bridget Jones columns that the Indy put out back in 2005 when they got Helen Fielding to come back to them with it. And so I bought it for 50p, and restrained myself from squeeing at the bored teenager behind the till as I did so (I was half tempted to squee at the sheer existence of volunteering-bored-teenager, but never mind). It has the proper Bridget who was at the top of the column on the cover and everything, not any of these fake Bridgets, and has made me very nostalgic for my school library where I used to read them every whichever-day-of-the-week-it-was-but-I'm-f
Er, anyway. As you can see, I'm feeling pretty cranky, though writing this has mellowed me out a bit which was kind of the point because otherwise this was going to segue into My Thoughts on Fanfic Awards. But I could still do with a bit of a pick-me-up.
ETA: And here's a good reason to be cheerful I'd forgotten: I'm going to see this next month. Apparently it is not actually that good, but hey.
