brainofck

It's interesting, making this shift over to Avengers fandom and getting a glimpse at what may or may not be happening to comics, or at least comics fandom, because of the interest of movie fans.

Movie fans = lots more girls. At least, that's my interpretation as an outsider and newbie. And I suspect it also means lots more "girls" like me - that is middle-aged women, who have been everyday feminists for 25 or more years, who have an experienced and mature sexuality, and who look at the art and go, Jesus, children, aren't you embarrassed to be laying your spank bank out there for everyone to see like that? (Though to be fair, I'm sure plenty of the women in my category are "drawn in" by all the pretty, pretty casting in the movie. I'm not gonna lie, that's how I got here. It's not necessarily why I stayed, but RDJ, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth? Not to mention Hiddleston, Renner and fuckin' Samuel L. Jackson? Yeah. I know who I am.)

Again, acknowledging that I'm sitting on the fringes, I see this in the vitriolic attacks by the intelligentsia of the medium on new fans and cosplayers at conventions. It's pretty clear that most of the discomfort with "new fans" is push back against a feminine presence encroaching on a fomerly masculine space.

Blah blah, hundreds of people have said it better.

But.

If you haven't seen it, please to be having a look over at http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/. Whether or not you care about the presentation of The Strong Female character in comics, you will almost undoubtetly LAUGH YOUR ASS OFF at some of the content. The concept is to show exactly how ludicrious some of the renditions of Strong Female Characters are by replacing them with Clint. (And I have to say, on an intellectual level, I knew this material was in there, and had even seen some of it, but to have panel after cover after panel just laid out there, yeah. Wow.)

On the other hand, it really makes me want to cry at the level of stupid. You will find interspersed between the posts, commentary from people who claim that the blog "goes to far" or that it only exists because people like drawing Hawkeye in sexual ways. I mean, it's one thing if comics readers don't care, or if they say, hey, we like these pictures, if you don't, go read something else. But to actually, honestly not get it? Those are some people who are going to lower the intelligence of the species if they don't get out of the gene pool. Seriously.

In case you haven't seen this from the Iron Man 3 trailer, ( spoilers behind the cut )

Or perhaps bot-lovers angst.

The first Iron Man 3 trailer is out today. I am delighted, though my first response to it was "THEY BLEW UP THE MALIBU HOUSE!!!!" (I LOVE that house. Can I have it?) Then my response to my first response was, well, since Tony probably had to rebuild the Malibu house after he decimiated the foundation while discovering his new element for his arc reactor in the last movie, it can't be THAT hard to rebuild the thing.

Well. I didn't consider who lives in that house with Tony. All his bots.

Go to http://scifigrl47.tumblr.com/ on today's date and SEE the distress this has caused amongst the bot fans! Also, I love the person who advocates that they "do ALL the arcs." Yes. Please to be doing all the arcs.

In any case, I'm thrilled with trailer. And if RDJ IS leaving the franchise, I am kind of sad, because there's a lot of potential for kewl stuff if they are doing some of the more interesting arcs in this movie. But I suppose we will see on all fronts: how good the movie is; whether RDJ is really going to call it quits.

...according to analysis by Forbes Magazine of the top 15 richest fictional characters. ETA: Direct link to the Forbes items here. ETA2: Smaug, eh? *is amused*

Reading Cap/Iron Man, or really any Avengers fan fic at all, leads you into areas of profligate and conspicuous consumption where a girl from the burbs like me has never thought to tread. Of course, I don't know what you kids are watching these days on your trashy reality shows, so maybe I'm behind the times here.

Anyway, my first question was, what about Tony Stark's cars? You can find them here and here, though you will need to prod the net a little if you want to see pics and prices for all of them. I was particulalry amused by the gasps of the knowledgable when Tony smashed his 1967 Shelby Cobra. And seeing that name answers a question I was having in traffic the other day when I was actually BEHIND a Shebly Cobra - though clearly NOT a 1967 - and going, dude, why does that sound familiar? Anyway, I must be having some kind of masculine mid-life-crisis becuase *I* want the Audi R8 for *my* going to get groceries car. *pouts* And dear Lord, check out this article on the 2014 Bugatti Veryron Hyper Sport that will apparently be Tony's new toy for Iron Man 3. I. Want. It.

Then, actually inspired by Boardwalk Empire and Jimmy Darmody and HIS fantastic suits, I went out looking for Tony Stark's designer. First of all trying to do a web search on Tony Stark Iron Man suits is NOT productive. *glares* However, I found a couple of funny threads in fora on the topic.

Just some people nattering on about Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne and suit designers - not really that interesting.

A thread on that gorgeous pale grey suit he wore in Monaco, and some guy who is clearly trying to BE Tony Stark, OMG. :)

But I really want to point you to this guy. A discussion of the wardrobes of Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, and Bruce Banner. Also, a link a the bottom to a great entry on Cap, and why his clothes were clearly bought by SHIELD, among other topics. I like his take on Pepper's bare feet, as well. And he has an amusing obsession with the heights of the actors (and did I mention here that when I watched The Avengers this weekend, I kept trying to see when RDJ was wearing lifts? Because I'm weird, but also, I'm really bad at shoes and I was never really sure...) and he offers a funny link to a selection of photos of the Ghost Protocol cast.

Hello!

I also found that bit of Tony Stark hentai art that I was trying to track down the other day. By no means visit a tumblr called Rogers-and-Stark. You will almost certainly regret it.

I have taken to loitering around Scifigrl74's tumblr. (No, I'm not going to join tumblr just so I can comment there. Yes, I did try to see if you could log in with open ID but apparently no.)

In any case, I'm sure this will end up on AO3 in a couple of days, but I have to rec this Head Canon: The Avengers and Interviews. Give it a minute, she takes a while to get rolling, as this is head canon, but the interview part at the end is hilarious.

Apparently, it was inspired by all the ridiculous questions Scarlett Johansson had to keep answering in interviews. And OMG I was laughing so hard about the beach-ready body. Anyway, this just reinforces my fear of watching any interviews on YouTube. I know they will be ghastly and mortifying, if the choices people made on Fuck Yeah Avengers is anything to go by. Though RDJ commenting that being part of an ensemble cast gave him plenty of time to knock up his wife and Scarlett Johannson complimenting Jeremy Rennery's costume becuase it let him "work out the guns" *almost* balances out the scary pieces of the Jimmy Kimmel interview that I saw. But there are other things, even more cringe-worthy, so awful I can't bring myself to type. So no.

I can't help feeling like 80% of the appeal of Avengers fic is how much it calls back to living in the co-op. Not that I lived with spies and super-soldiers or what not. But the freedom and independence; the exchange of ideas; the stress of research and the 1000s of pages of reading; being surrounded by 20-somethings and the beauty of youth; the sense of a common cause - sort of. The crazy math PhD wandering into your room muttering to himself; and the retiring physicist across the hall; and falling in love with the historian; and having a weird half-crush on the most-likely gay guy down the hall who always thinks you are drinking beer, but then feels like an idiot when it turns out to be Reed's Ginger Brew. And pizza and communal meals and weird sleeping schedules. Grad school = Avengers Tower.

I accidentally read an Absolute Power-type Avengers story, where Tony flips a coin every New Years Eve to decide if he will be a hero or supervillian starting Jan 1.

Yes. Accidentally. It was only 355 words, so you can't really tell your reading something that icky (as opposed to silly or angsty) until you're up to your neck in it or done.

I realize this is a flavor of story that a lot of people like, but I don't.

*scowls*

Knowing how the fangirls like to make a woobie and milk the angst, I really did not expect Tony Stark to be quite this damaged. Even reading about the couple of suicidal story arcs didn't prepare me for actually reading the source material. For those keeping track - I read Civil War and Iron Man: Civil War, last week, and now I have read Extremis. Execute Program is coming up. (I'm a little out of order, obviously.)

Next purchases will probably be to finish Iron Man Vol. 4, and prod the relevant Avengers and Captain America titles to fill in missing Civil War material - basically, I'd like to have the assasination of Captain America.

After that, I think I'll just go forward chronologically, despite green_grrl's >>>:-( regarding Matt Fraction.

AG33 seems to be enjoying. The Barbarian wants to get in on the action, too, but Extremis is too scary for her, I think. She muscled in on #1, which wasn't too bad (just skipped a couple of pages), and I thought she would find it simply boring, but no, she was totally up for more. Hmmm. If I completely skip #2, she may be able to read the others. Will look at it again.

In other Avengers silliness, I put this Captain America wall onto Miss Lemon, and I think The Barbarian appreciates him as much as I do. I had already snagged this for my work computer.

Skipping back though this journal, I see that I never mentioned my new toy! My parents acquired a Dell Inspirion Mini a while back that they decided they were never going to use and handed off to me when I picked the kids up from NC! I have named her Miss Lemon, after Poirot's amazing secretary. When I get Physty's replacement (yes, my backup drive has died - I cross my fingers I will actually get one more boot out of it, but pretty much dead), I'm naming her Ms. Potts. Just so you know. Though Husband thought I should use Hastings.

CK: Which reminds me, I wanted to find out why that other guy Husband likes hates Iron Man.
CK: Charlie something with an S. *prods brain*
CK: Stross
zats clear: good lord
zats clear: i love iron man :-(
CK: I will confess to having turned down the offer of an entry into comic writing a few years ago -- Marvel offered me "Iron Man", but the closer I got to the coal face the more I realised I detested Tony Stark and everything he stood for.
CK: Since he's talking about comics in 2011, I wonder if they were trying to get him to write during Civil War, and he sided with Cap? :D
zats clear: :-)
zats clear: you crack me up
CK: LOL! Here's a comment on a list of stories one should read before seeing Iron Man - "Warren brings a genuinely science fictional tone to his superhero comics, and this reads more like a Charlie Stross story than, well, an Iron Man story."
zats clear: i really wished i liked comics
zats clear: makes me sad
zats clear: but i cannot visually process them
CK: I may have to apologize to my brother. I'm liking the art in Civil War WAY MORE than I expected to. I was expecting to mostly hold my nose about it being a comic in favor of getting the primary source material for my current fandom.
zats clear: hahaha
zats clear: cool
zats clear: like i said, i wish
CK: Also: The nearest I've ever come to scriptwriting is when an editor at Marvel wondered if I'd be interested in taking over "Iron Man". I did my research, and got a serious hate on for Tony Stark -- so serious I couldn't do it. I don't play well with superheroes ...)
zats clear: good grief
CK: Hahahaha! - Tony Stark might as well be a Mary-Sue figure for Donald Rumsfeld. Want to see me write a misunderstood/comic Adolf Hitler? That'd be easier to do than for me to write Iron Man (other than by turning the frame upside-down and making him the villain).

---

So I am very amused. I don't really know that much about Rumsfeld's politics, but I am really wondering if Mr. Stross just doesn't get Tony Stark? Or perhaps I play with too many fangirls who try to make him look better than his overall backstory? The Avengers and Iron Man did spend a lot of time fighting Communists back when Communists were relevant, I suppose? Maybe it was a bit jingoistic? Haven't reviewed the source material, only the secondary sources. *amuses self* I'm especially smiling imagining Mr. Rumsfeld, tip tapping away at his computer in his office in the White House or the Pentagon or wherever, working on his Cap/Iron Man, with Tony as his TOTAL MARY-SUE OMG!!!! *cries laughing*

UPDATE: Yeah, the more I think about it, he must have read Civil War. I have not read it yet, though it has been sitting on my couch for a week. But Tony does some crappy stuff in that, and depending on how you are inclined to view his reasons (and I have only viewed them through the lens of fanfic, so I don't know what they really look like on paper), I could imagine making the Nazi comparison. Though I always get really, really twitchy when people want to compare anybody to Hitler. That's a whole different league of evil and I really feel like you need a full-fledged genocide on your hands before you get to be compared to Hitler. Just sayin.'

Alright, FINE. Civil War fic probably coming after all. As one of the spammers was asking me this morning how the area was recovering from the storm, I realized that I never turned on the radio in the car this morning. I was so far down in writing mode the ingrained reflex was completely overridden.

However, not writing - I SWEAR - until I read the damned thing. So I went looking for a reading list for Civil War.

http://www.amazon.com/Read-Marvels-Civil-Chronological-Order/lm/R1UQ3K40N5HZG5

Tossing the more extraneous stuff got me down to $93 worth of comics. No way in hell. I think I'm going with the main volume collecting Civil War, plus Civil War: Iron Man.

Meanwhile, maybe sanity will arrive. I am feeling the same annoyance that I felt at the beginning of Stargate (you will see the residual of that annoyance still today on my Stargate index). I am thinking this does not bode well.