Bottles and Wolfsbane

I wanted to get on here last night, but as is always the possibility, I couldn't. And now, how am I supposed to remember all the stuff I was going to say?

Well, for one thing, just before turning off the light and heading to Nod I did leave myself a note about one quotation I wanted to bring up from this collection of "Nightwing and Flamebird" stories. So, let me read it, then I'll be up to speed, then YOU'LL be up to speed.

Okay, awesome, so here's the set up:

Nightwing and Flamebird are basically the Batman and Robin of Kandor, Kandor being the bottled city that came from Superman's home of Kyrpton, now residing in his Fortress of Solitude.

You with me so far?

So in this one story, separatists want out, they're sick of living in a bottle, they want to go out and get their own planet. It's a pretty reasonable thing to start a discussion about, so how do they go about it? Well, if you're this one guy, you try to assasinate the leader of the anti-separatist movement (stay-ment?) dressed as an historical hero of Krypton.

So when the dynamic duo of Kandor finally stop this guy, the last dialogue in the story goes "That's right, son. Kandor's going to remain in its bottle for quite some time to come."

The End.

Because having one crazy guy on your side completely invalidates your desire to change things. It was so sudden, such a 'jar'-ing (good one, right?) halt to the story, that I couldn't help but laugh. These super types get accused of maintaining the status quo, for good or ill, and I just found it really funny that these two characters in the end didn't blink at keeping things as they are.

I guess they've got a good racket going. Wait wait- "I guess they've got a good bottle-racket going."

I know that one was a stretch... you know, like "bottle rocket"?

Fine, whatever- I thought it was funny.

Reading through various X-Men books, it's been fun to meet characters I really didn't have much acquaintance with- particularly the "New Mutants". I was already a fan of Cannonball, the guy usually sporting the goggles and southern accent, but now I'm getting to know Rahne (pronounced 'Rain', although I still have a rough time getting that through my head) Sinclair, who's a lot of fun. She's very sweet but is very prudish, which puts her at odds with everyone else.

Well, mostly just other female characters. Maybe male writers (of the 90's specifically) can't think of any other way to express their female characters than by having them harp on each other.

Like most Marvel characters, she's pretty insecure about herself. But while most of those others are, say, brilliant scientists or millionaires or possessing of movie star good looks (or if you're Iron Man- all three at once) and it tends to come off as, you know, stupid- Rahne makes it believable. It helps that her super power is to turn into a wolf/werewolf. Despite the fact that she's afforded a surprising number of low level required secondary powers with this ability, at the end of the day she's surrounded by MASTERS OF MAGNETISM! and dudes that shoot lasers out of all sorts of places.

AND she spends most of her time looking half wolf. With her, I GET the confidence issues.

That said, what I don't get? All these X-Men characters will either speak french, spanish, or have a southern or irish accent. It's weird to me.

The best line from this other book, Jubilee busts out some bad french "would you mind parlaying all that into anglais, sill vows plates?"

Then Emma Frost replies that she appears to be taking french lessons from Gambit. I thought that was hilarious.

Well, I remember what else I wanted to talk about, and yes, it's still X-Men related (I've been reading a lot of X-Men these past few days, what can I say?) but I'll save it for next time.