Childish Things

Since I didn't get a Summer job, I've been tasked with being Danny's personal driver while my mom is out of town. This entails mostly driving him to drivers ed in the morning, picking him up in the afternoon (it's a two hour class, and the drive is a half hour each way. I get an hour to rest while he's there. X_X), his multiple bass lessons on Tuesdays, and whenever he and his friends need rides around. There are bonuses, though. Like, one of his bass lessons is near a Borders, making that the perfect place to wait for his lesson to finish.

I've always loved bookstores, ever since I was young. Of course, recently, I've found myself straying from actual "Books" and more towards comics (both American and Japanese in origin). I suppose this is bad. I always thought I was a smart guy. Why am I not reading anything? Oh well. If you all have any decent books to read, I'm up for it. (Actually, I've still got a few to finish, including the last book of LOTR, and I was rereading the Hitchhikers series. I'm just wondering what all you guys are reading.)

But back to the comics, which is what the majority of this is about. I love comic books. I think they're a great way to tell a story. The perfect blend of graphical and text-based narrative. I actually got into the whole comic book thing from Chobits and Transformers. (I've really got a thing for stories about different artificial intelligences, actually. It's fun.) Chobits opened to me the world of manga, and I quickly jumped into Love Hina, Card Captor Sakura, and others. But Transformers wasn't comics to me, it was Transformers. It wasn't gonna draw me into the American superhero comics. I'd always liked the superhero cartoons, though. To a point, anyway. Batman: The Animated Series (and its long line of spinoffs, up to and including Justice League Unlimited and Static Shock, though not the Zeta Project. Blech) was a great series. I really am interested in getting any and all of those on DVD (maybe not Static, or Superman), though maybe not for quite as much as they're charging now. Maybe later.

Anyway, moving on. Batman was good. And the new Teen Titans, though not really a B:TAM spinoff, was superb. That was superheroes the way I wanted them: in easy to digest 30 minute chunks, minus commercials. Superhero cartoons NOT the way I wanted them, on the other hand, were the ones that came from Marvel's universe. X-Men and Spiderman. If you ever watched them, you'll be with me in saying that they played out like soap operas. That is to say, that underneath each episodes major villian fight, there was an ongoing emotional issue or two. Or 100, I don't know. And honestly, it hurt the direct plot of the episode. When each episode was viewed as a small chunk of a much larger epic storyline that spans the entire series, then yeah, I guess that works. But the flaw there is that that kind of show is targeted at children who, like I was when it was on, don't have that kind of attention span. So I saw a couple of episodes and went, "I'm confused, what just happened?" I caught the gist of the random villian for the episode, but the other things flying through the episode confused me. Wolverine's bizarre past. Whether Cyclops and Jean are together or not. What the hell Professor X and Magneto were doing on that island from the past or whatever. When I turned on an episode of Spiderman last year, and saw the title was something like "The Mutant Saga IX: The Punisher - Part 3 of 5" I decided that I had made the right choice.

So, flash forward a bit. I've become hooked on the Teen Titans. I must know more. Which brings us back to me being at Borders a lot. And Barnes and Nobles, and Waldenbooks, etc. I see, among their other Graphic Novels (big people talk for comics), Teen Titans, volume one. Which, like the Transformers Volumes I'd gotten, is the best answer to my major problem with comics. My crappy attention span. I can't be bothered to go to the comic store or whatever every month to get the latest issue of whatever series I am. Or rather, not that I can't be bothered; I can't trust myself. I'd miss an issue here and there, and have no idea what was going on. Issues 1-4 and 6. What a waste. The volues though, have all 6 issues in a particular story-line. This I like. So, long story short, I bought Teen Titans, volume one. I became hooked.

Yup. Hooked on Comics. So flash forward to today, I've been buying all sorts of comics. Marvel and DC alike. I haven't hit on any of the more "Indy" titles. Batman is good. Teen Titans is good. Ultimate X-Men is good. (I need to do a paragraph about them in a sec.) I'm tinkering with the idea of adding Spiderman in there somewhere, but I'm not sure.

X-Men - I got into these guys cuz I really do like the characters. All of them. And the way they all balance each other out. It's not just one unstoppable Ubermench like Superman. (God I hate Superman.... Maybe another day I'll talk about that... Or maybe later in this.) The problem with X-Men, though, is that, as one writer put it, "the Marvel Universe is one of the longest continuously running narratives on the planet." Since the first Marvel comic in whatever old year it was ('40s? '50s?), its all been one long interconnected story line, filled with plot holes, cross-overs, deaths and rebirths... (DC isn't much better, really) I don't have the energy into that massive a project. But I found the Ultimates line, which is like an alternate universe, where they all started over, just a few years back. I dunno when, but yeah. I started with that. I doubt I'll get all the way through. Oh well.

Anyway, I was thinking about the lines of comics, and how, in a sense, DC and Marvel Differed from each other. It's hard though, because DC has the full range of superheroes. You've got your Batman, Robin, (and the rest of Batman's crew), and Green Arrow, regular humans who are out fighting crime to be good guys. And on the other end, you've got Superman (who I believe got Kryptonite added as a weakness long after the fact as a way to "nerf" him by DC writers) and the Green Lanterns, two guys with nearly unbeatable superpowers. (I'm sure there's more than this, but those are the only two in this category that came to mind.) You've also got a host of mediocre superheroes, like Beast Boy and Flash, who, while better than the average human, aren't EXTREMELY spectacular.

Marvel has the same range, but I really can't be bothered to think of them. Anyway, I wanted to see what set the two "universes" apart. And it finally hit me. I started with Batman to see if there was a comparison for him in the Marvel Universe. At first I thought Daredevil, but then I remembered that he wasn't just blind, he was SUPER-blind. Blinded by toxic chemicals. Thus, superpowers. It's weird, but yeah. I was nearly stumped and ready to call that the distinction, but then I remembered the Punisher. X_X Really, he's no Batman. Batman is a force to fear. A symbol of terrible justice to evil doers. The Punisher isn't. He's a mercenary and a vigilante, near as I can tell. I could be wrong. Anyway, he's Marvel Comics token "non-powered" superhero. So I'm back at square one.

Theory number 2 is the one that I've stuck with. Here goes. DC is all about Extraordinary people. Superman. The Flash. Batman. All of them. They aren't normal people. They just aren't. Meanwhile, Marvel is more ordinary people in extrodinary circumstances. The X-Men all seem to react the way normal people would if they had superpowers like that. That's how it is with most of the Marvel characters. Both of them, though, have a unique feel. Marvel is like our own world, only with random freaks (I hesitate to call most of them superheroes, but several are in fact) running around, reacting and being reacted to. The DC comics, though, seem more apt to embracing costumed superheroes. Batsignals, whistles that summon Superman, whatever. The DC universe is truely a super heroic universe.

And, on a somewhat lighter note, I've recently gotten back into skipping. Not skipping class (Lord knows I do too much of that already). Just plain ordinary skipping. Like kids do. I haven't skipped in so long, years, I think, and tonight I just skipped down my driveway after taking out the trash. It's FUN! I'm gonna do it a little more often. Not all the time, but yeah. When I'm feeling giddy. ^_^

Night. *Skips off.*