Day in the Life of an Idiot

 My wife and I have argued long and hard about whether or not there is anything interesting in Indiana. 

Apparently, we simply never drove far enough.

If I could recommend you any town in Indiana, my recommendation would be Elkhart. Go to Elkhart. It's got a cool, historic downtown, a Botanical garden,  a really pretty amazing Environmental Center, and... The Hall of Heroes. 

We ended up in Elkhart, entirely by chance. We had, in fact, not intended to stop anywhere at all today, and, instead, just drive straight through to Youngston, OH. But, at one of the rest stops, I picked up a tourist brochure which had been organized by "stops along I-80." Shawn read to me in the car and when she hit the Hall of Heroes, I was like, "WAIT. There's a comic book and superhero museum and it's only about a minute off the main highway???" 

Of course, we had to go.

The only problem was that it didn't open until 11:00 am. We arrived in Elkhart at 10:20 am. We could have just sat outside the shop? But, we would have been staring at this rather unimpressive storefront for a half hour:


Image: A very boring view of one of the coolest places on EARTH.

So, Shawn flipped through our little tourism guide and discovered that there was a Botanical Garden just down Main Street. We found that, stopped in, but even though it looked like it might be quite nice, we were a bit put off by the sign that said that free admission was only for people who could PROVE residence in Elkhart County. I inquired within to see if we were BARRED or if we just had to pay, and it turns out we could have gotten in for $10 a piece. We decided, instead, to hop back in the car and check out the free Environmental Center further down the road.

What a good choice.


Image: cool fungus!

We wandered around through a wetland (saw a number of baby ducklings with their mama) and through an open prairie (and watched purple martins flit into their houses.) The trails near the Interpretative Center were very short loops and so perfect for a quick stretch and stroll, while we waited for the superhero museum to open.

A train stopped us for a short time, but we made it back to the Hall of Heroes around 11:30 am. We were the only people in the museum and so the guy behind the counter, John, gave us a personal tour. He asked us if we were fans of the movies or comics, and I was able to tell him that I grew up reading my cousin's father's comic books, which he'd started collecting almost from the moment comics were published, so I'd grown up on Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Shawn came to comics from a slightly different angle, having loved all the Strange Tales and horror comic books. We collected comics together all through college, and then, of course, became fans of the MCU. 

John was THRILLED and so very carefully pointed out all the cool draft sheets and inked pages they had on display, like this early Kirby art:


JACK KIRBY'S ART!!!!!!

Shawn and I spend a good hour at the museum, even pausing to play Deadpool pinball for awhile. 

Man, what a find!

That was all we did today, but tomorrow, it's the Pennsylvania Wilds. I should have a lot more to share.  And, because I've been listening to books on tape, I'll even have some things to report for "What Are You Reading Wednesday." 

Hope you all are having a good week without me!

Last night I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the College of Saint Katherine's by a colleague of mine at Ramsey County Library. Normally when I do these things at colleges and universities, I talk about my personal experience as a published science fiction writer--an area, on which, I am the leading expert.

This time, however, I was asked to come explain manga and graphic novels to a group of library science graduate students, aka future librarians.

It's not like I have zero experience passing myself off as qualified to talk about any number of fannish things. I do it all the time at science fiction conventions, right? But, there's something about this particular subject that oft goes awry (or 'gang aft agley,' as Robert Burns himself would say, incomprehensibly.) I don't know if the Goddess is trying to tell me that it's foolish for me to set myself up as an expert in something that is so decidedly _not_ my culture, or what?  

To be fair, I was very, very, VERY clear to these students that I am a consumer of this particular media, NOT an expert. I said that at the start and I reiterated it several times.  

I can't say it was an unmitigated disaster, not like that yaoi/yuri panel at WorldCon where I looked out into the audience and realized there were ACTUAL native Japanese EXPERTS in the audience and our panel was a bunch of blathering white chicks. In comparison to that, this was absolutely fine. The talk went... okay. I mean, the instructor promised me that this was a lively group and that I wasn't going to have to stand in front of them and lecture for an hour. And... I didn't? There were several glazed over eyes, but I did field a number of questions. The worst part is that there were slides.  And I read them to the class. Which...  yeah. I mean, to be fair, it was kind of my own fault. I sent a list of definitions to the instructor and she quite helpfully made me a powerpoint presentation, because manga does have a lot of specialized terminology.  

But, I SUCK at powerpoint presentations. I am 150% better at leading discussions--class discussions or panel discussions. Lecturing, particularly on a subject like this, where I don't have all of the information at my fingertips?  NOPE.

I wouldn't call it a fail, but it was not one of my better guest spots. 

I started the session off asking how many of these future children's/teen librarians (some of whom were already working in middle and high school libraries) read any graphic media: comic books, manga, graphic novels. There was a noticeable lack of hands that went up. I tried casting a wider net, as it were, and asked how many folks had SEEN a Marvel superhero movie... I... I'm not sure I've ever been in a room with so many people who have apparently NEVER seen a Marvel movie. Talk about a bubble that I usually live in. I had no idea there were even a dozen people on the planet who hadn't seen Avengers, much less all of them in the same place.

That might have thrown me a bit. I was at least hoping to connect to this room of 15 graduate students over a shared appreciation of Chris Evans or Tom Hiddleston. It was very weird to me to not be able to look at this room of women and go, "Loki, am I right?" 

IT WOULD HAVE FALLEN ON DEAF EARS.

What even! How does?

At that point, I had no choice to start off with, "Okay, so... manga is...." and start reading off the slides. I mean, I think, ultimately, things were learned. We did have an interesting discussion about how difficult it is to judge where certain manga should be shelved. I spent a lot of time explaining the publishing categories, like shounen, seinen, josei, shoujo--but, I realized that none of that was terribly helpful, since a manga like Chi's Sweet Home (literally the most inoffensive, sweet, simple thing--as story about a cat doing cat things, which Americans normally shelve in the juvenile section) is technically marketed in Japan as seinen, which is aimed at the ADULT (over 18) MALE audience.  I tried to explain that, really, a lot of this has to do with how much kanji is understood by the audience and sometimes, simple, sweet stories are popular among adult men....which says maybe more about how rigid the West is in its marketing strategy?  But, so, as a librarian, knowing that something was originally marketed to adults in Japan isn't often much of a clue as to whether or not it's "kid-friendly" in Western terms, especially since certain expressions sexuality are not nearly as taboo as they are here. (Good example being the masterbation scene in Bleach that was scrubbed for the English-Language release. Newsflash: teenagers masterbate. Americans, however, are too Puritanical to have that KNOWN, I guess. The funny part is that the scene wasn't the least bit explicit, is was much more IMPLICIT, but it was there, and, apparently, that was too much.)

But, anyway, I got an "honorarium" of a twenty-five dollar gift card to my favorite coffeeshop.

I feel like I probably gave them $25 worth of information, so that's probably fair. It's just ironic that at a con, which I do an entire weekend's worth of programming basically for free (minus the price of admission), I would probably have given hundreds of dollars worth of information. On the other hand, most of my audience at con would know what a manga _is_, so we'd already be out of Manga 101 territory.

So, that was my night.  

Otherwise, I've been recovering from an extremely wonderful Thanksgiving spent with good friends. Oh, and I had a birthday in there, too. I'm 51 now, everyone! Whoo!

Yesterday, at work, one of the librarians came over and asked me, "What's this thing you were a...speaker (?) at recently? Or maybe coming up?"  I look at her for a long moment, because, honestly, I have a terrible time remembering the names of people I work with regularly, and I'm also thinking, 'do mundanes know about cons?'  Hesitantly, I say, "Uh, well... I'm going to be a guest of honor at MiniCON over Easter weekend?" She shakes her head, "No, no this would be something recent."  "MarsCON?" I offer in my squeakiest, most uncertain voice. She smiles with recognition. "Yes, that's it!"

Then, without missing a beat, she adds, "What *is* it?"

Which is good, because, briefly, I was totally freaking out that someone outside of our community might actually be aware of the local SF scene. I mean, heaven forbid!  (TEASING. It would be lovely if regular people started knowing more about what we do.)

I've been wracking my brain ever since, trying to figure out how this person even heard of MarsCON in the first place. It occurs to me only just NOW that John, the branch manager at Roseville, called me Saturday morning hoping I could work a few hours. I told him that normally, I totally would, but that I was headed off to a panel at MarsCON. It's entirely possible that John mentioned that in passing (because I gave HIM a quick low-down on what MarsCON was, too) to other folks at the library.  Probably people figured it was something as cool as ComiCON in San Deigo and were shocked that something like that existed here in Minnesota.  (Don't worry, I put that idea to rest.  I told the librarian "You can think ComiCON, but think on a significantly smaller scale with more nerds and fewer celebrities." I think that's fairly accurate, wouldn't you?)

That was one interesting thing that happened at work.

The other is that a few minutes later,  I had to show something to the librarian... regarding their change in how graphic novels are going to be shelved. They've decided, I think wisely, to shelve by title. Okay, let me back up, here's what's dumb is that they kind of did this before, but it was somewhat haphazard. Like, they might collect a single copy of something, like AMERICAN BORN CHINESE and shelve it by author (makes sense) and then put all the SPIDER-MANs together (also makes sense, until you get to the fact that 9 out of 10 circulation staff don't READ comic books, don't bother to check the list to see which titles are series being collected, and don't understand how graphic novels are organized in terms of is Spider-Gwen and Spider-Man title, yes or no?)  The previous "solution" (which actually worked fine for the most part) was to organize first by collected series title (Spider-Man) and then by author (Bendis) and then by volume (number.)  

As any long-time superhero comic book reader will tell you that MOSTLY works, until, of course you hit the end of JMS's run of Spider-Man and the final volume in that series is actually written by someone else entire, since JMS quit over artistic differences.  (which is, of course, very different than manga where the mangaka and the manga are inseparable. You could organize manga by author, since the author never changes. They do those by title, because that's how most readers look for manga.)

To solve this, the libraries figured that they would just switch to volume title and volume number.  Hahahahahaha!  Yeah, that's WORSE. Because they're not collecting individual comic books (which are, for the most part numbered sequentially) but graphic novels, which collect, say issues 147-153, but might be volume 5 of Fraction's run.  So, I pulled out three AMAZING SPIDER-MAN volume 5s to show them this problem. I should have shown them the title page that explains which issues are collected, because honestly, if they organized this by ISSUE numbers they could mostly solve this.

But, the likelihood that they care this much about graphic novels is low. The comic book section will become a complete mess where Spider-Man will have 17 number 5s ALL FROM COMPLETELY DIFFERENT STORY ARCS and readers will be like, "WTF" and probably stop bothering to follow an arc.

Which is too bad, because, frankly, comic books/graphic novels are expensive and I feel like more comic book fans would read collections via the library if they knew they collected them (and how to find the ones they wanted.)  

So, yeah, that was work.

It's What Are You Reading Wednesday and I can report that I read a bit more of Scarlett (I realize that my other problem may be that I seem to have made that book into my bathtub reading book) and two Marvel comic books: Ms. Marvel (Vol.7): Damage Per Second by G. Willow Wilson/Takeshi Miyazawa/Mirka Andolfo and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (Vol. 5): Like I'm the Only Squirrel in the World by Ryan North/Erica Henderson/Will Murray.

I got halfway through volume 3 of another Yotsuba&!. What I need to do with those is make them my car books/carry around to read when you have five minutes books, because they read really fast.  I just keep forgetting about them.

So, about writing.... I had kind of an epiphany today.  It's going to seem like a sad one, but I'm not convinced it really is, but... I'm going to let go of the idea that "I'm going to write something today."  I've been living under the hope that "any day now," I'm going to get my act together and write a novel.  It's time to accept that's not going to happen. I've gotten into a really ugly, self-destructive mental space about it all, and I need to... let go.

I would be worried that this is a sign of depression, but the thought actually makes my soul feel lighter.  

I've had plenty of interest in the things that make me happy, in fact, I've been having a RENEWED interest in the variety of things that make me happy--all my little hobbies, including pen palling and stamp collecting and reading and cooking.  I've been the opposite of lethargic since I decided to let this go a little, and I've been getting a ton of things done around the house.  So, I mean, it's a sad realization in many ways, but it doesn't feel like one motivated by any kind of medical depression.

I'm not going to give up ALL forms of writing, either. I'm still very into my reviewing, in teaching, and critiquing fiction. I think I just need to let certain expectations about what I need to be in order to be a valid and productive human being--and one of them is that I'm any kind of serious about writing a novel any time soon.  I'm not writing.  When people ask me, I'm going to be honest and say, "I've given up on that for the time being.  I'm doing teaching and non-fiction work, instead."

It's not like this decision erases 14 published novels, either.

You can be sad for me, but I think this is the right decision right now.  I think, too, that if I can let go these expectations, I might actually be able, in time, to come back around to writing fiction.

Or not, but I need to be able to be happy with who I am. Right now? I'm not really a fiction writer and that's okay.

I finally got around to reading Lumberjanes written by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis / art by Brooke Allen


Here is a picture of the cover of volume one which you might not be able to see. It features the five main characters: Ripley, April, Jo, Molly, and Mal (in Stevenson style, which is hard to explain so go look at the cover of Nimona). Lumberjanes are a kind of Girl Scouts on steroids estrogen, plus these five particular girls keep running into monsters that are far from the average. Each issue collected starts with a little excerpt from the the Lumberjanes handbook, done in a tongue-in-cheek "Miss Manners" style, about how proper young ladies should behave when confronted with the Wilderness. Each one starts out sounding like something horrible from the 1950s, but ends with implications of bad-assery, ala, "A young lady should be well versed in how to cook. After all, her knife skills may come in handy when confronting a mutated grizzly." (That's my example. Stevenson and Ellis are cleverer than I. Unfortunately, I already returned the volumes or I'd give you something actually from the text. But they're very much in that vein.)

At times, for me, the characters were trying a bit too hard to be... hip? I dunno, I guess I mean whatever you kids are calling 'cool' these days... or clever. Mostly, however, I liked them. Jo was, of course, my favorite even before ( Read more... ) Likewise, Mal and Molly, the lesbian (or at least in love with each other) couple were runners-up.  Of them, though I liked Molly a little better, if only because she seemed nerdy in a way I could relate.  Mal, though, at least, physically looked like me--in college--but, in college, I used to complain that the butchest lesbian we ever saw on TV was Willow from "Buffy," and that wasn't saying much. So, it's really nice to see the butch, punk girls not only being represented but also allowed to secretly/not-so secretly be very NOT butch when it comes to being brave, etc.

The stories themselves impressed me less than the characters.  If you're really hoping for something whiz-bang in terms of storytelling, I'd say go read (or re-read) Nimona. But, if, instead, as one of the Lumberjanes slogans goes "Friendship to the Max" is more your thing, then you will enjoy the heck out of Lumberjanes.

I will say that, in this current political climate, Lumberjanes was exactly what I needed. I got through many nights by pouring myself a hot bath and settling into soak for a good long time while reading Lumberjanes. I used Lumberjanes the way I used "Free! Iwatobi Swim Club" and "Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories" ... which is to say, I turned to them when my brain needed something vaguely mindless, but ultimately happy/satisfying.

Our car is fixed.

It turns out to have been a very easy (and cheap!) repair. I even had my mechanic throw in an oil change, because otherwise it would have been under a hundred bucks.

That was awesome, but a tiny bit of a bummer, because I had decided that at Dunn Bros (which is kitty-corner from the shop and where I had planned to wait out any long repairs) that I would start working on a comic book script. I only got a page or so into it before I got that call that the car was done.

Thing is, I've written a comic book script before. That one is currently in the hands of comic book artist Barb Schultz. It's a 'some day' project for us. Sadly, some time in the 1990s she had asked if I had anything she could illustrate and I had no idea what to offer. Now that she's super-busy teaching at MCAD, I finally have All the Things. (And a grasp on what the hell is a comic book script thanks to my other comic book artist friend Christopher Jones. If only I'd had that then. Ah, well.)

But, after talking to Christopher at MarsCON, I decided that he was right (of course), when he asked: why not get serious about this? Why not write several scripts and see what could happen with them?

Writing comic books, if you don't know this about me, has been a dream of mine since I was twelve. Okay, probably if you had asked me at twelve I would have said either 1) I would actually like to BE a superhero, or 2) I would like do DRAW for Marvel. But, my art is... okay, but nowhere near good enough. My writing on the other hand, is provably "professional," even if not in this particular field. Other novel writers have made the cross over into comic books, so my giving it a try is not a completely unreasonable approach.

This year, by chance, I've also been invited to attend the Wizard World Comic Book Con Minneapolis. I'm going to be reprising the CONvergence Panel: "Loki Can Rule Me Any Day" at 4:30 PM, Saturday, May 2, in M100i. I apparently can have six panelist, but I may have to provide them myself? Having never done this con or a comic con before in my life, I have NO IDEA.It could be very... awkward if it turns out to be just me, but audience participation is a thing. Also, if you KNOW anything about this PLEASE LET ME KNOW. Also if you think you want to go to this and be on this panel with me PLEASE LET ME KNOW. It is possible that the wristband they are providing me can be extended to up to six people. So SERIOUSLY LET ME KNOW if you want to go to this thing and squee Loki with me.

At any rate, being a panelist provides me with a wristband so I intend to take advantage of it. Though I'm not sure what this event is even going to be like. From the looks of it, it's very commercial. But, who knows, right?

I will have to be elsewhere earlier in the day, if you remember. I double-booked this gig with a Loft First Pages in White Bear Lake. But 4:30 is plenty of time for me to dash from one gig to the other. (And the First Pages gig is a paying one, so I couldn't cancel it even if I wanted to.)

Anyway, this push to have a script written is so that if I'm asked, I can say, "Why sure, I have something I could send you."

Because nothing ventured, right?

St. Paul didn't close schools today.

The wind chills are expected to reach -35 F (-37.22 C for my foreign friends--also is this right?  I don't know that my converter can handle minus temps). Winds are expected at 15 to 25 mph. How wind chill works is that it's "the measure of the perceived decrease in air temperature felt by the body on exposed skin due to the flow of air."  Another fun fact is that when the real temperature is -19 F, exposed skin can freeze in one minute.  The REAL temp outside at the moment is -23 F.  (My family thinks the skin freezing thing is false, well, fine: it's still colder here that it is on some parts of Mars.)

Minneapolis closed school.  

For a point of reference, Minneapolis is 10 blocks from my house to the west.  I can drive down University Avenue for less than a minute and arrive in Minneapolis.  

So... Mason is home today because I'm not sure what St. Paul is smoking, but it's not safe.

St. Paul has decided that all absences are excused today, at least, but we would have kept Mason out regardless and he doesn't even wait for a bus.  Why?  Well, firstly, in protest, because most other people do have to wait outside and buses do not run on time always.  Secondly, because the last time we decided to go in temperatures like these our car broke down and Shawn and Mason had to walk several blocks home while I was forced to sit in the car to wait for triple-A.  I was lucky, our break down was tire related and I could have heat, but our car door also sticks open and super-cold temps, so I was really very chilly.  

The decision, St. Paul has said on its Facebook discussion about this, was partly to aid homeless youth for whom school is the one place they can get a regular meal.  At the same time they announced this, a call went out to the neighborhood for warm winter coats for homeless kids because there's a real shortage.  So, St. Paul required homeless kids to leave the warmth of their shelters, wait for the bus without winter coats, just for a meal?  I'm not entirely sure how well all that works in terms of logic. 

So, yeah, that's my morning.

As I just told my friend in Wales when she asked me if I was writing--not yet, I have to drink more coffee and complain about the weather.  It's the Minnesotan thing to do.

:-)

I also thought I do a very mini review of Ms. Marvel #10.  My subscription finally came, btw.  Long ago, I decided to subscribe to Ms. Marvel because at CONvergence many years ago, I was on a panel with Sigrid Ellis, who suggest that the best way to support women comic book writers was to subscribe to the titles they wrote.  So, dutifully, I went to Marvel.com and put in my credit card info.  I was pretty sure I was being ripped off because nothing ever came.  Turns out, I apparently signed on to start AFTER #9.  At any rate, #10 "Generation Why" showed up at my doorstep a couple of days ago.  

( Read more... spoilers.... )

In general, I'm just as happy my subscription starts now.  I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next (though I'm really hoping for an actual defeat for the Inventor soon).  I really like G. Willow Wilson's voice for Kamala.  Like my example under the cut, it's funny and sharp and smart.  Also, I'm growing very fond of Adrian Alphona's art.  It's stylized, but in a way I like?

In my quest to find a new weekly manga to review for our podcast, I keep stumbling into EVEN MORE monthly manga that I enjoy. The latest one is a futuristic, action-adventure manga called Hitogatana. My review is posted here: http://mangakast.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/hitogatana-chapters-1-21-a-review/


The short of it is that I liked it... A LOT.

There are a couple of really cool female characters and I love the premise of fighting teams with mech, "katana," that they download their consciousness into.

Weirdly, the next one I stumbled into that I seem to be reading? A shojo (girls') manga called Tora to Ookami.  I've only ever read an enjoyed one other shojo before and that was Absolute Boyfriend.  Tora to Ookami has no science fiction going for it, so I'm not sure what the appeal is so far.  There are only 12 chapters and it's complete, but I think part of why I got sucked in is that thing that sometimes hooks me... slice-of-life about food.

If I finish it, I'll let you know what I think of it.  Also, Naomi loaned me the latest Ms. Marvel, so I get to find out how I feel about the introduction of Lockjaw....

Okay, after getting some wonderful suggestions for improvement, here's what I came up with for a second draft of my review of the art book that caused me to FREAK OUT about my art skills.

----
Every time I pick up a book about drawing, I end up learning more about myself than I do art.

I ordered Foundations in Comic Book Art: Fundamental Tools and Techniques for Sequential Artists by John Paul Lowe from Blogging for Books this month because I’m a frustrated artist.

As the title suggests, this is a book aimed at teaching fundamentals to beginners. It is a book chock full of exercises aimed at improving basic skills, from learning to draw straight lines to understanding the specialized needs of visual storytelling. The example art throughout is magnificent, and for every lesson there’s a written and visual example. The tone of the book is fairly serious. It is aimed squarely at someone like myself, who is desperately looking a way to ‘level up,’ and gain the extra skill sets needed to become a comic book artist/graphic novelist.

Lowe’s book should have been perfect for me, but after reading through it several times and trying some of the examples, I ended up instead with a visceral emotional response which can be summed up in two words: I suck.

The forward and introduction to Lowe’s book suggest this is the very last feeling that I should’ve come away with. Lowe is very much of the belief (as am I) that art, like any skill, can be learned by anyone regardless of innate talent given enough time and energy.

I’m not sure what it is about this book that left me with that feeling. As I’ve said, this is a textbook aimed at teaching basics. Yet I left it feeling like there was no way I could ever master any of it (despite being far from a novice artist,) and it was all too overwhelming.

I wonder if it wasn’t because all the art shown was so good? This is one of those art textbooks where I’m already green with envy just looking at the instruction images that are supposed to be teaching me to see basic shapes in every day items, and instead of seeing the circles and squares, I’m thinking: damn, look at that cool apple! How come I can’t draw an apple like that??

There are a few playful images in the textbook, but even those examples showcase tremendous skill in background drawing. There were no examples that made me feel: oh, hey, I can do that.

There were no suggestions for work-arounds. Like, for instance, in my own comic book art, I have been known to cheat. I’ll take original photographs and use them as background images:

 

 The other thing that was missing from this book that’s been tremendously helpful for me, as someone who has considered coming into graphic novel writing from the other side is, a script. There’s a very specific kind of writing format that comic book WRITERS use that I’ve been privileged to see thanks to a friend of mine who works for Marvel and DC. What looking at those taught me was how important it is for the writer of comic books (if they’re not the artist) to think visually as well and consider how much text/dialogue can reasonably fit in a panel.

So, while I think this is probably an awesome textbook to go with a class, I’m not entirely sure how well it works for me. There are two huge chapters at the end of this book that are specific to digital programs that I’m not using. I would have preferred that space be used to talk more about the business of comic book writing.

Your mileage may vary.

As I said, my strong emotional reaction to what is essentially a textbook surprised me.

If you've been awake these last few days (and hang out in fannish circles on the Internet), you probably heard that Marvel is introducing a new Thor, a female Thor.  She looks pretty awesome to me, so I'm not quite sure what has certain fans in an uproar.  As a long time Thor reader, there is one single qualification in my mind to be Thor.  You must be worthy of Mjolnir.

For those of you just tuning in, comic book fans will happily explain that Thor not being Thor is so yesterday.  We've had a horse-faced space alien (a fan favorite, in fact,) Beta Ray Bill.  We've had, I kid you not, a frog.  All of those who welded Mjolnir before were WORTHY.  So long as this person is, I could care less.

Different people take on iconic hero titles all the time.  Do you even know how many Captain Americas we've had? At least one of them was insane, another had been a recently brainwashed super-assassin for the Russians.  So, you know, in the average life of a Marvel fan, this kind of thing is very ho-hum.

I was particularly struck by what it means (to me, at least,) to be a Marvel fan as I was finally reading through the Entertainment Weekly article about the new Avengers movie, Age of Ultron.  The article laid out the reason why the movie writers of the script decided not to make Henry Pym the inventor of Ultron.  I read that and thought, like a Marvel fan does, "Huh.  Okay, why not?"

"Huh.  Okay, why not?" could be a Marvel fan's mantra.

How about we reboot the entire mutant franchise when a villain goes back in time to kill Professor X? Huh.  Okay, why not?  (The Age of Apocalypse is still one of my favorite canon AUs.)

How about we replace a ton of your favorite superheroes with Skrull?  Huh.  Okay, why not?  (Secret Invasion. I  was less sold, but you know what, this is Marvel.)

How about the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a super-villain?  Huh.  Okay, why not? (Dark Reign.  Didn't read it, but am planning to try to collect it.)

The list goes on and on and on, and two thirds of my above examples are actually fairly recent developments, and don't even get me started on the whole Ultimates concept.  (For those of you who aren't comic book fans, Ultimates is like Marvel said, I wish we could re-write some stuff, and the PtB said, you can!  We'll just make it an AU fic, but because we're the bosses, it'll be canon because we can just make up a whole new set of titles for you!)

You know, it's like I tell new Attack on Titan fans--don't get too attached and roll with the punches.  Most of the time, the story carries you through all your fears.  Sure, sometimes it's stupid.  But, Marvel has, what now?  At LEAST 60 years of canon, some titles running weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly without interruption in all that times.  There's got to be some stupid given the sheer vastness of canon.  And, writers and artists can change mid-storyline, so Marvel fans have learned to cope in MULTIPLE ways.  I mean, I'll be honest, for me, I've been known not to finish a story because there's been a major writer shake up (still don't know how everything worked out after Straczynski left Amazing Spider-Man).

My friend empty_mirrors asked me how does Marvel deal with people getting older, and I said, "They don't."  Given the mess of the above, there's really no reason to.  Readers have learned to say, "Huh.  Okay, why not?" when confronted by the fact that Reed Richards is stated in canon to have fought in WWII.  Writers tend not to bring that up.  Or, when they do, they get points for coming up with clever work arounds.  Honestly, a lot of us long-time fans appreciate when writers like Bendis slide in a line for Peter Parker like, "Look, how weird can it be?  I once had four arms!"

Because, yes, yes he did.

And that's the other thing Marvel comics are made for readers to come and go from it.  New readers can pick up a title at any point and go from there.  I've done it when I've come back to story lines.  But fans drop out, new fans come in, old fans return, etc., etc.

And sometimes Thor is a woman.