Healy's Journal

This week on comment_fic had two days themed around short fills, so I could actually get around to some of them on time! (I'm a really slow writer, guys.)

Monday's theme was 1 Sentence, and I did around (quick count here) 10 of them, which isn't a bad number at all. Some of the ones I'm most proud of:

Justice League Cartoon, Justice League, affection
Batman: TAS, Harley Quinn/Bruce Wayne, elephant
DCU (any), any Rogue, Get Out of Jail Free card (Filled with Gorilla Grodd.)
any. any/any. is this a date? (Filled with Steven Universe, Pearl/MAY-OR DEW-EY.) (am I going to ship-jail now?)
DCU, Harley Quinn/+any, brainy

Then, Tuesday's theme was 10 Words. I did waaay less fills for this one; apparently I don't do as well with a stricter word limit. Here are two I like in particular:

DCU, any, night sky
Any, Any, secret ambitions (Filled with Aspel.)

I was also working on a longer work this week, but I wasn't feeling it, so I shelved it; I can always come back to it later, right? Many thanks to the people at comment_fic for their prompts and fills this week!

Currently I'm reading Final Fantasy 5 (GBA version).

What? It's an RPG, it's got text and words. It's got a lot of words.

( Who wants to read me blog about Final Fantasy 5? None of you? )

Also, an actual book I am reading this week is Jeph Loeb and Time Sale's Batman: The Long Halloween. This is actually a re-read; I read it before and kinda hated it but all the details of it slipped outta my head the instant I put it down, so I could never put my finger on why. Looking at it now, I think it's partly because it's got such a sour, cynical tone. I'm not bothered by the only two Frank Miller Batman books I've read, though (Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One), and while you could argue that tonally they're cut from the same cloth, I think the difference for me is that Frank Miller is much more knowing, or perhaps honest, about the effects he's reaching for; he knows what he's doing when he makes the Mutants such horrible S.O.B.s, he knows why he's making the Gotham Police Department so incredibly corrupt. Loeb, though, seems to be adding in these dark, gritty details because what else do you do for a dark, gritty story? That's why, even though the Frank Miller books have objectively worse shit going on, The Long Halloween feels meaner to me.

(Another thing I don't like is how played out the whole thing feels; everything in the story has been done elsewhere, and likely done better. Sure, all your favorite villains are there, but their schtick is so overdone you'll be begging for their part to be over. I guess that's what makes it such a great beginner Batman story, though, since it's likely a new fan wouldn't be bothered by this. As I remember some guy on a web forum saying, even the worst Batman stories still feature Batman punching all the bad guys until there are no bad guys left to punch.)

I won't deny it hits a couple grace notes for me, and I do like the art, but overall this re-read of Long Halloween didn't change my opinion of it much.

Next time, on Currently Reading Whenever I Get These Things Out: Next week I'll probably review Comic Book Rebels, by Stanley Wiater and Stephen Bissette. (Hooray, a straight answer this time!) It's a series of interviews with famous comic book personalities from the early 90s. I was gonna review it this week, but I had barely begun it by the time I wrote this post. Next week, though!