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There's an Old Spice commercial with Bruce Campbell and no one notified me?!? Seriously, I managed to catch the last second of it at the gym the other day and now I can't find it! Not even on youtube! I am very disappointed in you, Intranets.
EDIT: All is forgiven, Intranets. Dear lord, we all wish we could be this cool.
In other news, I'm still loving STARMAN. It occurs to me that Jack Knight strikes me as everything that Kyle Rayner fans love about their favorite Green Lantern. Now, I honestly like Kyle, even though he has two major strikes against him:
1.) He's rarely ever been written well or interestingly or not-annoyingly to me
2.) Many of his fans are every bit as psycho and extreme as many of Hal's fans
That second one still pisses me off that people only remember the crazy Hal fans. Both sides make everyone look bad, and it's a really cheap shot when folks think Hal fans are all send death threats and cut Green Lantern symbols into their flesh or something. And yet, for all his own nutty fans, I liked Kyle as a character. But I hated, hated, hated the writing of his creator Ron Marz. Under Marz, Kyle was an L.A. style Peter Parker with unfunny quips and a vague Keanu air about him. The situations were trite and cliched 90's tripe (women in refrigerators, the costume that was dated even then, etc.), the "hip superhero" dialogue was clearly written by a chubby nerd, and they used the exact same formula for every story arc. Here, see if this sounds familiar:
--Kyle is inexperienced. He encounters some more established hero and/or villain. Kyle gets his butt kicked. Kyle is reminded (or is neurotic about) how he's not as good as Hal Jordan. Kyle stands up like a noble hero and beats the bad guy. Someone tells Kyle how he truly is Green Lantern now. Kyle shrugs and says, "Thanks. I'm *trying.*" Rinse and repeat for eighty fucking issues.
I mean, honestly, Kyle didn't get any real character development until Judd Winnick took over. Judd gave Kyle more growth in six issues than he'd gotten over the previous five years. Problem is, I don't like Winnick's writing anyway. He's too damn sentimental, too whiny liberal, and his obsessions with Asian women and homosexuals (and twice now, they've been one and the same! Twice!) is rather tedious. Seriously, I could write a whole other rant about how cheap and forced the whole "Let's introduce a gay character into GREEN LANTERN" idea was. But I'm ranting about Kyle here, for the three or so readers out there who are interested.
Honestly, the only time I've felt Kyle Rayner's ever been written up to the potential of his character was by Grant Morrison. Morrison, bizarrely enough for such a Superman fan, dislikes Hal a good deal and very much favors Kyle. His vocalness in this opinion over the years should have turned me off, but godDAMN, he wrote Kyle well. The character was fresh, he was actually funny, he wasn't so damn whiny or angsty or wallowing in "Can I ever live up to the legacy? Wank wank wank." For the first time, Kyle was actually the Green Lantern.
He honestly lived up to those attributes Kyle fans list off whenever they explain why they prefer the character to all the other GLs: he's imperfect, he's an artist, he's cool, he's a smartass, and he's "relatable." Personally, that last one still makes me itch. "Relatable?" Since when should that be the most important attribute to a good character? 99% of comic fans can't truly relate to Wolverine or Batman, I'm guessing.
And yet, that's why I am so interested in Jack Knight from STARMAN. Like Kyle, he's a black-haired, snarky, smartass, cool-but-still-a-bit-of-a-dork, Gen-X, pop-culture-spouting young dude trying to fill another guy's shoes. But where Kyle's so often struck me as whiny, angsty, and annoying, Jack is transcendent, reflective, and poetic.
Maybe it's because I'm so neurotic and insecure on my own that I don't care to have those attributes in my comic character. Maybe it's because Jack Knight is, by his own admission, an elitist snob with a taste for Woody Allen movies and a rich sense of nostalgia, even as he's looking forward. And that... is something to which I can very much relate.
EDIT: All is forgiven, Intranets. Dear lord, we all wish we could be this cool.
In other news, I'm still loving STARMAN. It occurs to me that Jack Knight strikes me as everything that Kyle Rayner fans love about their favorite Green Lantern. Now, I honestly like Kyle, even though he has two major strikes against him:
1.) He's rarely ever been written well or interestingly or not-annoyingly to me
2.) Many of his fans are every bit as psycho and extreme as many of Hal's fans
That second one still pisses me off that people only remember the crazy Hal fans. Both sides make everyone look bad, and it's a really cheap shot when folks think Hal fans are all send death threats and cut Green Lantern symbols into their flesh or something. And yet, for all his own nutty fans, I liked Kyle as a character. But I hated, hated, hated the writing of his creator Ron Marz. Under Marz, Kyle was an L.A. style Peter Parker with unfunny quips and a vague Keanu air about him. The situations were trite and cliched 90's tripe (women in refrigerators, the costume that was dated even then, etc.), the "hip superhero" dialogue was clearly written by a chubby nerd, and they used the exact same formula for every story arc. Here, see if this sounds familiar:
--Kyle is inexperienced. He encounters some more established hero and/or villain. Kyle gets his butt kicked. Kyle is reminded (or is neurotic about) how he's not as good as Hal Jordan. Kyle stands up like a noble hero and beats the bad guy. Someone tells Kyle how he truly is Green Lantern now. Kyle shrugs and says, "Thanks. I'm *trying.*" Rinse and repeat for eighty fucking issues.
I mean, honestly, Kyle didn't get any real character development until Judd Winnick took over. Judd gave Kyle more growth in six issues than he'd gotten over the previous five years. Problem is, I don't like Winnick's writing anyway. He's too damn sentimental, too whiny liberal, and his obsessions with Asian women and homosexuals (and twice now, they've been one and the same! Twice!) is rather tedious. Seriously, I could write a whole other rant about how cheap and forced the whole "Let's introduce a gay character into GREEN LANTERN" idea was. But I'm ranting about Kyle here, for the three or so readers out there who are interested.
Honestly, the only time I've felt Kyle Rayner's ever been written up to the potential of his character was by Grant Morrison. Morrison, bizarrely enough for such a Superman fan, dislikes Hal a good deal and very much favors Kyle. His vocalness in this opinion over the years should have turned me off, but godDAMN, he wrote Kyle well. The character was fresh, he was actually funny, he wasn't so damn whiny or angsty or wallowing in "Can I ever live up to the legacy? Wank wank wank." For the first time, Kyle was actually the Green Lantern.
He honestly lived up to those attributes Kyle fans list off whenever they explain why they prefer the character to all the other GLs: he's imperfect, he's an artist, he's cool, he's a smartass, and he's "relatable." Personally, that last one still makes me itch. "Relatable?" Since when should that be the most important attribute to a good character? 99% of comic fans can't truly relate to Wolverine or Batman, I'm guessing.
And yet, that's why I am so interested in Jack Knight from STARMAN. Like Kyle, he's a black-haired, snarky, smartass, cool-but-still-a-bit-of-a-dork, Gen-X, pop-culture-spouting young dude trying to fill another guy's shoes. But where Kyle's so often struck me as whiny, angsty, and annoying, Jack is transcendent, reflective, and poetic.
Maybe it's because I'm so neurotic and insecure on my own that I don't care to have those attributes in my comic character. Maybe it's because Jack Knight is, by his own admission, an elitist snob with a taste for Woody Allen movies and a rich sense of nostalgia, even as he's looking forward. And that... is something to which I can very much relate.
