didn't mean to have a journal

www.themarysue.com/matt-smith-batman/

 I stumbled upon this cute comic :)

The Adventures of SuperHero Girl - she lives in Canada and fights largely mundane crime in a good humoured way - and I love the creator commentaries at the bottom of each strip, which show how often she was not thinking what I would have expected her to be thinking when she wrote it.

superherogirladventures.blogspot.com/

 Felix needs to know! Obviously they did once, at the point before they mutated. Presumably they now grow clones in vats....? Is there a definitive answer please!?

 I'm sure most of you fangirls out there have already heard, but DC is doing something that looks interesting.... I read about it here....

www.themarysue.com/dc-comics-changes/

 Sigh. The moment has come to admit it. I am in love with Spider-Man. I can tell because reading it makes me happy. I came to it late, but by God I'm hooked now.

 This was my laugh-out-loud moment today, so I had to share, even though I'm probably breaking every copyright law in existence.

 I mentioned my sadness over the death of Elisabeth Sladen.

Much has been said in the media about Sladen's defining role as a Dr Who companion, and I think we all appreciate her very fine performance within the constraints of the time - yes, many scripts were dodgy, many effects and costumes were worse - but Sarah Jane was not only real, consistent, and convincing, she continually fought to keep her feminist credentials clearly before the viewer, when so many companions before and since have had their supposed personas kinda swallowed up by indifferent writing.  I think this is much to the credit of Elisabeth Sladen, and I think her constant challenging of the chauvinist attitudes around her - the Doctor, Harry (whose arse she totally kicked) and most especially the dear old Brigadier - while still conveying the deep affection the characters had for one another, was masterly.

Though perhaps we shouldn't use the word 'masterly' talking about Dr Who.

Much more important to me, however, as I have been thinking about it, is Sladen's role in the Sarah Jane adventures. I think the fact that she was given the opportunity, as a woman, in her late fifties, to front a science-fiction adventure show, is frankly staggering, and I think few other women would have been or will be again, given that opportunity. The popularity of the show attests to how well she carried it off. I know my kids have never for a second questioned her leading role as an arse-kicker of aliens, her knowledge and expertise, the fact that she was old enough to be their grandmother and yet fronting an action show aimed at teens and pre-teens. Never questioned it. 

What I like about Sarah Jane in her later years, is that she pulled off this spectacular feat not by aping the young 'uns, no, and not by aping the Doctor either. Where the Doctor would leap in, Sarah Jane would hold back. Why? Because she's a responsible grown up, she's a mum, and she's thinking about the safety of others all the time. And yet she kicks arse. Is she boring? Hell no! But the governing principle of her life is that she is Luke's mum, and everything that happens in Sarah Jane comes through that prism. This is what an older, female action hero is like, and I must say it has a depth lacking in say, the Harrison Ford who appears to have had no development in maturity from the original Indiana Jones to the latest. It is a human and convincing way to have adventures.

I have had conversations with cassiphone on the difficulty of writing mum fiction. By which we mean cool, YA, speculative type fiction, not the sort that appears in Angus & Robertson catalogues at Mothers' Day with lashings of pink and roses on the cover. Generally adventures in fiction are had away from the parents, and parents usually are kept in the dark, cast in the role of unbelievers, kiboshers of fun, at the very best the unsuspecting providers of ginger beer for secretive adventurers. Parents are an absence in children's adventure stories. It is very hard to develop an interesting narrative where a mum, as a mum, can play a central role, without (usually) being some kind of damaged Sarah Connor type. But Elisabeth Sladen did it, she did it well, and she damn well went on doing it until the day she died, and all I can hope is that her example has opened the door to new ways of doing things, new opportunities for older actresses to get interesting roles, and more diverse models of what constitutes a heroine in our society, because Sarah Jane was one. She was a mum at the heart of the adventure.

 

 I promised Tansy I would blog this, so here goes. Don't expect quality, I'm watching the telly for a start.

I picked up China Mieville's Un Lun Dun at the library, under the mistaken beliefs that
1) it was steampunk, and 
2) China Mieville was a woman, coz I'd been feeling a bit gender-biased in my reading.

Instead, it turns out that there are blokes out there called China, and that Un Lun Dun was really more akin to a modern Alice in Wonderland urban fantasy kind of production.

I found it very slow to get into; this was partly because the main characters are called Zanna and Deeba, which I found irksome. Eventually, lured by a broken umbrella, they make their way to London's dark twin, the abcity UnLondon, where Zanna, the Shwazzy (choisi - chosen one) is expected to save the unciviisation from unusually militant and personalised smog. 

Once it hits UnLondon, the story really does get interesting.

At a superficial level, this is because Mieville piles bizarre character on bizarre character, and incident on incident, in such a throwaway manner that you feel he has crazy ideas to spare, and that another writer would have got a good ten books out of the material he is lobbing around so carelessly (and perhaps that his editor was overwhelmed by the volume - it is a damn long book, especially for kids). He plays with words quite literally - some of his best characters are words, or dressed in words, or just bad puns. The warriors who the girls early encounter, for example, are binjas - garbage bins with martial arts skills - note one on the cover. Characters include a bird whose cage includes a body to walk it around, a school of fish in a diving suit, and a half-ghost who has to leave his clothes behind to go through walls. There are rooftop dwellers whose roofs sit directly on the ground, houses in bizarre shapes, a moving bridge (the Pons Absconditus) and words that come to life. The plethora of material could be distracting, but becomes an effective phantasmagoria, more of an atmosphere than a book.

At a deeper level, Mieville is playing with the traditional form of this type of story, starting from his decision to abandon the tall blonde Shwazzy after her first reckless encounter, and leave the action to the 'comic sidekick' Deeba, her unreliable book of Shwazzy prophecies ("the Book"), and her lovable animated milk carton, Curdle. Deeba is unconcerned with convention, and focuses on getting the job done, at the expense (thank goodness, did I mention how long this book is?) of the quest form - get a to get b to get c to get d to get the magical UnGun which will allow us to defeat the evil smog? I think not! - instead, Deeba convinces the guardians of the final UnGun that what they really want is the thing she managed to get first. Deeba's refreshing ability to think outside convention brings the book a life and conviction.

In the end, it is entirely appropriate that the UnChosen One has the adventure and saves the day, while the actual Shwazzy is lying on a couch at home with amnesia.

Actually, it does make Alice look rather tame.

Find it here. Inigo has fallen in love :)

www.sadena.com/BBC-Radio/H2G2/