a turquoise flower

Day Ten: Top Five Reasons You Feel The Way You Do Right Now
Well, I'm always feeling fannish so I'll go with that feeling (as opposed to bored--because I'm on break--and cranky as hell because it's hot and it's summer and those two things and I don't go well together) and tell you now it's because:

1. Watching Star Trek: The Original Series for the first time. (I'm looking forward to the other incarnations of the franchise just because I'm a complete-ist. I've seen random bits of TNG and Voyage and loved them, but it'll be fascinating to go back and watch them from the beginning, and get caught up with the animated series, DS9, and Enterprise.)
2. Pretty much fell head over heels in love with Haven too.
3. And same goes for "Welcome to Night Vale" even though I'm the slowest person ever to catch up with the series.
4. Sinbad started out so awesome, but then it started dragging and now it's kinda a chore to watch it because I'm not very much invested in this world, which is a drag and I so very much wanted to love this show and I did. For like five episodes? But then my most favorite character, Nala, left the show, and now it's become well...so much more about Sinbad and how the secondary characters are all there to make him a better person and that gets tiring after a while. (I'm not saying Sinbad isn't an interesting character, just that the secondary characters are interesting as well, and the world established is interesting, yet the execution falls flat.)
5. I don't keep up with it as much as I'd like to (a lack of funds and just getting to the comic store), but I am so bummed out my absolute favorite (well, one of my absolute favorites) comic about my favorite mutants--X-Factor by Peter David--is getting cancelled. To me, it seems like a bad move on Marvel's part because this is a book that does sell well, although maybe not as well as Marvel would like or whatever they're thinking by ending it.

from: X-Factor #207
larger image: http://oi45.tinypic.com/bhlgcp.jpg

X-Factor the comic is a spin-off of the X-Men title featuring characters from the X-Men stories. (Just trying to list all the X-Men titles since the inception of the comic in the '60s is enough to make your head spin off [god that was an unintentional pun].)

I have a time hard describing X-Factor beyond that. I first jumped in with like issue #215 and then went back to only issue #200 to get caught up and random two digit issues since then. Another reason why it's difficult is the title changed so much since it was first published in 1986. The way to go about describing it, as I know it in its current formation, is that it's basically a mutant detective agency (that's the simplest answer).

Throughout its 20+ years of publication, the team roster has changed a lot. First it was comprised of the original five X-men - Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Angel, and Iceman; then these five went their separate ways then came back, then they were mutant-hunters who pretended to be normal people to hunt mutants only to secretly train them to be "normal" and reintegrate them back into society (we can guess how well that went with the mutant community). Then they turned into a government team with all-new members for the first eight years in the beginning of the '90s - with some of the members also in the current run of the series now, Multiple Man, Polaris, Havok, Wolfsbane and Strong Guy; they then changed members again; then they were a Mutant Civil Rights Task Force but that is confusing as all hell even though it was only a 4-issue limited miniseries and finally we come to its current manifestation as a detective agency led by Multiple Man called X-Factor Investigations. -deep breath- Yep, that was a brief summary from Wikipedia, god bless it.

This post was inspired by coffeeandwizards' Nine Favorite Covers of 2012. Coffee and Wizards is a wonderful book blog run by the awesome goddess_of_ice and I thought it'd be interesting to do a list of awesome comic covers. I couldn't confine myself to just 2012 comics (since I haven't read a lot of comics just published this year, except for Fairest, that was published in 2012) but I did confine myself to mostly recent issues. (I have read most of these except for the last two, but the covers are making me want to read them!)

( a mish-mash of stuff that's not artfully done but I don't care a whole lot )

So yesterday I went to the comic store for Free Comic Book Day. I got a bag of goodies including a sample where Captain America & Thor team-up, an Amazing Spider-Man comic, another team up comic between Young Justice and Batman, a Green Lantern comic, and an Archie comic featuring Betty and Veronica and Sonic The HedgeHog. I only read the Captain American & Thor, Amazing Spider-Man, and Archie comics, will probably get to the others sometime soon. Archie comics as a whole don't interest me and this free comic read more for like little kids, but I loved the Amazing Spider-Man and Cap & Thor comics. HOLY MOLY is all I can say. (But I'm naturally a Spider-Man fan so it was a guarantee I'd like it and the Cap & Thor comic I only gave it a try because there was a post for it at scans_daily and I realized what I've been missing by not reading it. SO MUCH GOODNESS IN SO FEW PAGES!! Half the fun of reading comics is having other people to talk about it with, because again, SO MUCH GOODNESS and it needs to be shared. SO PLEASE PLEASE GIVE COMICS A TRY. I hardly know anybody in RL who is into comics - or on here either - and that is a shame because, trust me, COMICS ARE AWESOME, COMICS ARE THE BEST. I know they don't have "literary" merit like classic novels like War & Peace, Pride & Prejudice, Life of PI, and numerous others but that doesn't mean their stories aren't as good as some that are found in those "literary" books.)

And then after getting my free comics, I brought Young Avengers & Runaways: Civil War, all four issues of the crossover between the YA and the Runaways. I believe I already talked some about how freakin' awesome Runaways comics are and I knew there was a crossover between them and the YA - which is another awesome comic about teenagers but one I don't have in my collection currently and have only seen certain scans of and not the whole thing so I wanted to refrain from talking about it until I start reading it from the beginning - and knew I had to get it.

And then I found out my local comic store also carries current issues of X-Factor (!!!!!!!). So, as a late birthday present for myself, I brought:
#200
#203
#207
#208
#209
#211
#215
#216

(I definitely want to complete my meager collection of X-Factor comics so will definitely go back and try to find the ones I'm missing - unfortunately these were all the ones I could find at the store - well these and some others like issues #38-#45, but I didn't know what these issues were about so I held off on buying them for now.)

I had already read these issues online before but albeit illegally. So am now supporting the artists and writers who work on them because that'd be the right thing to do (and I totally know I'd get my money's worth because I had already previewed them and liked them, but that's not the major point here). *nods*

Look at me, supporting Peter David and other awesome comic artists and writers by buying their comics! Which everyone should do if it's feasible.

(It was weird the comic store didn't have X-Factor #217 as it was published a month ago; I really wanted this current issue. I hope they get it soon and that it's just a case of it being delayed getting here and not something HORRIBLE. BECAUSE THERE'S A CAMEO BY SPIDER-MAN. SPIDER-MAN AND X-FACTOR!!!! WHY WOULD ANYONE BE SURPRISED I'M A FANGIRL?!! Oh and there's a cameo by Black Cat too who's awesome but who I haven't read too much about but MAINLY IT'S PETERRRRRRR!!! WHO HAS MY HEART!! And issue #218 came out sometime in the last week of April so am thinking will have to wait a while to get that issue too. :(( Pooey. I don't think I'm ever gonna be ready to read it though because it looks like they might kill off one of the main characters - GUIDO!!!!!!!! HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO YOU?!!! ARE YOU REALLY GONNA DIEEEEE??? YOU CAN'T???!! MAN, I NEED THIS ISSUE LIKE YESTERDAY!@! And I really want to find out why there are people trying to kill Jameson. I mean, there's no mystery that Jameson has enemies, but still...exciting stuff.)

So after blowing about $36 on comics, I thought I didn't have any more money left so I thought I couldn't get the book I was hoping to get by now. (It was Meg Cabot's Abandon. Ah well, maybe next month.) But I did find some twenty dollar bills at the bottom of my bag after I got home so I definitely could've brought it right then and there and I'm kicking myself now for not buying it. Ah, well, I guess I get some points for exercising some control.

Awesome people at scans_daily at Dreamwidth have already scanned some awesome pictures from the free comic sample of Amazing Spider-Man: here and Cap & Thor: here with cameos from Merlin & King Arthur. Wheeeeeeeeee!

~*~

Oh, and for my birthday, I got a lot of awesome things including two new pairs of shoes from my parents, some money from my brother, and a lovely fanart piece of John and Rodney by the lovely and awesome ribbon_purple. :D So yeah, I didn't technically celebrate it as I was freaking out about an English presentation I had to do that fell exactly on my birthday and I'm buried now in studying for finals that start tomorrow. But it was a lovely way to enter my 20th year of being alive (20 freakin' years old!!!!! Man it's scaring writing that.)

~*~

So yesterday was filled with a lot of excitement and fangirly squeals and me huggling my new, shiny comics even though I should've been studying. Although, remind me to never wear high-heeled shoes again. Because, while they're awesome and adorable and make me about two inches taller, they kill my feet when I have to go traipsing all over the city for extended periods of time. (They weren't killing me on my way to the comic store, just on my way back home so there was that small miracle. Ugh, why must you adorable shoes betray me so??) *still massaging her poor toesies and her battered ankles 24 hours later* Man, the things I endure for my comics obsession...