Aliens, Apes, and Salad

I just had to read this volume of Power Girl. The charming art montage on the cover, paired with the title (Aliens and Apes) made it irresistible. I have to admit, however, that my expectations weren't very high. I read Power Girl: The New Beginning, and found it a bit hard to get through, especially the fight sequences.

Aliens and Apes is absolutely pitch perfect. It's funny, action-packed, and Power Girl is a compelling heroine. I especially loved her interactions with her best friend, Terra, whom she just happens to have to rescue from certain doom! Oh, and Power Girl's cat is super cute, too. 

It's been a rough week, so I haven't caught up on the single issue comics I purchased last Wednesday. I did read Animal Man #6 and Memorial #2.

The last issue of Animal Man ended on quite a cliffhanger. This issue takes a surprising detour -- I don't want to reveal any spoilers, but let me just say that it was nothing I was expecting. This comic book is BRILLIANT. Each issue gets better and better. 

I can't say the same thing about Memorial #2. I read the first issue, and found the writing clunky and the plot bland. I love the idea of the premise -- an ever expansive fairy tale, but on paper it just didn't appeal to me. I wasn't planning on picking up the second issue, but an interview with the writer and artist on War Rocket Ajax convinced me to give it another try. 

Alas, it was just more of the same. The protagonist and her talking cat companion were not interesting enough for me to want to read on. This is a shame, because I'm all for supporting comic books featuring female leads. 

Oh well. At least I had some great food lately. On Saturday night, J and I went to a friend's house for dinner. We brought a split pea soup (you can see a photograph of this soup from a few weeks ago), and our friend made a lovely Mango and Heart of Palm Salad with a Lime Vinaigrette. It was a nice alternative from the traditional tomato/lettuce salad.

Last night I was feeling sluggish, so I decided to give my system a nice jolt of energy by making a big pot of Creemy Kale Soup from Jae Steele's Ripe From Around Here. Mmm. There's really nothing better than kale. Here, pureed with zucchini and onions, the kale had an almost cilantro-ish taste. 

Oh yeah, and I finished that vest. Which turned out to be a short-sleeed knitted top instead. I'll post pictures next time, I promise!

Hellboy, Fables, What's Ahead

Here's the graphic novels I've been reading this week:

 

Hellboy: Seed of Destruction! I received this for a late Christmas present in the mail from my brother. Thanks Reg! Now this is a good introduction into the Hellboy/B.P.R.D universe. This book is all about Hellboy's origin, complete with Nazis, a Rasputin-like villain, and of course Hellboy's mysterious red right hand. The first movie was loosely based on the events in the book, so there were no surprises. Still, this was a satisfying read.

I've been on quite a Fables roll. After a long hiatus, I read three graphic novels in the past three weeks. Fables: War and Pieces is about the events leading up to and encompassing Fabletown's war against the Adversary. Remember when I complained about the lack of interesting female characters in Sons of Empire? Well, War and Pieces makes up for this with Cinderella, Fabletown's spy/assassin! She is sent out on a mission to retrieve a certain "package," and comes across all kinds of peril along the way. But nothing keeps Cinderella down! 

Looks can be deceiving in Fables, and this is one of my favorite things about the series. Unassuming characters (a janitor, a scrawny Fable always toting a trumpet) evolve to become kings or impressive warriors. In War and Pieces, Beauty complains about Cinderella's involvement in their war strategies. Why should Cindy be entrusted with such an important mission? She only owns a shoe store, after all. She's just another pretty face. Cinderella proves her to be so very, very wrong.

Speaking of wonderful women characters, Sue of DC Women Kicking Ass has started a new blog, This Is What Women in Superhero Comics Should Be. Anyone can submit pictures and panels of their favorite women characters. As soon as I figure out how to do it (I'm a bit tech unsavvy), I'm going to submit something. I encourage you to do the same. 

I went to the comic book store last night and picked up copies of the latest Animal Man, Memorial, Fatale, Rachel Rising, and Alpha Girl. I'll let you know what I think about these comic books in my next post.

The Isla Wrap

It was all about the knitting this weekend. I put the vest on hold to knit a quick wrap, and then picked up the vest again.

Pattern: Isla Wrap by Jessica Vinson (you can find this for free on Ravelry)
Needle: US 8
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Mediumweight (Rosemary Rocks colorway)

I was running out of yarn, so I omitted two repeats of the folded neck band. I had to block this aggressively to get the length right, but am happy with how it turned out. And I love this yarn! Blue Moon Fiber Arts' colorways are consistently beautiful. 

I always feel sneaky when I knit something other than socks with sockweight yarn. :)

Here is the progress I've made with the vest. 

I'm in the middle of reading Fables: The Good Prince and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. This may sound like a weird combination of reading material, but they work surprisingly well together.

Photo Anatomy of a Saturday

Sleeping cat.

New yarn (after a three month yarn diet!)

WIP (Isla Wrap)

Second sleeping cat.

Meat-less, cheese-less taco night.

Vest

Look! Another successful knitting project. This one only took me two days to knit. It has a nice, rustic look to it, but unfortunately I don't have anything at all to wear with it, so it has to languish away in the closet for now.The girl modeling the vest in Classic Knits is wearing a cap-sleeved, flowery blouse on underneath, so that may be the route to go. I'm pretty crappy when it comes to outfit planning and accessorizing. 

Knitterly Specs:

Project: Tank Top from Erika Knight's Classic Knits

Yarn: Knit Picks Cadena

Needle: 15

The Cadena yarn is a bulky yarn, whereas the pattern calls for super bulky. Otherwise, I didn't make any changes or alterations. 

My latest project is ... another vest! This one is in a DK yarn with a much smaller gauge. I'm using Schulana Sierra yarn, which has been taunting me from my stash ever since I bought it five months ago.

My only concern is that this will be way too bright and colorful a vest for me to wear out in public. Hopefully that's not the case.

Cassandra Cain and B.P.R.D.

I'm having a hard time tracking down some of Cass Cain's Batgirl titles. Most of them are out of print. My library has a few titles available, but I'm going to have to request them from different branches. I did get my eager little hands on a copy of Batgirl: Death Wish by Kelley Puckett and Chuck Dixon. 

I'm not in love with the art in this one, but the story remains very solid. We learn more about Cass' unsavory upbringing and the guilt she carries from her past. Oracle is still a major player  (yay!), and there is a charming mini-adventure involving Spoiler, the girl who will eventually take Cass' place as Batgirl. Cass also has a "death match" with Lady Shiva, fulfilling her promise from the last book (one death match, in exchange for Shiva's help in repairing Cass' preternatural sensory/empathic skills). Great stuff.

In addition to the Batgirl/Batfamily world, I'm starting to delve into Hellboy country. I enjoyed the Hellboy movies, and kept hearing great things about Mike Mignola's Hellboy/B.P.R.D books. To date I've read two of the B.P.R.D books, Being Human and Hell on Earth: New World.

Being Human is a stand-alone collection, so this was a good place to start. It didn't hurt that one of the stories featured Liz Sherman, a pyrokinetic agent and my favorite character from the films. After accidentally killing her family, Liz was sent to the B.P.R.D headquarters for monitoring, and the scientists/agents there eventually help her to control her powers. In "The Dead Remembered," Liz goes on her first adventure, one involving a malevolent spirit from the Salem Witch trial. She also begins to come to terms with her past, and her role in B.P.R.D.

In Hell on Earth: New World, Liz is reported as missing, and I slowly realize that the reason why there is a #1 on the spine is not because it's #1 in the B.P.R.D. adventures, but #1 in the Hell on Earth sequence of events. Which apparently means that I've skipped, oh, about 15 trade paperbacks worth of character development, missions, and plot lines. Sigh.

This is not to say that Hell on Earth: New World wasn't a compelling read. There's events of apocalyptic proportions happening all over the world, and Houston has apparently been wiped off the map. The B.P.R.D team is splintered, weary from damage control. But I'm sure it would have been a much better read if I had known which #1 to pick up first. Met all the characters properly, witnessed what caused these massive catastrophes. You know, good stuff like that.

That's my biggest complaint about the comic book world. It's so hard to figure out where to start. Hellboy and B.P.R.D. are pretty self-contained, but even then a girl can get confused if there are two #1's in the B.P.R.D books, but only one (the wrong one!) on the local comic book shelves. It gets even harder to wade through the superhero worlds of DC and Marvel. Say I really do want to read all about Barbara Gordon's adventures as Batgirl and Oracle? Where do I start? Where is the beginning? Oracle is in Birds of Prey, but she's in Cass Cain's Batgirl books too. What about Stephanie Brown's run? What about the regular Batman books? Which Batman books? They appear to be a hundred million, and there are more than one Batman. 

Wikipedia has been of some help, but even that can get confusing. Here's the entry on Barbara Gordon. See what I mean?

And Yet More Soup

I wasn't kidding when I wrote earlier that I am in major SOUP mode. J and I have had soup for the past two nights now. Last night was celery and red potato soup.

I improvised this soup, using my go-to cream of potato soup recipe for a starting point. I halved the amount of potatoes I'd normally use, and added five stalks of celery. I think I overcooked the celery a little, but otherwise it tasted great. Oh, and I've been using rice milk lately in cream soups. I think it has a more "milky" hue than soy milk does, though I honestly can't taste a difference between the two.

J and I didn't cook anything tonight. Instead we went to Salem's Market and Grill and brought home an enormous container of lentil soup. I love Salem's. Everything I've ever tried there has been fresh and delicious, and the lentil soup is no exception. It has a lovely spicy aftertaste. Yum!

In comic book news, I have started my foray into the Batgirl universe by reading Kelley Puckett's Batgirl: A Knight Alone. According to Wikipedia, this is actually the second trade paperback in Cassandra Cain's legacy as Batgirl. I couldn't find the first book, A Silent Running, so just crossed my fingers and hoped that not knowing what the hell was going on wouldn't lessen my reading enjoyment.

It really didn't. Cassandra Cain is not much of a talker, and apparently spent most of her childhood training to be an assassin. I don't know if she was kidnapped from her family at a young age or not, but there's definitely something off about her upbringing (you know, besides the obvious). And she kicks ass so hard. Like Barbara Gordon in the new rebooted Batgirl series, Cass Cain is a teenager, but she isn't the giggling, whining sort. She definitely has a few issues to work through, but what makes her so compelling is a stoicism mixed in with fleeting moments of vulnerability.

Oh, and she's Asian! Yay for Asian superheroes! 

And for most of the book, she was staying with Oracle!!! Yes, this is my first introduction to Oracle, aka Barbara Gordon, the Barbara Gordon who existed before the New 52 reboot. She doesn't do much in this arc except express concern for Cass' wellbeing, but I still felt happy every time she appeared in the panels.

One thing I am still trying to figure out. Maybe this is an extremely naive question, but why is it so important that superheroes keep their identities secret? There is a storyline in A Knight Alone when Cass' identity is potentially compromised. It was also a major theme in the Gotham City Sirens book I read. I just don't understand why this is such a big deal. If you know, leave me a comment.