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Jordan’s Favorite Things of 2015

You didn’t ask for it. You didn’t want it. You don’t even care that it’s here. But here it is, so you might as well read it: It’s Jordan’s Favorite Things of 2015!

So, I thought it would be fun to do a Top One list from a bunch of different mediums and then add a brief paragraph (or two, or three) explaining why they are the Top One Thing of their respective mediums. So here we go!

Game: Undertale by Toby Fox

Every year, I replay Bastion by Supergiant Games, and then semi-jokingly declare it the best game of that year. Because it’s the best game that mankind has ever created. This year, however, I didn’t even feel compelled to make that joke (though I did replay Bastion on PS4 and get all the trophies. Still the best!) because Undertale is So. Damn. Wonderful.

I feel like if you care about video games in any serious way, you at least kind of know what Undertale is. You’ve certainly HEARD of it, but maybe you know nothing about it. That’s because Undertale is that most frustrating of things to recommend; the kind of thing that must be experienced relatively blind to truly experience. But here’s what I can say: Undertale is a JRPG that gets rid of all the annoying bullshit that plagues the genre. No grinding, an interesting combat system, and it’s only like 5 hours for a single playthrough (though you will do at least two, trust me).

But what truly sets Undertale apart is its writing, music, and commitment to subtle player choice that really matters (we’re talking player choice so subtle that you might not even realized you made a choice until you beat the game or read the wiki). The characters and world are so memorable that you honestly feel like the characters in this world are your friends by the time it’s done, and I know how hokey and stupid that sounds, but it’s true. If you have a heart, Undertale will touch it.

The game is $10. Play it.

Honorable Mention: Tales from the Borderlands, Ori and the Blind Forest, Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows.

Book: Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Uh, this is sort of a default entry because I can’t think of another novel I read this year that was actually published in 2015 (the English Major Curse, I suppose). I’m working my way through Welcome To Night Vale right now, but that one probably wouldn’t even take the spot anyway because I have a fondness for YA fiction and I think Rainbow Rowell might be our greatest living YA writer.

The concept of Carry On is extremely hard to pitch to a stranger. In Fangril, one of Rowell’s previous works, the protagonist Cath writes a lengthy fanfiction about the conclusion to Simon Snow, a Harry Potter knockoff. Carry On is that fanfiction, the eighth book to a fantasy series that doesn’t exist, and one in which two former enemies, Simon and Baz (a vampire) realize that they are both gay and in love.

The book is extremely fun, funny, and endearing. It uses the reader’s presumed familiarity with Harry Potter to draw them into this similar, but very different, world. Yes there’s a British school for wizards, yes there’s a chosen one, yes there’s a wise and mysterious headmaster, but Rowell makes these characters her own, and uses shifting character POV to tell a truly engaging story on top of the aforementioned romance between bitter enemies-turned-boyfriends.

Honorable Mention: N/A

Movie: Max Max: Fury Road and Inside Out

Gasp! A tie!

Mad Max: Fury Road is an two-hour chase through a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with only a few brief minutes of respite. With minimal dialogue and maximal visual storytelling, director George Miller tells a simple-but-compelling story filled with laconic-but-detailed characters. I’m the kind of guy who usually nods off during lengthy action scenes, but the film is an utter thrill-ride, but one with enough brains, heart, and character to captivate any audience. I just saw it for the fourth time yesterday, and it continues to be incredible.

But in addition to being fun, Fury Road is important. While the characters of the film find hope in a desolate wasteland of warlords and violence, we in the real world see a bit of hope in the desolate wasteland of misogyny and poor representation in media. Fury Road is a feminist film through and through, a film about female captives breaking their chains own chains and escaping their male oppressors (with a little help from Max). It’s progressive without being in your face about it, and what a lovely day it will be when the rest of cinema follows suit.

Inside Out is a very different film, though no less important. It’s a Pixar film, and I think it might be their greatest yet (and I am a big Pixar fan). The film follows Riley, a preteen girl who moves from Minnesota to San Francisco and is greeted by a crippling bout of depression when she gets there. The story is told both inside her brain - as depicted by her emotions Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust working to restore happiness to Riley’s memories - and externally, as Riley finds it difficult to communicate with her family and finds despair in the simplest things, such as disappointing pizza. It’s a film about growing up as much as it is about depression, and more importantly, it’s about empathy, the most important of human traits. I’ve only seen it once, and I’m embarrassingly coming up with little more to say, but you should absolutely see Inside Out, one of the funniest, saddest, and most human pieces of media I’ve experienced this year.

Honorable Mention: Age of Ultron, Ex Machina, and Creed, 

Comic Book: Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson

I feel like anybody who knows me would be pretty surprised if this wasn’t the comic I chose. I love Kamala Khan (the titular Ms. Marvel) so much that I wrote a 20 page research paper about her earlier this year, so I’m going to use this space to briefly touch on why that is (technically she just finished her second year as a character but I’ll just be talking about her in general).

Kamla Khan is a 16 year old Pakistani-American, Muslim, and nerd who writes fan-fiction about The Avengers and plays MMOs in her free time. She’s also a shape-changing superhero who fights crime, both on the streets of New Jersey and (as of this November) alongside the likes of Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America in the All-New, All-Different Avengers.

In a lot of ways, Kamala Khan is the successor to Peter Parker (so is Miles Morales, I assume, but I don’t read his comic). A nerdy, relatable teenage superhero for the new generation. In Ms. Marvel, the punching of villains is a fun part of her comic, sure, but it’s not why you’re there. In every arc, G. Willow Wilson tackles some vital aspect of our current society, from internalized racism (Kamala’s first arc is about overcoming her instinct to shapeshift into the white, blonde, blue-eyed Carol Danvers as she fights crime), to gentrification.

But perhaps what makes Kamala important more than anything else is the way she uses empathy and compassion as a tool with which to perform heroics. In her most standout moment, Kamala discovers that a number of missing teenagers have actually been brainwashed into believing that their generation is hopeless and that the only way to find self-worth is to give up their lives as fuel source to resolve the energy crisis. Before she goes to beat up the villain who did the brainwashing, Kamala asks the kids about their interests, and tells them how they can benefit the future and make something of herself, telling them that giving up on their generation is to give up on the future of humanity.

Kamala Khan stands as a symbol of why superheroes can be really important. They show us the best that humanity can be, and Ms. Marvel does this in a way that is relevant, progressive, and thoroughly enjoyable. If you’re even casually interested in comics, absolutely give this one a read.

Honorable Mention: Sandman: Overture, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour (Color Edition), Hawkeye.

TV Series: Jessica Jones

I could say a lot about Jessica Jones, but I would just be echoing Devin Faraci of Birth.Movies.Death because he nailed it, and this post is already pretty long. If you need to know why Jessica Jones is amazing, go read the last two paragraphs of his review (or all of it, but there are spoilers so maybe don’t). Short version: It’s a superhero show about dealing with trauma and facing its source, and the harrowing process thereof. It’s an almost perfect show, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Album: Beat the Champ by The Mountain Goats

I am the least qualified person to talk about music, but John Darnielle is one of the most poetic lyricists of all time and this band, quite frankly, rules. It’s a folk album about wrestling on the surface but it’s also about parenthood and death and searching for justice and meaning through fiction. At the very least, you ought to check out “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero.”

Anyways, this actually the second best album of the year because the actual best goes to…

OVERALL BEST THING: Hamilton: An American Musical

Before November of this year, I had only encountered one piece of media that so perfectly clicks with all my interests and philosophies that it transcends genre and medium and becomes not just my favorite movie or comic or game or whatever but my Actual Favorite Thing, a piece of media that feels like a reflection of my soul and what I care about and what I love. That one thing was Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley.

Well, now there are two.

Hamilton is a musical written by and starring Lin Manuel-Miranda about the life of early America told through the story of underrepresented Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. It’s one of those things that I saw so many people love so much that I snobbishly assumed that it couldn’t actually be that good. But one morning in November, I decided to buy the album on iTunes and give it a listen, because I love early America and I love musicals. I have scarcely listened to anything else since. 

The musical is a blend of hip hop and more traditional musical theater stylings, and every minute of it is wondrous. Cabinet meetings are settled via rap battle, the recurring musical and lyrical motifs are incredible (and sometimes heartbreaking), and the number of ways it rhymes the phrase “Arron Burr, sir” is one of the great achievements of the English language.

And although the story is about America in the 18th century, it is very much told by the America of the 21st. There is hardly a white actor in the show (I think Jonathan Groff, who plays King George III might be the only one? I don’t actually know), but it doesn’t call any attention to this fact. There’s a certain reclaiming of history in this, I think, reminding us that yes, the Founding Fathers were white, but the country isn’t, and never has been, built entirely by white dudes, and things like the other characters’ obsession with Alexander’s status as an immigrant seem to be reminders that we as a nation been holding the same prejudices and having the same conversations for more than 200 years now. In other words, it’s a historical work, but an extremely relevant one, as all great historical works are.

Hamilton is so much fun, the music is good, and if you love yourself, you will go check it out on Spotify or something (and then buy it on iTunes because it super, super deserves it).

Honorable Mention: Luna, my three-month-old Corgi. 

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Wonder Woman cosplay by Lilhevn

Cosplayer  deviantart / facebook  / instagram /  tumblr

Photography: Orange Mochi Photography

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Been trying to watch all of the Apocalypse episodes from the 1990s animated TV series. They went realllly over the top with Apocalypse. Here are some of his best (?) lines.

#X:men: the animated series #apocalypse #monologuing

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The Horsemen of Apocalypse (Marvel Comics).

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have fun and don’t worry about the snobs.

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It wasn’t only Tess’s incredible artistic talent that inspired me to reach out to her about coming onto Rat Queens permanently. It’s her spirit, and a like minded bond that I’ve developed with her over the past two years of working with her.

If anyone has a love for the women in Rat Queens, it’s tessfowler

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An Ending, but Not the End

I’ve spent the last 50 days blogging one issue a day of the original 1995 as well as the 2005 revisiting of Age of Apocalypse.

But I’m not stopping the blog. I may won’t be quite as prolific as I’ve been over the past two months, but I will be putting out bonus dead-blogs of related materials, including tie-in issues, AoA stories in other media (the 1990s animated series, next year’s film, etc.), and related writings and media.

I will of course also be creating entries for the entire Secret Wars AoA series when I can get it all in my cold, digital circuits.

#age of apocalypse now #this is the end #not really

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Day 50 (!): X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #6 (2005)

This is the end, my mutant friend. The battle between Magneto’s X-Men and Sinister’s Six commences with a Phoenix fireball, that Mags deflects with some handy metal. Then he calls a time out and asks Mr. Sinister for a couple of pages of exposition, partly to make sure we’re all caught up, also so that he can tell them how he is different than Apocalypse, and finally why he wants Magneto and the X-Men to help/do something for him. We are verily caught up, Sinister tells us that Apocalypse wants to kill off the weakest while he only wants to find the strongest: in this case, ‘mutant alpha,’ the first—and therefore most powerful—mutant. Jean Grey.

This is a bit of a problem, since much of the weight of Apocalypse’s claim to the mutant throne (and the explanation for his enormous power) came from the fact that he was the first and most powerful mutant. There’s also the fact that in the original AoA event, Sinister’s plan to create the perfect mutant pretty explicitly involved breeding Jean and Scott Summers to create Nate Summers/Pryor/Grey/whatever the X-Man. So the follow-up event manages to retcon both Apocalypse and Jean’s power sets and origins, and makes Sinister’s original story arc and Nate’s very existence an inconsequential mess.

We never quite learn whether the Phoenix is part of Jean, or some alien entity (the explanation kind of presumes the former, another weird retcon). What about Old Sin’s explanation for wanting Maggie and the X-people to join him? It basically boils down to the Phoenix’s power can be shared so, um, maybe it should be and also we’re-not-so-different-you-and-I. All right.

The battle is unpaused. Cloak swallows up Gambit and Nightcrawler (fuzzy elf escapes!), and Quicksilver is killed. Logan calls Jean “Baby,” allowing her to remember everything and switch sides pretty easily. She turns on Sinister, whom—in a bizarre and needlessly bloodthirsty scene—she holds up so that she, Magneto and the Weapon X family can all take their turn killing him. The X-team that slays together, I suppose.

Denouement stuff. Psylocke helps X-23 remember her memories: she is Logan’s daughter, and with Mariko! She’s heading to Japan to see her mother, and her uncle the Silver Samurai is going with her. Magneto admits his wrongsdoing to the world and turns himself in, setting up an echo of the classic ‘trial of Magneto’ story from Uncanny X-Men #200. Jean promises to take his place as leader of the team. We find out that Blink and Sabretooth are out there somewhere, ‘changed’ (whatever that means AARRGHH), and Rogue and Jean promise to find all of their old friends as well as the world’s wandering mutants.

Deaths: Mr. Sinister, Gambit, Quicksilver.

This issue’s rating: 1/4 horsemen. An uninteresting conclusion to an utterly inconsequential follow-up. Like when the Phoenix God came down from heaven to stop the bomb-lets, the 2005 AoA ends not with a bang but with a­­­­­­­­­­­­­___________.

#age of apocalypse #jean grey #magneto #mr. sinister #rogue #weapon x #x-23 #mariko yashida #nate grey

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Chris Bachalo’s cover to X:Men: Age of Apocalypse #5 (2005)

#chris bachalo #storm #ororo munroe #gambit #remy lebeau

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Day 49: X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #5 (2005)

Magneto tells the X-Men his sad-sack tale, about how Jean Grey apparently possesses the power of a cosmic god-like entity (the Phoenix, obvs) and how it was this entity that made all of the falling bombs go away during the night Apocalypse was defeated. Mr. Sinister dug up Jean’s body—actually in suspended animation, it seems—hoping to control the Phoenix. He blackmailed Magneto into leaving him and his work alone, holding over Erik the truth about who destroyed the bombs (the masses of humans and mutants believe Magneto did, a key part of why they trust him). As an explanation it’s a little weak, to be frank—Sinister seems to have a lot more to lose from the reveal than Magneto does, and the Magneto that was the focus of the original AoA event would have made such a deal in any case.

So Logan decides not to kill fearless leader if he leads them to Sinister and helps them bring him down. After a little detective work, they find his base in NYC, in the same lab he used previously (no one thought to check out Apocalypse’s old base? Seems like an oversight). Sinister confronts them with the rest of his ‘Sinister Six’ (this universe’s version of the longtime Spidey supervillain team: clever). One of them is Cloak (that’s cool). But then Mr. Sinister steps aside and tells us that Sinister himself is not one of the six… just as Jean Grey flies up above them, in full Dark Phoenix mode. To be concluded, I guess.

Deaths: None

Undeaths: None

This issue’s rating: 2/4 horsemen. After a nice start, this anniversary event went downhill fast. I’m depressed. So, um, who needs a fastball special, and by fastball special I mean a tactic designed to wreck things and also alcohol? 

#age of apocalypse #mr sinister #magneto #jean grey #dark phoenix #cloak

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Super héros du jour:

Superhero of the day:

Cypher / Douglock

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Day 48: X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #4 (2005)

It occurred to me, reading today’s issue, that I haven’t been keeping a death list for this series. I suppose this is because it has hardly been necessary. Here we go:

Deaths: Paige (run through by X-23).

But it also occurs to me that there is a very different list that this 10 year anno event could use instead. Let’s add it, while also catching up on the series’ previous issues, shall we?

Undeaths (issue 0): Mr. Sinister

Undeaths (issue 2): Paige

Undeaths (issue 4): Jean Grey

Undeaths (issue 6): Apocalypse*

*This last one is only projected, but the fact that we can already reasonably joke about it is a problem, isn’t it?

Last issue was almost completely consumed by an X-Men vs. Guthrie siblings battle in Washington, D.C. This issue is almost completely consumed by an X-Men vs. Guthrie siblings battle in Westchester, N.Y. Not exactly the best use of our six issues, especially considering neither of these battles is in anyway involved with the metaplot. Or now, wait, Paige’s dying breathalogue informs Magneto and reader that Charles was taken so that Sinister would have the leverage to convince old Mags to follow through on his side of their bargain. Magneto despairs again, and tells everyone that it’s all his fault, and that the bombs over Manhatten were stopped by Jean Grey who is still alive don’tchaknow. Cue scandalized Logan face and to be continued messaging.

This issue’s rating: 2/4 horsemen

#x-men #age of apocalypse #paige guthrie #husk #not dead #dead #not dead again #dead again #I'm out

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Mohawk Storm is best Storm. Not sure about the rest of this.

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE FIRST LOOK: GET A CLOSER LOOK AT THE FILM’S NEW VILLAINS

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Day 47: X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #3 (2005)

And we have lost the wheels or the rails, or whichever transportation-enabling metaphor you desire. I didn’t buy Magneto’s descent into despair last issue—he killed Apocalypse and saved the world, but is broken by a few misbehaved teenagers? No. And I don’t buy the tonal shift evident in this issue. It begins with a football game, a nice throwback to the Claremont-era team baseball games in one respect, which is nice, I suppose. Why shouldn’t the team have a little break? I mean, world saved and all, yes? But the fun doesn’t last too long. Logan and daughter (named Kirika, not Laura, we learn) come back, and almost immediately Kurt threatens his former teammate, and Silver Samurai attacks his former rival: Logan knows how to make friends and influence people. These conflicts are ultimately toothless, worse they are familiar—the threats and gibes are delivered with a kind of glibness that seems more than a little out of place here.

As does the issue’s central conflict: three of the Guthrie sibs attack D.C., and the X-Men BAMF to intercept. After a quick victory they come home to find Paige Guthrie of Generation Next still alive! And the Guthrie family attack was a feint! And Husk closes the issue with a pith-icism: “But you know how they say blood is thicker than water? They’re right. Don’t you just love family reunions?!”.  It’s the same kind of cymbal-crash, mic-drop moment that we’ve come to expect from every supers book written over the last 25 years. Which is fine, in a sense, I love superhero books, obviously, or I wouldn’t have put nearly 20,000 words into dead-blogging AoA. But we’re no longer in a post-Apocalypse or even post-apocalyptic world now, are we?

And if not, is the point just to spend some more time with these versions of these characters? If so, why wreck their arcs? One of the most touching moments from Generation Next was Illyana’s airlift out of the cauldron: the last thing she sees—the thing she says she never will forget—is the look on Paige’s face. BECAUSE PAIGE DIED.

The problem, always, with corporate comics is that characters only stay dead so long as they are no longer profitable or useful. That’s part and parcel of the whole genie gig. I get it. But not here. Not in Age of Apocalypse, where—paradoxically—because the things that happen don’t matter for the core universe we can actually trust them to matter in this one. It’s why events like this are fun. Deaths are final. They hurt.

Not anymore, alas.

This issue’s rating: 2/4 horsemen. Well-written. Beautifully drawn. Not Age of Apocalypse.

#age of apocalypse #generation next #paige guthrie #husk #corporate comics

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Day 46: X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #2 (2005)

Two issues in, and while a lot of stuff is happening, it’s difficult to see the larger conflict. We get our first suggestion of what might be up in an early battle between Magneto’s X-Men and some Morlocks down in the tunnels. The scene is set up much like the battle against the Hellions in the previous issue: the X-Men unexpectedly drop in on a group of renegade mutants, and a grand melee ensues. There are some significant differences, however. These Morlocks are not Apocalypse’s former soldiers, they were his victims. The X-Men are there to try to recruit them, but they don’t take it that way. Instead they see only what they are used to seeing: groups of powerful mutants who have come to imprison or control them. The question that was raised last issue (age-old, in the Marvel-lous sense) reappears: what is the responsibility of those with great power to those who have little? Should all mutants come out of their hiding places and announce themselves to humans and each other? Can the ones that have been victims (raised, like these Morlocks, in Sinister’s pens, be allowed anonymity as well as liberty?) In a post-Apocalypse world, in which a few handfuls of mutants killed millions and enslaved much of the world, this question is obviously eXtremely significant.

The Morlocks have no intention of following Alpha M Magneto and so fight back, and the X-Men are—it’s fair to say—routed. One of them takes off Magneto’s helmet, allowing a Morlock telepath to project his greatest fear into his mind. What he sees is distorted, and difficult to make out, but appears to be Mr. Sinister in control of the Phoenix Force. The X-Men retreat, and Magneto shouts something about not having a choice (in regards to Sinister? Did he give him Jean’s body?). In any case, Mags and his faith in Xavier’s dream are shaken. Later in the issue we get just a single-paged glimpse of a garage or underground workshop. An unidentifiable figure in a metal suit kneels over a glowing pod, calling whomever is inside “My Angel…”. If my supposition about what is happening is correct it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense: the fact that there is no connection between Grey and the Phoenix Force in the AoA timeline is ironically remarked upon in a caption in X-Men: Omega. SO WHAT IS HAPPENING.

Northwheres, Logan and Laura (now confirmed as X-23 in her backstory flashback) engage in a little daddy-daughter/clone-cloned time. She can’t appeal to his sentiments, but she can count on his desire for revenge. They beat up on Aurora and Northstar, and Logan remembers how fun it is to main people. He’s back on board.

This issue’s rating: 3/4 horsemen. We’re a third of the way through this mini, and it feels like we’re still taking cardboard out of the box and punching out pieces.

#age of apocalypse #magneto #jean grey #phoenix force #dark phoenix #mr. sinister

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Day 45: X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #1 (2005)

This is the first of a six-part miniseries commemorating and continuing the original AoA event on its tenth anniversary. And hold your living-steel-plated butt because it’s drawn by Chris Bachalo (Generation Next)! It starts in the snowy Canadian wilderness, with a hooded figure in green, cutting through some very animalian mutants, possibly creations from Sinister’s genepens. The green-clad destroyer has admantium claws, which retract with the familiar SNIKT, and withdraw with the nearly-as-familiar SNAKT. It’s Weapon X, obviously.

Cut to the White House. President Kelley addresses the press corps. It’s been a year since Apocalypse was taken down, and human society is rebuilding. The press is dubious of his proposals to offer amnesty to many mutants, and to send mutant teams to hunt down Apocalypse’s former lieutenants. In this reality, Kelly is a mutant supporter, not their hunter.

Enter Magneto, who announces that President Kelly has made him the minister for mutant affairs. He show the press a live feed of a kill-Osama style mission currently underway, as his X-Men infiltrate the hidden base of and then wipe the walls with the Hellions, a kind of junior league Hellfire Club. The mission goes off perfectly, but when Mags returns to Westchester, some of his inner circle are a little unclear on the boundaries: why are some mutants (like Rahne/Wolfsbane f--- yeah!) are welcomed into the fold, and others hunted and imprisoned? Magneto insists that there will be due process and fair trials… although Erik really never has been a by-the-rules kinda guy, in whatever universe. We’ll see.

Someone asks about Mr. Sinister: apparently his survival is beknownst to all, even if no one seems to be aware that Magneto met with the former horseman a year ago. Mags says that the situation is being taken care of “at this very moment.” Quick cut back to the Great White North. Logan is in a cabin, speaking to someone. We assume it must be Sinister, based on the context clues from the panel transition. But pull back. He’s actually talking to the green-clad warrior from the book’s beginning. Surprise! It’s someone else, obviously. Logan says that he’s not coming back to help Magneto, as everything (and mostly any/the one) that was worth him fighting for is gone. The warrior says they aren’t going back without them. “…the hard way, then”, Logan says, to which the figure drops the hood—it’s a young woman—and says, “[t]hey told me you might react this way… dad.” SNIKT-er snap. To be continued.

This issue’s rating: 4/4 horsemen. Intriguing and fun.

#age of apocalypse #x-men #magneto #weapon x #rahne sinclair #wolverine