I've completely fallen down a well of reading crappy superhero comics. (virtually all superhero comics are crappy.)

it's a comfort food thing. takes me back to my ill spent youth.
read a bunch of Dan Slott's she hulk run, which is depressingly sexist, all things considered. (the old, there's something wrong with you if you're a powerful woman who enjoys being powerful trope.)
Gail Simone's Birds of Prey is pretty fun; character interactions are great but she's got trouble figuring out worthwhile plots. all the villains are pretty eh.
read some Bendis avengers and new avengers. he writes fun characters, but the crossover stuff is so omnipresent it's hard for him to develop any narrative cohesion.
Ultimate fantastic four is actually quite good, especially the first Bendis/Ellis issues. it's very much not the kirby, family bickering thing. instead what's fun is that the characters are all charming and clearly like each other.
they kept switching creative teams and it sort of lost that.
oh right; Millar's Ultimates I wrote about that. it sucks, but in kidn of interesting ways. https://t.co/c4YoLFDoms
also reread the old x-men comic where they go to Limbo and Ilyana ages 7 years. I think I first read that like 40 years ago. it stuck with me...and can sort of see why, though also doesn't really hold up.
I thought it was extremely creepy when I was 8; the x men transported to this weird alternate reality and they wander through the halls and find their own corpses.
it's still a bunch of good ideas, but Chris Claremont's writing is too workmanlike to take advantage of the horror atmosphere.

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Best books I read in 2020

1. Atomic Habits by @JamesClear

“If you show up at the gym 5 days in a row—even for 2 minutes—you're casting votes for your new identity. You’re not worried about getting in shape. Youre focused on becoming the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts”


Good Reasons for Bad Feelings

https://t.co/KZDqte19nG

2. “social anxiety is overwhelmingly common. Natural selection shaped us to care enormously what other people think..We constantly monitor how much others value us..Low self-esteem is a signal to try harder to please others”


The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

https://t.co/uZT4kdhzvZ

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents...Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without a believe in a devil.”


Grandstanding

https://t.co/4Of58AZUj8

"if politics becomes a morality pageant, then the contestants have an incentive to keep problems intact...politics becomes a forum to show off moral qualities...people will be dedicated to activism for its own sake, as a vehicle to preen"


Warriors and Worriers by Joyce Benenson

https://t.co/yLC4eGHEd4

“Across diverse cultures, a man who lives in the house with another man’s children is about 60 times more likely than the biological father to kill those children.”

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