I think that while expecting the LJ outage of today, I'd planned to write a post in GDocs to post after the servers returned to us. I'm sure I'm not the only person doing the same thing. Except that I almost lose the will to blog when stripped of my reading list of blogs. So I had this document up for a while before pushing myself to write in it.

But, because I need to have something to keep my bum in my seat, I am making myself blog. And in case all you thought you were getting was going to be knitting and holiday snaps, I'm going to blog about comics.

Remember when the news broke that Chuck Dixon was leaving DC comics in what, from the outside, looked like a mutual explosion of creative strop, though we never quite worked out what it was over? And then DC cancelled three titles that Dixon created and developed? I've been wondering whether his leaving might have something to do with the cancellation of Robin, Nightwing and Birds of Prey, but with last week's  comics, I began to wonder how far in advance writers find out what's happening in certain titles, if at all. I heard once it was a while after the comics were published, but maybe someone who had the right connections might get some word in advance. I don't much know how the creative process works, and to an extent, I'm fine with that - comics are like laws and sausages, if you like them, it might not be a good idea to know how they're made. What follows, therefore, is nothing but speculation, which does made me feel unbelievably dirty, but I am using it to disguise my own distaste about recent DC developments.

What I'm saying is I would not be in the least surprised if Dixon received advance warning of the latest development in Green Arrow/Black Canary and decided to have nothing more to do with DC at all. Dixon, of course, didn't create Connor, but he's one of those characters (like nearly every DC character I like) Dixon had a large hand in developing during the nineties. And he's shown, I think, a tendency to like to keep characters constant; he restored Dinah to full sonic-crying Black Canary status after Grell left her depowered and depressed. His first act on coming back to Robin was to bring Steph back to life. He's been known to take umbrage at people trying to imply Connor was gay, for crying out loud.

[Aside - Not that I personally mind Connor being gay. I liked Connor's general 'I'm just not into romance' attitude that was concordant with his beliefs so well, but I was a little enamoured of the idea of Oliver Queen being the only member of the Arrow family from whom the NHS blood transfusion service would take donations.]

So in a hypothetical situation in which Dixon found out that yes, he was allowed to bring Stephanie Brown back to life, but Connor Hawke was going to be stripped of both his character-defining faith and the only ability he inherited from his father, then transformed  into Just Another Meta to take the edge off even his martial arts skills - well, I know I'd be upset if someone did that to a character I'd had a significant hand in developing.

Enough baseless speculation, though. I feel dirty.

Since arriving at Chez Bing, I have finally read her complete run of Y: The Last Man. She warned me at the beginning: "It's very very good," says she. "Until the part where it gets weird. You'll know the part."

And boy, did I ever.

I say this every time I discover a new one, but I really am a sucker for a well created world. A concept, a situation, a world larger than that microcosm occupied by the main characters, as rich and full as that world in which we currently live. Brian K Vaughan delivers that in his post-apocalyptic all female world, and delivers it hard. The problem is with a what-if, wild and fun concept in today's culture of scientific competence and understanding, that any attempt to try and explain what happened to deliver the kicker concept is going to, as it did here, make people - and by people I mean me and Bing - pull faces, cry out in annoyance and sulk at the Bad Science.

I will say, though, that Vaughan saved his ass later by enforcing the imperfect narrator idea- just 'cause some person said this caused the event, doesn't mean they're right. I still wouldn't mind if he hadn't run that little plot point at all.

At the same time as having a great world, the main characters were also engaging and interesting and utterly adorable. And I do indeed have a very effective fictional Gaydar. The overarching storyline itself was exciting and important and ultimately heartbreaking and had me running emotional gauntlets right until the end: it was character driven rather than true plot-driven, and thus followed a nice logical order, which kept me reading. I don't know whether I'm glad ofr rueful that I read it all in one sitting instead of in monthly instalments, but I do know that even now, I'm sad it's over.

And I wish I had more monthly comics I was as invested in as I have been in that for the last week. Stupid DC.

Anyway, now that's done, Joe has lent me Gotham Central, because he knows how much I adore minor stories in a large world, and understands my affinity for little-h heroes in a big-H Hero universe. Oh, Renee Montoya, you're no mob informant in my personal universe.