Jamie and Jane and a whole lot of comics.
Sep. 15th, 2004 12:11 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsIn which Jamie introduces Jane to the amazing world of comic book geekery, including one of the Classic Conversations, and Jane sees a familiar face in one of the books. Fluff, with a hint or two of a more serious nature.
Warning: Contains hazardous levels of meta. Proceed at own risk. Management not liable.
Jamie reclined on the couch in the suite common room, longboxes arranged on the floor around him. Even Doug, he thought a little smugly, didn't have quite this big a collection; it was amazing what three years stuck on a farm with an infinite amount of spare time and very understanding parents could get you.
He'd occasionally thought about doing comics as a sideline to the movies and TV shows he wanted to make, down the road. Sure, comics starring mutants were a risk, but hey, anything could happen.
Jane was wandering vaguely in the direction of the kitchen, but a glance inside the room she was passing brought her up short. She stopped, turned around, and peered inside. Jamie was sitting in a room covered in weirdly shaped white boxes full of what appeared to be undersized magazines. The smugly satisfied expression on his face somehow reminded her of a picture she'd seen in a children's book of a dragon sitting atop his hoard of treasure. It made her very curious. "Um, hiya, Jamie!" she said, entering the room cautiously.
Jamie looked up with a grin. "Jane! Hey! How you doing? Getting used to the new rooms all right?"
"Yeah, its okay, although I do miss Amanda and Paige and my ceiling stars, but Monet is, um, nice." Well, Jane assumed Monet was nice -- they hadn't really talked much. "So what about you?"
"Well, we can put up new ceiling stars, that's no problem." Jamie smiled. "I'm good. Artie and Miles are still insanely excited about having their own room, which is fun to watch. And hey!" He waved a hand at the array of boxes. "Mom finally got around to shipping me the rest of my comic books."
"That's good, I guess." Jane looked more closely at the colorful objects. There were sure a lot of them! She wondered where he would put them all. "They're like the comics in the newspaper, right? I've never read any."
"Well, kind of. These are a lot bigger, have room for more story. And they're not always funny. They're sort of . . ." He thought for a minute. "Well, one of the other terms for them is 'graphic novels.' There's ongoing storylines."
"Like, um, like the 'daytime dramas' on the television on the weekdays that never ever end? Except written on paper instead of on the TV? Those aren't funny, either."
"They can be, sometimes, yeah. Only with superpowers." He grinned. "So, actually, it's a lot like here, sometimes. I've been collecting 'em since I was little."
"Superpowers?" She perked up -- now they sounded interesting. The 'daytime dramas' she'd seen were kinda boring with weird, incestuous relationships and immensely convoluted plotlines and characters that came back from the dead or who turned out to be another characters long lost relative or had a Dark Secret or something. But superpowers like the powers everyone had at Xavier's sounded interesting. "Like ours?"
Jamie couldn't resist a mischievous grin as he hooked one of the boxes over with his foot. "Almost exactly, sometimes." He slid one of the comics out of the box and handed it to Jane. "This is a book about . . . well, it's sort of about the teenage sidekicks to some of the adult superheroes, but they aren't really sidekicks. Anyway, see what you think."
Jane stared at the comic book he handed her, more than a touch shocked. It had... well, it had her on the cover! The comic proclaimed itself to be "Young Justice Now With Added Girl Power" and it was apparently the fourth issuse. And there was a girl made of clouds on the cover, just like her! Jane flipped through the book, not really understanding what was going on. She had a feeling that she was missing a lot of the backstory. Like, how did the boy with the R on his shirt and the boy in the leather jacket and the boy with the big feet know each other and the other characters? And the cloud girl. Her name was 'Secret'? Was that really her name?
"Jamie... this Secret girl has my powers! Do you think that whoever wrote this... um, this David guy, do you think that he knows about me! This is so cool! Can I see some other ones? And more about Arrowette and Superboy and Robin and Impulse and Wonder Girl, too? And you said that they're sidekicks? Sidekicks to who?" Jane bounced. There was a story about a girl with powers very like her own! That rocked!
Jamie grinned--there was nothing quite like getting Jane excited about something, and he'd hoped she would find Secret interesting instead of scary. "I dunno if he knows about you--it could just be a coincidence. I mean, Superman and Mr. Summers both shoot red beams out their eyes. And sure, you can borrow any of these you want." He started opening boxes. "See, Superboy, Robin, and Impulse all have their own comic books too--and they started out as guest characters in Superman, Batman, and the Flash, see, and those guys have been around forever, pretty much. You probably want to start out with more Young Justice, though--" He laughed. "Hey, maybe you'll get some ideas from reading the stuff Secret does."
"Like, for how to develop my own powers and stuff? What all can she do, anyway?" Jane hunkered down and started pulling out comics with Jamie.
"Well, for one thing, she can change shape, after she's turned into mist--you ever tried that?" Jamie flipped through the comics, finding an example.
Jane peered at the picture he was showing her. "Yeah, I could probably do that. I can be a light mist that is so diffuse that you'd never even know I was there or a thick cloud. And I can sorta make shapes with myself, but not very well. Does Secret talk telepathically like I do when I'm a cloud? And it doesn't look like she's ever just solid like I can be. That would suck." Jane contemplated being permanently in her cloud form with a shudder. Sometimes she had nightmares about just that thing...
"So what about you, Jamie? Is there a comic book about someone with your powers?" she asked to take her mind off the disturbing thought of being permanently gaseous.
"Well, sort of. There's this girl in one of the other comics that can split into three, but I don't think it works the same way." He shrugged. "Not much to my power, anyway."
Jane grinned at him. "You're just really unique, Jamie, truly one of a kind!"
Jamie grinned. "I dunno, I do a pretty good impression of a full house." He shook his head. "Anyway, back to the more fun coincidence . . . I don't remember if Secret ever was able to turn solid, but do you wanna borrow the comics and find out for yourself?"
"Yes! Thank you! Could I borrow some of the other ones, too? Just so I can figure out who these people are." She shuffled through some issues of the issues, selecting some because of interesting covers. "And do you have any favorites? What do you like? Would I like them, too?"
"Well, actually, this one's one of my favorites. And Impulse--he's fun. He's kind of a dork, and has the attention span of a gnat on amphetamines. And he has super-speed. It's a really funny book." Jamie added several issues to the rapidly-growing pile.
"He is cute," Jane agreed, flipping through some of the comics in her growing stack. "Superspeed would be a great power to have. You could go anywhere in the blink of an eye! Hey, Jamie, if you could have any superpower, would you keep the one you have or choose something else?"
"I wouldn't mind being able to fly," Jamie confessed. "When I was a kid I always wanted to be Superman, and that was a big part of it. And it seems like half the people here can, sometimes, or could if they pulled the right stunt with their powers, but not me." He sighed. "I dunno if I'd trade. Sometimes . . . well, the worst that can happen when you're flying is, you fall. Or you hit your head on a plane."
"Or get sucked through the engine of a plane," Jane nodded. "Actually, that's kinda one of my nightmares. Whenever I'm out and floating about, I avoid planes. But I know what you mean about flying. It is very cool."
"Getting sucked through the engine of a plane would definitely . . ." Jamie grinned. "Suck." He shrugged. "My grandpa--my mom's dad--flew planes all his life, or at least until his eyes started getting bad. He took me up once, when I was little. Let me steer, and everything. It was the greatest."
"That is cool. I've never even steered a car. As for me... I don't know what power I would want if I could choose. I mean, mine is very neat and all, but it might be fun to have, I dunno, Doug's power. It would be great to understand everything like that! Or telepathy, that would be cool."
"Telepathy is my second choice, I think." Jamie slid the comic book he was holding back into its bag and leaned back on his elbows. "Words get in the way, sometimes . . . just once, it'd be nice to be able to show Kitty exactly what I see when I look at her. I haven't been able to find the words I want yet."
Jane thought that Kitty probably knew how he felt about her already -- it was in his eyes. But she understood about words being tricky. Jane knew she tended to say the wrong things sometimes because she didn't know any better.
"Telepathy is a lot of work, though. I mean, I have a little bit of projective telepathy so I can talk in my cloud form, but the people who have full-on, non-stop telepathy really have to work at it. It must be really hard having to block out what everyone is thinking. Not that all of our powers don't come with hard stuff. I've been developing mine, trying to only transform partway. We'll all probably alway be learning new things about what we can do and where our limits are, eh?"
"Found mine already," Jamie muttered. "Yeah, though, I guess everything has its drawbacks. And when you get right down to it, I like the power I've got." He recovered his grin. "You realize, by the way, you just came through the first of your all-important geek conversations? And you're a girl, so you get a pass on 'Who'd Win in a Fight.'"
If she were a comic book character, Jane just knew that she'd be drawn with a bunch of question marks dancing over her head at this moment. "Huh? What do you mean, are there ritual conversations involved in reading comics?"
"Oh, yeah. There's 'Who'd Win in a Fight,' which like I say you get a pass on, there's 'What Superpower Would You Want To Have,' which we just had, and then there's 'Movie Casting Call,' 'The New Writer's Screwing Everything Up,' all sorts of stuff. Ancient hallowed rites of passage and questions of profound significance. And it's just fun finding out what people think."
Jane grinned at him. "I see. Well, I'll probably have to read more of these comics before we can have those other conversations, but I'll be sure to study hard and I will be prepared to partake in those sacred rites when next we meet, oh great Master of Comics."
Jamie nodded sternly. "The path of wisdom is long and arduous, but the diligent find themselves rewarded." He grinned. "For example, when you figure out what your favorite books are, I'll introduce you to my comic store guy and he'll help you start your own collection."
Jane looked around at the huge collection spread out around them. "Er, spiffy!" Jane absently wondered what exactly it was she was getting herself into. Jamie had a LOT of comics.
Jamie snickered at her expression. "Don't worry, nobody'll expect you to put together something like this. I'm a hopeless case. Besides, you don't have to worry about getting back issues--you can borrow mine anytime."
"Really? The way you protect them -" she geastured to the boxes full of bagged and boarded comics "- I'd think want to keep a closer eye on them. But don't worry, I'll treat them like my very own children, 'kay? Thank you, Jamie!" With a careful step over a pile of comics, Jane leaned over to give him a hug.
Jamie patted her on the back. "Hey, now, all that's just to make sure they stay readable. I trust you. And sharing 'em's more fun."
Warning: Contains hazardous levels of meta. Proceed at own risk. Management not liable.
Jamie reclined on the couch in the suite common room, longboxes arranged on the floor around him. Even Doug, he thought a little smugly, didn't have quite this big a collection; it was amazing what three years stuck on a farm with an infinite amount of spare time and very understanding parents could get you.
He'd occasionally thought about doing comics as a sideline to the movies and TV shows he wanted to make, down the road. Sure, comics starring mutants were a risk, but hey, anything could happen.
Jane was wandering vaguely in the direction of the kitchen, but a glance inside the room she was passing brought her up short. She stopped, turned around, and peered inside. Jamie was sitting in a room covered in weirdly shaped white boxes full of what appeared to be undersized magazines. The smugly satisfied expression on his face somehow reminded her of a picture she'd seen in a children's book of a dragon sitting atop his hoard of treasure. It made her very curious. "Um, hiya, Jamie!" she said, entering the room cautiously.
Jamie looked up with a grin. "Jane! Hey! How you doing? Getting used to the new rooms all right?"
"Yeah, its okay, although I do miss Amanda and Paige and my ceiling stars, but Monet is, um, nice." Well, Jane assumed Monet was nice -- they hadn't really talked much. "So what about you?"
"Well, we can put up new ceiling stars, that's no problem." Jamie smiled. "I'm good. Artie and Miles are still insanely excited about having their own room, which is fun to watch. And hey!" He waved a hand at the array of boxes. "Mom finally got around to shipping me the rest of my comic books."
"That's good, I guess." Jane looked more closely at the colorful objects. There were sure a lot of them! She wondered where he would put them all. "They're like the comics in the newspaper, right? I've never read any."
"Well, kind of. These are a lot bigger, have room for more story. And they're not always funny. They're sort of . . ." He thought for a minute. "Well, one of the other terms for them is 'graphic novels.' There's ongoing storylines."
"Like, um, like the 'daytime dramas' on the television on the weekdays that never ever end? Except written on paper instead of on the TV? Those aren't funny, either."
"They can be, sometimes, yeah. Only with superpowers." He grinned. "So, actually, it's a lot like here, sometimes. I've been collecting 'em since I was little."
"Superpowers?" She perked up -- now they sounded interesting. The 'daytime dramas' she'd seen were kinda boring with weird, incestuous relationships and immensely convoluted plotlines and characters that came back from the dead or who turned out to be another characters long lost relative or had a Dark Secret or something. But superpowers like the powers everyone had at Xavier's sounded interesting. "Like ours?"
Jamie couldn't resist a mischievous grin as he hooked one of the boxes over with his foot. "Almost exactly, sometimes." He slid one of the comics out of the box and handed it to Jane. "This is a book about . . . well, it's sort of about the teenage sidekicks to some of the adult superheroes, but they aren't really sidekicks. Anyway, see what you think."
Jane stared at the comic book he handed her, more than a touch shocked. It had... well, it had her on the cover! The comic proclaimed itself to be "Young Justice Now With Added Girl Power" and it was apparently the fourth issuse. And there was a girl made of clouds on the cover, just like her! Jane flipped through the book, not really understanding what was going on. She had a feeling that she was missing a lot of the backstory. Like, how did the boy with the R on his shirt and the boy in the leather jacket and the boy with the big feet know each other and the other characters? And the cloud girl. Her name was 'Secret'? Was that really her name?
"Jamie... this Secret girl has my powers! Do you think that whoever wrote this... um, this David guy, do you think that he knows about me! This is so cool! Can I see some other ones? And more about Arrowette and Superboy and Robin and Impulse and Wonder Girl, too? And you said that they're sidekicks? Sidekicks to who?" Jane bounced. There was a story about a girl with powers very like her own! That rocked!
Jamie grinned--there was nothing quite like getting Jane excited about something, and he'd hoped she would find Secret interesting instead of scary. "I dunno if he knows about you--it could just be a coincidence. I mean, Superman and Mr. Summers both shoot red beams out their eyes. And sure, you can borrow any of these you want." He started opening boxes. "See, Superboy, Robin, and Impulse all have their own comic books too--and they started out as guest characters in Superman, Batman, and the Flash, see, and those guys have been around forever, pretty much. You probably want to start out with more Young Justice, though--" He laughed. "Hey, maybe you'll get some ideas from reading the stuff Secret does."
"Like, for how to develop my own powers and stuff? What all can she do, anyway?" Jane hunkered down and started pulling out comics with Jamie.
"Well, for one thing, she can change shape, after she's turned into mist--you ever tried that?" Jamie flipped through the comics, finding an example.
Jane peered at the picture he was showing her. "Yeah, I could probably do that. I can be a light mist that is so diffuse that you'd never even know I was there or a thick cloud. And I can sorta make shapes with myself, but not very well. Does Secret talk telepathically like I do when I'm a cloud? And it doesn't look like she's ever just solid like I can be. That would suck." Jane contemplated being permanently in her cloud form with a shudder. Sometimes she had nightmares about just that thing...
"So what about you, Jamie? Is there a comic book about someone with your powers?" she asked to take her mind off the disturbing thought of being permanently gaseous.
"Well, sort of. There's this girl in one of the other comics that can split into three, but I don't think it works the same way." He shrugged. "Not much to my power, anyway."
Jane grinned at him. "You're just really unique, Jamie, truly one of a kind!"
Jamie grinned. "I dunno, I do a pretty good impression of a full house." He shook his head. "Anyway, back to the more fun coincidence . . . I don't remember if Secret ever was able to turn solid, but do you wanna borrow the comics and find out for yourself?"
"Yes! Thank you! Could I borrow some of the other ones, too? Just so I can figure out who these people are." She shuffled through some issues of the issues, selecting some because of interesting covers. "And do you have any favorites? What do you like? Would I like them, too?"
"Well, actually, this one's one of my favorites. And Impulse--he's fun. He's kind of a dork, and has the attention span of a gnat on amphetamines. And he has super-speed. It's a really funny book." Jamie added several issues to the rapidly-growing pile.
"He is cute," Jane agreed, flipping through some of the comics in her growing stack. "Superspeed would be a great power to have. You could go anywhere in the blink of an eye! Hey, Jamie, if you could have any superpower, would you keep the one you have or choose something else?"
"I wouldn't mind being able to fly," Jamie confessed. "When I was a kid I always wanted to be Superman, and that was a big part of it. And it seems like half the people here can, sometimes, or could if they pulled the right stunt with their powers, but not me." He sighed. "I dunno if I'd trade. Sometimes . . . well, the worst that can happen when you're flying is, you fall. Or you hit your head on a plane."
"Or get sucked through the engine of a plane," Jane nodded. "Actually, that's kinda one of my nightmares. Whenever I'm out and floating about, I avoid planes. But I know what you mean about flying. It is very cool."
"Getting sucked through the engine of a plane would definitely . . ." Jamie grinned. "Suck." He shrugged. "My grandpa--my mom's dad--flew planes all his life, or at least until his eyes started getting bad. He took me up once, when I was little. Let me steer, and everything. It was the greatest."
"That is cool. I've never even steered a car. As for me... I don't know what power I would want if I could choose. I mean, mine is very neat and all, but it might be fun to have, I dunno, Doug's power. It would be great to understand everything like that! Or telepathy, that would be cool."
"Telepathy is my second choice, I think." Jamie slid the comic book he was holding back into its bag and leaned back on his elbows. "Words get in the way, sometimes . . . just once, it'd be nice to be able to show Kitty exactly what I see when I look at her. I haven't been able to find the words I want yet."
Jane thought that Kitty probably knew how he felt about her already -- it was in his eyes. But she understood about words being tricky. Jane knew she tended to say the wrong things sometimes because she didn't know any better.
"Telepathy is a lot of work, though. I mean, I have a little bit of projective telepathy so I can talk in my cloud form, but the people who have full-on, non-stop telepathy really have to work at it. It must be really hard having to block out what everyone is thinking. Not that all of our powers don't come with hard stuff. I've been developing mine, trying to only transform partway. We'll all probably alway be learning new things about what we can do and where our limits are, eh?"
"Found mine already," Jamie muttered. "Yeah, though, I guess everything has its drawbacks. And when you get right down to it, I like the power I've got." He recovered his grin. "You realize, by the way, you just came through the first of your all-important geek conversations? And you're a girl, so you get a pass on 'Who'd Win in a Fight.'"
If she were a comic book character, Jane just knew that she'd be drawn with a bunch of question marks dancing over her head at this moment. "Huh? What do you mean, are there ritual conversations involved in reading comics?"
"Oh, yeah. There's 'Who'd Win in a Fight,' which like I say you get a pass on, there's 'What Superpower Would You Want To Have,' which we just had, and then there's 'Movie Casting Call,' 'The New Writer's Screwing Everything Up,' all sorts of stuff. Ancient hallowed rites of passage and questions of profound significance. And it's just fun finding out what people think."
Jane grinned at him. "I see. Well, I'll probably have to read more of these comics before we can have those other conversations, but I'll be sure to study hard and I will be prepared to partake in those sacred rites when next we meet, oh great Master of Comics."
Jamie nodded sternly. "The path of wisdom is long and arduous, but the diligent find themselves rewarded." He grinned. "For example, when you figure out what your favorite books are, I'll introduce you to my comic store guy and he'll help you start your own collection."
Jane looked around at the huge collection spread out around them. "Er, spiffy!" Jane absently wondered what exactly it was she was getting herself into. Jamie had a LOT of comics.
Jamie snickered at her expression. "Don't worry, nobody'll expect you to put together something like this. I'm a hopeless case. Besides, you don't have to worry about getting back issues--you can borrow mine anytime."
"Really? The way you protect them -" she geastured to the boxes full of bagged and boarded comics "- I'd think want to keep a closer eye on them. But don't worry, I'll treat them like my very own children, 'kay? Thank you, Jamie!" With a careful step over a pile of comics, Jane leaned over to give him a hug.
Jamie patted her on the back. "Hey, now, all that's just to make sure they stay readable. I trust you. And sharing 'em's more fun."
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Date: 2004-09-15 11:24 pm (UTC)Drop me an email? I think my schedule`s too messed up for logs any other way.