Meltdown

As of late I have been ingesting what one might see as a high level of comics and cartoons in the vein of DC, Marvel and other graphic novel makers. I have read I don't know how many disjointed Wonder Woman story lines I now have in my head, and the Ultimate Avengers have strangely fascinated me yet pissed me off in their rendition of story. I'm now up to date on the in-universe origin story of Firestar, and I'm well aware that Batman started out not as an ass-kicking crime fighter but as a detective. The boy wonder was not in original danger because he was there for sleuthing, not pwning.
I have consumed news about the comics industry (including that stupid fiasco about there not being enough women working on the Batgirl thing. Or the relaunch thing. Or whatever it all is. Like I said, I've read a LOT of stuff and I'm not really retaining it at this point.) and with SDCC having just occured along with ChicagoCon on its tail, there has been a LOT of news to digest.
Needless to say, I sorta hit my overload point on the way home today with my husband. I sort of, how shall we say? Exploderated. Badly.
Let it be stated here that I have never claimed to be, nor will I ever be so foolish in teh future as to make the claim, that I am any sort of expert on the subject of comics. Yours truly for years only read Cry for Dawn, Death and Sandman. There was a touch of Lady Death and Spawn followed by some hard core time with Witchblade and the Darkness, but for the most part I have not been privy to the voracity with which people bark about Marvel vs. DC, nor have I taken up in their camps. I simply don't know enough. I didn't really grow up with these things the way others had, and I understand I'm at a loss. To look at the tangle of story lines, cross-overs, offshoots and ret-cons I know that I will never EVER EVER EVER have a full grasp of any universe out there.
Pretty much I just know I love Iron Man, Wonderwoman, Batman and Firestar. Death is my hero. And if I ever get skinny enough, I am going to cosplay the ever-livin' hell out of Dawn. That's good enough for me.
Which is why, when I suddenly launched in to a conversation about all the inconsistencies I saw in the Avengers cartoons I'd been watching, that the floodgates spilled forth and I spent 30 minutes just ranting and spewing out inconsistencies and strangeness that I had come across in the past 3 weeks. 30 minutes. My voice rose, and is, in fact, still sore from me complaining about a particular panel where Wonderwoman from Earth 1 is at home with Wonderwoman from Earth 2, and they're both in their Amazonian steel-boned bustiers complete with magic lasso seated around a dinner table consuming meatloaf. I got shrill, in fact. Because it was ridiculous and I was simply unable to get past it. (I actually closed the comic and stashed it, so great was my loss of belief in the story line. Over meatloaf.)
When I was done and my husband looked at me with concern and said "Okay, so do you need to take a break?" that I realized.... yeah, I probably did. In my usual fervor to try and intake as much information as possible, to make up for that learning curve that others half my age had already danced through and mastered on my new chosen love and art form, I was making it No Fun. Or rather, I was simply overloading my brain, and because I felt like there was no outlet to discuss this, it had begun to crumple for lack of an outlet to bounce thoughts off of.
Thank the many gods for spouses, because he sat and listened. Then he listened to me apologize for venting. Then he listened to me talk about how there's nobody to talk with this stuff about. And he was supportive and kind and told me I could talk to him any time about all of this.
Suddenly I felt like I could move on from all of this and start fresh with a second round of reading and learning. AFter all, I'd made the mistake of actually ~reading~ the stories instead of using them for what I'd snagged them for... examples of pacing, foreshortening, language, perspective, etc. I had not taken from them what I disliked and tried to figure out how to do it better (as I will not be limited by 32 pages, or "editions"), I'd just jumped right on to the "WTF IS WITH THIS? THIS IS STUPID!? mode of thinking and not let go.
Seriously. Meatloaf in a comic book and seeing winged faeries in Alfheim on TV. It brought me to utmost distraction. It's almost embarrassing, really.
So I'm done trying to do the meta-learning thing and simply figure out what ~I~ want to do with things... my current stack of resource material is unnaturally predisposed to the DC way of telling a story anyway, and it's my goal to develop my own flow through this.
It's funny that in the first few weeks of this, I very nearly killed it dead by over-consumption of it. I didn't leave space to study as I'd planned. Now that I can see this, I can go in a bit wiser and learn more. Perhaps even this is something initially that has to happen to anybody that gets in to this stuff. Who knows, but it's done now.
I am now looking at my Wonderwoman comics, #600-613, currently unread, and thought I know I woud probably enjoy the story line I am not touching them. I don't want to get pissed off by the reboot or the costume change or any of that. Instead, I am going to pick randomly from the stack and learn to draw Wonderwoman's iconic eyes. I will pull out my other material and learn to draw male jawlines and hairstyles, and finally really see how a suit falls across a man's shoulders properly.
And I absolutely, positively, will not get pissed off if Wonderwoman decides to eat dinner dressed in her bustier and magic lasso again.