getting feedback, and other events

I was talking to a friend last night who's on my "A Messy Faith" mailing list, and he told me had found my story about Daedalos to be haunting.

I was intrigued, since I haven't been getting much in the way of feedback on the list lately, and its membership hasn't swelled considerably yet. Not completely surprisingly, Brian didn't quite get the idea behind the story. He saw it as being about a man who had been courageous, lost his courage when he realized that he wasn't as in control of his life as he had thought, and then finally committed suicide.

That wasn't quite what I was aiming at. The ending was meant to be at least a little jarring, since you really don't know what's going to happen next, whether the wind carries Daedalos away from where he's been languishing, or if he's going to plunge to his death. I can see where he could get that interpretation, though I had thought the wind was a rather obvious symbol for what I had in mind.

Ah well.

Things continue as they have been, otherwise. We just got back from a weekend trip to visit family in Atlantic City, and are taking a slightly longer trip to D.C. this Friday afternoon, where we will visit my brother and take in the sights of the capital. We won't be going to visit the White House, alas, but we will see some of the other monuments, and let the girls see their first-ever protests outside the White House, I'm sure.

Just checked out a bunch of graphic novels from the library. As predicted, most of the Batman graphic novels were a disappointment. They've replaced Jim Gordon with a new police commissioner (Gordon retired), which makes for an interesting tension between Batman and the Gotham police; and for a few issues at least Batman had a female Robin sidekick, since Timothy Drake was grounded from superheroics once his father found out. A couple of interesting developments and changes, but the comics still lack any vision or drive that made Miller's Batman stand out. Heck, they're not even as well developed as Jeph Loeb's Batman, and I never thought he was that interesting.

On the other hand, I also checked out Alan Moore's "Saga of the Swamp Thing." First time I've ever read a Swamp Thing story (aside from a short story or two by Neil Gaiman), and it's by Moore, too. Does it get any better than this? It's an interesting read, and from what I can tell, it completely reinvented the Swamp Thing story, with a whole new interpretation of its origin. I'm still processing it, and will undoubtedly reread it a few more times before I return it. It's not due until the end of the month, like the others, but they're going back tomorrow.

Been re-reading Straczynski's "Rising Stars," too. More on that later.