Phoning It In

Summer Mix-Tape

2011-06-29T11:48:00.003-05:00

Summer Summer Summertime! Time to throw some meat on the grill, crack some beers and (if you’re in my neck of the woods) hope it stops fucking raining before August. Here’s a mix I put together that is perfect for just those times, featuring Tommy Keene, Sugar, Stars, Velocity Girl, The Times, Sloan, Gorillaz, Portastatic, The Pipettes and many others!

Download it here, I hope you enjoy it!

Gladstone's School For World Conquerors

2011-05-06T21:40:00.000-05:00

Picked this up on a whim because I really enjoyed writer Mark Andrew Smith's previous work on The Amazing Joy Buzzards and Aqua Leung (and had also pledged to his Kickstarter book, The New Brighton Archaeological Society). This book was a real pleasant surprise, essentially the flip side to superhero training school based comics (Zoom's Academy comes to mind), this books begins witht he history of the title institution, began by a villain who wasn't very good at his job. From there we're introduced to some of the students, who deal with the same trials that kids everywhere deal with; not measuring up to their parents' expectations, boring teachers, schoolyard taunting, however the students are also by and large, well, evil. And super-powered. So there's that.

The word "fun" is thrown a lot in comics reviews, but it's tough to not include it in this one. Though the book does touch on some heady subjects (absent parents, truly sociopathic children) it balances them well with bright action and wit. The comics gives you a good handle on the main characters, the layout of the school and the dark (well, not that dark) secret that lies in the background of their world.

The art is handled by Armand Villavers and he does a very nice job. Similar to the style of Smith's previous Buzzards collaborator Dan Hipp, but the edges are a little less sharp and stylized, which definitely suits the book's all-ages tone.

This book was a great pick-up for me and I look forward to handing it off to the kids to check out. It's also a great value, offering 40 pages of story for only $2.99, so if you're looking for something to pick up when you're at the shop tomorrow for Free Comic Book Day (and if you're going you should buy something too), this is a good choice.

2010 A Year In Singles: Side Two

2010-12-30T20:47:00.003-06:00

OK, we've cruised through the pop half of my faves of 2010 mix-tape, now let's move on to my usual rock n' roll stomping grounds. There were a good amount of rock records I loved this year, most coming from old favorites That's good, because I love seeing bands I enjoy keep moving forward, but also unfortunate as there just aren't a lot of new bands out there that doing it for me. Let's go to the list.

1. The Like - He's Not A Boy from Release Me: Just a charming single from this all-girl band. Pumping out a sound that wouldn't sound out of place in some late-50's biker movie, this song is pure nostalgia for garage rock. It's just plain charming. While the album that followed later in the Summer was good, it doesn't come close to the heights that its lead single achieved.

2. Jason and The Scorchers - Mona Lee from Halcyon Times: Jason and The Scorchers is a band that I've sadly slept on for far too many years. I've read nothing but fantastic write-ups about them for years, and even enjoyed Jason Ringenberg's children's album, A Day At The Farm With Farmer Jason with my kids, but I just never took the plunge. Finally, after an enthusiastic e-mail from this guy, I bought their newest reunion record Halcyon Times and it's just fantastic. Full of barnstorming rockabilly, it's absolutely irresistible. This is just one of the many fantastic songs off of a fantastic album.

3. Teenage Fanclub - Baby Lee off Shadows: Another older band that is still putting out vital music. First pushed as the "next bog thing" during the first Brit-pop wave of the 90's, Teenage Fanclub has carved out a pretty great career putting out 60's style garage rock that is utterly infectious. I can't recommend picking up their new album enough (and it's only $5 this month here as added incentive).

4. Best Coast - Crazy For You off Crazy For You: Just pure breezy summer pop music. Can't say too much about it, but this is the type of music that immediately puts in mind sitting on the beach with an umbrella drink in hand.

5. Superchunk - Learn To Surf from Majesty Shredding: Speaking of both beaches and old bands still pushing out vital music, Superchunk came back after close to a decade off and put on two blistering shows in Chicago this year and put out one of my top three or four albums from them. Though they've harnessed a few of their rougher edges, they've done it by mastering a tunefulness that is undeniable. I love this band, I love this album and I love this song.

6. Stars - Wasted Daylight from The Five Ghosts: I really think I'm the only person who absolutely adored this album, but there it is. A bit of a departure from their previous albums, The Five Ghosts kind of felt like Stars was pushing all-in to break big, but I really liked what they did with their sound. Between this song and We Don't Want Your Body (the best Michael Jackson song he never sang), they made some fantastic music to dance to, and I really liked it.

7. Spoiler Alert! - Booster Gold from Spoiler Alert! EP: Art Brut frontman Eddies Argos took 2010 "off" from that band in order to head up no less than three side projects. Everybody Was In The French Resistance...Now!, a band that makes songs that answer famous pop songs; Glam Chops, a band that renders covers of pop songs as glam rock songs and Spoiler Alert!, a band that, in theory, for legal reasons, Argos has nothing to do with, but that sings songs exclusively about DC Comics superheroes. This song, explaining why Booster Gold is the "greatest hero that you've never heard of" is just amazingly charming and warms this old Booster Gold fan's heart. Which reminds me, I really need to pick up this t-shirt.

So that's it for my mix-tape for the year, I really do suggest putting it together as a playlist, it works rather well together (or *cough* contacting the author for assistance if need be). Finally, let's hit up some honorable mentions for the year.

New Pornographers - Together and Ted Leo + Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks: While neither of these efforts from favorite bands were as ground shaking as some of their previous releases, they were still damn solid and damn solid out of either of these two is better than 80% of the rest of the music I own.

Adam WarRock - West Coast Avengers Mixtape: Speaking of love for 80's superheroes, 2010 was a banner year for this old man, if only I could send this back in time to me in 2985, I'd be one cool-ass 11 year-old, let me tell you. FYI, if you want to check this out, it's available free thanks to the fine folks at Comics Alliance. Also, WarRock's website features over 50 other free tracks that are really damn good.

Chromeo - Business Casual and Girl Talk - All Day: You wanna dance some more? Here you go. (All day is free as well, just hit the link.)

Let's see if I can keep this thing going and come back to you about comics tomorrow.

2010: A Year In Singles Part One

2010-12-28T10:32:00.000-06:00

2010 was a pretty great year for music, personally, I probably purchased more albums this year than at any time since the 90's. While I generally hate writing about music, let's go through my favorite new songs from the pasty year, the order is unimportatn, other than the fact they make a nice playlist this way.

1. Adam WarRock - The Silver Age (f/ Tribe One) from The War For Infinity: It's tough for someone to rap about comics oriented stuff and avoid getting labeled something with a derisive "nerd" attached to it. Eugene Ahn avoids this deftly with the single off his excellent concept album, re-purposing Marvel's The Infinity Gauntlet to a world where the dispute was not settled with fisticuffs but rap battles. The single, though it is separate from the album's story helps to inform the foundation on which it was built.

2. Gorillaz - On Melancholy Hill from Plastic Beach: It's tough to pick one track from Plastic Beach because it is truly a complete album, one that has a form of sonic cohesion that's rare in pop music today. I tdo realize there is an overarching story line to the album (and indeed all of Gorillaz work), but I can't make heads of tails of it without viewing their (fantastic) videos as an accompaniment. This is easily my favorite album of the year.

3. Kanye West - Runaway from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: To paraphrase Aziz Ansari's description for someone else, Kanye West is an brilliant rapper/crazy person. While his latest is not my favorite of his releases, Runaway is a pretty undeniable single. My only wish is that it had come out in the Summer, since this is windows down on a hot day music if there ever was any.

4. Passion Pit - Little Secrets from Manners: Speaking of Summer music, this song is it to a "T". While the album it comes from is certainly good, this is one of those singles that just stands above the crowd. Not too much else to say.

5. Daft Punk - Derezzed from Tron: Legacy OST: While I would have prferred a "proper" Daft Punk album this year, their rollicking soundtrack to the Tron sequel fits the bill quite nicely.

6. Robyn - Dancing On My Own from Body Talk: this year I really came around on pop music, and robyn's Body talk EP's (now collected into on fantastic album) really were the final nail in the coffin. The fact that Lady Gaga gets as much press as she does for doing so much recycling and wearing meat dresses while Robyn simply makes great music in the trenches and is ignored by the mainstream is pretty depressing. Regardless, there is great pop music out there and that's a great thing.

7. Cee-Lo Green - Fuck You from The Lady Killer: It's easy to write this song off as being cheap, "hur hur he says 'fuck' a lot" but, damn, this is a fine ass song. That it's gotten several conservative commenters upset that someone other than Dick Cheney is using the f-word only makes it sweeter.

So that wraps up the first half of what I loved this year, tomorrow I'll come back with part 2 and the more rock-oriented half of the list.

Big Hits, Big Money

2010-10-20T10:16:00.001-05:00

I listen to a fair amount of sports radio, though I'd rather listen to NPR, the current pre-election news cycle is enough to get me from zero to RAGE in under 10 minutes and that's no good first thing in the morning. Anyway, speaking of rage, the recent crackdown in the NFL on violent hits is turning even the rather calm confines of ESPN Radio's Mike & Mike into yet another edition of Sports Shouting.

If you're unaware, there have been a shocking amount of injuries this year, a lot from violent, and possibly illegal hits, especially ones that are helmet to helmet. On Monday, after a particularly viscious Sunday, the NFL came down and said that they would start fining players harder and perhaps even suspend players for hits that have been, up until now, considered legal and part of the game. Naturally, this has caused sports radio apocalypse, and the arguments against the new crack-down are as follows:

The league has been acting rather responsibly on the point of concussions this year and though this year's injuries may simply be an aberration, they should continue to act responcibly and not make knee-jerk reactions.
The players know what they're signing up for and it's part of the reason they get paid such huge salaries. They know every time they strap on their helmet they may get carried off the field, perhaps never to walk again.
The NFL has long built itself on "big hits" being part of the game, going so far as to sell video tapes featuring their "greatest hits". Just look at half of the highlights packages that play before games on Sundays, I guarantee there's at least 2 clips of someone getting absolutely demolished to every sweet touchdown or catch shown.
It's fucking football. Stop being such a fucking pussy.

Though those arguments are valid, I think they're missing, or perhaps even ignoring the point behind these rule changes. The NFL is in business to do one thing, make money. This is not a secret, this is not a bad thing. Yes, I'm sure Roger Goodell and the rest of management want to protect players as well, but their first job is to make sure the league is profitable both today and well into the future and this brings me to the 2 big points why they are making these changes now and not hesitating.

I'm a fan of NFL football, though not necessarily a die-hard, but I'm certainly more than a casual fan. I generally watch every game on Sunday and Monday nights, hell, I even lasted through a full half of that shit storm that was Titans/Jaguars last Monday night before giving up and switching to baseball. I'm in a fantasy league and a confidence pool, however I do not bet on football nor go to games nor even think about laying out the cash for the Sunday Ticket. So I figure this places me pretty much in the middle-ground of fandom. The thing is, for me, and those who like the game as much or more than I do, the NFL doesn't have to sell us. We've bought in to the extent that we will buy in, we're addicts and we'll show up every Sunday no matter how badly they shit on us. Be it interminable commercials, be it Joe Buck, be it John Gruden, be it everyone pretending Matt Millen didn't ruin football in Detroit for a quarter of a century. The NFL is no longer trying to sell to us, they're going after the casual fans. The ones that maybe watch one game a week and maybe even go to or hold a Superbowl party. The NFL wants these people, they want their money, badly, and when these consumers are confronted with mounting news stories of dreadful injuries to NFL players, and of the possible horrible future that awaits these players due to repeated head injuries, they are far less likely to buy into the NFL. These injuries, and the news stories and medical studies they spawn, are costing the NFL money today, and more importantly new money in the future. The NFL has to be seen as being proactive, going out of their way to protect these players from these injuries and even from themselves. That way these new consumers will feel better about handing over their cash to the league and not spending it on a new Cubs jersey instead.

Secondly, as a parent of two boys (4 and 7 years old), I'm deathly afraid of letting them play football. My eldest has already had one concussion from an accident a few years ago, making him even more susceptible to them in the future. While I would not go so far as to ban them from playing, I would take them to get base-line testing done prior to playing and pull them out with no hesitation at the first whiff that they could get hurt. From talking to other parents, I'm certainly not the only one who feels this way and that's got to be a huge concern for the future for the NFL. This cuts into both their future player-pool and into their future fans. Unless they can reassure parents that their kids will be safe in the sport, the future could be rather grim.

Another aspect of this whole situation that I do think is being willfully ignored by the media, especially the NFL partners like ESPN, is the upcoming labor dispute. As the NFL tries to push an agenda that both features paying the players a smaller percentage of their revenue along with the 18 game season, a season that features more injuries along with the release of more and more studies showing the long term effects on players it makes their position tougher both at the bargaining table and in the public eye. With the looming idea of a lock-out next season, every single move the NFL makes has to be viewed through the lens of the effect it will have on the next labor agreement, but it is hardly even mentioned in the media and I don't think that's because they think it is of no consequence. It's obvious that the more the labor issues stay out of the news cycle, the better it is, probably for both parties, but it's still odd to not see it mentioned, even in passing along with this debate.

As more and more of the true health consequences come to light of playing professional football, I have no doubt that drastic actions will be taken in the coming years. From requiring state-of-the-art mouth-guards (which really could help immediately), to requiring players to wear tight-fitting helmets (most of the helmets you see go flying on game-day is because players wear them too loose) to draconian measures like legislating certain types of contact out of the game, I really have not doubt that the NFL we see ten years from now will look a lot different from today's. This should be a good thing. Protecting the players, be it for money or out of true altruistic care is a good thing and should be paramount in everyone's mind, but everyone needs to calm down and talk about this like rational human beings, not like the assholes they're being on radio right now.

Floppytown Reviews

2010-10-04T13:49:00.000-05:00

Should have a bunch of reviews up at FLOPPYTOWN this week, including Avengers Prime #3 (already up),Captain America #610, Skull Kickers #0 & Action Comics #893. Swing by and check them out.

Floppytown: Steve Rogers Super Soldier #3

2010-09-20T18:06:00.000-05:00

Inspired by The Singles Jukebox, Matt Springer has wrangled a bunch of people into contributing brief reviews on single issues of comics each week at a new site called Floppytown. The first post is up today, which is a review of Steve Rogers: Super Soldier #3 and I have a contribution.

This looks to be a fun project, so swing on by and please contribute as the more will be the merrier.

It Came From....The Vending Machine...AGAIN

2010-09-01T14:04:00.002-05:00

After last week's exposure to the horrors of Mad Basil's Bavarian Bakery's "treats", I decided to play it safe and stick with something out Milton S. Hershey's proud company, the Hershey's Cookies 'n' Creme bar.

The bar itself seems to be a white chocolate delivery mechanism for bits of chip-shaped chocolate cookie that are not wholly unlike Oreo wafers. The "cookies" portion provide 90% of the taste, which is quite good, being encased in the viscous, not-quite-solid white chocolate keeps the cookie bits from being too dry. However, it is the white chocolate membrane that provides the biggest minus of the bar, the texture. The cookies are crunchy, but the chocolate is largely tasteless and gel-like, making if feel like you're eating delicious cookies encased in snot. If you can get over that reaction, it is not an unpleasant snack, but really, you should seek psychological help if that is the case.

Comics!

2010-08-31T11:35:00.001-05:00

After skipping three weeks, went to the store on Friday and picked up a whole gang of comics that had been languishing in my box, let's talk about them.

Dracula: The Company of Monsters #1

I really love Kurt Busiek's writing and since Marvel's since decided that their cool, old-school Dracula wasn't cool enough and turned him into the refugee from Middle Earth by way of Twilight, I felt like checking out Boom!'s attempt to update him for the current age.

While this issue certainly isn't bad, it's esentially a 22 page info-dump setting up the series. It feels more like a "story-before-the-story" zero issue than the proper start to the book. Our main character is Evan, a middle-managment schlub who is stuck doing research on Vlad The Impaler for his boss and uncle Conrad. The issue goes onto give the history of Vlad as he makes a deal with the devil for immortality and Evan and Conrad fly to a secret dig site in Greece. That's really it, not bad, the art is certainly nice. Scott Godlewski's work elicits a John Romita Jr. vibe that serves the story well. Again, there's nothing bad here, just nithing that compels me to stick with it.

Thor: The Mighty Avenger #3

Can't really explain how much I love this comic. Updating Thor's origin to the present (and most likely bringing it more in line with the up-coming movie) this book has really been doing everything right. After the first two issues briskly introduced out main characters, the third issue begins our main storyline as Thor tries to remember why he's been exiled on Earth. This issue brings Hank Pym & the Wasp to Oklahoma to investigate the death of one of Hank's mentors (who was killed in the previous issue by My. Hyde). This brings them into conflict with Thor, who's having visions brought on by Loki, making him believe he's besieged by Frost Giants, forcing him to slug it out with Giant Man.

Roger Landridge, who does great work on Boom!'s Muppet comics, really comes through here. His characterizations of both Pym and the Wasp are spot on, and makes the usual "two heroes slog it out due to a misunderstanding" plot and does something interesting with it. Both advancing the main storyline and offering up a solid. single-issue story. Chris Samnee again provides excellent visuals and Matt Wilson's coloring is just luscious. Oh yeah, and did I mention that this is an all-ages title? This proves that all-ages, doesn't mean, "for kids only".

Action Comics #892

I've been seeing a lot of people on the internet dismissing this book simply because it's Action Comics and Superman isn't in it, and those people are really missing out. Paul Cornell has been a favorite of mine since his run on Captain Britain & MI-13 over at Marvel, here he's telling the story of Lex Luthor, addicted to the power granted him by the Orange Lantern ring during Blackest Night, he's scouring the Earth for traces of other power rings, determined to have their power for his own.

This issue, Luthor travels to the arctic to search out a plume of black-power-ring energy that has developed, bringing Deathstroke with him as protection. Unfortunately, the energy begins taking over his team, leaving him to out-fight it and out-think it.

This book is turning out to be rather fun. Luthor is an interesting main character, in that he's really the villain of the title, but Cornell does bring through his charisma that you can't help but root for the jerk, at least a little bit. As usual, Pete Woods provides some great art, and while I think he's probably the best Superman artist working today, I don't have a problem with the big blue boyscout sitting this one out for now.

Maybe some more later. Going to try to dole this out in some smaller chunks.

This Is The Future (and I'm Not Sure I'm Willing To Pay For It)

2010-08-25T15:54:00.000-05:00

After reading Matt Springer’s take on the upcoming releases of Apple’s iTV and Google’s GoogleTV do-dads, I went back to my nagging thoughts of giving up my cable and going it alone with nothing but a computer, an internet connection and a prayer for my TV viewing habits. Matt lays out pretty eloquently the pluses and minuses of each system, but there’s still one thing that keeps me dropping $60 to $100 a month* on my cable bill is live sports. As both a pitiful Cubs fan and rather angry Bears fan (with a rabid Packers fan girlfriend), without precious cable we would probably be left in the cold with Apple’s set-top box and up to the whims (and fees) of the NFL & MLB with Google. I know that Major League Baseball currently offers an on-line video plan for a reasonable fee that gives you the ability to watch just about any game going on....except games that are blacked out in your area. That’s no fucking help.

My other concern is that if you find a way to get these games, legally, live on-line you will most likely still have to pay a nominal fee for them. But you’ll still have to deal with the ads. Part of the plus of iTV is that with your 99 cents, you buy your way out of having to watch commercials. With live sports, you’re stuck with those commercials, or almost even worst, stuck watching a blank screen on your TV/computer while those ads role and the teams pick their noses on the sidelines. And there’s the rub, even if you’re paying to not have ads, you’re still stuck with them, and that just bugs me. If those advertisers are paying the NFL (and the TV station or on-line provider), why the hell am I going to compensate them a second time?

I’m sure these concerns have been thought of at Google & Apple HQ, but I’m sure they’re waiting to see how the cards fall and whether the general public flees the increasingly higher and higher cable & satellite bills for the new frontier of the internet and whether they balk at the idea of paying both for access to the content and ads during the content they already paid for. Hulu is already giving this a try with their new, $10 a month plan, but screw that. If I’m paying them $120 a year, I ain’t putting up with commercials just so I can watch Ironside (Raymond Burr is the shit, y’all). I could go on for a while, but I’ll save it for my usual soapboxing at the corner of LaGrange Rd. & Ogden Ave. between 4:30 & 5:00 PM, doing my best to drown out the suburban street preacher on the opposite corner.

*Depending upon whether the fine CSR at Comcast has pity on me and throws a deal at me

It Came From....The Vending Machine

2010-08-24T15:44:00.000-05:00

Basil’s Bavarian Bakery Duplex Sandwich Cremes

Oh, what a horrible cookie. I like to think that Basil, having learned the secrets to the baking arts in late 30’s Bavaria and hearing the drums of war, he escaped from Germany, hiding out in a specially baked pastry that sadly destroyed his sense of smell and taste. Returning to England during the blitz, he found that his talents as a baker of tasty treats was of little use as shit was getting blown up all the time. Choosing to leave his homeland once again he struck out across the ocean for America, dodging Jerry’s U-Boats all the while. Once firmly ensconced in the US of A, he set to baking the best possible cookies for the men and women fighting for freedom across the Atlantic. Sadly, due to his tragic lack of both taste and smell, his cookies came out horribly, being rejected even for use on POW’s. The only bright spot was that they were found to have a half-life of close to 2,000 years, so they were packaged and placed into office vending machines that were becoming all the rage. And there they sat until and unsuspecting schlub (me) bought them for the hefty price of $1.00 this afternoon.

At first the cookie seems like your average Oreo knock-off, ala the Hydrox cookies your Grandma always tried to pass off on you. I will say that the center is rather creamy, comparing favorably to the sometimes chalky center of an Oreo. However, the cookies that surround it, at first, taste not bad but quickly devolve into something thoroughly unappetizing. Along with that, there’s just so darn many of them. The package contains 15 cookies, which really isn’t bad for a dollar (the recommended serving size is 3 cookies*), but oh God whatever you don’t try to eat them all. These things hit your stomach and immediately begin to expand like an alien egg gestating in your GI tract waiting until that 3:30 conference call you have coming up to burst forth from you and slither into ventilation ducts to go back to its vending machine nest.

The Horrific Aftermath

According to fellow vending machinologist Matt Springer, Basil has since gotten the backing of the Biscomerica Corporation, funding his sad attempts to make the world atone for his tragic loss of senses. Damn you Basil, only a strike force made up of Little Debbie, Tony the Tiger, Twinkie the Kid and Kool-Aid Man could hope to storm your hollowed-out volcano fortress in Rialto, CA and make you pay for the horrors you’ve unleashed upon an unsuspecting populace. You mad bastard.

*HA HA HA HA HA HA HAH HA HAHA HA

Review: Batman Odyssey #1

2010-07-13T10:32:00.000-05:00

Neal Adams has returned to Batman with Batman: Odyssey, the first of two mini-series touching on the high-points of his career. While the art is certainly very nice, the story itself is lacking.

Batman starts the story, relating to Robin (Dick Grayson, though he’s drawn wearing Tim Drake’s costume) one of the earliest adventures of his career, back when he packed guns as part of his repertoire. The hook of the story is to explain to Robin why they don’t carry guns, though the phrase “Batman doesn’t kill” would seem to be good enough explanation for me. From there, Man-Bat wanders into the Batcave with some important information. Bats yells at him for using the Man-Bat serum instead of simply coming as his human self, stopping him from relaying some information that he thinks Batman needs to know. From there, Batman shows off his new Batmobile to Robin while driving/flying/boating to stop the Riddler who is, apparently, committing two simultaneous crimes.

This book is a mess, the Batman featured here seems to hew closest to Frank Miller’s “G--damn Batman” from his All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder’, berating Robin, while lamenting in his internal monologue that he should be more supportive of the boy. While I realize that historically that Batman did sport guns back in the day, I had long thought that had been retconned out, so it was just jarring to see them show up here as a plot point, the same for Dick wearing Tim’s costume. I realize that this was the first issue of a 12 issue story-arc, so it’s natural for it to throw out a lot of plot threads that will be followed up on over the coming issues, but there was a haphazardness to this that felt like it was throwing a ton of stuff at the wall, just to see what will stick. It felt like Adams drew a bunch of pages and then waited a year before worrying about grafting a plot onto it.

As for the art itself, it’s certainly very nice. Though not as smooth as his 70’s work, Adams can still draw the heck out of a Batman comic. The scenes with Batman driving his “new” Batmobile (actually a retooled model of Adams classic coup model from the 70’s) are just gorgeous, if only the dialogue written over them was not so clunky.

I had high hopes for this book, and I still do, but I can’t say that I’m not more than a little disappointed at the opening issue to this series. Hopefully, though Adams stumbled out of the gate, he’ll get back up and charge to the finish.

Batman: Odyssey Part 1
Neal Adams - Story & Art
Michael Golden - Inking (pp. 19 & 20)
Continuity Studios - Color
Rob Leigh - Letters
Mike Marts - Editor

Review @ PopSyndicate: Zatanna #2

2010-06-29T21:47:00.000-05:00

This week at Popsyndicate I review Zatanna #2:

After a slow week at the comics shop, I cast around on twitter to see if anyone had a good recommendation for a comic to review this week. The overwhelming favorite was Zatanna #2, and they were right. In current comics, it's very odd for the second issue of a new series to be a perfect jumping on point, but this one is jsut about perfect.

Zatanna, returning home after a rough night with the Justice League, just wants to fall asleep, but a nightmare-imp named Fuseli has other ideas. Since Z's home is impervious to both physical and mystical breaking & entering, Fuseli enters her mind via the nightmares of others, eventually entering into Zatanna's turning them against her. This leads to some frankly, beautiful full-page spreads by Stephanie Roux depicting their battle through the dream-scape.

Head on over here to read the full review.

Review @ PopSyndicate: Hawkeye & Mockingbird #1

2010-06-08T08:58:00.000-05:00

In Marvel's most glaring ploy to get my business, they've brought back the main characters of the first superhero comic I started reading in earnest, West Coast Avengers: Hawkeye & Mockingbird.

As Marvel continues their roll-out of The Heroic Age, Hawkeye & Mockingbird picks up where they left off from the New Avengers: Reunion mini-series with the heroes reunited in body, if not in spirit.

Following up on the events of their miniseries, Hawkeye (no longer using the Ronin identity) & Mockingbird are running the underground law-enforcement organization WCA (get the acronym?) and open the issue hunting down a shipment of stolen weapons. After a car chase, they stop the shipment, and run into two blasts from their past. First Crossfire, the villain behind the plot that got these two together in the first place, shows up, somehow involved with the weapons. Also, conveniently, teh granddaughter of the Phantom Rider (who Mockingbird threw off a cliff in the Old West) shows up and is not too happy to see her back in the land of this living.

Read the rest here. Also, if you're interested, check out where it started in Avengers: Hawkeye, West Coast Avengers: Assembled & New Avengers: Reunion.

Review @ PopSyndicate: Secret Avengers #1

2010-06-01T21:36:00.000-05:00

Almost forgot to mention that I have a review up at PopSyndicate for Secret Avengers #1:

As The Heroic Age dawns on the Marvel Universe, Ed Brubaker tries his hand at writing his own Avengers team, bent on cleaning up the messes of the previous administration.

As in our own universe, the problem with suddenly deciding that things are going to be better now is that there are still problems left behind. Under the care of Norman Osborn, powerful artifacts were sold off to the highest bidder, or just neglected so that any random do-no-gooder could grab them where they were left lying around. Steve Rogers (the former Captain America), now in charge of the nation’s national security, has assembled a group of agents with the intention of using them to gather these objects. Unfortunately, these things never are as easy as they seem. When stealing back the Serpent Crown from Roxxon Oil, they discover that this was not the crown they were looking for, and that it may be related to Roxxon’s efforts to find oil on Mars, efforts that were suddenly abandoned and scrubbed from their records.

Head on over to read the full review.

Summer Reading: Grimjack Omnibus

2010-05-31T12:07:00.000-05:00

Summer Reading is a series that I plan to update on Monday's during the Summer that highlights some books that are good for throwing into your bag while on the way to the beach, vacation, or even to work.

I've been enjoying the recent trend of releasing Omnibuses (omnibi?) of older, very influential work by some of the smaller publishers. I've long wanted to give Grimjack a try, I've enjoyed both of the creators work for a while and this has always been th work that many have cited as their seminal work.

Grimjack is a pretty simple set-up. A mercenary named John Gaunt (nicknamed Grimjack) lives in the city of Cynosure, a city that is the nexus of many realities, all in a constant state of phasing in and out of phase with each other. Gaunt has had a long and checkered past, having been a criminal, a cop and now a man for hire. Both the setting and Gaunt's history allow for incredible flexibility in story telling. In this book alone, we get westerns, science fiction, noir detective mysteries and political intrigue. All of the stories are grounded by the presence of Grimjack, who could very easily be written off as a typical Eastwoodian "Man With A Dark Past Who Does Good", but the character is very well written by John Ostrander (Suicide Squad, Hawkworld) so that the character shines through. Also, the art by Timothy Truman (Scout, Hawkworld) is incredibly detailed and clear. The art makes it worth while to re-read the book just to see the easter eggs sprinkled through out. For stories that are over 25 years old, it feels very fresh and new.

As for the format, IDW Comics prints the first 8 Grimjack stories that were originally backups in the First Comics series Starslayer and the first 13 issues of Grimjack's solo title (along with a brief framing sequence that I believe was created for the last re-print of these stories) here in a 6x9 softcover. It's a great package and I wish Marvel & DC would modify their Showcase/Essential series to this format. I'd gladly pay the extra money for color pages and the smaller trim size which makes for a much more portable read. Both IDW and Dark Horse are publishing a lot of books in this format and I look forward to grabbing more of them.

Reviews @ PopSyndicate: Siege #4

2010-05-18T10:00:00.001-05:00

Also this week @ PopSyndicate, I review the rather lackluster conclusion to Siege:

Marvel's event comic to end all of their event comics (or so they say) comes to a close, not with a bang, but with a whimper. This is especially disappointing following on how strong the three previous issues were. Where did it all go wrong?

Check it out!

Reviews @ PopSyndicate: Sweet Tooth Vol. 1

2010-05-18T08:47:00.001-05:00

This week I'm reviewing Sweet Tooth Vol. 1 over at PopSyndicate:

Jeff Lemire's new Vertigo series releases it's first collection this week. A post-apocalyptic adventure featuring a strange, and very sweet protagonist who shows us that even at the end of the world, there's still time for candy.

Gus lives by five rules his Father has imposed upon him:
5. Never have a fire in daytime, cause people can see the smoke.
4. If I ever see anyone other than my Dad, I run and keep running.
3. Always say my prayers so as God don't decide to come make me sick too.
2. Never forget to pray for Momma, cause she was the prettiest lady God ever made.
1. Never, EVER leave the woods.

Head on over here to check out the full review.

Thoughts on IRON MAN 2

2010-05-10T11:09:00.000-05:00

Overall, I enjoyed the heck out of the movie. It was fun, though it had some fat that could have easily been trimmed. There was also one moment at the end that bugged the shit out of me. But, if you enjoyed the first one, this delivers more of the same. Maybe a little bit too much more. But you'll have a good time. Anyway, here are some SPOILERIFIC bullet points:

Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer was great as the anti-Tony Stark, Justin Hammer, but was almost a little too cartoonish. And the fact that he didn't get punched in the face at least once was a little disappointing. Regardless, Rockwell is fast becoming an actor who improves anything he's cast in.
Scarlett Johansen was really good, but I went in thinking she was going to be really bad, so I guess low expectation paid off there.
The final battle just went on...and on. After a while it was just metal crashing into other metal with some explosions. They could have cut it down by half and made it better.
Two dudes in Iron Man suits drunkenly duking it out to "Robot Rock" by Daft Punk? YES.
The biggest thing that bugged me was that they built up Pepper Potts over the course of the movie as being a strong, capable leader (especially towards the end when she took over the situation) to then have her freak out with the, "I'm a girl! I can't do this, save me Tony!" reaction at the end. It was just a completely puzzling choice, unless they thought they had somehow emasculated Tony by making him no longer CEO.
During the opening at Stark Expo, when Tony checked his blood toxicity for the first time, my girlfriend leaned over to me and asked, "Is his suit killing him?" I was confused for a second, looked up at the screen and saw the awful, shiny tux he was wearing in that scene and almost replied, "Well, it's certainly killing me."
The shout-outs to future Marvel movies were distracting and far from subtle. I half expected Agent Coulson's last line to be, "I'm needed in New Mexico." *turns to camera* "Where you can seem me next Summer in The Mighty Thor!"
And yeah, the easter egg after the credits was OK, but not nearly as cool as the last one.

Review @ Popsyndicate: Free Comic Book Day Round Up

2010-05-04T10:00:00.004-05:00

Today over at Popsyndicate, I offer up a round up of my favorite books from last Saturday's Free Comic Book Day:

Another Free Comic Book Day has come and pass, and by the anecdotal evidence of the giant crowd I experienced at my local comics shop, and the glowing notices I have seen around my circle on twitter, it looks to have been a success. After reading through the pile, the rather large pile I might add, of books I picked up, it also looks to have been one of the best in terms of the actual comics that were produced for the day. Almost all of the larger publishers actually produced new content for their books and most of those were full issues of series. Here's a run-down of some of the highlights of the books I picked up.

Overall, it was a pretty great haul, with some minor disappointments. Head on over here to read the full run down.

Review @ PopSyndicate: The Brave & The Bold #33

2010-04-27T08:50:00.000-05:00

Today at PopSyndicate, my review is up for The Brave & The Bold #33, and I am less than enthused.

J. Michael Straczynski continues his mining of continuity for new stories and comes up with mixed results.
There are fewer books that I've gone into this year that I wanted to like more than this one. It featured three characters who I enjoy quite a bit (Wonder Woman, Zatanna, & Batgirl) but who rarely seem to socialize, and that was part of the hook for me, them socializing. As much as I love punching in comic books, I also enjoy seeing heroes living and interacting in situations where they're just having fun and not trying to save the universe.

Head on over here to read the full review.

Buy My Stuff...Please

2010-03-17T22:23:00.001-05:00

So it's come to this, I've got way too much stuff. So why don't you help me out, dear internet person and take some of this stuff off of my hands! Below is a list of books I'm ready to say goodbye to, all are in good shape, some minor shelf-wear but other than that almost like new. Pricing is: Over-Sized HC's are $10, HC's are $7, and soft covers are $5. Prices are negotiable, especially if you're buying several. If you're in the Chicago area, I'm sure we can work something out to meet up, if not, I'll be happy to ship anywhere in the US, however shipping will be extra. You can pay via Paypal or just shoot me a check. If you're interested, send me an e-mail at jurbanciz [at] gmail [dot] com and we'll work it out.

[Edit: obviously stuff that has a strikethrough has been claimed.]

Hardcovers

Justice League: The Lightning Saga
JSA: The Next Age
Wolverine: Enemy of the State Vol. 1 (Premier)
Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 2 (over-sized)
Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 3 (over-sized, missing dust jacket)
Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 4 (over-sized)
Batman: Hush Vol.1
Batman: Hush Vol. 2
Superman/Batman: Supergirl
The Walking Dead: Book One (over-sized)
The Best American Comics 2006
Justice Vol. 1
Identity Crisis
Secret War (over-sized)
Uncanny X-Men: Manifest Destiny (over-sized)
Ultimate X-Men Vol. 1 (over-sized)
Ultimate X-Men Vol. 2 (over-sized)
Captain America: The New Deal (over-sized)
Marvel Zombies (over-sized)
Catwoman: When in Rome

TPB's

Outsiders Vol. 3-5
Hawkman Vol. 3
Teen Titans (recent series) Vol. 4, 6 & 7
Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 9 - 16
Avengers: The Search for She-Hulk
Avengers: Red Zone
Avengers: World Trust
Supreme Power Vol. 1 - 3
Supreme Power: Nighthawk
Supreme Power: Hyperion
Superman: Birthright
Girls Vol. 1 & 2
Noble Causes Vol. 1
Batman: City of Crime
Green Arrow: Moving Targets
Captain Britain: Vampire State
Rising Stars Vol. 1
Justice League International: The Secret Gospel of Maxwell Lord
Wanted
Sachs & Violens
Grendel: Devil's Legacy
Rex Mundi Vol. 1
Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating the DCU Vol. 1
~~Gotham Central Vol. 1-5~~
Chosen
Fallen Angel Vol. 1-2
Amazing Joy Buzzards Vol. 1 & 2
Starman: To Reach the Stars
Starman: Sons of the Father
Starman: Stars My Destination
Starman: A Starry Knight
Starman: A Wicked Inclination
Starman: Grand Guiginol
X-Men: Phoenix: Endsong
Ultimate X-Men Vol 5 - 15
Top Cow's Best of Warren Ellis (includes Down & 2 Witchblade stories)
Ultimate Fantastic Four Vol. 4-6
Wolverine: Enemy of the State Vol. 2
Teen Titans/Outsiders: The Insiders
X-Men: Supernovas

True Geek Confession: Lois & Clark

2010-02-17T20:23:00.005-06:00

Following up on last year's cross-blog event, "My Scott & Jean", the Alert Nerds have thrown down the gauntlet once again. This year's event is "True Geek Confessions" and I'll let them explain it:

Unpopular opinions: we can haz them. Sometimes you stand alone in loving a super niche-y run of a popular comic book series. Sometimes you’re the only person on the entire planet to ’ship a certain ’ship. Sometimes you simply Do Not Get a movie the rest of your geeky brethren is falling all over themselves about. And because a lot of fandom is about sharing loves and hates and communing with your fellow geeks, this can feel awfully lonely.

For a while there, I didn't think I really had one, but reading through Dan Faust's excellent post on the Family West, I realized that I had a similar love that largely goes unshared by the geek community: the marriage of Clark Kent & Lois Lane. Even as child, the dysfunctional love triangle that existed between Lois, Clark & Superman bugged me. Superman always seemed like kind of a dick, and Lois was necessarily portrayed wither as clueless, or as a shrill harpy, bent on getting Superman to marry her*. As befits the premiere investigative journalist of a major metropolitan newspaper, it seemed silly that Lois wouldn't be able to defeat Clark's cunning disguise of horn-rimmed glasses and brylcream eventually.

So in 1996 it happened, though Lois didn't figure it out for herself, the reveal was well done, with her slapping Clark for leading her on as two separate men for years, but their love won through and they were married. though the writing of their marriage hasn't always been perfect, there have been some wonderful moments that make me so happy that DC allowed them to "take the plunge". A personal favorite is the moment in Superman: Up, Up and Away by Kurt Busiek & Geoff Johns. After Superman lost his powers post-Infinite Crisis, he and Lois got to spend a blissful year as a "normal" couple, but eventually his powers started to reemerge. Though Clark thinks that his wife will be angry or upset that she will be "losing" her husband once again to the craziness of the superhero lifestyle, she only has three words for him: "Go get 'em".

Lois and Clark as a married couple compliment each other really well, she's not the hand-wringing wife, waiting for her man to come home from the fight, she's out there on the street getting the story, and though she needs saving every once in a while, she does a fair bit of saving her man's ass as well. It's nice to get to see my childhood heroes get to behave, and grow, like adults.

*Not to say that Silver Age Lois stories weren't freaking hilarious.

2010 Media Journal 2

2010-01-13T10:18:00.000-06:00

Movies:

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Rewatched this again this week, and holy shit, I forgot how great this movie is. It's one flaw is that after the amazing truck chase after the ark, the whole movie just kind of groans to a close. I mean, the whole "dudes faces melting off from viewin the glory of God" thing is pretty boss, but after Indy chucks a guy through the windshield of the truck, you can't really top that. I think I'm going to have to watch the other three over the next few days/weeks (yes, I even own Crystal Skull, don't judge me) to see how they feel. Raiders just has a different look to it than the others as far as I can remember. It looks and feels more organic. While Spielberg was going after those old school movie serials, it also has a strong noir vibe to it. Especially with his use of shadows. More on this as I watch the rest.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Wild Wild World of Batwoman: Since me and my girlfriend are big fans of MST3K, we watch a lot of it, and this may very well be the worst movie we've seen yet. Worse than Manos: The Hand of Fate. Yes. really. Mike & the 'Bots do their best, but it wasn't quite enough. You'll want to avoid this one at all costs. I'd give you a plot description...but I think I'd pull something in my brain if I even tried to igure it out.

Comics:

X-Factor: Nation X - A fun little one-shot. Apparently the X-Men have set up their on little island somewhere so they can just stay away from everyone who hates & fears them? X-Factor gets invited to come live with them and they stop by mostly to just tell them that it's a stupid idea and have a (good-natured) fight. Not much to speck of, but a good way to pass the time. Can anyone explain to me why Dazzler is now blonde?

Stumptown #2 - Another very good issue of this book. While the first issue seemed more self-contained, this one gets deeper into the story, so it doesn't hit as hard, but still very well done.

Sports:

So my girlfriend is a Packers fan, and needless to say, Sunday was gutting. The game was probably the best game I saw all year, but did not have the desired outcome

So that's it for this week.

Review @ PopSyndicate - Siege #1

2010-01-12T08:54:00.003-06:00

Over at PopSyndicate.com I offer my thoughts on Siege #1:

I have not been a fan of Marvel Comics’s recent run of “event” comics.
Starting with Avengers: Disassembled five years ago, Marvel, with Brian Michael
Bendis at the helm has put out a series of ever-escalating events that seemed to
be leading…somewhere, but just never quite got there. It was incredibly
frustrating because they always seemed to be stories that had a beginning, a
middle, and then a “to be continued” that was in no way a satisfying
ending. While I understand that in on-going comic books, there really is
no such thing as “The End” since Spider-Man is still going to come out next
month whatever happens, but each one of these events simply ran into the next,
constantly losing momentum until it seemed the endgame was to simply get people
not to care anymore. So with Siege, we’re faced with what Marvel claims to
be the end. This is where it was all leading and, frankly, it’s pretty
darn good.

Head on over to read it in full.

Also, I am still going to be doing my weekly media journals, but I'm switching the scheduling so they'll publish wednesday mornings. Just works better for me, and this is all about me, after all.

2010 Media Journal 1

2010-01-03T19:59:00.003-06:00

Hey all, this year I'm going to attempt to post once a week with my thoughts about new comics/books/movies/TV shows I've read and seen each week. I probably won't post too many full-on reviews, but mostly just random thoughts associated with what I've been up to. Mostly this is to help me remember what I've been up to and also help organize my thoughts.

Comics

It was a slow week this week, with only one new release, but I took the opportunity to pick up a few books I had been eyeing.

20th Century Boys Vol. 2 - The near-universal acclaim that has been following this book on the internet made me very excited to pick it up, but the first volume left me kind of cold. It was certainly good, but it was a rather slow burn of a story and I didn't feel compelled to keep on going. Vol 2 still didn't make me a full-fledged addict, but it definitely has e eager to grab volume three. The only thing that bugged me about this volume is that it used a story-telling trick that has always bugged me. A character has information that is pertinent to the plot, he even tells other people this information, but the author covers up what he's saying so that the reveal is hidden from the reader. I understand that it's important to show the reader that the information has been discovered, but it just feels like such a tease.

Sugar Shock One-Shot: The shop was giving this one-shot by Joss Whedon & Fabio Moon out for free during their New Year's Eve Eve sale and it's a fun little book (collecting stories that were originally put up on MySpace). The story is about a punk-rock band called to perform (maybe) at a galactic battle of the bands and it reads lie The Amazing Joy Buzzards had it been written by Whedon. There's not to muc heft there, but certainly worth the price I paid.

TV

Doctor Who: The End of Time 1 & 2: Though I'm not a huge Doctor Who fan, David Tennant's run on the series has been a favorite of mine and these final two episodes were certainly very good, if a tad melancholy. A lot of people on twitter were complaining that the Doctor came off rather unheroic as he met his end, especially compared with his direct predecessor, however it felt fitting to me. Tennant's Doctor always was the reluctant hero who seemed that he'd always prefer be out having fun instead of saving the universe, so his final words seemed right to me. Also, Timothy Dalton chewed the hell out of the scenery in that episode and probably took some home in a to-go container.

Re-watched the ending of Battlestar: Galactica this week and was still really impressed with it, though I could have done without the "present day" coda. Still, really good.

Can't think of too much else I watched other than a few bowl games and repeated watchings of this one episode of The Batman that my youngest has become fascinated with.

Movies:

For Christmas I got myself a Blu-ray player that also is compatible with Netflix Watch Instantly, so I'm going to be watching a lot of movies, some of which will not be very good, such as:

American Ninja: BeaucoupKevin was twittering about watching this yesterday ad so I threw it on late last night, thinking I'd be asleep in a few minutes. But shit, it was fascinating. In discussing it on twitter, Kevin said that it was "such an artifact" and it was. It hearkened back to watching awful movies just like it on cable on at my friends' houses back in grade school. Plus, there was a ninja that shot lasers at the end, that shit was off the hook.

Chocolate: The plot of this Thai martial arts movie: an autistic girl is able to repeat just about any movement she sees someone perform, so fo course she watches a bunch kung-fu movies so she can go collect the money owed to her former-gangster-mother in order to pay for her mother's cancer medicine. It was shockingly not nearly as exploitative as I thought it would end up being and was quite a good movie.

So that's about it for this week. Hopefully I'll have more for you in seven days.

Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T14:14:00.002-06:00

Yeah, so I failed at the whole "posting daily" this year, didn't I. Anyway, it's New Year's Eve, so have yourself a good one, and more importantly a safe one.

I do plan on posting much more often in 2010, so I've got that going for me. See you in the future!

Favorite Things II - Day 23

2009-12-23T00:01:00.001-06:00

I saw a fair amount of live music shows in 2009, but without a doubt one of my favorites was seeing a cover band. Tributosaurus is a Chicago collective that, once a month, picks a band and performs one show "as" that band, playing pitch-perfect renditions of their songs, obtaining all of the necessary musicians and instruments required. Though I've only seen them once so far, I got to see them "be" one of my absolute favorites, XTC. Which is nice, because we're not likely to see XTC ever tour, should they ever choose to reform, that is. Here's a infomercial they did to promote it:

They started of with a version of Life Begins at the Hop that blew the doors off, cycling through multiple vocalists and musicians in order to get every song exactly right, and they did.

It was a great night, both from my overwhelming familiarity with the music and with the fact that they played it so well. I can't wait to see them in just over a week when they play a New Year's Eve show "as" Tom Petty. I'm sure it'll be a fantastic evening.

Favorite Things II: Day 14*

2009-12-14T08:56:00.000-06:00

A quick one for today, here's DC Comics Holiday Card, featuring Jonah Hex, with pencils by José Luis Garcia-Lopez, inks by Kevin Nowlan and colors by Matt Hollingsworth. Just a beautiful card.

click to Santa-size

Art via Kevin Nowlan's blog.

*I know, I know, I'm three days behind here. Will catch up tonight!

Favorite Things II - Day 13

2009-12-13T08:00:00.000-06:00

Today's favorite thing is a repeat from last year, it's the internet. Mostly because of shit like this:

A compilation of all of the deaths from Total Recall. YES.

Favorite Things II - Day 12

2009-12-12T00:01:00.000-06:00

Since it's a lazy Saturday here at the Phoning It In Industries compound, let's pull out an oldie but goodie, what is probably my favorite single comics panel:

It's from JSA: The Liberty Files, a DC Elseworlds title reimagining a Wolrd War II era Justice Society. But even on an alternate earth, Batman's still The God Damn Batman.

Favorite Things II: Day 11

2009-12-11T21:25:00.004-06:00

Whew, almost missed today, well shit. Sorry about this, but I've been on a business trip, but let's go with one of my favorite artists of the last few years, Gene Ha. I got the chance to meet him at my local, Amazing Fantasy Books & Comics and he's a darn nice guy, he even did this awesome sketch for my youngest.

Anyway, though he hasn't done any interior work this year, he did do the covers for what was probably my favourite mini-series of the year, JSA vs. Kobra, here's one of those covers.

Anyway, he's a cool guy, and it just so happens if you're in Chicago, he'll be appearing at 3rd Coast Comics tomorrow from 12 - 5. Swing on by and meet him, grab a sketch and buy some books.

Favorite Things II - Day 10

2009-12-10T08:00:00.000-06:00

Sorry, on a business trip this week, so I'm kind of out of sorts but here's an album that I love so very much from this year and it's great and you should get it*. Mayer Hawthorne's A Strange Arrangement is as fine an R&B record as I have heard this year and it is the JAM.

*Can you tell I'm a little drunk as I write this?

Favorite Things II: Day 9

2009-12-09T08:00:00.002-06:00

Skottie Young has been on my radar for a couple of years, and though I generally enjoyed his cover work, I never eally got into his storytelling. However, this year saw the release of his & Eric Shanower's excellent adaptation of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Young's cartoonish art perfectly fit the book and it brought a wonderful story (that I was thus far only familiar with from the movie) to life. I highly suggest checking out the book, especially if you have kids as it is easily the best all-ages book released this year.

Favorite Things II - Day 8

2009-12-09T08:00:00.001-06:00

Well, I've already gone over my favorite movie of the year, now let's talk about the movie I thought was the best.

Moon is easily the best movie I saw this year. Sam Rockwell puts in an amazing performance as a man working alone on the moon, waiting for his tour to end so he can return to his wife and child. One morning, he has an accident and from there, things get strange. I hesitate to say more and if you don't know anything else about the movie, I urge you not to seek out any more information before seeing it. While foreknowledge of the plot does not lessen your enjoyment of it, but the movie is best if you go in with no expectations. This is just a great movie and Rockwell is great in it. Co-Writer & Director Duncan Jones takes a simple story and did not go the easy route with it, so many times I expected him to take a different approach to the story, but where he went ultimately felt much more natural and "real" than most genre films. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't come to video till late January, but I urge you to seek it out, it's a winner.

Favorite Things II - Day 7

2009-12-07T00:01:00.000-06:00

A few months ago, I wrote a post talking about my problems with Fringe. Fortunately, most of my problems were solved through the remainder of the first season, opening up the series universe(s) to show where creator JJ Abrams and co. were going with the show. The thing I like most about the show, and something it shares with his previous show, Alias, is that he's not afraid to blow up the shows status quo from season to season. Initially, we thought The Pattern was to be the big bad of the show, the enemy for our heroes to fight each week, but by the end, The Pattern were shown to be much more complicated than previously thought and then pushed aside to show what the true enemy was: another Earth, one that wants to take over our own.

Throughout this, they've kept the stuff I liked, Crazy Walter is still crazy, but his madness has been deepened and given reason, something that just about anyone can understand. Peter's mysteriousness has been given an edge, one that the character himself doesn't yet understand. And Olivia has been further humanized, both by the inclusion of her sister and the fact they've since allowed her to smile once or twice.

I've really been enjoying the second season thus far, though I could have done without the baseball playoffs throwing a wrench into the scheduling, but it's quickly risen to be one of my must watch shows. Glad to know there's something that will still keep me guessing in a few months once Lost is gone.

Favorite Things II : Day 6 UPDATE

2009-12-06T20:08:00.001-06:00

Well shit, not 12 hours after I hit "publish" on today's post, does Saturday Night Live do a parody of the very same infomercial. Probably the finest thing they've done this year:

Favorite Things II - Day 6

2009-12-06T07:00:00.002-06:00

Another lazy day here at the headquarters, but do I have a treat for you. This had undoubtedly been my favorite viral video of the year. Though you may be unfamiliar with the uniquely awful "musical" stylings of the Insane Clown Posse (once notable for being kicked off their label for being too obscene...and awful), but they have built up quite a large following, called Juggalos. This following is so large that they hold a massive, three day festival called the "Gathering of the Juggalos". To promote it this year, they made an infomercial. The most awesome infomercial I have ever seen. I warn you, it is close to 15 minutes long, but goodness, is it worth it. I'd recommend reading The International Society of Supervillains running commentary on the video as you go, as it is one of the best pieces of of internet comedy writing of the year:

Are you entertained? Disturbed? Good.

Favorite Things II - Day 5

2009-12-05T00:01:00.001-06:00

As you may remember, Saturday's are lazy days of the Favorite Things. So here's a video featuring one (or rather two) of my favorite things of 2009: DRUNK EWOKS.

Favorite Things II - Day 4

2009-12-04T00:01:00.005-06:00

As with most previous years, I only managed to see a few movies in the theater this year. Most of those were with the boys and for some, the less said, the better . Part of the reason I didn't see a lot was simply because this Summer's blockbuster movie season was rather lacking. No big releases that made me block out time in my schedule just so I could see it on opening night or make an evening of it with some friends...save one. That is the new reboot of Star Trek.

While I am a Star Trek fan, I am not a STAR TREK FAN. I am in no way scandalized that Paramount chose to re-boot the original series with an all-new cast. It makes perfect sense if you are trying to cast the net past the same fans that are going to see the movie no matter what. People who aren't fans know certain things just because they are ingrained in the culture: Kirk, Spock, "Beam me up Scotty", etc. To drop $150 million or so on anything that lacked those makes no sense.

Going into the movie, I expected some pretty explosions, and hopefully a few nods to the things that made Star Trek such a great show, the relationships, the nobility and promise of a hopeful future...and they nailed it. Instead of having the actors simply impersonate Shatner, Nimoy, etal, they managed to capture the spirit they brought to their roles and still make it seem new. And it's just all such a good time. Saw in twice in the theater and have seen it now a few more on DVD and it's just excellent. It certainly isn't the best movie of the year, but it certainly is my favorite.

*For more, go ahead and click over to my original review of the movie from this Summer.

Favorite Things II - Day 3

2009-12-03T00:01:00.002-06:00

I'm going to try to stick to more theme-days this month, simply because it makes it a little easier to plans things out for me, so Thursday shall here-by be THUG THURSDAYS, celebrating some of my favorites in crime fiction from the past year (either new released or new to me).

Let's start with what is easily one of the best books of the year, Darwyn Cooke's graphic novel adaptation of Richard Stark's The Hunter.

If not the best of Stark's Parker books, it easily the most adapted, being made into films such as Point Blank and Payback, and many others that are not official, it is a simple story. After a big heist, Parker's partner and wife attempt to kill him and run off with the money. Living through the attempt, Parker slowly recovers, and then comes back looking for his money...and if he gets a little revenge along the way, so be it.

The best choice made with this adaptation is that they kept the setting in the sixties, which plays to Cooke's artistic strengths and the book is stunning to look at. Eschewing full-color to work in a muted palate of blacks and blues conveying the mood of cold dread throughout the whole book. Take a look at this preview of the fist 20 pages of the book to see how he conveys the silent ruthlessness of Parker, moving forward like a shark looking for his money.

I really can't praise this book enough and others have done it much better this year (and probably in the next few weeks since it is sure to end up on every year-end best-of list), so simply if you enjoyed the genre of crime books/comics this is an essential.

Favorite Things II - Day 2

2009-12-02T00:01:00.005-06:00

It's Wednesday, so as most of you know it is new comics day so every Wednesday this month I'll try to spot-light a new comics series from the past year that has wowed me.

Let's start off easy with what is without a doubt in my mind the best series of the year, though not new, it is certainly a new direction, Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III run in Detective Comics, featuring Batwoman. I've been a fan of Rucka's for quite sometime, starting with his initial comics work, Whiteout*. Since then, through his creator-owned series Queen & Country and his excellent work on my favorite series Gotham Central (along with co-writer Ed Brubaker and artist Michael Lark) he has created/worked on some amazing female characters. When he created the new Batwoman, Kate Kane, in the weekly series 52, I was interested, though the media centered on the fact that she is gay, I saw that there was much more possibilities with the character than what we was initially on display. I kept up with her appearance in other event series, but she was never given a spotlight until now and man, was it worth the wait. We're still mid-way through the origin arc of the character, but it's something special and unique and it's nice to see that in mainstream superhero comics there's still room for something new.

Obviously when talking about this series you can't ignore the art, J.H. Williams II I a truly great artist. His painted work on the Batwoman scenes is just amazing and the effortlessness that he moves between other styles is just amazing. If you'd shown me this book without the artist credits, I would have told you there were at least three other pencillers working on this book, but he just makes it work so well, and instead of seeming a mish-mash it blends together so well. Here's an example of a fight scene that he did that is just amazing:

The fluidity of the image is amazing. And also, it include two face-kicks, which is awesome.

Also, I shouldn't leave out the back-up stories featuring The Question, the secret identity of my favorite character from Gotham Central, Renee Montoya. It's unfortunate that these stories are getting overlooked or criticized simply because they are very good rather than great. The first arc told a nice action story about human smuggling and Cully Hammer's art is perfect for it. It's good stuff, but it can't help but be overshadowed by the main story.

This is a great book, and easily one of my favorite things of the year.

*We won't speak of the, shall we say unfortunate, movie adaptation from this year.

Favorite Things II: Day 1

2009-12-01T08:00:00.001-06:00

Ho ho ho folks, as it is the happiest season of the year (for some of us at least), I figured it's once again time to share some of my favorite things from the past year (and just the past). Anyway, let's start off light, though seasonally appropriate. though the idea of a Bob Dylan Christmas album sounds odd, I've found myself enjoying it quite a bit. I think the video for "Must Be Santa" sums it up quote weel, though Bob looks like he's auditioning for the role of the Mad hatter in a Holiday-themed version of Alice in Wonderland, it works within the rather mad-cap feel of both the video and the song.

So I hope you all are starting to emege from your post-Thanksgiving food-coma and are starting to get into the mood. Look forward to sharing a lot more over the coming days.

Coming Tomorrow: CONTENT

2009-11-30T07:00:00.001-06:00

Hey folks, I know things have been slow around here other than the occasional post pointing out my reviews over at PopSyndicate, well boy howdy is that about to change, as you may remember from last December, I went into high-content mode posting about one of my favorite things each day of the month, leading up to Christmas. I'm doing it again, starting tomorrow, so buckle up fr 25 straight days of crap from me cluttering up your RSS feed!

New Reviews @ PopSyndicate

2009-11-24T08:46:00.007-06:00

Have two new reviews up at PopSyndicate today:

Adventure Comics #4

While Geoff Johns certainly has enough balls up in the air juggling his current event, Blackest Night, he decided to use this tie-in as a sequel to his last two event titles, Infinite Crisis and Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds.

Punisher #11

If Jason Aaron’s Punisher MAX is the Punisher version of The Wire, Remender’s is the Punisher version of Crank.

PopSyndicate.com Review: R.E.B.E.L.S. #10

2009-11-17T09:00:00.000-06:00

My review of the Blackest Night tie-in, R.E.B.E.L.S. #10 is up at popsyndicate.com:

I haven't been keeping up with DC's "cosmic" titles since 52, but since I was picking up a copy of R.E.B.E.L.S. in my quest to get all of the promotional lantern rings DC is distributing with various Blackest Night tie-in titles. My familiarity with this title is limited, though I had read L.E.G.I.O.N. back in the day because I was a fan of the event it had initially spun out of (Invasion!), I was unaware of what took them from being a "legion" to being "rebels". Though that information was not forthcoming, the issue itself was a good introduction to the characters and its overall concepts.

Go here to read the whole thing.

Review @ Popsyndicate - Assault on New Olympus

2009-11-10T14:08:00.003-06:00

My second review is up on PopSyndicate for Assault on New Olympus #1:

Picking up from the dangling story threads from Incredible Hercules and The
X-Men Vs. Agents of Atlas mini-series, Assault on New Olympus kicks off the
story line that will be flowing both through the main Hercules story in
Incredible, along with the new, Agents of Atlas back-up story.

Read the full review here.

Book Review: Star Wars: Death Troopers

2009-11-04T20:53:00.001-06:00

Let's get this out of the way first off, while I am definitely a Star Wars fan, I haven't read anything from the Expanded Universe since reading the Thrawn Trilogy back in High School/College. I always thought the EU was way too bogged down in "cannon" and when I tried picking up one or two of the novels a few months ago, they were darn near impenetrable. Anyway, seeing as how Halloween was coming up, I was in the market for scary things, movies, books, comics, what have you. So when I heard the elevator pitch of "Star Wars with Zombies", I was sold, or rather, whatever the equivalent term is for getting it at the library.

Star Wars: Death Troopers is exactly what you would expect from a mash up of Star Wars and zombie movies. In fact, it is everything you would expect. Take the following factors: a damaged prison ship/bus/space ship, an abandoned island/town/bigger space ship, and the usual motley group of well-meaning and cruel prisoners/guards, throw in zombies and you have the story right there. Hell, you've seen this movie, both on the big screen and probably six or eight times on TV if you enjoy SyFy Saturday original movies (like me!). But though the story is as familiar as any zombie story is, doesn't mean it's bad. It's a well done piece of work, taking the same old tropes and working in familiar settings and characters (whose identities are supposed to be secret since they are not featured on the book cover and don't appear until half-way through) of the Star Wars Universe.

The setting is, the deep-space, imperial prison barge Purge has come up lame somewhere outside of normal shipping lanes, finding an abandoned Star Destroyer, a party is sent aboard to scavenge for parts that may help them get underway. Unfortunately, the away team brings back more than parts. Suddenly it's up to a corrupt guard, a plucky Imperial doctor, two teenage prisoners and a pair of "rogue smugglers"* to get out alive.

the familiar tropes of the zombie genre are trotted out efficiently and done well. though there are a few twists added into the methodology of the zombies, it's nothing Earth-shattering. You get the horror of what is going on and the carnage is certainly not made more family-friendly since this is a Star Wars book. If made into a movie, this would definitely be "R" rated (though there are no boobs or swears, so you never know). At least suspension of disbelief is made easier since you can assume that George Romero movies have not made it out to the Outer Rim, so you don't have to wonder how stupid the characters are not to know to shoot them in the damn head.

It's a solid book, if you want a Star Wars zombie book, you can't go wrong here, but if you want anything more than simply that, you'll have to hope for a sequel.

*Three guesses as to who they are.

Star Wars: Death Troopers
Written by: Joe Schreiber

Review @ PopSyndicate.com - Beasts of Burden #2

2009-10-27T08:50:00.004-05:00

I've started doing comics reviews for popsyndicate.com, for my first one, I chose Beasts of Burden #2.

With the on-coming Halloween holiday, it seems appropriate to discuss Beasts of Burden. Spinning out of Dark Horse’s horror anthologies the book seems to be rather simple, neighborhood dogs (and a cat) dealing with supernatural dangers to themselves and their families.

Go here to read the full review.

JSA Vs. KOBRA - The Signening

2009-09-12T20:35:00.006-05:00

Today, my local, and favorite comic book shop, Amazing Fantasy, hosted a signing for the art team for the JSA vs. Kobra mini-series, a book that I have raved about before. Suffice to say, it is still one of my favorite books hitting stands and it was nice to meet the guys and get some sketches from them. Since I had to bring my boys along, I let them pick the subjects of the art. Jack decided that the only two choices for him were "Batman or Ninjas" so I went with a Batman sketch from Don Kramer, penciller for the series who has also had runs on JSA and Detective Comics:

Sean, meanwhile, decided that he really wanted a drawing of Hawkgirl, so I asked Gene Ha, cover artist and also the artist for Top Ten, for a sketch and he rewarded me with the below:

Really, though I've only gotten a few sketches so far, this is probably my favorite one. He used one of Alex Roth's JSA covers for reference and he commented that it had an Alex Toth feel to it and I can see that in his art.

So a great time was had by all and a big thanks to Amazing Fantasy for hosting. Gene Ha, Don Kramer & inker Mike Babinski were all really nice guys ad I wish I could make it to Windy City Comicon next week to see them again.

Review: Dark Entries

2009-08-30T20:56:00.000-05:00

DC Comics's adult imprint Vertigo recently launched a new crime line. I was fortunate enough to pick up the first two titles at the library recently and I barrelled through this one rather quickly. Getting star mystery novelist, Ian Rankin (author of the Rebus series) was quite a coup, the fact that he's writing a story featuring one of the stars of the Vertigo line, John Constantine is sure to be the icing on the cake. The only problem is that this isn't really a "crime" book at all, and only nominally a Constantine book.

Anyway, first things first. It's well done, and not having read any of Rankin's work up till now, it's obvious he has a nice ear for dialogue. The set-up is that John Constantine, paranormal/occult investigator is brought into a reality show, "Britain's Most Haunted". Apparently the contestants, who are locked in a "haunted" house are being, in fact, haunted. But it's not by the producers. Constantine decides that in order to diagnose the problem, he needs to enter the house.

It's around here that we hit the big twist of the story, one that it's really difficult to discuss the book without giving away, so if you want to skip the spoilers, scroll on down to where John's giving you the finger and read on.

It turns out that all of the "contestants" are really dead souls, pulled out of Limbo into a reality show being shown in Hell. The whole point of the show was to bring Constantine on board, the most requested contestant ever. It's here the story goes from being a detective story to straight up horror, and kind of loses the point as being marketed as being a crime story. But, it is quite good, so that's just an issue with the marketing.

My other issue with the book is that Constantine doesn't really feel like himself in this book. Sure, he's aloof ad a bit of a dick at times, but really, only at times. John Constantine is an asshole at all possible times, to everyone. This feels like the normal character on Prozac. I don't want to blame Rankin, maybe he (or editorial) felt they wanted to soften him up for wider consumption. But it just felt a little off for me.

The art by Werther Dell'edera is fine, nothing to write home about, but these books aren't meant to be artist's showcases anyway. HE does a fine job to set the mood and manages some touches that feel a bit like Guy Davis (B.P.R.D., Sandman Mystery Theater) in some of the later scenes.

A quick word on the format, it is damn nice. These small, 6" X 9" hardbacks have a very nice feel in the hand, reminiscent of the feel of Hardcase Crimes little paperbacks. Though they are small, they feel substantial. I may have to keep buy all of these just to see them all lined up on my shelf, much like how I like seeing all of my Hardcase books lined up. Yes, I realize that sounds a little anal/OCD, but the hell with it, one of the biggest charges I get out of collecting these things is seeing them all up on my book shelf. My preciouses....

Anyway, overall this is a good solid book, and I'm interested in reading more coming from the line, which is fortunate, because I have Brian Azzarello's book sitting right here, calling to me. Maybe if I get through this one quick enough I'll have something up about it mid-week, but I make no promises.

What's the Word?

2009-08-26T23:10:00.006-05:00

The word is laaazzzzzyyyyyyy. Anyway, have been taking some time off from blogging lately for reasons both work (boo!) and personal (yay!). Anyway, in case you're not keeping up with me elsewhere, I can also be found on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jason1749

Also, since long-form blogging seems to be beyond my attention span at the moment, I have been updating my tumblr blog quite a bit of late: http://www.phoning-it-in.tumblr.com

You can also clink on the linky thing over on the sidebar if you want to be my fake internet friend over at the Facebook. But I'm not there a lot.

But hey, it's Wednesday, so let's have a quick run-down of what I picked up this week at the shop*:

Batman and Robin #3: So the first storyline wrapped up in this issue and I liked it quite a bit. I like watching Dick & Damien growing into their roles as Batman and Robin and there's a nice character arc for them, even though this an "All New!!! All Different!!!' Dynamic Duo, I'm glad that this allows them to actually grow the characters. Morrison's writing is in par with the rest of his Batman work of late (very good) and Quietly, though there are some sketchy panels, once again delivers, and hopefully he'll be back after the next arc is over. I like the mixture of campy old-school villainy mixed with the new, more grotesque style on display here.

Detective Comics #856: While Batman & Robin is the flagship title of the Batman line, Detective is my absolute favorite book out there now. With Rucka firing on all cylinders at this point, it seems like he's finally getting to write the stories he wanted to after he created the new Batwoman in the pages of 52 (before she got drug into the whole Countdown/Final Crisis brou-ha-ha). This is some of my favorite work he's ever done, and he's long been one of my favorite writers working in comics, so that's saying something. As much as I can say about the writing, the art is just amazing. J.H. Williams III is turning in easily the best art that is being done on a big-two monthly comic right now. There's not much more than I can say about it other than to show off the cover below.

Wednesday Comics #8: While the universal love for this novel series seems to be waning, I for one am still enjoying it almost completely. Sure, the Wonder Woman and Teen Titans strips are dreadful, but once you realize that it's just like any comics section, with thing you like and things you skip, it's much easier to deal with thos. Consistently, the three MVP's of this series for me have been Supergirl (fun, goofy all ages comics), Strange Adventures (Paul Pope Adam Strange...exactly) and Hawkman (dude with a mace, hitting things...on Dinosaur Island). There are other strips that I like, but suspect will be even better in collected form (whateve novel form that is).

Nova #28: Nova continues to be one of my favorite Marvel books, simply by delivering large-scale, cosmic action. Though I have a feeling I'm missing a bit due to only reading this part of the War of Kings cross-over, I still love this series. Also, kind of kicking myself for giving up the monthly on Guardians of the Galaxy. Anyway, not much to say other than this is good stuff here.

*who you can also follow on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/amazing_fantasy

Live Tonight: THE DECEMBERISTS

2009-08-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of bloggery lately, but Summer's seemingly just moved into full swing. Anyway, going to see The Decemberists tonight at The Metro, and am suitably stoked. Picked up their newest album, The Hazards of Love and am enjoying it quite a bit. Os a complete album, it holds together much better than The Crane Wife (which I liked quite a bit).

So after I've talked about their last two albums, here's a track from their album before that, Picaresque, just because I love the video so much, with it's Rushmore meets The Daily Show conceit.

A Little Travelin' Music

2009-07-21T15:04:00.004-05:00

While I promise to bang my thoughts about Pitchfork Music Fest into some kind of post before the week is out, I figured I'd throw some songs at you. Usually when I'm leaving work for the day, I need something to play in the car to wake me up from a day of staring at a computer and trying not to put my fist through it, so here's five quick tunes that help me work the funk out.

Lisztomania - Phoenix

1901, Phoenix's newest album is easily my favorite new music of the summer. Very reminiscent of Cut Copy's brand of indie-dance-pop, the whole album gets you wanting to jump up and down, but nothing is better than this, the lead track.

DC Comics & Chocolate Milkshakes - Art Brut

Though, I'll be honest, Art Brut's newest album is probably my least favorite of their albums so far, it's still damn good. This song, Eddie Argos sings about two of his favorite things in life, which also happen to be some of mine as well.

Safe European Home - The Clash

It's pretty safe to say that The Clash are my favorite band, so it's pretty easy for them to make this list. Nothing like singing this one at the top of your lungs with the windows open.

Pull Shapes - The Pipettes

I know, I know, I've evangelized about these ladies many, many times before, but I'm just going to tell you, this is great music and if you don't like it you're dead to me. Well, not really, but let me be dramatic just this one, k?

Evangeline - Matthew Sweet

Recently loaded Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend up on my work iTunes and damn if that isn't a perfect album. One of the few records I've listened to a million times in the past 18 years, and I still love it as much as the day I got it. And this is probably my favorite song.

So go get in your car, turn it up and have some fun people!

Happy Bastille Day!

2009-07-14T21:31:00.003-05:00

Well, figured that post something...anything here, so here's a song with only a tentative connection to France:

Camera Obscura is a fave of mine and I highly suggest you check out their most recent album, My Maudlin Career if you like what you hear.

Comic Review: KICKBACK

2009-07-12T19:45:00.003-05:00

Since David Lloyd, co-creator of V for Vendetta is going to be doing a signing at my local comics shop, I decided I should catch up on his more recent work, so I picked up his 2006 graphic novel, Kickback, and it's a nice little read.

Taking place in the fictional American city of Franklin City, the story begins with the police discovering a massacre in what looks like a drug deal gone wrong. Most interesting is that one of the victims is the city's biggest gangster, and soon the entire city is at war with the police paying the highest price. In Franklin City, every cop is on the take and it is a known fact that no one can prove. Our hero (such as he is) is Detective Joe Canelli, who at least feels bad about being corrupt, but explains it away as just being "the way things are". Along with investigating the case, Canelli has to deal with odd dreams he has of waling through some type of tunnel, dreams that have something to do with a child-hood tragedy.

Overall, this is a very good book, the setting and corrupt cops angle reminds me a lot of Ellis & Templesmith's Fell, another comic about being a cop in a corrupt city. Though this book is not nearly as aggressively weird as that one. It's also evocative of LA Confidential, which is about as high a praise as I can give a crime book.

Lloyd's art is as sharp as ever, he does some great work here, though some of the coloring looks a little muddy. Part of me wonders if that's an effect of the glossy paper that the book is printed on. Though my copy of V for Vendetta was lost in a flood*, I seem to remember it being printed on a much rougher paper that gave the colors a lot more depth. Other than that, my only other issue with the book is that a lot of the street signs and other background writing was added in digitally ad it doesn't seem to mesh well with the art on the page. A minor quibble.

This is a really good book, and Dark Horse has produced a nice hardcover for it, especially at the price of $12.95.

*I will be picking up a new copy at the signing.

Happy Fourth of July!

2009-07-04T13:31:00.002-05:00

Despite the weather being far less than ideal here in the Chicago-land area, I hope everyone is celebrating a happy and safe Fourth of July. Here's a shot of patriotism from The Muppet Show to help you get in the mood:

Video via twitter pal, Joseph Finn.

What I Got - 7.1.09

2009-07-01T20:33:00.005-05:00

Scored a boatload o' comics at the shop today, so let's talk about them.

Captain America Reborn #1

So he's back...or rather he's coming back. Maybe. But anyway, Cap's certainly alive and from the explanation we're given, it becomes pretty clear that they've been building this up since the very beginning of Brubaker's run on this series. Spoilers follow.

So Cap's become unstuck in time, and I had a feeling it would be something like this since the Red Skull and co. have made a lot of hints in the past that their plans involved one of Dr. Doom's time platforms. In the issue we are given the parallel stories of Cap in WWII, Carol trying to explain to the Avengers what's going on, Bucky & Black Widow breaking into a HAMMER heli-carrier, and Norman Osbourne meting with Arim Zola and all of them getting bits and pieces of the whole story.

Overall, this was very well done and though it's obviously a first/set-up issue, the pieces are moved into place nicely. My only problem with the issue is the art. Not that it's bad, in fact, this is far better work from Hitch than on Fantastic Four, but the inks by Butch Guice makes this look less like a Hitch book and more like a Butch Guice book. Again, I like Guice's stuff, and his art is very comparable to Epting and Perkins who were the back-bone of the art in Brubaker's Cap run, it just,seems odd. My other issue is that, during the flashback to WWII, Cap is in his Ultimate Universe outfit. I understand that Hitch probably spent a lot of time re-designing the costume for his gig on The Ultimates, but every time I saw it, it just pulled me right out of the book. These are all minor quibbles with the book, mind you. I'm really looking forward to see where this is going and I have a feeling it's going to be really good.

Justice League: Cry for Justice #1

I've been excited for this book since it was announced, however the preview that had been appearing in books last month left me cold. Once again, they were running out the old trope of a pro-active superteam, one that identifies threats and takes them down before they hurt people. We've seen this before (Justice League Elite, The Outsiders, etc.) and it never works. However, after reading the first issue I'm hopeful again. After we get the opening scene of Green Lantern yelling, "Fuck you Dad! I'm gonna fight crime on my own!" at Superman, we get a gathering of heroes who have recently met with a tragedy and who doesn't think that all of them have the same cause?

Anyway, it's well done, and I'm always happy to see James Robinson going back to Opal City, but the fact that so far we've only been introduced to 5 out of the 8 members of the team means we're probably not getting to the plot anytime soon. Anyway, it's good, maybe even very good, but I'm holding off on loving it till it gets somewhere.

OK, that's it for tonight. Maybe I'll get some more up tomorrow, including the best book of the week.

Michael Jackson

2009-06-25T19:39:00.003-05:00

If you grew up in the 80's, and love good pop music, you probably have a mixed thoughts about Michael Jackson. On one hand, he was responsible for some of the most amazing and inventive music of our generation. On the other hand, he was widely suspected of committing some of the worst crimes you can think of.

Let's deal with the first one first. I don't know how you explain it to people who weren't around when he exploded onto the national consciousness with his performance of Billie Jean on the Motown 25 special back in 1983. Off The Wall had already been released and was a huge hit, but Thriller, and that performance in particular, turned him into the type of superstar that hadn't been seen since The Beatles, and has not been seen since (and most likely probably never will). Everyone was a Michael Jackson fan, when the Thriller music video was release on VHS (when I was nine), they actually took all of us out of class so we could all watch it at school. How did that happen? I have no idea, I just know I was caught along with it. I wanted a sparkly glove, just like Michael! So did everyone I know, and probably everyone you know that was conscious during that time.

But once that superstardom faded away, we were left with the music. Two perfect albums (and one that was pretty damn great), I still have my battered vinyl copies of all three of those (though only one is the original one that my Brother bought at Musicland at Orland Mall) and I'll be honest, I've really wanted to upgrade and get some nice CD's of all of them. And that's where the second part of Michael Jackson's legacy comes in. He was one weird motherfucker, and there was no denying it, really there wasn't a damn thing you couldn't accuse him of that you couldn't see being true, so when the pedophile allegations came out, no one had trouble believing it, and that's why I just couldn't drop any cash that could find its way into his pockets, much like the difficulties I have with other troubled pop genius/bat-shit crazy mofo Phil Spector.

So what am I trying to say here? Hell if I know, but it sucks that Michael Jackson didn't make more great music, and it sucks that his own ego/fucked up up-bringing/crazy-asssedness got in the way of that. But we still have the great music did make, and maybe his death will allow us to appreciate that a little bit more.

Father's Day Comics: Top Ten #4

2009-06-21T23:59:00.000-05:00

Well, it's late on Father's Day 2009, and I just got struck with a great comic to talk about on this most "Dad" of days, and rather than let it marinate (and probably get forgotten about) for another year, I figured I'd just throw it out there before it's all over.

Top Ten is one of my favorite series of the last ten to fifteen years, part of Alan Moore's America's Best Comics line, it's the story of the police officers of Precinct 10, cops in a city populated solely by super-heroes. It's just an amazing series, and almost more that Moore's excellent writing, it is brought alive by the art of Gene Ha* and Zander Cannon. The sheer amount of detail thrown into the images is just amazing and it pays to go back over the art again and again for "easter egg" images. If you've been reading comics for any significant length of time, you owe it to yourself to check it out, as it takes the piss out of much from the genre.

Anyway, the Father's Day aspect of the book, during the course of an investigation, the detectives of the 10th pick up Ernesto Gograh who's father just happens to be the neighborhood Godzilla analogue:

Who happens to be not only a giant monster, but a drunk as well. Needless to say, things do not go well, as the drunk as a skunk monster-redneck throws up all over the neighborhood. Anyway, long story short, thanks to their staff size-changer, they manage to bust the big guy down to size:

So what does this have to do with Father's Day? Jack shit, but for some reason it just struck me as appropriate. So obviously, I have no idea what is and is not appropriate. Regardless, get the book, read the book, love the book..and then send me money.

Pre-Review: Underground #1

2009-06-19T21:07:00.005-05:00

I've long made no secret of the fact that Jeff Parker is probably one of my favorite writers working in comics today, though most of his work that I've read of his has been his work for Marvel, specifically his excellent work on Marvel Adventures: Avengers and his own creation of Agents of Atlas. I've always intended to pick up his independently published graphic novel, The Interman, but have yet to. Anyway, when I heard that he was going to be working on a series with Steve Lieber, artist on one of my favorite series of the last ten years, Whiteout* I was excited to see what they were going to come up.

Fortunately, they posted the entire first issue on-line, so I took a looksie at it and it's pretty great so far. Very reminiscent of Whiteout, and not just because of Lieber's excellent artwork, though it certainly helps. The series is set in Marion, KY in the Appalachian Mountains, which has little going for it other than a set of spectacular caves which they are itching to turn into a tourist destination, however, it's up to the government whether they are allowed to turn a national landmark into a tourist trap. Though most of the residents of the depressed region are all for it, Park Ranger Wesley Fisher would like nothing better than to not see another human being step foot into the caves to preserve their unique ecosystem. Of course it's this clash of ideas that cause things to go wrong. Though the first issue is largely set up, it flows very well and gives you a great feeling for the characters. As I said above, Lieber's art is great and looks fantastic in black and white in the preview, it'll be interesting to see it in full color.

Anyway, the book so far is pretty great and I heartily recommend hiking on down to your local comics retailer and putting in an order for the first issue, hitting stands in September. Check out the web site they've created for the book to learn more!

*I hope to have a Favorite Things post up on Whiteout soon.

Always Remember....

2009-06-18T22:35:00.004-05:00

Lobot was a stone cold motherfucker who
would kill you just as soon as look at you.

Captain America #600

2009-06-15T20:05:00.002-05:00

So here it is, Captain America #600, the book that's been talked/bitched about for the last few weeks. Since my shop was kind enough to request the Monday delivery of the book I figured that I'd pick it up, and much like every issue of Ed Brubaker's run on the series so far, it's pretty darn good. Now mind you, it's an anniversary issue, celebrating 600 issues of Captain America in the real world, and a year since Cap was shot & killed in the Marvel Universe. Mostly it's a series of vignettes featuring the main characters in the book showing how they were going to mark the anniversary, along with some remembrances from some of his former supporting characters.

But that's about it, except for one plot point revealed in the very beginning, the big event that we all thought was going to happen, doesn't happen here. It's all a big "To Be Continued In Reborn" which doesn't really bug me, but if anyone actually picked up this book based on the mainstream media coverage, man, are they gonna be pissed since it doesn't happen here, just the ball starts rolling, but it all feels like a giant bait & switch. I love what Ed Brubaker's done with Captain America, making it one of the best superhero comics of the last 10 years, but Marvel's continuing jackassery about how they're marketing it is a giant thorn in my side.

Overall, if you've been enjoying this book, your enjoyment will continue. If you haven't been, well, start at the beginning.

Boosterism: JSA VS. KOBRA: ENGINES OF FAITH

2009-06-07T20:25:00.005-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I got lucky enough to lay eyes on some of Don Kramer's original, inked art for this new mini-series and it was nothing short of stunning. I've been a big fan of Kramer's work for a little while, but this was some of the best work I've ever seen from him.

I'd actually been looking for this series for a while, mostly because of the writer, Eric Trautman, who hasn't written much, but served as Greg Rucka's co-writer on the far too underrated Checkmate!. In that series, they managed to take Kobra, what could have easily been DC's Hydra knock-off and turned it into a credible, currently-relevant threat to the DC Universe. Up until now, most of the "terrorist" organizations existing in the big two comics have been rather lacking in terror, but they've really managed to rachet things up very well.

So anyway, if you find yourself at the shop on Wednesday with an extra $2.99 burning a hole in your pocket, you could do a lot worse than to pick this one up.

Daredevil: Lady Bullseye

2009-06-05T21:16:00.003-05:00

I'd been holding off on picking up the latest volume of Daredevil, partly because, though I've been enjoying Ed Brubaker's run on the title, my enthusiasm as waned a bit with each ensuing volume, and partly because most reviews I've seen have been rather lukewarm about it*. Anyway, so after a crappy day at work, I decided to give it a swing anyway and while it was certainly not bad, even very good in parts, I'm still not fully sold on it.

Part of the reason I've been cooling on the series as a while is that, frankly, I'm getting tired of Matt Murdock. I know, he's supposed to be the "hard-luck, self-destructive superhero", but now he's just turning into an asshole. After his wife was driven insane, he's now (guiltily) making time with private investigator, Dakota North. Even as he fights his wife's parents in a custody battle. I realize that if it wasn't for bad luck, DD wouldn't have no luck at all, but this is just getting to be too much. I half expect for Brubaker to have Matt adopt a cute puppy, only for him to cheat on it and then have Mr. Fear boil it for good measure.

The main thrust of the story itself is that with the ninja clan, The Hand in chaos after the events of Secret Invasion, they have designs on Daredevil, and some of his friends (including personal favorite, Iron Fist). Leading up this effort is the titular Lady Bullseye, who as a whole isn't a bad villain (no pun intended), but, as her name suggests, she lacks originality. As Lori** recently discussed, Marvel has seemed to have given up on creating new female characters and just is issuing female version of current male ones (or in the new She-Hulks case, new versions of female versions of make characters). While I really can't fault Brubaker's writing of this character, I just have a hard time buying into Lady Bullseye, because, at the end of the day, she's just a copy. Of a villain that, due to his recent ubiquity in the Marvel Universe, we're all pretty sick of.

But that's not to say that I didn't like it. It did have some really good parts to it. One of my favorite Daredevil tropes is his teaming up with other ninja-types and this book delivers on that, along with the aforementioned Iron Fist, we get the newly re-formed Black Tarantula, and Master Izo, who was apparently Stick's teacher. From there we get some good battles where the good guys lose some ad the bad guys lose some more, ending with an offer to Daredevil that I saw coming a mile away. And to be honest, I'm kind of sad DD made the decision he did (spoilers ahead).

As I had guessed early on, The Hand were sizing all of the heroes up to see if they thought any of them were ready to take over leadership of The Hand. While I have been enjoying the adventures of Daredevil: Hard Luck New York Lawyer!, I'd really like to see them shake up the premise a bit. It's been a decade since Daredevil was brought back to prominence and really, other than the unmasking, they haven't done too much to shake him up. It would be nice to get him out of New York and let him do something new. That said, the premise of "crusading hero takes over international criminal organization and tries to set them straight from the inside" is already being done, and done well in Agents of Atlas, so maybe they'll need a different tack to shake things up here.

Anyway, Brubaker's*** only got one more volume before he moves on from the title, so hopefully he'll toss in a curveball in the next little bit. Regardless, as a while, I've loved his run on the titles, more than anyone else's, short of Miller's run.

*Oh yeah, and also because it's over-priced...$17 for 5 issues Marvel? You really are a bunch of dicks, aren't you?

**Manager of my local comics shop, who has recently started her own blog, check it out!

***And along with him, excellent artist Michael Lark. It's a shame I didn't mention him earlier, but it's kind of hard to critique his art, since it's consistently perfect.

What I Got - 6.3.09

2009-06-03T22:15:00.000-05:00

Fuck it, I'm bored, let's talk comics.

Batman and Robin #1

So begins Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely's rebirth of Batman, etal. I have to admit, I wanted to like this book, no, I wanted to love this book and rarely does that lead to good things, but, as of right now, I gotta say I love it. While it's probably an understatement to say that Morrison often over-complicates his plots, this is a straightforward, very quickly* told story. He gives us an introduction to the new status quo and introduces the new threat to Gotham City in a very elegant way.

I must say, though I liked the idea of [SPOILER] Dick taking over as Batman, I wasn't exactly sold on Damien. He's always been a little shit and just couldn't see how they could make him into a likable character. But here, he seems to have turned a corner, though still arrogant, he's lost some of the asshole-ish edge that he had to him. It is an interesting dynamic (no pun indended) to switch up the personalities involved with the duo. You have Batman, who doesn't really want to be Batman, and a Robin who would only be too glad to take over.

Morrison's work on Batman has shown flashes of brilliance (the Club of Heroes story), but has also been a bit of a mess, but now you get the feeling that this was the story he signed on to tell. I look forward to see where this is going.

A note about the art, I realize that Quitely's art is not to everyone's taste, but he does some pretty great work here. There's one page that I just fell in love with:

I've always loved those cut-away shots that they did to show off the heroes' or villains' lairs and this one is no different. Plus, Wayne Tower even has bat-ears!

Agents of Atlas #6

This book has been another one that I've wanted to love so bad, but up till now, it just hasn't fired on all cylinders. I absolutely loved the original mini-series, but the on-going just has missed that certain verve the original had. Up till now at least, though I'm hesitant to say that it's made the leap back to where it was, it's building up. Part of it could be that this is the first issue of the series that's not dividing the narrative between the past and the present, allowing Jeff Parker to tell a more coherent story. Plus removing the team from the Mora's of the current Dark Reign crossoverclusterfuck makes it that much more enjoyable for the rest of us not following along.

I do like that they're following up on the Namorra/Namor romance brought up in Hercules recently, complete with an exhaustive explanation that their relationship is not incest**. It's also nice to see the return of former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Derek Kahnata, who figured in tot he original series greatly.

Also, special mention has to go to artist Gabriel Hardman, his work is very reminiscent to Michael Lark and Sean Phillips stuff and it's really grown on me. Hopefully they can keep him on this book for a while because I look forward to where it is going.

OK, looks like I only got two reviews in me for the night, but that's what I really loved this week.

*Very quickly, if there's one big criticism of this book is that it reads way too fast.

**"Ken Hale's, "I guess they even got hillbillys under the sea." is definitely the line of the week.

CRAKKAJAMMA!!!

2009-06-03T19:00:00.000-05:00

Just a friendly Wednesday evening reminder that if you're not reading The Incredible Hercules (comics' #2* purveyor of the finest violence-based onomatopoeia around), boy, are you missing out. What are you waiting for?

*#1 being, now and always, Walt Simonson's Thor.

Movie Review: UP

2009-06-02T20:30:00.003-05:00

Pixar's tenth movie has just been released and I think UP is the most daring of the lot so far. Yes, even more daring than the one about the rat that was a chef. I'll get it out of the way up front, I loved the movie and thought it was excellent, but it (at least as of right now) isn't my favorite of their movies.

UP begins with the story of Carl and Ellie, who meet during childhood, joined by their love of adventure. We see, in a beautiful sequence, them fall in love, get married, and watch their dreams of adventuring together slowly fade away as life intervenes and finally Carl is left alone in their house awaiting the loss of his own freedom (as he is being put into assisted living). As a last ditch effort, to live his & Ellie's dream, Carl floats his house away on thousands of balloons towards South America, joined by Russell, an unwitting passenger, who is a Wilderness Explorer seeking to get his Elderly Assistance merit badge.

This is a beautiful film, but also a very melancholy one. From Carl's loss of his wife, to Russell's absent Father, hell, even the talking dog is sad most of the time. I think the key is that almost all of the characters feel that they've failed and are in some way useless. While it may seem odd subject to broach in what is ostensibly children's movie, it's actually pretty apt. Watching my eldest (age 6) push his way through Kindergarten this year, dealing with failure is probably one of the earliest lessons kids learn and rarely do we actually attempt to teach them anything about it. He's wanted to read so badly but it's very hard, especially when you have the patience of..well, a six year-old.

The one thing that surprised me about the movie is that is very emotional, while the inital Carl/Ellie courtship scene is sure to bring the tears, there are several other occasions that got things a little dusty in the movie theater.

Overall, this is a pretty fantastic movie, though there are valid criticims to be made, especially with regards to the sometimes slow pacing, I was still won over by it.

Programming Note

2009-05-31T21:31:00.003-05:00

First let's start off with a joke, though Mike Sterling already made the most obvious one earlier this week:

This costume should really come with a Salacious Crumb* that you can velcro to your chest for added amusement/shame. Or better yet, a harness and S.C. infant costume so you can embarrass your child before they're even old enough to realize that you are making a fool out of them.

Anyway, I'm going to make a concerted effort to get some real content up this week, I've even got a few posts in the hopper already, but the mass of posts that have died during the editing stage cast doubts on even my best of intentions. But dammit, I will do this thing, and it will be good**.

*Oops, I'm sorry, apparently his full name is Salacious B. Crumb. Phoning It In Industries regrets the error.

**Or at least vaguely acceptable.

Late to the Party

2009-05-25T10:26:00.004-05:00

I've had this blog post sitting in my drafts for a few days, unfortunately, I hate blogging about music, since it's something I have a hard time putting into words, more so for things that I really like. Anyway, it all started when Johnny Bacardi, Matt Springer and I were discussing Jay Bennett's solo work, something I had been pretty unaware of until the last week or so. Then, yesterday I started to see some rumors on twitter, and finally last night I saw my fears were verified on Jim Derogatis's blog. Jay Bennett was dead at age 45.

I was a big fan of Wilco back in the mid-to-late 90's. I saw them a bunch of times (living in their home-town and all) and Summerteeth and the first Mermaid Avenue album rate pretty high on my desert island discs list. However, after the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot fiasco, they fell into the same hole that Radiohead fell into for me. While the ponderous, experimental music both bands have been creating after their popularity peeked may be more artistically rewarding for them, but I much preferred when both bands rocked. Since then, I've kind of listened to each new release with less and less interest.

After our conversations, I picked up Jay Bennett & Edward Burch's The Palace at 4AM (Part 1), used off of amazon (as it looks to be out of print)*, as Bennett's time with the band coincided with the peak of my interest and I was justly rewarded. It's kind of funny that I was completely unaware that Bennett was even releasing solo music, considering that this disc is 7 years old. The album itself is just great. Heavy on Brian-Wilsonesque orchestration and lyrics that I find very similar to Elvis Costello's (it helps that some of the vocals sound like him too). It's pretty much a perfect album to throw on while sitting outside this summer, enjoying a frosty beverage. Here are two of my favorite tracks, first up is one of the more Costello-ish cuts:

Jay Bennett & Edward Burch - Whispers or Screams

Next, is one of the best rockers on the album:

Jay Bennett & Edward Burch - Drinking on Your Dime

Obviously, it's pretty terrible that Bennett passed away, from what I've read, he's had a pretty tough go of it the last few years, but things were starting to look up. I look forward to getting into more of his catalog, but I'll feel bad that I won't get a chance to see him live.

*Looks like most of his stuff is available on eMusic (with a few tracks unavailable) and they're also up on Amazon for pretty cheap (though that may change). Also, his most recently released album, Whatever Happened, I Apologize is currently available for free download.

Movie Review - Terminator: Salvation

2009-05-23T20:38:00.004-05:00

I loved The Terminator, in the way that only a 12 year-old boy can when he just saw the most awesome R-rated movie he'd seen up till then. It was everything I wanted in a movie: time-travel, guns, robots, boobs, and explosions. By the time T2 rolled around, I was 17, and though I was excited, it just didn't push the same buttons, mostly because they didn't really exist anymore, or rather, I hadn't gotten mature enough to discover that some of the immaturity of youth was worth holding onto. For all of the ground-breaking effects in that movie, I never saw it as much more than a perfectly adequate sequel. We'll just ignore the third one, mostly because everyone else has.

Anyway, that all was just my way of saying that, while my inner 12 year-old was suitably chuffed for the latest movie, it just didn't hold the same vibe for me. Finding myself with a few hours to kill yesterday I said "what the hell" and checked out Terminator: Salvation. It was pretty darn good.

Ditching the time travel scenarios that have defined the previous three films (and the TV series), we start up after Judgment Day, with the machines thoroughly winning the battle against humanity. John Connor, rather than being the leader, at this point is simply middle-management in the resistance, screaming to anyone that'll listen that he's the one who's going to save them all. Some listen, some don't. After a disastrous mission in which all of his men are killed, Connor and the leadership discover they may have a way to finally win the war, and also discover that they're all on Skynet's hit list, though some kid named Kyle Reese is #1. Also during this mission, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) finds himself among the ruins. During the prologue we met Wright on death row, signing his body over to Cyberdyne Systems. From there on we have two storylines, Wright's traveling through the post-apocalyptic landscape, meeting with Reese and trying to figure what's going on. And Connor, planning the attack, and also trying to find Reese on his own.

It's no secret that they all eventually meet up, and that Wright proves to be a terminator. But regardless, the plot is just something to keep the action scenes coming, and they do, at a pretty quick clip. It's all pretty cool, lots of big robots, blowing things up, and if that's what you want, you can't go wrong here. Sam Worthington's pretty darn good here, though his Australian accent does slip a few times, overall, he does well facing off against Bale. Christian Bale does the best that he can with what he has to work with, but it's not much. Essentially, he's asked to play Batman, without the Bruce Wayne scenes to bring some pathos to the character*. Connor is all gruff, grumbling anger, which, let's face it is to be expected in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Obviously, a lot of the character development of this movie has been left on the cutting room floor. Connor and his wife, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, have virtually no time together, and the baby she's obviously pregnant with is not even mentioned. Also, Wright strikes up a relationship with a pilot played by Moon Bloodgood, that had to have more to it originally than the few meaningful glances that are included in the movie.

Anyway, this movie is virtually all action, and it's all well done. Is there anything deep or meaningful to the movie? No, but there wasn't anything deep to the previous three, so why should that be held against this one? Star Trek** is still my favorite movie of the summer so far, but this one will do when you've gotten tired of seeing that one. McG proves himself to be a pretty darn good action director, but it still doesn't make up for the fact that he had a d-bag name and unleashed two Charlie's Angels flicks upon the world.

*FYI, this movie is 82% more awesome if you just go into it thinking that rather than a terminator movie, it is, in fact BATMAN VS. ROBOTS.

** Actually, Star Trek is my favorite of the year so far.

The Great Geek Disappointment of 1999

2009-05-19T00:01:00.001-05:00

Hey everybody! Do you remember when this was the coolest, most exciting thing you had ever seen?

Well, that was 10 years ago yesterday, cause ten years ago today Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace came out and while we all tried to talk ourselves into loving it for a few months, we eventually admitted, despite a few moments of wonder, it was pretty crap. Anyway, if you don't plan to spend this dorkiest of anniversaries in a hazy, drunken stupor, I'd suggest popping over to Alert Nerd and down-loading Mat Springer's E-book, PooDoo: Bullshitting About Star Wars (1999-2009). I'm about half-way through so far and it's a hoot.

Random Comics Reviews: Solo Avengers Starring Hawkeye #17

2009-05-15T22:07:00.009-05:00

OK, in order to jump-start this den of nothingness that I call a blog, I'm going to dive into my unorganized mess of back issues and randomly select and issue every week to read, review and quite possible ridicule (or praise).
Tonight's offering is Solo Avengers Starring Hawkeye #17 from 1989. It's hard to believe that back in the day that West Coast Avengers was such a hit that it spawned its own spin-off starring it most popular character. Each issue would feature a lead 11 page story starring Hawkeye, and other half would be given over to a tale starring another past or current Avenger.

The lead story, titled, I shit you not, "Even an Octopus Needs Arms!" written by Tom DeFalco with art by Al Milgrom & Don Heck features everyone's favorite purple-attired hero checking in on an anonymous tip called into Avengers mansion about an arms deal. Upon arrival, he's greeted by the recently reformed Sandman, who is casing the joint for his job with Silver Sable and decided he needed some back-up, thus Hawkeye.

Anyway, needless to say, things go sideways when Doctor Octopus shows up and the boys decide to bust some heads. From there, it's a few pages of the heroes bantering while trying to catch the bad guys and eventually losing them all because they're too busy trying not to get killed (well, at least on Hawkeye's part, that is).
The only truly interesting part of it is this panel:

Where Hawkeye references the hearing aids he got after suffering some damage, as he said, "months ago", despite the series being referenced having been published a full six years before. Damn, time moves slowly in the Marvel Universe.

Next up, we have a quick tale starring the Sub-Mariner by Danny Fingeroth and Dave Cockrum. Apparently Namor's looking for the children of his recently deceased wife, Marina. Whilst swimming about the ocean, he happens along a family who were thrown from their boat and he saves them and brings them back to land. Moved by the poverty that they live in, he gives them the gold that he just happens to be carrying with him*.

Anyway, continuing his search, he comes upon Power Man & Iron Fist's old office building which the Beyonder turned to gold and then was promptly sunk in the ocean by the government so it wouldn't tank the entire world's gold market. How's that for a bit of heavy continuity injection for ya? Namor, grudgingly agreeing with the Henry Peter Gyrich-wannabe** he's got to deal with heads out and agrees not to tell anyone about his lucrative find.

As he swims away, he passes a stealth submarine, manned by Goldbug, a super-villain I had only previously thought had existed in a Spider-Man Hostess pie ad***, stealing the gold building. Anyway, after we get treated to Dave Cockrum's Many Emotions of Namor:

He decides to do the right thing and mess up a C-list villain and get yelled at by the same government jackass, thus souring him once again on the human race.

Overall, it's pretty much the definition of adequate superhero comics in the late 1990's. Well worth my $.75, but not much more. Thanks for reading my rants concerning this weeks random folly of my youth, tune in ext week to see what I found lurking in the comics boxes in my basement.

*To apparently pay off a class action suit he had recently lost. This is a book I want: The Biggest Legal Battles of the Marvel Universe. I want action....LEGAL ACTION.

**This Guy:

***Which apparently I had imagined, I just spent nearly an hour looking for the damned thing on Seanbaby, and couldn't find it. If you happen upon an old school Hostess ad featuring Goldbug, drop me a note, just to show I'm not crazy....at least about this.

Movie Review: Star Trek

2009-05-08T20:02:00.003-05:00

I've gotta say that I was impressed. I've never been the biggest Star Trek fan, the original that is. In college, I archived the perfect balance of free time and alcohol abuse that made Next Generation my favorite series for a couple years there, but Kirk, Spock and crew just never connected for me. I enjoyed the better of the movies (how can you deny Wrath of Khan?) , but it just never meant that much to me. So I approached the new movie hesitantly, but I wasn't overly concerned with J.J. Abrahms "crapping on my childhood" or anything like that. Hell, if I was going to try to sell a Trek movie to the general public, I'd do the same thing, start with what everyone know, Kirk, Spock & "Beam me up Scotty!"

So the movie, for an origin story it zips right a long. Starting with Jim Kirk's birth and his Father's death. From there, we get some parallel stories of Kirk & Spock's upbringing, meant to highlight the fact that they grew up outsiders. This is really the only part that kind of fell flat for me. While Spock's story works well, Kirk's only illustrated to me that he was a mouthy little kid who needed a good slap. Plus, that kid looked nothing like Chris Pine.

Anyway, things move quickly from there, getting Kirk etal. through Starfleet Academy via a quick, "Three Years Later"* title and getting us to Kirk's victory over the Kobayashi Maru scenario, which was pretty damn funny. I do like that while Chris Pine nails Kirk's cocky, self-assurance, he's the only one of the actors that didn't attempt to mimic their predecessor's acting style/character tics. It would have been very easy for him to fall into mimicking Shatner's stilted line-readings and that just would've been horrible. The rest of the gang is just great, though I would have preferred a little more of Simon Pegg's Scotty, but hey, you can't get everything you want. All of the characters are given something to so, something that comes from their character and that's the best thing about it, the characters join hand in hand witht he whiz-bang effects to make this just a fantastic film.

The biggest down-fall of the film overall is its villain. Eric Bana gives it a try, though he varies from being the hard-ass, tough-guy, to playing one scene with cocky sarcasm, but he's just kind of there to give something for our heroes to bounce off of. When the sequel comes, I have a feeling they'll have to put a little more effort into the challenge the Enterprise faces.

Overall, I loved this movie, in fact, I plan to see it again tomorrow. Though there are still a few movies coming out this summer that I'm eager to see, I doubt that any of them will rival this one. Now, when's the damn sequel coming out?

*My biggest disappointment about my viewing experience is that the theater mis-framed the picture of the movie, so all of the titles bled off into the curtains. It would have been nice to see the whole thing.

Hey Kids! New Art!

2009-05-04T19:59:00.004-05:00

Many moons ago, Les McClaine, superb artist and co-creator of favorite indie-comic (and TV show) The Middleman, was offering to do commissions. This was so many moons ago in fact, that I had forgotten that I had bought one. So much to my pleasant surprise, I found a large envelope on my doorstep with my Iron Fist commission inside, check it out:

Also, since I'm a wonderful person, there was a small portrait of Luke Cage as well:

He also threw in copies of his Repeat Until Death comic-strip collection and the Evil Space Robot mini-comic. So yeah, I'm pretty stoked, maybe this will get me of my ass to get these and my other two portraits framed now, one can only hope.

Anyway, I highly recommend keeping an eye on Mr. McClaine's web site, EvilSpaceRobot to see when he next is offering commissions, and also follow his excellent web-comic, Johnny Crossbones.

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY: $%#@ YEAH!

2009-05-02T16:07:00.004-05:00

So it came to pass that Free Comic Book Day has descended upon us once more, on this absolutely beautiful (at least in the Chicago-area) Saturday in May. I headed over to my local comic shop to check out the wares and was not disappointed with the selection and there was already quite a crowd, even though I arrived just a few minutes after opening. Skottie Young, artist on Marvel's adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was already signing and doing sketches, so I quickly jumped in line. Chris Mitten, artist on the very good Wasteland, soon joined him. I managed to get something signed by each of them, along with these two sketches:

First, I had no idea what to get, since I didn't expect them to be doing sketches, so I didn't think about it ahead of time or bring any reference material (or even a sketch-book). Fortunately, I overheard Skottie Young saying that he had just finished re-reading NextWave, so I immediately knew I needed a sketch of Machine Man:

Next, I asked Chris Mitten to draw Michael, from Wasteland:

Both of the guys were great to talk to and I'd highly recommend seeking them out if they're at a convention near you.

Amazing Fantasy did their usual bang-up job with the event and everyone had good things to say about them, I love that shop and it's nice that I've never had to shop at a crappy comics shop in my life.

As for the comics themselves, I'd highly recommend picking up the Atomic Robo book, the short story contained within is a hoot and worth the (no) money for the last page alone. DC's Blackest Night #0 is OK, pretty much a trailer for the upcoming event, but there's still some nice interaction between Hal Jordan and Barry Allen in there, actually, it was better than Flash: Rebirth #1 in that respect, but I don't know if that's a function of this book being that good, or that book being that bad. Marvel's Avengers book is a fun little story and is good for bringing people up to speed on the current clusterfuck that is Avengers continuity, it's a good example of taking a crappy status quo and spinning an OK story out of it.

So anyway, it's still reasonably early on this most comic-booky of holidays, so if you can, get out there and get yourself some comics! Buy some too!

Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader?

2009-04-24T21:07:00.002-05:00

I guess I Always knew that this was how it was going to end. That we didn't have him forever. That one day, someone would say, "Hey Jim. Whatever happened to the Caped Crusader?" I'd tell the, "Pretty much what you'd expect. He's dead."
-Commissioner Gordon

So after a few months of delay, the second part of Neil Gaiman & Andy Kubert's two-part requiem for Batman has been published, and from what I've seen it's being met with a collective "meh.." Which is pretty much how I felt, but after thinking about it, I've figured out the problem with the book, and now I think I like it quite a bit.

***Spoilers Ahead***

But let's begin at the beginning, the story (which is better read in one sitting) envisions a ghostly Batman, along with an eventually-identified woman, peering down at his own funeral, watching both his allies and enemies each eulogizing him and giving different accouts of his death. Some of the deaths are brave, so are inconsequential. Through all of these stories, we get the essence of what The batman is, he never gives up, he always saves the day (even if it means his ldeath), and that there is always a Batman. Mirroring Alan Moore's Superman tale, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow", we find Batman moving onto his reward* But unlike Superman's final reward (to live a normal life as a human, with Lois and child), Batman's reward is to simply be Batman, as if this is all he can imagine and his reqard is to be reborn again and spend a happy few years as a child with his parents again until their murder, which he knows cannot be prevented.

There are good moments in the book, even some that are truly powerful, such as Harvey Bullock's eulogy:

However, I ended up having four issues with the book, and they're all kind of interrelated.

1. The title automatically ties it into "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow", probably one of the most iconic Superman stories of the last 30 years. By joining them like that, you're setting the book up to fail if it doesn't live up to something that's almost impossible to live up to.

2. Batman's not dead. Sure, everyone thinks he is, but as we saw at the end of Final Crisis, he's been shunted to stone age, or on an alternate Earth (or both). Yes, I know that's not really the point and this could very well be an Imaginary Story (aren't they all?), but it leads to a certain cognitive dissonance. When Man of Tomorrow was put out, it was the end of an era, whereas no one really believes that Bruce Wayne is going to be gone much longer than Steve Rogers has been(two years, and counting, but it looks like he's back in July).

3. Andy Kubert, while a very good artist, just isn't an iconic Batman artist, and to lend this book some gravitas, that's what it needed. Man of Tomorrow, had Curt Swan (with inks by George Perez), and really, there's no more iconic Superman artist than Swan. Kubert's good, but can you imagine if they'd gotten Neal Adams? Or hell, while I'm wishing, Jim Apparo?

4. And that brings me to the last issue with this book, it wasn't published 25 years ago, at the same time as "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow", that book was put out as a capper to Superman's silver age, essentially giving that Superman a send-off before he was rebooted by Man of Steel. I really think that's the proper way to look at this book. The myriads of deaths presented are the deaths of the infinite numbers of Batmen as the multiverse collapsed into itself at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Bruce Wayne, who is re-born at the end, is the new Batman of the re-booted DC Universe following Crisis. When I think of it that way the book works for me. The idea that the collective Batmen (Batmans?), though different, all had the same ultimate goal and the same, final reward.

Anyway, it is well done, Gaiman's writing does carry the story, and though I think it would have been better served to have been all published at once (or at least without the giant delay), I think the book accomplished what it set out to do, and it does work as a complimentary volume to Man of Tomorrow, but I just don't think it will ever be seen that way, but you never know.

*I find it interesting that while most of Superman's friends died trying to save him in Man of Tomorrow and he gets to live happily ever after. While in Batman's story, he's the one who pays the price to save everyone, including his enemies.

Live Tonight: Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3

2009-04-18T10:18:00.002-05:00

This is one of those shows that I was excited for as much for hte band, as I was for the venue, the Church of the Epiphany in the West Loop, but alas, they've been forced to move the show to the Logan Square Auditorium, but I'm still stoked, none the less. Hitchcock is an artist I've been a fan of ever sine "So You Think You're In Love" was playing on 120 minutes back in the early 90's, but I've never made it out to see him, and from what I hear, his shows with the Venus 3 (featuring R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, amongst others) are barn-burners, so I'm sure to have a good time. Here's a song from their first album together, Ole' Tarantula:

Both Ole Tarantula ad their current album, Goodnight Oslo, are available on eMusic.

Happy Easter

2009-04-12T21:34:00.001-05:00

I know it's late, but it's still the thought that counts.

Hope everybody had a good holiday!

Live Tonight: XTC (kinda)

2009-04-11T00:45:00.002-05:00

Over the next few days, an astonishing 4 close, dear friends of mine will pass from the shores of youth into the Greyhavens of the grand age of 35. Fortunately, we've all been given the ample venue for this celebration of their passing into agedness, Tributosaurs, a Chicago collective that puts on monthly shows "as" other musicians, is putting on a show as long-time favorite XTC.

XTC has been a favorite of mine for years, so long that I can't really even pin-point when I started enjoying their music, though I do remember stealing my brother's cassette tape of Mummer way back in the day. Regardless, I've been a fan for just about as long as I knew what type of music that I actually liked and it's nice that I'll finally get to see their music played live, even if not by them. Though they're not exactly a going concern anymore, even if they were still putting out new music, I doubt we'd be seeing them anytime soon. Though it's long been rumored that extreme stage fright keeps lead-singer-songwriter Andy Partridge* off the stage, I think it's because he just doesn't like doing it that much.

Anyhoo, the music itself is pretty much just pitch-perfect witty pop. I really hate writing about music because any effort I put into describing it just comes out sounding lame, so here's the Avengers-inspired video for The Mayor of Simpleton:

If you like what you hear, and you haven't yet been exposed to their majesty, I'd highly recommend picking up their Greatest Hits comp, Upsy Daisy Assortment**, really, in lieu of owning all of their releases, that's an album no collection should be without.

Anyway, needless to say, I'm going to be having a good time tonight, hope you are too.

*Incidentally, Andy Partridge also wrote and performed my all-time favorite TV theme-song for the woefully under appreciated Wonderfalls, I can't find the opening on youtube, but here's a link to the song itself.

**Which is apparently out of print, so you could do worse than to pick up the slightly more expensive, yet also more comprehensive Fossil Fuel singles collection. If you're looking for a single disc, grab Oranges & Lemons, still very good stuff there.

What I Got - 4.8.09

2009-04-08T20:43:00.003-05:00

Oh man, what a crappy day, but hey, no day can be that crappy when it's ~~nudie magazine day~~ comics day! Anyway, figured I'd give a quick rundown of what I picked up:

Batman: Battle for the Cowl #2

Not quite as strong as the first issue, but I'd wager that's because it's th middle issue of a three issue series, all the cool stuff is going to happen in the next one. This really felt like it was moving the parts into place. Taking Damien off the bored and forcing Dick to feel a sense of responsibility over him. Moving the Black Mask's plan forward and setting up what seems to be a apocalyptic gang war in Gotham City. So overall, it's still pretty darn good, but all the real fireorks are being held off till next month. Crap.

Captain Britain & MI 13 #12

Speaking of not wanting to wait a month for that next issue...I had read the first 6 issues of this series and resolved to wait for the trade, but after picking up the first trade and reading the last few issues through *cough* *cough* other means I started picking this up again last month and hell, when you have Dracula and his vampire horde invading Britain via his castle on the bloody moon, well, it's just too cool to wait for. Anyway, this issue sets up some true hope for our heroes, only to see said hope crushed at the end. Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk are doing some fantastic superhero comicing here and I'm glad I'm not missing it (though I could use a time-machine to get me to next month already).

OK, that's it for tonight. I'll try to get something up tomorrow on the other two books I picked up. Incidentally, if you get the hankering for some comics, head on over to The Action Age and check out the first issue of Chris Sims' epic, The Chronicles of Solomon Stone, it's good, real good.

Friday Night Linkage

2009-04-03T20:26:00.005-05:00

Hey there folks, I've really been thinking about posting something this week, but man, have I been exhausted. Plus, after the blogosphereageddon that occurred on Monday, with the Alert Nerds' curation of the My Scott & Jean Event, I think the whole geeky internets has been pretty tired anyway.

Anyway, as I'm sure you know, this past week saw April Fool's Day come and go, which is pretty high on my list of fake holidays that I cannot stand, but usually, there's one joke/prank pulled that sticks around either because it was so good or so bad. This year there was one, that was only bad because it was fake, ThinkGeek's Tauntaun sleeping bag:

Yes, a product so truly awesome that they are now attempting to make it a reality. I'm totally buying ones for me and the boys if that happens (yes, they are making them in adult sizes).

In other internet geekiness, part of the reason my blogging regularity has declined is Twitter, I've been ~~wasting~~ spending a lot of time there interacting with fellow colleagues, and...well, it got shamefully geeky the other day. Fortunately, twitter pal Scott Cederlund chose to preserve the conversation for all time, and yeah, it really was rather sad.

In other Twitter conversation news, ms park has taken it upon herself to utilize it as a random poll generating tool. Here's the results of the first few, and though I forgot to mention it in a follow up, I'd totally go with Paris Hilton, because, well, at the end of the day, I'd rather be stuck on an island with a girl.

Oh hey, if you happen to live in South Suburban Chicago, my local comics shop (and it's other locations) is having a pretty nice sale, so I'd recommend you swing on by. The Easter Bunny will even be there, if you're at the Frankfort location, you might get to watch him get messed up by a 3 year-old (I just mentioned that Sean could take him, and now everyone wants to see it).

So there you go, I'll go back to watching TV and you can go back to having a life, but I'll leave you with some music, here's something that's been a fave for a few years, and just never seems to leave the playlist (especially in the spring):

I Wanna Know Girls by Portastatic

Also, speaking of music, check out old friend Ditching Boy's blog as he's been going apeshit with the music bloggery of late.

With that, have a good night and I'll talk at you later.

My "Scott & Jean": "Trust Me!"

2009-03-30T00:01:00.002-05:00

The fine folks over at Alert Nerd have decided to take an off hand comment made by one of the fine folks I follow on Twitter and turn it into a meme. When discussing something Batman related, Dan Faust made a comment that the subject in question was his"Scott & Jean", meaning a subject in which a person's passion/geekiness/**** veers from rationality and becomes something that you simply cannot talk about without swearing repeatedly and eventually having to either fold up in the fetal position or drink heavily (and quite possibly both). Let's face it, we all have one, even if it's not a geek related thing, be it about sports (anytime a person mentions the Cubs' "curse" I want to break something...or them), soap operas (Days without John & Marlena just ain't Days...) or whatever else we choose to obsess about, everyone has a breaking point.

As a true nerd, I'm sure I have several, but really there's one that so seemingly minor to most people, but it just sets me on edge, and of course it's all George Lucas's fault. Now, let's all face facts here people, the prequels just weren't made for us children of the 70's, and I've come to grips with that. But I still bitch about them from time to time, hell, I even got yelled at by Church a few weeks ago because I was complaining about how much Attack of the Clones sucked. But ultimately, I've let go of any residual anger about those movies and have even started enjoying them on their own merits (as long as you fast-forward through any of Hayden Christiansen's painful attempts at "acting"). No, my issues lie with the Special Edition re-releases of the original trilogy. Now when these were coming out, we all thought they were an excellent idea, new special effects, new scenes, how could this go wrong? Well, it did, the new effects, though state-of -the-art looked pretty cartoonish when compared to the 25 year-old effects of the original (hell, just look at Jabba in A New Hope SE, that is some bad-looking CGI). But you know, I rolled with it, under that polished veneer, the movies that had shaped my childhood were still there, but then I got to Return of the Jedi and I lost my shit. It was all due to this (go to 4:03 on the video):

Now,if you're wondering what's wrong with that, the original scene* was:

Lando: "Wait, I thought you were blind!"

Han: "Trust me!"

Now, Han's line has been replaced with:

Han: "It's allright, I can see a lot better!"

What the fuck Lucas Why the hell would you change such a perfect line that not only is so fucking Han Solo it's also Airwolf and it also hearkens to Indiana Jones. Why? Well, according to an interview I saw (can't remember if it was with Lucas or one of his lackeys) it was because they had a better audio track for this particular line reading than the old one so they went with it instead. So wait, with everything they have at their disposal, they can't loop one fucking line they can't clean up the audio. What the fuck is wrong with you people? This ultimately confirmed the thing I fear most about Lucas, he's no longer an artist, if he ever was one to begin with, he's now just a technician. A very good one, perhaps one of the best working today in movies, but he's lost the ability to create art he can only create bells and whistles that are certainly pretty and neat, they just don't have any life in them (once again, see the performances in the prequels), and that's what kills me, that's what makes me crazy and that, dear reader, is my Scott & Jean.

*FYI, I did mean to throw up the original scene, but the internets have failed me and it's not on youtube. I did give it the old college try at getting it on youtube myself, but I just couldn't do it, as I ama technological moron.

Big Box O' Love: March (Part 1)

2009-03-28T20:57:00.005-05:00

Oh hey there, I guess I have a blog! Should get around to that "content" thing the kids are all talking about. Anyway, DCBS dropped this month's box off at my doorstep Friday, and here's a run-down of what I got.

Starman Omnibus Volume 2: I've made no secret that Starman is probably my favorite series ever, and this volume (and its place on the NYT best-seller list) just proves that it's worthy of my love.

Continuing on the first volume's collection of the entire series in chronological order, along with some stuff I didn't know existed (namely some Shade stories put out in the showcase books DC put out in the 90's), his book is just amazing. Though some of the coloring is a little dated, other than that, this is just a time-less book and I can't wait till I have the remaining four volumes in my hot little hands. By the way, anyone want to buy the first five trades of the series, cheap?

The Invincible Iron Man Volume 1: Finally, the first collection of Matt Fraction's take on Iron Man hits paperback and it's some good stuff. Though it does pay some lip-service to Tony Stark's post-Civil War place in the Marvel Universe as the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., this book feels more like the thematic sequel to Warren Ellis's Extremis story-line,, Stark dealing with the technology he designed as a weapon and trying to make it positively benefit the world. Being Fraction, he manages this actually better than Ellis did, having a much more decompressed story that's a much more satisfying read. Bringing back Zeke Stane, who he introduced in his tragically short-lived series The Order to plague Stark, Fraction tells a good story, though I never really got Stane's motivations, or maybe he just had too many (Daddy-issues, inferiority complex, terminal asshole-itis). Salvador Larocca's art was very good, reminiscent of Adi Granov's work on the previously mentioned Extremis arc, but it had a little more life to it, probably because it was drawn instead of CG. Overall, a solid, well-done book.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1: Another book I've been waiting for in soft-cover for freaking ever, this collects the first six issues. Really, this book is a lot of fun, spinning out of Annihilation Conquest, Peter Quill and his cohorts (including Rocket Raccoon, who is, for some bizarre reason, one of my favorite characters, ever) are on a rather ill-defined mission to seal space-time fissures throughout the cosmos. Using Knowhere, the hollowed-out head of a dead Celestial that hangs on the event horizon of the (literal) end of the universe, as their home-base, the team deals with religious extremists, their own inter-group squabbles and the creeping tendrils of the Secret Invasion. I actually dropped collecting this book monthly when they got sucked into Secret Invasion, but I shouldn't have been so hasty seeing how they ultimately dealt with the situation, which was pretty ingenious on the part of the writers (Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, two writers who are no strangers to cosmic scale superheroics). Once again, Paul Pelletier puts in some very good work, it's a shame that his art doesn't get talked about more, between his work here, on Nova and on Fantastic Four he's proved he's got some serious chops.

So that's the first part, let's see if I can actually get through the other two books I got and get a Part 2 up tomorrow.

Because I'm bored....

2009-03-26T19:32:00.002-05:00

Consider this payback for the chicken purse.

A Sorcerer Supreme You Can Believe In

2009-03-23T20:53:00.003-05:00

It has come to our attention here at Phoning It In Industries (NYSE: PI3) that The Bendis has decried that the Marvel Universe's current Sorcerer Supreme, Dr. Strange, is to be ~~laid off~~ replaced with what the young ruffians are currently referring to as the "new hotness". Now some people have made some hay of who the choices are and have thrown their considerable (mostly panda-based) weight behind, what we think to be, a lesser candidate.

While our distinguished colleagues in blogging would gladly hand of the title of Sorcerer Supreme over to a young lady who has done well for herself in both the worlds of modeling and super-heroics (though slightly less-so in the world of marriage), young Miss Walker, though lucky in some of her magical dealing, is just not fully prepared for the responsibility of dealing with magical threats to the earthly plane, that's why we here at Phoning It In are throwing our support behind:

ELSA BLOODSTONE

Quite simply Miss Bloodstone has been preparing all her life for the mantle of being Earth's Sorcerer Supreme. Trained from childhood by her (rather deranged) father, Ulysses Bloodstone, first by defeating the Blight Beast with nothing but a spoon as a baby to circumcising the hideous felch-monster of Bihar Province with the same (now rather worse-for-the-wear) spoon moments later.* She proved herself in a mini-series that no one has read. She proved herself by defeating (along with her team, NextWave) the forces of H.A.T.E. I mean, has Miss Walker defeated the combined forces of a Baby M.O.D.O.K. and Devil Dinosaur? We think not. Plus, she's English, they're totally classier that your lame-ass Alaskan chicks.

Vote for Elsa Bloodstone to be your Sorcerer Supreme, she's your only hope (at least until Dr. Strange comes back sometime next year).

*Come to think of it, I really hope they threw that spoon out.

Battlestar Galatcica: Happy Endings

2009-03-12T07:00:00.000-05:00

I'm coming to the realization that Battlestar Galactica could very well be my favorite TV series, ever and it's making me wonder why I've been feeling more and more ambivalent as the last few episodes have been unspooling. They've certainly been good, and I'm sure part of it is that while they're giving call-backs to past episodes and kind of reveling in the idea that, "well, we're not going to be in this corridor ever again, we might was well give it a send-off" we all just want to know how it ends. The biggest thing is that we want someone, anyone in this Olympics of Despair to have a happy ending. That's what this show has been about since the first nuke exploded over Caprica, a happy ending for the human race, and short of the ONE TRUE GOD coming down, that's not going to happen for most of the cast we've come to love, let's give a quick run-down:

President Roslin: They might as well be wheeling her around in a coffin for the next three episodes.

Adama: Will not survive. Because letting him live after both* of his true loves are gone is too much for the Old Man to bear. Speaking of his other true love....

Col. Tigh: Is it me or has this whole series been about Tigh? It' like he's the very definition of human fallibility and also of our nobility. Just an amazing character...which kinda sucks because the dude is screwed. There's no way he can have a happy ending, because his two loves are going to be eternally in conflict and other than Adama his other love....

Ellen Tigh: Has been set up as the fall ~~guy~~ lady for the whom all of Man's/Cylon's sins will eventually rest. Ellen will eventually do something noble, but she's fucked (as is most everyone else...keep going).

Boomer: Effectively damned herself with her abduction of Hera, unless she and Tyrol can somehow end up boxed together in the Barbie-dream-house she imagined for them. Speaking of...

Galen Tyrol: Yeah, without Boomer, dudes just a fat, single dad who can fix the hell outta a Viper. That's no happy ending.

Baltar: Let's face it, if this dude gets a happy ending, it's no happy ending for us. I like Baltar, the flashes of brilliance he used to get himself out of tight scrapes are just amazing at times, but eventually, he's going to be made to pay.

Tori: She was once really hot, then she got all Cylon and bitchy. Go away...no happy ending for you.

Hot Dog: Who the fuck cares about Hot Dog?

Anders: Well, it doesn't look good, figuring dude's got a bullet lodged in his brain and he's a Speak n' Spell right now, but, obviously he's going to have a major part to play coming up in the end seeing as how he's married to...

Starbuck: who is obviously the crux who the whole thing is revolving around (though I've never found her that interesting). However, no matter what she is, no matter what happens to her, she's probably not going to be happy, since she love both Anders and....

Lee Adama: Who has shown himself to be both bad-ass and milquetoast throughout the series. Hopefully our man will get a chance to shine in the next two weeks, but I just don't see him settling down with Starbuck and having little cigar-chomping, lawyers with her. He's dooooommmmedddddd.

Helo, Athena & Little Hera: They're it. These three are the only ones with a chance of redemption at the end, the only ones who have not betrayed their friends, whose trespasses are forgivable, who have kept the faith. At the end of the series, humanity/cylonity will rest upon this family and they are all we have.

Well, them and the hopes of a scene featuring Adama and Roslin going to work on Cavill with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch. But that's probably too much to hope for. What do you think?

Batman: Battle for the Cowl

2009-03-11T21:21:00.004-05:00

Picked up a bunch of books this week, but I think I'll split the ones I want to talk about into a few posts. Anyhoo, up first is Batman: Battle for the Cowl #1:

So Batman's dead, or stuck int he past, or trapped on an alternate Earth....whatever, dude's not around so the shit is hitting the fan in Gotham City. The criminal element has felt the absence of Batman and is taking full advantage. Nightwing has pulled in all of the reserves to cover the crisis and they're holding, barely. But a new Batman is appearing on the scene, brutally bringing down criminals, leading Robin to believe that someone from the inner circle has to take up the mantle.

I've gotta say, Tony Daniel really does a good job with this book. After reading his workman-like art during Grant Morrison's run on Batman, I was doubtful that his writing would be much batter, but he has seemed to really nail the characters (with one reservation). Robin narrates the whole story, and his voice is very well done. The art is serviceable, not bad, but still a little sketchy in places.

The only real issue I had was Damien's characterization. While Daniel gets the spoiled rich kid thing with him, I always saw him as being much more unflappable. The kids too much of a dick to let his opponents see fear on him, plus the little fucker's lethal. It just seems like the plot required him to behave that way, and thus, he did.

Anyway, it was pretty darn good, and after all of the Final Crisis stuff, astonishingly straight-forward. I'm looking forward to the next two issues, hopefully they'll come out at a reasonable clip.

Fantastic Four: World' Greatest

2009-03-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

"It's such a fine line between clever and stupid" - Ian St. Hubbins (Michael McKean)

Mark Millar's been bugging me for a couple of years now. Not really his writing (which has been both good and bad of late), but his public persona, constantly schilling his stuff and explaining to anyone who will listen how rich he is and how much of genius he is. It's pretty much turned me off from picking up any of his latest stuff. However, I had a free trade coming from the shop this week, and with his latest collaboration with Brian Hitch hitting stands, I figured that I'd give it a whirl. Following their collaboration on The Ultimates, a book that I liked a lot though I felt it kind of fell apart towards the end of part two), Millar and Hitch signed on for 16 issues of Fantatic Four and this collects the first eight of them.

Overall, it's a fun little read, playing to their strengths with big action set-pieces and lots of big crazy-science ideas, but, as Sir St. Hubbins says above, in his quest to be really clever with his story, Millar falls onto the stupid side of the thin line. The overall conceit of the book is that the Earth is dying and the only way to save its population is to move them all to the under-construction Nu-Earth (no umlaut?). Of course, the construction is being led by Reed's ex-girlfriend Alyssa Moy (think Reed in Tomb Raider's body), who we're supposed to think is constantly tempting Reed with her feminine wiles, despite acting like a woman I can't see anyone standing for more than ten minutes. That's probably my biggest problem with the book is the characterizations. The only character that I really felt that Millar "nailed" was Reed, with his absent-minded-professor schitck. Ben just kind of stands around and makes wise-cracks, Sue's just there to be the loving wife and stand by Reed, and his Johnny is an irresponsible jackass. That characterization of Johny would have been fine five or six years ago, but during Mark Waid & Mike Wieringo's run* they actually grew him up a bit and it's a shame that no one is contiuing that, it just seems lazy, like he couldn't be bothered to draw any nuance but the broad strokes.

From there we get the patented Millar/Hitch big action scene featuring the entire Marvel U going up against Nu-Earth's out of control security (giant) robot. The arc wraps up with the FF being challenged by a team of refugee superheroes from Earth's apocalyptic future (which adds up to how many apocalyptic futures for the Marvel Universe now? ).

Hitch's art is very good for the most part, but seems in some areas very sketchy. like they colored directly from his pencils in order to save time, which is a shame. If you hire Hitch, you have to deal with the delays and not bother rushing him. He also doesn't seem to get Reed's face/head right. He's pretty spot-on with everyone else, by Reed just always looks rather mis-shapen. Also, he relies upon photo reference for a few too many of the women's facial expressions. I mean, how many do you know who talk while sticking their tongues out? Apparently Bryan Hitch (and Greg Land) know a lot of them. My last issue with the art is that there's a few places where it's obvious they had meant to do a double-page spread of an action scene, but for some reason decided not to. It makes the action in those pages seem rather compressed and loses a lot of its impact (I noticed this towards the end of Ultimates 2 a well).

Overall, I liked the book in it's turn-off-your-brain, action movie kind of way, but it's certainly not something I'll hold up to people as vital work on the FF.

*Probably my favorite run on the title.

Movie Review: Watchmen

2009-03-08T07:51:00.000-05:00

"George, you can write this shit, but you can't say it." - Harrison Ford to George Lucas

The quote above pretty much embodies a lot of my feelings towards the movie adaptation of Alan Moore & Dave Gibbon's graphic novel Watchmen. I absolutely love the book,but when comic book dialogue is taken off of the page and put on screen, coming out of the mouths of real people, it just sounds stupid.

But let's back track. I did think the movie as a whole was pretty good, Zack Snyder took what I thought to be an un-filmable book and managed to tame it into a pretty brisk 2 hour 45 minute movie. Some of the performances were excellent, some (one in particular) were not so good. So we'll start with the good. The movie really begins excellently right off with a credits sequence set to Bob Dylan's "The Times, They Are A-Changin'" illustrating the "golden age" of the movie's world to the present with key scenes, including the formation of the Minutemen, the assassination of JFK, and the sad end of the Silhouette. It really sucks you into the world that Moore & Gibbons created and serves as a great Cliff's Notes to the new viewer to understand what 1985 of the Watchmen's world is like. From there we get the first two issues of the series pretty much word-for-word, and done well. Jackie Earl Haley is very good as Rorschach , managing to pull off his voice very well and give his journal readings some heft. Though Jeffrey Dean Morgan gives it a good try, The Comedian's dialogue is the most ridiculous, when not given a brush-up for the screen. This is most obvious during his scene with the Nite Owl while quelling the pre-Keene Act riots. I love how it reads off the page, but when it comes out of his mouth, it just doesn't work. It's in this instance that the filmmakers' slavish devotion to the source material hamstrings them. I'm sure they could have pulled this off much better if they'd rewritten some of it.

The movie proceeds pretty much along the lines of the book, excising some characters (the News Vendor, the boy reading the comic book) and combining some scenes (the psychiatrist now has just one scene with Rorschach). The biggest change is the tweak to the ending, which really didn't bother me, though the idea that Dan & Laurie continued on as superheroes after the end did, as it kind of misses the point. I always thought was one of the ideas of the book was that dressing up in these idiotic costumes was damaging to the individual, for them to continue to be costumed adventurers, to me, shows that they haven't changed despite the events of the story.

Easily the worst part of the film was Malin Ackerman's (Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II) acting. It was as if she was reading cue-cards just out of scene. When I read Michael Phillip's review for the Chicago Tribune and he referred to her as "possibly the worst actress in Hollywood at the moment", I thought he was just being an asshole (because the rest of his review is pretty asshole-ish too), but I do have to agree, she's really bad, distractingly so.

Other issues were Zack Snyders' use of his fast-slooooowww-fast style of action scenes, a style that was old before 300 was over. It's odd, because that's the only way he asserts any directorial style into the picture, other than that it's purely what's on the page, put up on the screen. I would much rather have seen a different director put his own stamp on the material ad take chances with it. While Watchmen is not as bad as 300 or Sin City in my mind, both of those movies to me were so slavishly devoted to their source-material that they ceased to be anything more to me than technical exercises in taking pictured from the page and adapting them exactly for the screen; the equivalent of taking a photo of a girl and photoshopping it so that it looks exactly like the Mona Lisa, that's not art, just good photoshopping.

Anyway, I may sound like I'm coming down on the movie, but I did enjoy myself and may even see it another time (I'll certainly see it on video). At no point was I looking at my watch thinking, "get on with it!" I do wish that I could have come into this movie cold, without the weight of having known this story so well for the past 20 years, I think that's why Roger Ebert's review is so laudatory, he had not read the book, so all of this was new to him, as this was just a re-telling of one of my favorites. Overall, they took a great book and made a pretty good movie out of it.

FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS: OPP!

2009-03-06T17:00:00.002-06:00

TONIGHT'S ONE PANEL PUNCH-OUT:
CAPTAIN MARVEL JR. VERSUS CAPTAIN NAZI

YEAH, THAT'S JUST ABOUT HOW I THOUGHT IT WOULD GO DOWN

This awesome panel (along with so, so may others) is brought to you by: Shazam Family Archives Vol. 1.

What I Got - 3.4.09

2009-03-04T21:14:00.003-06:00

So I guess I should make an attempt to put up some content on this here blog-thingy, so here's a quick rundown of what I picked up this week, I haven't gotten a chance to read everything, but at least here are some first impressions:

Secret Six#7: The first arc of this book comes to an end and I'm rather enjoying Gail Simone's take on this team of quasi-villains. It just seems like it's missing something, if it weren't for the fact that I have a feeling that the book needs every purchase that it can get, I would probably wait for trade. I suspect that it would read better that way.

Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead?: My sole reason for picking this book up was to see the Gotham MCU back in action and it's OK. It just seems like one of those preview books that DC puts out occasionally, featuring four 6-page previews of new books coming out,this time featuring Vicki Vale, Stephanie Brown, Leslie Thompkins and Harvey Bullock as they deal with the aftermath of Batman's "death". However, I guess that the stories in this book are meant to be wrapped up in another Gotham Gazette book in May? I liked this, but I don't like waiting 2 months for the ends of stories that weren't long enough to be that memorable.

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt #4: It's Hellboy. There's really nothing else to say about that.

Secret Warriors #2: I got the hard sell on this book from a fellow customer at the shop, and, since I've always love Nick Fury I figured I'd give it a shot. Well, I did and I'm out. The whole "everything you know is wrong!" reveal of the last issue just rubbed me the wrong way, and this issue did nothing to make me feel like anything actually interesting is going to happen. Part of the problem is that both issues have featured people sitting around have not-particularly interesting conversations. Plus the art is rather pedestrian. I'll look in on it again when the trade comes out. Kind of disappointed as I was hoping for more from co-writer Jonathan Hickman (as I loved The Nightly News).

Best of the Week

Agents of Atlas #2: Jeff Parker is easily my favorite comics-writer right now and his original Agents of Atlas mini-series is a large reason why. Taking a disparate group of Marvel's golden age characters and fashioning them into team that seeks to save the world while operating as an underground criminal organization, this book is pretty much everything people want in a comic. Smart, fun and full of action, I just love this book so much.

TRADES:

North World Vol. 2: I didn't even know this book was coming out until this morning and I was very happy to see it was coming out. Lars Brown story of Conrad, a heroic adventurer who decided, after the event of volume 1 that he'd rather settle down and be an accountant with his Dad that chase monsters is an enjoyable little story about a man facing the dawning of his adulthood, while fending off giant bears and random street-thugs. I'm only about half-way through this new volume, but it's of the same quality as the first.

Fantastic Four: World's Greatest: I hadn't planned on getting this first volume of Mark Millar and Brian Hitch's run on the title, but I had a free trade coming at the shop, so I figured I'd take a shot. I think I might actually try to review this one in full, once I read it.

So there you go, what did you all pick up this week?

ONE MORE! And Then There Was The Time...

2009-03-01T21:18:00.006-06:00

And then there was the time when Power Pack teamed up with The Punisher and Dakota North to bring the Three Stooges to justice...

This fever-dream brought to you by Power Pack #46 by Jo Duffy and Whilce Portacio. And with this one, I promise I'll stop stealing Church's shtick.

And The There Was The Time...

2009-02-27T20:26:00.010-06:00

And then there was the time when Luke Skywalker fought
some crazy chick with a laser whip....

This fight originally published in Star Wars Vol. 1 #96, and it is yet another reason why the Expanded Universe can suck it.

Reading the Watchmen: Chapter Five

2009-02-18T20:35:00.002-06:00

This was my favorite issue yet of the series. Alternating between the various stories running parallel in the book, the plot is moving quickly towards the moment where everything goes to hell.

Rorschach continues his investigation into the murder of the Comedian and the shaming of Dr. Manhattan. Through this we can again get into his head and see the pure black and white world view that he subscribes to. He sees the evil in the world and he is on a crusade to end it, all of it.

Along with that, we return to the Greek chorus of the book, the nameless news vendor, offering his opinion to any and all about the state of the world, all while the boy reads through the comic-within-a-comic, "The Tales of the Black Freighter". That narration of that book, serving to also narrate our story.

All of this culminates with the framing and capture of Rorschach, revealing him as the bum who we've seen earlier silently carrying a sign reading, "The End is Near". This leads you to wonder, is he really any type of hero at all?

This was just a fantastic issue, and a horrific one. The horrible visuals of the Black Freighter story only serve to heighten the feeling of dread that comes through the entire story. The back-up in this issue, is an excerpt from a book about the pirate comics that ruled the newsstands in the world of Watchmen. The amount of detail that Moore puts into just those three pages is just amazing and I wish that they had managed to put together some of the stories they discuss in there for real, as they all sound pretty amazing.

Reading the Watchmen: Chapter Four

2009-02-17T20:07:00.002-06:00

Chapter four of this book is a tough nut to crack, perhaps because it is the most straight-forward so far. It features Dr. Manhattan on Mars, recounting his life story. From boyhood, teaching himself to be a watch-maker (Hey there symbolism! Glad you could drop by!) to becoming a physics researcher for the government, to the accident that turned him into something far more than human.

Essentially, we also get a brief history of the latter 20th century of the world of Watchmen. Manhattan's very existence serves to completely tilt the balance of the Cold War so that it's no longer just a balance between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., instead (as is spelled out in the essay in the back), it's now a ticking time bomb until Russia finally gets fed up and decides to put "America's Superman" to the test by asking him to catch a whole gang of nuclear warheads.

Manhattan has made the whole of humanity obsolete. In a telling scene between the first Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan at Owl's retirement party, he mentions to Manhattan that he's going to fix cars. Manhattan immediately responds that the new electrical cars he has made possible will be even "simpler" than current automobiles. Poor Hollis Mason, the man is effectively pushed out of two lines of business by Manhattan's arrival, and he seems to be the stand in for everyone.

The one thing I question about Dr. Manhattan is that he is most likely the book's biggest tragic figure, since he can see the future and obviously knows both the horrors that are to come, but that he is also powerless to stop fate, but I don't know if he can feel the tragedy in that. It's been shown that he does feel emotion (his outburst of anger when the press turned on him, for one), but while do get overtones of sadness from him, I don't know how he feels about all of this. I'll keep a look out for that as we go along.

Reading the Watchmen: Chapter 3

2009-02-08T19:26:00.003-06:00

With the introductions and the world-building of the first two chapters out of the way, chapter 3 kicks the story into high gear. The plot against Dr. Manhattan is put into place, as he is confronted with the information that many of his previous associates have been diagnosed with, or even died from cancer. Manhattan's way of dealing with this information is to freak out on live TV and vanish, first for Arizona and then Mars. His disappearance, literally throws the entire world into havoc. Up until this point, Dr. Manhattan was the ultimate Cold War weapon for the United States, there was no weapon that the U.S.S.R. could produce that could hope to counteract him, so, as we've heard in asides previously in the series, the Russians pretty much had to be happy with saber rattling and accepting whatever America wanted to do. Now, with his disappearance, they immediately invade Afghanistan, with their sights set on quite a bit more. This shows the reader just what the stakes are, for those of us who grew up in the 80's, we all knew that nuclear war was a possibility (hell, a probability depending upon what type of rhetoric Reagan and Thatcher were spouting that particular week), but in the world of Watchmen, it's even far more likely, and closer than ever.

In this issue, we are introduced to the news-vendor, who serves as a bit of a Greek chorus to what is going on in the world. He gives the reader a view into the everyday existence of the book and how the goings on are effecting everyone. Also introduced is the in-book, comic book, The Black Freighter. Picking up with a sailor who stands abandoned on an island with nothing to keep him company, but the rotting corpses of his dead shipmates, his narration of his own story also serves as narration to the over-arching story of the book. I'll be honest, the Black Freighter portions have always been the most impenetrable portions of the book for me. I know what Moore is going for, but this time around I had an easier time seeing the comparisons between the Sailor's thoughts about God abandoning him and Manhattan abandoning humanity.

The back-up is the third (and I believe final) excerpt from Hollis Madison's memoir of being the first Nite Owl, bringing us through the end of their Golden Age and through the beginning of the Silver. The only thing I was left to wonder about was whether DC got the idea about the Justice Society's break-up in the 1950's over being targets of the McCarthy hearings from Watchmen, seeing as how that's essentially what happened to the costumed heroes here, or if it was an independent decision. Just something that occurred to me.

Another great issue of this series, though I really need to pick up the pace if I'm going to get through nine more of these before the 26th. Hope you all had a good weekend!

New Music - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart S/T

2009-02-07T06:00:00.000-06:00

It's Saturday morning, and since it looks like it's going to be a pretty nice day here in the Chicago-land area, I figured I'd start it out with a song. Some friends and I were discussing this article at the AV Club regarding what bands you'd like to see one more time, and I started getting nostalgic for my college days and the music that we would listen to over and over again. And fortunately, it just so happens that Thursday night I had downloaded a new album that sounds exactly like the sort of stuff I would have played over and over back in those days. Well, not just in those days, since I've been listening to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart's self-titled album pretty much constantly and enjoying quite a bit. It's just the perfect type of fuzzy pop magic that I loved then, and I love it now. Here's an appropriate song for the day of the week:

Come Saturday - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

If you'd like to read (and hear) some more, head on over to good friend Ditching Boy's blog.

Ladies & Gentlemen: A Major Metropolitan Newspaper!

2009-02-06T13:24:00.007-06:00

I had to post this, simply to confirm that it wasn't some type of fever-dream. Today's Chicago Tribune (Section 1, Page 3) featured a 3/4 page spread comparing Rahm Emmanuel to ROM: Spaceknight, here it is in all its glory:

[Edit! You can now click to embiggen!]

So, have I been (as TwitterPal Robert Clark posited) been somehow transported to the Marvel Universe? I don't know, but watch out for Dire Wraiths!

[Edit: It was actually TwitterPal Matt Springer (of PopGeek and AlertNerd) who made the livin' la vida Marvel comment. Oops.]

Reading the Watchmen: Chapter 2

2009-02-03T20:28:00.004-06:00

Chapter 2 is where the plot, as they say, thickens. The main line of the story is the funeral of the Comedian, as each of the main characters remembers a key moment in their life that involved him, leading us to understand just what kind of a miserable bastard that he truly was. From him almost raping Sally Jupiter in the Minutemen's trophy room, to his murdering the Vietnamese woman he got pregnant during the war, all these terrible acts show us the dark side of America that he had come to represent. These flashbacks also tell us a great deal about the characters themselves. Most interesting is the realization of just how disconnected from humanity that Dr. Manhattan is. After murdering the woman in Vietnam, The Comedian chides Manhattan for imploring him to stop, but doing nothing about it, "You coulda turned the gun into steam or the bullets into mercury...but you didn't do nothin' about it!" The Comedian becomes a character that allows the reader to view each of these heroes in extreme circumstances and gives us a true window into the America of this book.

So after seeing how horrible a person The Comedian can be, it makes it all the more amazing the revelation that Rorschach has while investigating Moloch, an old villain. The pages featuring a drunk, sobbing Comedian, seemingly confessing his sins and rambling on to Moloch are a beautiful lesson in foreshadowing. In fact, the whole issue is. Really, the whole mystery of the book is solved right there. From watching Ozymandias stare at the burned map of America after his comments that, "Given the correct handling, none of the world's problems are insurmountable. All it takes is the right intelligence." To The Comedian commenting on what he saw on that island, and that Moloch was on "the list". It's all right there.

The book is capped by another excerpt from the original Nite Owl's memoir, this portion detailing the beginnings of his career and the formation (and downfall) of the Minutemen. Not as revelatory as the portion from the previous issue, but still it helps to fill in some information on the world the book is inhabiting.

Reading this again years after first reading it, the big thing that stood out for me was, during the flashback showing the abortive formation of the Crimebusters, Rorschach is speaking with a normal word balloon, instead of the (I have no idea how to describe it) shakily-drawn one he usually "speaks" in. Just another thing to illustrate that one, even Rorschach was a somewhat sane individual.