Moving...

So yeah, I haven't been around a lot. I'm in the middle of moving houses and let's just say, it's a pain in the ass. Anyway, I should be through with is by the start of November so I'll pick up a more regular pace by then.

Talk at you soon.

Go Cubs Go...to October!

Holy sweet baby Jesus,...the End-Times are surely upon us.

Save us Ron Santo...Save Us!!!

Drink a fan can to celebrate

Seriously though, my Grandfather had emergency surgery last night and they're giving a 50-50 chance to live to get out of the hospital. Hopefully he'll be able to live long enough to see a better Cubs post-season experience than the fucking Bartman game (which he was at).









Oh, and for shits and giggles, let's hear some Lee Elia (language warning, kids):



Incidentally, apparently, this is my 100th post. Neat how that worked out.

NEWSFLASH!

Our President is a moron.

That is all, go back to your daily lives...if you can.

Link Blogging!

I'm bored. So, since I, unlike Herm Edwards, have the internets, let's find some fun stuff!

Here's Husker Du on the Late Show with Joan Rivers. Damn, are they awesome.


Looking for someone trustworthy to invest with? Howsabout Ric Flair? I wonder how hitting people with folding chairs fits into his plans?

So, a Justice League movie? Just looks like a bad idea to me. Here's hoping...

Quick run-down of recent concerts:

• Editors @ Park West: Man, they rock. I've seen them twice and they've brought it bouth times. Highly recommended. As a side note, Park West is the worst place in Chicago for a rock show, worse than the Mutiny even. I mean, it'd be great if I was going to sit down and listen to soothing folk or something, but for rock? Place sucks ass.

• Hideout Block Party (Saturday): Went for the Art Brut and loved them. They were preceeded by a punk rock marching band, which was odd. The Brut was followed by The Frames, who could be good, but they were too wuss-rock to follow a brit-rock-art-punk band, no way they could measure up. That said, they did close with an excellent cover of "Where is my Mind?" by the Pixies using the Hideout's resident glee club (ask me later) for the "woo-oooo's", but it wasn't enough in the end. Stuck around for one song by Andrew Bird, needed food far too badly at that point.
  

Since I've been rather lax on the whole "reviewing" thing lately, here are a couple books worthy of monthly purchase (rather than waiting for trade):

• Batman - Grant Morrison's take on Batman is surprisingly traditional and fun. The ole' Morrison insanity is there, but Bats is pushing through it. I think this run may end up overshadowing his X-Men stuff, if he can keep it up for a little while longer.
• Iron Fist - Brubaker & Fraction are adding a lot of layers to this formerly-cult character. With a little other-media exposure, Iron Fist could make the jump to the big-leagues.
• Casanova - More Fraction, even more craziness. Feels like a comic Brian Jones would have written right after he took drugs and right before he got in the pool.
• Captain America - Over 30 issues in, not even the title character's death can lessen how much new life Ed Brubaker has breathed into this series.
• Brave & The Bold - Pretty much the only comic coming out today that could be published at any time in the last 50 years and still be considered as good as it is. It is the very definition of "old-school". Well written, beautifully drawn, and fun.
• Honorable mentions - The Spirit (only 3 more Cooke issues left) and All-Star Superman (only considered monthly in other dimensions).

So that's what I got, hope you're all doing well.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Got divorced today, how's that for a conversation starter? We both kinda compared the actual court-room stuff to a car crash from one of those VW commercials, it all happened so fast we were left shaken and muttering "Holy Shi..." Anyway, at least we're both friendly and the most important thing right now is negotiating the mine-field that is not allowing this to fuck up our kids. That and selling our house in the shittiest market this century. So if I'm a little distracted and not around too much, there's the explanation.

Well, anyway, instead of posting some maudlin break-up tune, here's a (kinda) happy, witty one:

Art Brut - People in Love

A Fight I Want...Nay, Need to See

I want to see this guy:



Fight this guy:



Yee gods man, imagine the head-butts!

Actual content will return at some point soon...really. I'm fine, we're all fine...how are you?

Friday Night Fights!

Hey Capatain Marvel Jr.! That Dudley guy stole a whole gang of jewelry & tried to kill Freddy Freeman! Beat him up!

POW! SOCK! BAM! CLOUT!

Wait a minute....."clout"? Was "biff" out to lunch?

Now Bahlactus, that's a guy with clout.

And Now a Word from....Art Brut

Modern art....

Makes me...




Want to ROCK OUT!!!!!!

Friday Night Fights - I Spit On Your Grave!

"Sure thing boy scout...I've heard that before"


DAMN!

Bahlactus could stop the rockin', he just doesn't feel like it.

Images from Superman #666, these panels occur after Superman demolishes a convenience store and before he kills Braniac using "super-friction".

What I Got - 8.22.07

To reiterate from my other blog....I suck, but hey, it's August and I'm not the only one whose blogging-fu has dropped off recently. Anyway, I'm still paying my weekly tithe to the shop, so I might as well write about what I'm spending my money on:

Batman #668

Morrison continues on his "Batmen of Many Nations" arc and ups the stakes for our collection of heroes. It's an interesting little murder-mystery that really brings Bats back to his roots. I only have read a few of Morrison's Batman issues, but what I really like is how he's humanized (dare I say...softened) Batman. When Robin starts making fun of some of the past-their-sell-by-date heroes they're trapped with, Bats sticks up to defend them. Plus, his continued confidence in Robin's abilities is very cool. It's nice to see him acknowledge not every hero can measure up to him. This is the middle-part, so it suffers a bit from that, but it's still a very good issue.

One thing about the art, I had noticed while re-reading the previous issue, it looks as if J.H. Williams III is drawing each hero in a different artist's style. The Knight & Squire look as if Ed McGuinness is drawing them, the Argentine hero is in Carlos Ezquerra's style, the American Indian heroes look like Kevin Nowlan did them and The Legionairre looks like some of Carmine Infantino's Silver Age work. It looks really cool.



Superman #666

Holy crap that was awesome. I was disappointed with Batman #666, but this issue of Superman more than makes up for it. Essentially the plot is that Superman, thinking he's dreaming, decides to live out every single awful impulse he has ever had...from killing Luthor (by spitting in, and through, his face!) to making Jimmy Olsen's head explode using his super-whistling, and hey, no biggie, it's all a dream.....(wait for it)....OR IS IT!

Kurt Busiek writes an insane script that essentially exists solely to give Walt Simonson insane things to draw in the way that only Mr. Simonson can. I think this is the best single-issue tale I've read all year.





Annihilation Conquest: Starlord # 2

So our heroes go into battle (including everyone's favorite Racoon riding a sentient tree) and things get messy. That's pretty much it, this issue was good, but not to the heights of the first issue. It could be that the artist is better at drawing people talking rather than shooting, but it's still good. Part of the problem may have been for as much action that happened in this issue, there wasn't a lot of story, it's like the script read "Our Heroes bicker as the fight their way through the sewers and X & Y characters die." It's not that simple, but not too far off.

Irregardless, I'm still excited to see where this is going and I'm confident that it won't let me down.





The Spirit #9

Darwyn Cooke gets back into fighting form with this issue. Focusing back onto out main villain, who was created during The Spirit's origin, this issue mirrors the tale told in issue #3 with multiple member's of the cast telling the story in narration as we move through. It's well done and what could have been incoherent is easy to follow.












Immortal Iron Fist #8

Here's the pitch: Iron Fist...starring in..."Enter the Dragon", with superpowered kung-fu deities.

FIGHT!

Oh yeah.....

Friday Night Fights - Challengers!

Annnnnndddd....BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!

BONUS HIT:

WTF!

Both images courtesy of this week's Brave & the Bold #6 in which the Challengers of the Unknown fuck up Rann's entire army. Please note, that is the only panel in which the giant gun makes an appearance. No, I have no idea where the hell it came from either.

What I Got: 8/08/07...Do-Over!

So while I liked what I picked up on last Wednesday, i was a little underwhelmed by my choices (for the record: Nova #4, Criminal #8 & X-Factor #22), mainly because all three books were in mid-storyline so each amounted to a set-up for the next issue. I feel bad about this, since all three of those are some of the bast on the stands currently, but hey, I'll hopefully I'll be raving about them again in a month. ANYWAY, I was just going to skip reviewing this week, but this guy and this other guy's review of the following two books pushed me back into the shop yesterday and I was pleasantly surprised.

Batman #667

I had picked up issue 666 (because, how can one stay away) and was underwhelmed by the issue, so I decided to wait on this book until the collection, but the reviews started coming in and it looked like this might be Morrison's defining arc on the character, so hey, 3 more dollars to my local isn't that much is it? The reviews were right, Morrison brings this Silver-age bit of insanity into current continuity and not only fits it in well with our current Batman, but uses it to humanize him a little as well. This looks to be a fun bit of murder mystery that will help get Bats back to his detective roots.

One last note on the art, J.H. Williams returns to Batman (after his brief Detective stint w/ Paul Dini) and once again, he does a great job. while I love his take on Batman, his Robin is probably the best I've ever seen. He makes him look both like a kid, but tough at the same time. I'd love to see him do a Robin mini sometime in the future.

Casanova #8

So I had picked up the first two issues of this series, because it was a) Matt Fraction, "fuck-yeah" artist of 2006 and b) it was in the $1.99 "Fell-Format". While I enjoyed the secret agent/criminal action of the story, the constant reality/time shifting left me kinda clueless as to what the hell was going on. so I bailed. Not my finest moment, I admit, but life's too short to be confused by funny-books. ANYWAY, this story is a lot more straight forward with everything having been established by the opening arc. Essentially, Casanova Quinn, all-around bad-ass, other-reality super-agent has to track down some hard-core, evil-tech, military hardware. All that plus a giant robot. Fantastic. So, now I'm off to get the collection of the previous seven issues from Amazon. Woo-hoo!

Friday Night....Beatdown!

Lesson #1, Hawkeye:

YOU DON'T BRING A BOW TO A FIST FIGHT!

This beatdown was brought to you by New Avengers #33, of which, these were the only panels worth a good gosh darn.

Thanks, Bahlactus for continuing to bring the pain!

What I Learned @ The Movies

Well then, in the last few weeks, I've seen more movies than I did in all of calendar 2006 (and perhaps 2005), rather than write cohesive reviews (go here for those), here's some things I learned:

• Batman commands respect: During the previews before The Bourne Ultimatum began last night, all of the teenagers in the audience were chatting amongst themselves, but as soon as Michael Caine's dialogue started during the trailer (when you realize it's Batman) everyone became silent. It was awesome. The trailer's kinda "meh" on youtube, but in the theatre, it rocks. I guess it figures, since the guy will throw a car battery at you if you mess with him.


• As for The Bourne Ultimatum itself, it f---ing rocks. A solid continuation of the previous movie (it literally begins 5 minutes after the other one let off) it really doesn't feel like the movie stops to let you breathe throughout the entire running time.


• Also, I highly recommend seeing it in the theatre, since a lot of it is filmed hand-held and with very little to no set-ups or blocking (ie. there's a lot of times where people are standing in front of the camera and very little of the shot is revealed) so I think it'll lose something on the small screen.


• Took my 4-year-old to see Underdog earlier the same day and it was actually pretty good. Not a lot of poop or fart jokes, some good effects and nothing too-scary for the little one. A good time and recommended if you have kids. If you don't, skip it and go see Ratatouille.


• Speaking of Ratatouille, definitely go see that movie. It's love letter to the power that good food has to transport you to another place. Indeed, in that way, it really speaks to all art, be it music, books, what have you, it really shows how you can take many disparate ingredients and use them to trigger not only a specific feeling, but transport someone to a time and place in their history that it's just beautiful.


• Oh yeah, and there's a ton of fun slap-stick moments and perfectly timed jokes that'll keep you laughing at the same time.


• But lest you forget, there still are insipid kids-movies getting foisted upon us, we watched the trailer for the Alvin & the Chipmunks movie and even Jack thought it looked awful.


• The fact that no one is taking a close look at how Pixar is achieving their success and trying to emulate them says a lot of sad things about the state of movie-making in America today.


• Saw Die Hard 4 (the real title sucks, let's face it) and enjoyed it. It's as good as the last two and really, for all of the people bitching about it being rated PG-13, there's a shocking level of violence. Well, there weren't any boobs, good thing we just limited the kids to seeing many, many brutal murders instead of a boob, THAT could warp them.

That's about it for thatrical movies, I was going to get into my recent Netflix travails, but I'll hold onto that for a couple of days. Have a good week.

Friday Night Fights

HA! Eat Glass Lawman!

(click to awesome-size)

What's his name!?!

Yer damn right!

Bahlactus will devour your world!!!

All images courtesy of All Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder #6, which should be retitled simply: Goddamned Batman from now on.

"Real" Book Roundup

So, I've been on one of my kicks where I'm devouring prose novels & books at a rapid clip. Here's some quick capsule reviews if you're still on the look-out for some good summer readin'.

Gone Baby Gone - Dennis Lehan

Saw the trailer for the upcoming movie adaptation and decide to give the book a try, I haven't read anything by Lehan (author of Mystic River), but had heard nothing about good things. This is just a devastating book, spinning out from a child abduction case, two PI's are drawn into one of those cases where "nothing is as it seems", but it's handled very well. I don't want to get into too much of the plot simply because to summarize it does a disservice to how well written it really is. That said, there is very little beauty in this book, it's string of gut-punches and the ending proves that while justice can be done, it's not necessarily the right thing.






Can I Keep My Jersey? - Paul Shirley

On to some lighter fare, I was turned onto Paul Shirley's writing by espn.com columnist Bill Simmons, Paul is a lower-rung NBA player who is the guy who fills the end of your bench when several of your players are injured. Since college he's kept a blog of his travails in the NBA and (mostly) European Leagues, it's generally fascinating stuff, even for those of us who haven't really cared about the NBA since Michael Jordan rendered it very boring (when you've seen the greatest, why bother watching a lot of people who aren't as good?).

Mr. Shirley is very self-deprecating and I was able to connect with his work mostly because he holds himself far apart from the normal professional-athlete mindset. He doesn't think he's very good, he definitely doesn't think he's better than most of his teammates and he fully appreciates how lucky he is to make a very good living playing a game. The hardest part of his writing is that since he is so self-deprecating, you have to continually remind yourself that even a guy who heats the bench for 10 days at a time in the NBA is still one of the best 500 basketball players on the planet and also, he kind of comes off as a bit of a misanthrope, but if you had to surround yourself with this type of co-workers or work on a potentially mob-run basketball team in Siberia, you'd probably have a low opinion of your fellow humans as well.

Bad Luck & Trouble - Lee Child

Yet another Jack Reacher novel from Lee Child, and yet another one that is very, very good. Essentially this is a brutal summer cation movie in novel form (think the Bourne series). Reacher is an ex-army MP who prefers to live life as a nomad, traveling only with the clothes on his back and living off of his meager savings. While most of the novels in this series usually end of with Reacher getting into a situation involving a convoluted coincidence, but this time...wait for it...it's personal. One of his Army buddies has just been found dead and essentially, he's getting the band back together to hunt down those responsible. It's a fun, quick read that doesn't stick with you too long after you're done with it, but you're ready for the next book to hit the stands none-the-less.



Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling

So yeah, much like 10 million other people across the country I bought and read this book last weekend. Much like the rest of the series it was very good and provided a fitting end to the series. It could have used a little editing in the drawn-out middle part, but I'll give Ms. Rowling a break because you can tell she didn't want it to end the same as her readers.

If you like the series you'll like the book, if you don't, well, you won't.



Soon I Will Become Invincible - Austin Grossman

So one last book, a novel about a super-villain, recently escaped from prison bent on conquering the world. There's a parallel thread about a new superhero joining the world's biggest super team. This is a fun little book, and the author is able to create a world with a rich history of super-people without boring you by giving you endless tracts on its history. Once again, this is nothing that will change the world, but it's fun none-the-less, it makes a good point to try to get into the head of a supervillain and try to understand why in the devil he wants to use his obvious brilliance to take over the world. Especially since that's a rather thankless task.

So that's what I've devoured ion the last few weeks, I've still got quite a stack on the nightstand, so hopefully I can give another report in a little while.

Friday Night Fights - Mr. Sexypants

Always remember:

Even for Mr. Sexypants, "No means NO."

Thanks be to Bahlactus for spreading the truth!

Image courtesy of The Spirit #8, wherein we learn, for reals, that Spirit = Pimp.

What I Got - 7.25.07

Whoo-hoo, got my books early this week, and it's a good-un. Here we go:

Annihilation Conquest: StarLord #1

After picking up the collections of the first Annihilation event, I knew that I'd be getting the sequel as well, but I figured I'd hold out for the collections since I knew I'd be getting them anyway. Until I heard that this series would be featuring Rocket Raccoon. Well shit, I gues I'll have to pick this one up. Essentially, this book is a variation on the Dirty Dozen, with Peter Quill, StarLord leading a low-tech team to Hala to try to take down the Phalanxes (ie. the Borg of the Marvel Universe)
doomsday weapon. this issue is little more than set-up and the gathering of the team, but it does it so well, that you don't even care that no one gets punched. The art was very good too, I've never heard of Timothy Green II, but I'm going to keep an eye out for him. His work really reminded me of the late Seth Fisher's and that's definitely a complement.

The Immortal Iron Fist #7

While the creative team charges up for the second arc of this fun series, we get a quick "mythology" issue, providing the story of the Pirate Queen of Ping-Hi Bay. There's some fun kung fu action in this story, which is essentially: girl meets kung fu master, kung fu master trains girl, girl meets boy, boy and girl get married, kung fu master gets ticked, boy runs away (not wanting to watch girl die), girl searches for boy and kicks the crap out of southeast Asia while she does it. Oh yeah, there's pirates too. So fun for the whole family, at least the one's who like kung fu and pirates.





Queen & Country #32

I had completely stopped believing that this series would ever even come out again, but here it is, at least for one more issue. Greg Rucka wraps up the current storyline featuring British spy Tara Chase being held in Baghdad (with a journalist and her partner). truth-be-told, I had no idea what was going on, since the last issue came out over a year ago, but even without the benefit of a recap page, I was up to speed pretty quickly. This is a very good issue of this excellent series, but sadly, according to Greg Rucka's letter at the end, it's to be its last for a while. We'll have to wait for a relaunch coming in 2009 (or 2010!) in order to keep following these characters he has so well brought to life. It's funny, this series has been gone for quite a long time, but I didn't realize how much I'd miss it until someone told me when it would come back.

Black Summer #1

So Warren Ellis's new Avatar series fully kicks off and it's quite the grabber. In issue #0 we learned that John Horus (ie. Superman) killed the President and his cabinet for their lies and is determined to bring a newly elected government into power. Unfortunately, that means all of his old allies are now targets of a very scarred government and Tom Noir (ie. Batman) is fighting for his life. Oh yeah, Tom is now a drunk and minus a leg, so he's not exactly in shape to be fighting off super-powered hitmen....or is he?

Ellis, gives us a very good look at "real-world" superheroes, which is funny, since this is like his eighth time exploring this subject. Irregardless, I guess I'm in again, I wonder how it'll come out this time?

Batman #666

So I really don't know how you go wrong here. You have issue #666, written by Grant Morrison, featuring Batman's son, in the future, fighting the Anti-Christ and his minions (including a Gorilla in a clown costume) on the eve of the Apocalypse. But it all comes off rather flat. Part of the problem is that you have to search for clues throughout the story to see what the heck is really happening, and a fair amount of it refers back to stories that happened in the last few months (that I haven't read). It's still very good, but I wanted more.

One more bone to pick, could there have been more blood in this book? I understand that this is future-bad-ass-psycho-Batman, but did he really need to eviscerate all of his opponents? And this all got Code approval....how? It didn't bother me so much as pull me out of the story in a few place.

Let's hope Superman #666 is better.


So that's it for this week, everything was good, if not great. I also picked up Warren Ellis's Doktor Sleepless, but haven't gotten around to reading it, but based upon thumbing through it, I'm not hopeful. Now to figure out who's going to be fighting tomorrow night!

Hey Kids!

Have you ever wondered what could be more awesome than Rocket Raccoon firing a heavy machine gun?



Well, clearly Keith Giffen has too! How about Rocket Raccoon, firing a heavy machine gun, being held up by a giant, sentient tree?

Yes, that'll do nicely.

All images courtesy of this weeks Annihilation Conquest: Starlord #1, which is just as good as these two panels suggest.

Last Bastion of Oddity

The Weekly World News, one of the last bastions of mainstream oddity is shutting down.



I remember as a lad, when comics of all types were cheap and plentiful at the local drug store, there was also the excellent "news" publication. Too bad it no longer fits in to today's homogenized grocery store checkout racks. If only they had featured Rachael Ray or Brad Pitt more. So go out and pick up a copy so that you can show your children there was once true wonder in this world of ours!

Keep your eyes open Archie, you could be next!