Earth 2 Casey

Wizard World: My Haul

2009-06-20T17:21:00.001-04:00

So this weekend I worked my way down to Philadelphia to try and get my groove back, Stella style*, after the Beatles: Rock Band. Why Philly? Well, I wanted to check out Wizard World Philadelphia! There were some amazing guests lined up; Kevin Maguire, Steve Dillon, Garth Ennis, EDWARD JAMES OLMOS, and a number of other cool guests. I hadn't been to a hardcore comics con in a long time, so I was pumped.

Unfortunately, after a few hours at the con, I realized; I'm kind of done with this schtick! A lot of things were overpriced, ESPECIALLY anything involving a pro: Alex Maleev wanted $150 for a sketch and would only talk to people through an agent, Kevin Maguire wanted $100 dollars for one of JUST a character's face (though he is an AWESOME dude and talked to, and shared a few awesome Justice League secrets with me), and Edward James Olmos wanted $50 for an autograph, and $20 just to take a photo with him!

Not everyone was quite as demanding; the delightful Amanda Conner was selling head sketches for $40, and J. G. Jones, too, was doing them at a reasonably rate. Not surprisingly, though, they were both fully booked for sketches for the weekend.

BUT, I am still really happy I came, as I got to talk to some awesome creators, and I ended up buying a TON of art from independent creators. Here's what I got:

I met Joe Dunn from one of my favorite strips, Joe Loves Crappy Movies, who I didn't expect to see.

I ended up buying the Turtle shirt and book of another one of his delightful strips Turtle Vs Bunny!

I also found this excellent Duck Tales print by Craig Parrillo:

I found an amazingly dense Goonies print by Jim Horwat with more tiny references to different scenes in the movie (and the NES game!) than I could list here. He's also got a TOTALLY rad Evil Dead 2 print on his website that I'm considering ordering.

Then... then I found the COOLEST table at the whole show. These three guys were all holed up together, selling these prints, and I walked away with about a million pieces.

First is Scott Derby, who did this amazing Shaun of the Dead poster:

I love the color and overall claustrophobic design of the piece. Plus the Simon Pegg is adorable.

Then I met Tom Whalen, who was selling these other movie poster remakes, and he was selling one particular set I couldn't resist picking up:

While I was waiting for him to flip through, I also couldn't resist picking up this print of Earth's Mightiest Heroes:

And the third artist at this table, the man who got the most money out of me, was Dave Perillo, and well, I can't talk about all the pieces I got from him, so here they are in all their awesomeness.

These guys were all incredibly talented, incredibly nice, and I was really happy to have met them. Now I just need to figure out how to frame and where to put all this...

Anyway, tonight is Kaiju Big Battle and then I plan to just wander around Philly for a few days, but I wanted to take a minute and share my swag.

-casey-

*Yes, I know that means have an affair with a young black man.

Game Designer weekly E-Mail #1 - E3

2009-06-07T16:22:00.001-04:00

This is the first in a series of weely e-mail exchanges between game designers about upcoming events (Like this one! E3) trends in games (a move towards more casual play for example), or just what we feel like discussing at a given time (the perfect taco, or where one might get said taco).

Your participants are designers Dan Teasdale, Chris Foster, myself, Sylvain Dubrofsky, and eventually Grace Williams.

These e-mails were exchanged pre-E3, so read them and see how the real thing matched up with our expectations!

Dan Teasdale

Okay, let’s try kicking off this whole email design thing with something that’s sure to cause contention. I am a classy gent, after all.

E3 is next week. It’s the return of the huge 40,000 person behemoths of old, complete with 8 hours of doof and awkward-looking booth babes. What is everyone looking forward to? Any games that are off most people’s radars that you think will be awesome? Any trends you hope to see, or not see?

Casey Malone

Well, this is my first E3, so I'm expecting an orgy of decadence the likes of which even David Bowie or Robert Evans would back away from slowly.

Seriously, though, growing up reading about and imagining the floor of E3 I'm not sure what's coming; is it going to be full of multimillion dollar booths with lights, decorations, props, costumes and fun like Disney World or is it going to be a starkly lit nightmare full of cranky nerds and too-loud music like Euro Disney? I'll let the old hands at this convention thing take guesses towards that.

I guess what excites me the most is seeing what some of my favorite developers are bringing; I have been itching to get my hands on the next game from DoubleFine since the moment I finished* Psychonauts, so I'll be rushing to try Brutal Legend. I'm hoping that Warren Spector brings his long-rumored Mickey Mouse game, so I can at least get a look at what he's bringing to the Disney universe. I want to try out The Legend of Zelda: We Love Toy Trains Edition**, because I have no idea what's happening with this title. And I will proudly wear the badge of the only Harmonix designer who is excited at whatever new game Kojima Productions is working on; yes, I'm sure they'll announce MGS4 for 360, but I'm really crossing my fingers they're bringing something else with them.

As for games that'll secretly steal the show? I think people are going to walk away from Scribblenauts amazed - and no, I don't just love games with "nauts" in the title. And I don't mean to get all "blow our own horn-y"***, but I think The Beatles: Rock Band is going to make jaws hit the floor.

The trend I really want to see and also want to see avoided is sort of a contradiction - I want to see less of a casual market taking over the games industry and instead see games move more towards accepting a casual audience. I mean fewer fitness and weight loss products, and more games that have bright friendly art direction and no lose conditions. Fewer mini-game collections and more intuitive controls. I want to see game makers trending away from the hardcore, but not the point where we lose focus of what makes games fun - interactive fantasies we can provide that movies can't. If the focus of E3 is on experiences like that instead of the gritty FPSs of the world, I'll be really excited for gaming in the next year.

* I never finished Psychonauts, but instead had to watch a friend finish it. Damned Meat Circus.
**Which Dan will tell you he designed a decade ago, I'm sure.
*** There was a better way to say that, I'm sure.

Dan Teasdale

Casey, you have reminded me of Scribblenauts and made me throw in my 0.02c for that as potential dark horse of the year. I'm really curious to see how deep the vocabulary is. Maybe they're really smart about it and target common words plus people's playtest list? I heard that's how Al Lowe did the vocabulary in the first Leisure Suit Larry, and it seemed to work pretty well in being a jerk to me because of it.

I loved E3 the first few times I went. As a game nerd, having everything you want to play on a show floor is awesome. I'm pretty sure this will be the Casey experience. Then, I demoed a game with a 15 minute linear demo for three days and got to see the seedy underbelly of E3, and now I'm a curmudgeonly old jerk. This will probably be the Sylvain experience.

This curmudgeonliness has raised a question in my head: Do we need E3 anymore?

The justification about Ye Olde E3 was that it was a single location that publishers could meet with retailers to buy shelf space for the holidays. Sure, there was a nice side bonus of all the people attending getting to play each other's games and see in action upcoming trends, but the only reason you were flown out there was so that you could guide your hastily-duct taped demo for the King of Walmart*, who would then decree the amount of shelf space you'd get in November.

In the break between Ye Olde E3 and this year's E3, the publishers figured out news ways to talk to developers and vice versa - shows like EA3 and the GameStop Manager's Conference took the place. Bloggers picked up video cameras, thereby negating the need for me to walk the floor or wait in a three hour line. Services like Steam and the first party marketplaces have meant that shelf space isn't a problem, so they can focus on spending their marketing budget towards players rather than wooing retailers ($1mil+ on a booth for E3 2006, EA? Really?) Games like Bioshock have proven that you don't have to come out in the holidays (or be held over to March 31) to be successful.

My gut is that while it'll be a good press boost, it's going to be more like Harrison Ford in Crystal Skull than it is Harrison Ford in Raiders. We'll see this old format played out, realise that it was great before, but that as an industry we've grown since then and that our needs for an expo need to be different if we're going to treat it as a PR festival rather than a distributor pimpathon.

To end on a cheery note, my predictions for E3:
* Brutal Legend blows peoples brains open
* The Beatles: Rock Band gets nominated for an E3 Critics Choice award.
* The most popular booth will be the Target relax-and-feed-me-snacks lounge.

-DanT

*I'm assuming he's your king, or at the very least your Governor General.

Chris Foster

Between being seven months into Raise-A-Baby-Quest, and only now getting de-Beatled after over a year in the Rock Band mines, I'm going into this E3 fairly cold and devoid of specific expectations.

But while it's been a few years since my last E3, I do have my memories. I think my first significant recollection of E3 (though maybe it was an ECTS from the same year) is seeing this mindblowing, totally unexpected 3D console called the "PlayStation." I particularly remember that they demoed Ridge Racer using these weird pre-Dualshock analog controllers from Namco called NegCon, where you steered by twisting one half of a split controller while holding the other half.

I also remember, a year or so later, the massive robot-spider both that Scavenger Software used to present their dozen games and game demos-in-progress. I think that spider-booth was pretty much the only concrete thing they ever actually shipped.

I also remember the multiple appearances of the Gathering of Developers outside E3 at their personal trailer park -- though I never personally visited due to a pathological distrust of strippers and loud people.

I guess that covers the range of experiences I'm hoping for. I'd love to be wowed by something as monumental and game-changing as it is unexpected. I'll also keeping an eye out for those companies where you catch glimpses of a massive train wreck to come, if only in hindsight. And I'm expecting to see things that I will immediately wish that I could unsee.

E3, how I've missed you.

Sylvain Dubrofsky

Hey I remember that E3 booth that you manned Dan. I was actually really looking forward to DAH after that presentation.

I'm really excited E3 is back in the form I remember. I've been in the industry for almost 10 years. I think I went to E3 in years 2-7. At first it was a similar experience to going to a big out-of-town concert. The first couple industry jobs I had wouldn't pay for us, so we'd get our own flights, share beds in hotels, and take vacation days. By the end I have been spoiled getting my flights, hotel room, and per diem covered.

There is one common experience with all my E3 visits. Exhaustion after it's all over. As much as I love it, I'm sure I'll get massive headaches, muscle soreness, and extreme lack of sleep. This year that will be mitigated by my excitement showing off our HMX games which I'm tremendously proud of.

Ok enough history. To the games! I'll be on my usual hunt for obscure titles that may not have received enough coverage. The truth is, besides actually playing the games, you can get a large picture at home in front of a computer or watching G4. That's why I'm gonna do my best to actually play the games while I'm there and have free time.

Things I wanna play if they are there:
Modern Warfare 2
Halo: ODST
Half Life 2: Episode 3
Batman Arkham Asylum
Splinter Cell Conviction
Trico
Madden
Starcraft 2
Anybody else's music games

Casey, I find it odd that you mention FPS-sequel-X as a problem but are excited by yet another Metal Gear. Everyone has their things they enjoy (I'm always excited to try each new Madden, or anything by Valve, Bungie, Infinity Ward, Epic...). I personally don't get the fandom behind the regular E3 trailer of the next Metal Gear or Final Fantasy but I don't see it as something that takes away my excitement.

And with that, we got ready to do E3 prep and other projects, and our first e-mail exchange ended. Tune in next Sunday for hopefully our next installment.

-casey-

Audio Booin' The HMX After Party

2009-06-05T05:04:00.000-04:00

I Have Never Been So Excited for a Solicitation In My Life

2009-05-22T02:22:00.001-04:00

Ladies. Gentlemen. ESPECIALLY the gentlemen.

I give you... MARVEL BROMANCE:

"If This Be Bromance--! Marvel's greatest buddies take the spotlight in this one-of-a-kind collection, and it's male bonding like you've never seen -- as Cable and Deadpool swap stories, Wonder Man and the Beast share a plane ride, Spidey and the Human Torch battle back-to-back, Wolverine makes a bet with Nightcrawler, Black Panther and Everett Ross lay their feelings on the line...and the Warriors Three set sail for fun! Plus: Captain America and the Falcon, Iron Man and Jim Rhodes, and more! Be here as Marvel says, 'I love you, man!' "

Amazing.

I honestly don't know why they don't just change the title of every Power Man & Iron Fist collection to "DUDE-GRABS: HEROES FOR HIRE."

-casey-

Joe Quesada Says: Ladies, Give Me Your Money And Shut Up

2009-05-15T02:54:00.001-04:00

It's not often that I come across a quote from a major comic book creator that makes me go, "AAAAAAARGHSASHALBARGLRLE" with murderous fury and terrible rage. The reasons for this is that my expectations for socially progressive statements from the big two comic companies are staggeringly low.

So when a reader came out and said that this cover to "Marvel Divas" was sexist, I was extra impressed by Joe Q's reply ;

"If you’re Marvel reader and truly feel we’re sexist, then why are you reading our books? Now, perhaps you’re not a Marvel reader, then if that’s the case, I’m not quite sure what you’re criticizing if you don’t read our books?"

Putting aside that the reader was concerned about an image, something that can be critiqued as soon as someone views it, this defense is completely bulletproof. I'm sorry, I meant "bullshit". Completely bullshit.

If you are buying Marvel Comics, perhaps because you enjoy some of the characters they have exclusive rights too, then you've immediately lost the right to question any subject matter in those comics. But if you're not reading them, perhaps because you found the cover of a comic you'd otherwise be interested in too demeaning to women, then your opinion is again invalid. Basically, this statement says; ladies, give me your money and shut up.

Now, to his credit, Joe Q goes on to give an industry answer to this issue; that if the book launched with a less sex-laden cover, it would never sell. He even goes so far as to say that "the book would be canceled before it hits the shelves,*" and defends the cover, saying "Is the cover image provocative, perhaps, but it’s no more or less than any other book we do."

I find this interesting, because by saying this, Joe Q acknowledges what he's denied the reader the ability to point out - that there is something wrong here, it's the industry standard, and what's more it's The Marvel Standard. A standard that they, with their huge market share and some of the most popular and iconic characters in the world, could fight against. A standard that they have no intention of ever challenging.

I don't know about you, but I don't want a comic company that's going to grumble, "Yeah, yeah, we know that we're not great to women, but what are we supposed to do?" and pushes Incompetent Professional She-Hulk and Domesticated Mary Jane statues on me. And I certainly don't want one that's going to tell me to shut up while they're doing it.

-casey-

* All I have to say to this is, "28 Issue Run."

Geoff Klock on Watchmen

2009-03-09T16:27:00.004-04:00

So I have my own thoughts about Watchmen, but I wanted to first post some thoughts that Dr. Klock had over at Remarkable that I found spot-on:

I am wondering if the thing that makes Watchmen unfilmable is the fact that you cannot make superhero violence look anything other than sexy, at least because it requires a massive budget and budget means people who are not going to let you do violence in a depressing way. [...] Watchmen the comic is not supposed to deliver that particular thrill, but the movie does, and how can I fault a movie for delivering a thrill? [...] It is a mess and I would hardly hold it up as an example of great filmmaking; but to deny I had fun would just be dishonest, even if it makes me look foolish. I would recommend it to people only on this superficial level; as an intellectual thing, as a hunt to re-experience the craft and thematics of the book, avoid it I think.

More on this from me, soon, but in the mean time check out Dr. Klock's blog for other interesting pop-culture commentary.

Remarkable: Short Appreciations of Poetry and Pop-Culture

-casey-

Digital Dollars

2009-02-26T01:56:00.000-05:00

Looks like I need to add some money to my Playstation Wallet and buy some Microsoft Imaginary Space Bucks. The downloadable content that's been released in the past week has been darn near insane in both scope and quality.

Here's a rundown of what I'm picking up:

Prince of Persia: Epilogue
Mirror's Edge Time Trial Pack
Noby Noby Boy
Flower*
Burnout Legendary Car Pack

As someone who only ever spends his money on whole Xbox Live Arcade games and Rock Band tracks, this is a whole lot of expansion content for one week.

You'll also notice that Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and the Damned is not on that list. I will definitely be getting into why in a later post.

What expansion content do you guys buy? I'm curious if releasing stuff like this gets people to hold onto games they'd otherwise trade/lend/use as costers...

-casey-

*Yes, I bought this last week, but it was in the calendar week, so I'm adding it to the list!

Ninja-Star Power

2009-02-24T23:54:00.001-05:00

I got stuck in Best Buy waiting for a friend today and ended up sorting through the DS games.

On the heels of the Rock Band PSP announcement today, I was surprised to discover that there is another, possibly more AWESOME portable music game that already exists;

Someone. ANYONE. Please make this happen.

-casey-

Burnout: Paradise - "Panama" > "Paradise City"

2009-02-15T13:34:00.003-05:00

I have been playing hell of Burnout: Paradise this weekend.

It's amazing how much I'm enjoying it, as I hate driving in general*, and driving GAMES specifically. But Criterion manages to take all the things that normally drag other games down - the simulation style controls, crashing once ruining your good time, and generally just smashing your opponents - and make it their trademark. Well done. Add on all the free content and DLC that they've put onto their platform and Burnout: Paradise quickly becomes an amazing game and an even more amazing achievement for a developer.

I do, however, have one beef with the game: The soundtrack.

Luckily, both platforms allow you to play your own damn music.

So presented here, in full, is my soundtrack for Burnout: Paradise. I shuffle the hell out of them, so pay no attention to the order. But know that all 48 of these tracks are perfectly suited for driving the hell out of cars.

Panama - Van Halen**
Circle, Square, Triange - Test Icicles
Out of My Mind - The Konks
Back in Black - The Hives
Pump It Up - Elvis Costello
OLE! - The Bouncing Souls
PDA - Interpol
Girlfriend - Avril Lavigne***
Ms. Fat Booty - Mos Def
Nausea - Beck
Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love - Van Halen
Random - Lady Sovereign
Lyrical Swords - GZA & Ras Kass
Song 2 - Blur
Rock N Roll Train - AC/DC
Dancing Queen - Abba
Stayin' Alive - The Bee Gees
She Sells Sanctuary - The Cult
Positive Contact - Deltron 3030
Method Man - Wu Tang Clan
Here's Your Future - The Thermals
Troublemaker - Weezer
Bad Scene, Everyone's Fault - Jawbreaker
Do You Want To? - Franz Ferdinand
Bone Machine - Pixies
This is a Call - Foo Fighters
Teen Age Riot - Sonic Youth
Helter Skelter - The Beatles
Just a Gigolo (I Ain't Got Nobody) - David Lee Roth
Shimmy Shimmy Ya - Old Dirty Bastard
Hello There (Steve Albini Version) - Cheap Trick
The Power Is On - The Go! Team
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
99 Problems (Helter Skelter Mix) - Danger Mouse
Kiss Off - Violent Femmes
Tick Tick Boom - The Hives
American Hearts - Piebald
Hold Music - Architecture in Helsinki
Beat It - Michael Jackson
Fat Bottomed Girls - Queen
Perfect Hair - Danger Doom
The Final Countdown - Europe
The Militia - Gang Starr
You Vandal - Saves the Day
Dirt of Your Shoulder - Jay-Z
Personal Jesus - Depeche Mode
Baba O'Riley - The Who
Highway to Hell - AC/DC

And with that, I return to Paradise City to smash things to tiny bits.

I suggest you do the same.

-casey-

*I don't even have my license for realsies.
** Despite "Paradise City" by Guns N Roses being on disc, Panama by Van Halen is the perfect song for this game. PERFECT.
*** Look, I seriously don't even want to hear about it, okay?

President Elect Barack Obama

2008-11-05T00:18:00.000-05:00

Tonight, the night of Barack Obama's acceptance speech, I'm 26 years old. Raised by The Simpsons and taught quips by Mystery Science Theater, my generation is one that views everything through thick lenses of irony, touches everything through a heavy sheet of sarcasm. A group of friends gathered together to watch the election results ebb into CNN and throughout the night, hopeful and excited as we were, we mocked.

We mocked presenters, gaffs in speeches, graphics and a Will I. Am hologram. This was a process we had all been excited about, an election that promised nothing but hope for all in the room, something of unprecedented importance in our adult lives, and we still mocked.

Then President Elect Obama came behind the podium, and began to speak. More than that, mere minutes after he was chosen by the American people, he began to lead.

While I could tell you many things about my reaction to this - how I felt finally touched by this candidate who I'd listened to for months, how I was actually moved to tears, how amazed I felt to have a candidate who has won not instantly forget all he'd said for months - what is most telling is that for the duration of President Elect Obama's speech my friends and I sat in dead silence.

Not a word. Not a quip. No gentle teasing of someone in the crowd.

For once I feel like someone has lifted the protective veil from the people of my generation and we're allowed to feel something patriotic and genuine all at the same time.

Thank you, Mr. Obama, if for nothing else, then for that.

-casey-

Coming Next: "Guy Holding Boom Mic" Star Wars Masterpiece Figure

2008-11-02T23:45:00.002-05:00

You know, as a huge fan of characters like Blue Beetle, I can understand rooting for the minor characters. Sometimes they're more interesting or fun than the big guns. But I mean... Really?

My friend Aaron likes to say "We all spend our money in different ways," but come on... Captian Antilles? The only thing dude did was get choked by Vader. Maybe I can cash in on this...

Coming soon from Casey Studios -

Showcase Replica of that Sandwich a Jawa Ate From the Craft Table

$79.99, Shipping Q4 2009

-casey-

Workplace Harassment: Dan Teasdale Edition

2008-10-28T20:50:00.001-04:00

My office mate Dan ordered a Macbook Pro when they announced them a few weeks ago. Sadly, for him, it was broken. He sent it back, and then was swept away on a whirlwind press tour of Europe for our job.

Since he left there has been a steady buildup of packages delivered to his desk.

(read from bottom to top)

Casey Malone: Dedicated to being a jerk from a continent away.

-casey-

The E-Mail Saga of Casey & Earle

2008-10-25T16:30:00.001-04:00

A few days ago a friend of mine directed me to a Craigslist post for the following rug:

Yes, my friends. A Pac-Man rug. It also doubles as a Pac-Man game! At nineteen dollars, I had to have it.

What I didn't know is that the man selling it was crazy, and that a simple copy-and-paste error would turn the process of buying a crazy trinket off of craigslist into three days of threatening voicemails and craaaaaaazy e-mails.

Presented to you,with all of it's original formatting intact, is...

The E-Mail Saga of Casey & Earl

Casey Malone to (craigslist e-mail):
Hi!
Is the Pac-Man game still available? I am VERY Interested in it!
Thanks,
Casey
339-2**-0***

A man named Earl calls me, and I tell him I'm interested in picking up the rug. He is skeptical about my sincere interest in the rug, for no reason apparent to me, but tells me that he'll e-mail me with a landmark near his home. Apparently he'll e-mail me a time to be there, and if I am at this landmark, he will direct me to his home.

Earle does not give me any contact information of his own.

I receive the e-mail with the location and time.

Earle to me:
THE NEAREST LANDMARK CLOSEST TO MY LOCALE WOULD BE THE WHITE HEN PANTRY
@ 56 RIVER STREET IN 01832
FIND THAT & YOU WILL KNOW HOW TO GET THERE
I WILL CALL YOU AROUND 4PM TOMORROW TO BE SURE WHETHER YOU ARE COMING OR NOT
IF I DON'T REACH YOU: I WILL NOT BE SURPRISED ( AS IT APPEARS TO BE A TREND OF SORTS WITH CALLER FROM CL; PRANKSTER "KIDS" ACTING AS IF THEY WANT TO BUY SOMETHING AND THEN DISAPPEARING LIKE GHOSTS) NOT TO SAY tHAT THIS WOULD BE YOU BUT ONE NEVER KNOWS.
THANKS "CASEY"
TALK TO YOU TOMORROW!
SORRY IF I SOUND "SKEPTICAL" BUT THAT'S THE WAY CRAIGSLIST REPLIES TEND TO MAKE YOU. SKEPTICAL. ESPECIALLY THE ONES THAT SAY THEY'LL "STOP BY" THEY USUALLY DON'T. STRANGE PEOPLE IN A STRANGE WORLD. I THINK SOME SIMPLY REPLY TO ADS BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO REAL LIFE OR FRIENDS AND IT IS
THEIR FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT SOMEHOW. OH WELL! NO BIG DEAL. SOME DAY
THEY'LL GROW UP & GET A LIFE. RIGHT?
HAVE A NICE DAY!

I'm a little confused by this e-mail, but nonetheless want that swank-ass rug. I go about my day, which at the moment involves occasionally checking the craigslist personals section.* One lady posted a really sweet ad about watching movies, going to shows, and playing videogames, which as you may notice is right up my alley. I send her a reply. Except... I don't. Instead of hearing back from a lady, I receive the following e-mail...

Earle to me:
ah, hey dude!
you just sent me an e-mail like it was a personal ad
kinda creepy!!
you had curly hair and glasses sitting next to someone with a light blue top & a straw type cowboy hat on
ah, whats up with that?
i'm a littleconfused and a little creeped out
i don't know why you would reply to my rug/game ad as if it were a personal
i'm a GUY anyways!!
LOL
so: let me know....what's up with that bud?
thanks
Earle

This about sums up my embarrassment.

Casey Malone to Earle:
Ahhh... this is super awkward.
Basically, I copied and pasted your craigslist e-mail (sale-88481***@craigslist.org) and responded to you.
Then I opened up another ad, THOUGHT THAT I copied and pasted THAT e-mail
address into g-mail, but I guess my computer never copied it, and just re-pasted your generic craigslist e-mail address into gmail.

Sorry about that, it was definitely not meant to go to you. I guess it could have been worse?
Again, sorry. Again, awkward.

-casey-

Earle to me:
yeah whatever..LOL
I just thought it was kinda creepy gettin a pick-up line from another
guy!!
I can imagine how you musta felt when you saw MY e-mail to you about
it!!!
LOL
no damage
BUT.....it was kinda funny
don't worry...I'm secure & I feel safe!!
have a good night
I'll call ya tomorrow

I go to bed, sleeping the sleep of a man who thinks he's getting a Pac-Man rug. The next day, I end up stuck in a meeting until after 4, the very time Earle was supposed to call me. As much as I like Pac-Man, I like my job more, so I didn't answer and instead let it go to voice-mail.

The message left is angry, ranty, and condemns me for not living up to my "responsibilities" and "the commitment" I made. Earle leaves no number for me to contact him at. He instead promises he'll call me back at 5. I wait for his call, but at 5:15 I decide to head home.

While on the subway, Earle gets my voice-mail a second time, and does not take kindly to it. He now sounds sad, but still like a nut-bar, and when I hear his second voice-mail that promises a third call at 7, I decide I don't really want to meet this man in a parking lot somewhere by myself. He calls at 7:40. I don't pick up. Earle isn't done with me.

Earle to me:
E-MAILED YOU YESTERDAY WITH WHAT THE PLAN WAS REGARDING YOUR ALLEGED INTEREST IN THE PAC-MAN RUG/BOARD GAME. I CALLED YOU AT 4:30 ISH AND THEN AGAIN AROUND 5:45 ISH AND THEN AGAIN AT 7:30 ISH. LEFT CASEY MALONE THREE MESSAGES BECAUSE YOU WOULD NOT PICK UP! SO: SEEING AS YOU DID NOT PICK UP ON THREE SEPARATE OCCASIONS: THE BALL LIES IN YOUR COURT. YOU CAN REPLY TO THIS E-MAIL IF YOU REALLY ARE INTERESTED.
I AM NOT GOING TO CHASE ANYONE. YOU CONTACTED ME. REMEMBER? SO NOW I SIT AND WONDER AS TO THE ACTUAL LEGITIMACY OF YOUR INQUIRY. I GUESS I WILL SIMPLY SIT BACK AND SEE IF THE E-PLY COMES. IF NOT. WHATEVER. I WILL NOT BE CALLING AGAIN. I DID MY PART. X 3! ALL SET.
TAKE CARE & HAVE A GOOD NIGHT.
GOD THIS IS SOOOO TYPICAL OF 50 TO 60 % OF C L REPLIES.
ALL I CAN ASK IS: "WHY"?
GOD ONLY KNOWS!

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeah. I don't reply to this e-mail. I go to bed. The next morning, I get this...

Earle to me:
next time don't waste my friggin time you fruitcake creep
i called you 4 times the day you CLAIMED you were going to show
WEIRDO!

C.C.: FILED (C.L. HARASSMENT)

It's important to note, he didn't actually CC anyone... he simply typed "C.C." into the e-mail.
I feel compelled to reply to this.

Casey Malone to Earle:
Earle,

I want to let you know, the reason I didn't pick up is that I was in a meeting at work during your first call. I listened to your voicemail, and found it vaguely threatening and overtly hostile, and decided it was a better idea to not deal with you.

Over the course of 2 more voicemails and a couple more e-mails I was proved correct.

Next time, relax more, and understand that no one is trying to scam you out of a $19 dollar rug.

-Casey-

Then, the final chapter of the saga...

Earle to me:
damn man...you ARE a friggin weirdo
i think you actually WERE trying to pick me up the other day
dude, you ARE scary and i believe you ARE dangerous
DO NOT CONTACT ME EVER AGAIN OR I WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO CONSIDER IT THREATENING AND WILL IMMEDIATELY SEEK LEGAL REMEDY
1ST WARNING & ONLY WARNING!!!
GO AWAY
FAR FAR AWAY!!!
CREEP!
C.C.: CRAIGSLIST (HARASSMENT/THREATENING/ABUSIVE)

I don't know if there's a moral to the story. But that people still fear the internet enough to type in bold, red courier is god-damn hilarious.

-casey-

*Yes, this is embarrassing a little, but I wanted to give you guys the full picture, and this is key information.

Sackboy to Nikko - FUCK YO COUCH

2008-09-24T02:12:00.000-04:00

Little Big Planet - Game of the Year.

Respect Your Audience

2008-09-20T02:14:00.001-04:00

I saw a comedian earlier tonight.

He was okay, some good ideas, but his big problem was one I see a lot in pop-culture (TV, comics, movies); an assumption that your audience needs everything explained to them.

While this was a recurring thread throughout his set, there was one bit in particular that really highlighted this problem and frustrated me. Here is the start of the bit, to the best of my recollection:

"I do have a little bit of a drinking problem, but I try to strike a balance, so I exercise. I try to run a mile for every beer I drink. This only ever becomes a problem when I start dating a girl who's really into exercise, and she wants to know what I do to keep in shape... and I eventually tell her that I run five or six miles a day."

At this point in the bit several people in the audience, including me, laughed. We had all already made the jump from "run a mile for every beer I drink" to "run five or six miles a day." This was a pretty good joke.

The comedian, however, looked surprised, stopped his bit for the breifest of moments and actually said to the audience, "Huh, okay, well, that's not the funny part..." and then continued the bit. He continued this story for two or three more minutes, eventually getting to the punchline of explaining to the audience again that those miles were based on the number of beers he drinks.

Now, it's important to note that some people did laugh. It was a fairly small crowd of people (maybe 30), and some of them only laughed once the comic got to the end of the long-winded version. But for me at least, by making me wait for a few minutes, he lost me completely. By adding this hand-holding two minutes to the end, the bit became inelegant, his tone seemed to change to condescending, and I became bored with it.

This sort of thinking, that people are too dumb to keep up, has permeated pop-culture, and serves as a reminder that reaching the "lowest common denominator" is something that can come from form as well as content.

When creators dodge this, when they trust people are capable of understanding their work, then audiences more often feel engaged rather than confused, and focus harder to have a real dialog with that work. And when that connection is made, it's usually far stronger than had everything been spelled out for them.

If this comic trusted his audience more to be able to keep up with him, he might have gotten one big laugh instead of splitting it and losing half the audience, gotten an additional two minutes to squeeze a new bit into, and maybe gotten a new fan. Instead he just got a few small chuckles, an extra two minutes of no punch lines, and me blogging about how crappy his routine was.

Respect your audience and we'll respect you back.

-casey-

Let's Play The X-Men Guessing Game

2008-09-19T01:24:00.006-04:00

Hey kids!

Like I said in title, let's play the X-Men Guessing Game!

Q: Based on this panel from Uncanny X-Men #502...

...is Dazzler -

A: Dizzy from holding her breath, and leaning against the door for support?
B: Posing like that to distract from what is a really bad X-Men costume*?
C: Traced from porn?

To get the answer, just drop a line to Marvel Comics at this link, and I'm sure they'll let you know!

-casey-

*And that's saying something.

For anyone wondering why the posts have been slow...

2008-09-18T02:23:00.001-04:00

BLAME THIS ASSHOLE.

Missing the Point - Marvel Noir Part 2

2008-09-15T23:48:00.001-04:00

Hey kids! Remember this post?

Well, our old pals at Marvel have put out the December solicitation for the first issue! Let's take a look...

"X MEN NOIR #1 (of 4)

Written by FRED VAN LENTE

Pencils & Cover by DENNIS CALERO

Variant Cover by DENNIS CALERO

"The coroner's men flipped the redheaded corpse over so Dukes and Magnus from Homicide could get a better look at her. 'Better' being a relative term in this case, with the claw marks that slashed her face into a featureless, bloody mask and turned her guts into a butcher shop explosion.

"But the tattoo -- the simple, encircled 'X' above the left shoulder blade -- remained intact, and Dukes pointed it out with the toe of his wingtip once Peter the rookie was done heaving up lunch.

"'See this ink?' he said. 'Means she did time at this reform school upstate, run by this shrink, Xavier...'"

32 PGS./Parental Advisory ...$3.99"

I think the writing here can be summed up by the following phrase:

Butcher shop explosion.

BUTCHER. SHOP. EXPLOSION.

Or, to demonstrate visually -

-casey-

Oh god, oh god no...

2008-09-11T23:07:00.000-04:00

I had a sudden horrifying realization.

Batman is a furry.

-casey-

Missing the Point - Marvel Noir

2008-09-09T19:09:00.004-04:00

For the past few months, Marvel slowly leaked the above teaser images to the comics press, until today they announced a new imprint - Marvel Noir.

Newsarama has the full story [here].

This imprint houses several upcoming mini-series, which will feature familiar Marvel characters in a 1930's crime setting, independent of any continuity, without any of their familiar powers or trappings of the super-hero genre.

Speaking of classic Marvel characters like the X-Men, artist Dennis Calero said of the premise, "What if they were conceived as pulp action characters rather than superheroes?"

My question is this: When you've decided to strip these characters of their powers which define them, of the genre conventions from which they were conceived, and the continuity that binds them to a largely unchanging existence, why are we even using these characters at all?

Is there any literary or entertainment value in simply putting the Gambit/Rogue love story in a different setting? At what point will Marvel stop pretending to do something new, and instead actually do something new?

Or will we forever see Marvel cycle through the same stable of 20 odd characters, never conceiving any new characters as pulp action, superheroes, or any other variety?

And not to beat that dead horse but are we to blame for buying these?

Show me something new, Marvel, and I will give you my $2.99.

-casey-

One sentence about Peanuts (part 2)

2008-09-04T18:05:00.003-04:00

Snoopy is a spy for the Russians.

Today on MySpace

2008-09-03T02:35:00.003-04:00

Presented on the new MySpace homepage:

New Metallica
Old Cheech and Chong
Chris Kattan in a NON-IRONIC FASHION

And finally... SADNESS

I'd love to take off into these woods and get good and lost for a while...

2008-09-02T17:59:00.002-04:00

Hey guys,

Real updates are going back to sporadic for the next week, since I just moved to a new apartment that's without internet.

However there is some concern that, without the constant typing and clicking that they've become adjusted to, my hands will shrivel up and fall off.

To combat that, I'll try to do little mini-posts at the end of my work day, thus keeping the semi-daily updates more daily than semi-.

Real post tomorrow, for now here are two songs to give you an idea of my mood;

Mates of State - California (Phantom Planet Cover)

The Cribs - Be Safe

-casey-

Get Free From the Middle Man

2008-08-31T20:59:00.000-04:00

I defy you to not be totally charmed.

Julia Nunes - http://www.junumusic.com/

Damn Fools - Ben Curran Edition

2008-08-31T19:59:00.000-04:00

Hey Kids!

Remember This Post about how if you don't like something, a comic you're reading, a blog you're checking, just stop participating in it?

Well, instead of doing that, Ben Curran over and ComicBookResources.com chose to post a 60 item long list taking childish pot-shots* at things he hates in the comics industry.

See it here -

60 Things I Hate (Well, more like don't care for) About Comics

Now, were I to write up this post, saying that Ben Curran sucks for liking Clerks 2** and then continue to read his blog, I would be no better than that which I decry.

Instead I'm just going to point out that acting like Comic Book Guy does nothing to help you be taken seriously, that writing solid reviews and analysis is harder and more interesting, and I will not be reading the Comics Should Be Good! blog any longer.

Agency, kiddos! Taste the FREEDOM.

-Casey-

* One blogger makes the list because he likes Hawkman. A list of lisenced comics "whose annihilation would make [him] happy." A list of people who should never have written comics. You don't like something so you don't want ANYONE to have it? That is the attitude of a child.

** It should be noted that Clerks 2 is a terrible movie.

Okay, I'm sorry, this is the last one...

2008-08-31T01:49:00.000-04:00

He's to sexy for all of those things.

I promise, I'm done for now.

I should probably start saving these up...

2008-08-31T01:46:00.000-04:00

Kids, this is why you don't go down the YouTube Rabbit Hole.

GAAAAAAH

2008-08-31T01:37:00.000-04:00

Why is this thing a thing?!

Bad Box-Art Theater

2008-08-31T00:27:00.003-04:00

"Why choose a single Fish Related Action Movie Pun when we can have TWO?"

Other than that, I have NO IDEA what the hell is happening here.

Adventures in Google Advertising

2008-08-28T00:33:00.004-04:00

While I appreciate the concern for my finances, Google, I'll thank you to keep your adds out of my asshole.

Damn Fools - PVP Comics

2008-08-27T01:19:00.008-04:00

"If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it."

- W. C. Fields

An annoying trend exists in nerd culture, and comics culture specifically, where we cannot let anything go. Comics that we claim suck get our $2.99 every month, we complain about TV shows yet tune in every week, and go to the sequels of the movies that we didn't even like to begin with.

Are we so shut out from the broader pop-culture that we cannot let go of things that are specifically for us? Like so many Garfield window-toys we cling, bleaching in the sun, orange and gaudy, not to be moved. Or is it that we are a culture that nurtures complaints - geeks as a people are of the internet, a place designed specifically to allow anonymous, endless criticism*.

Regardless of why, I'm as guilty as the rest, so I am going to excise my demons here.

Today is the day I begin the process of moving on.

Today is the last time I go to PVP Comics.

I started reading PVP around 1999/2000, a year into highschool, back when the comic strip was about gaming. It was punchy, the art was good, and most importantly the strips were funny.

Eventually, though, the funny decided it didn't need to show up to work every day. Gags turned into running gags, running gags turned into memes, and memes got tired. The strip became more sit-comish, with some gags ripped straight from shows like Newsradio, with the more hackneyed plots that style demands. At one point Scott Kurtz, the creator of PVP, even introduced a talking cat that wanted to take over the world.

If there's two rich comedy veins currently unmined by cartoonists, they're cats and adorable megalomaniacs.

But something kept me reading. For every Scratch the cat and Shecky the Troll I wanted to throttle, I still really enjoyed the core cast. Brent, Cole, Skull, Jade... these are characters who I've been reading about daily for nine years now, and Kurtz has done an amazing job of keeping most of his older characters three-dimensional, consistent, and interesting.

Another plus for the series is how Kurtz has evolved as an artist over the years. Comparing Kurtz's early work to what he's drawing today is a bit like comparing the light from a match to that of the sun. It ranges from solid cartooning to some really beautiful line work. If Kurtz continues to work on his artistic range, maybe some day he could be as diverse as late-era Bill Waterson.

But those can't save the fact that the strip just isn't funny any longer. I click through each tired story line, excited for the next to begin but as soon as it does I find myself waiting for it to be over. The stories are boring, there are no good gags to be had.

And every strip is so steeped in Kurtz's love for pop-culture that it becomes distracting. It's impossible for there to just be a doctor in the strip, the doctor has to be Hugh Laurie from House, and a panel must be spent referncing that. It's gotten to the point that I can only respond to all of Kurtz's winking with eye-rolls.

So today I take a step into a scarier world, a world without Skull the Troll and with one less thing that annoys me taking up my time.

Today I quit reading PVP. Tomorrow perhaps I'll stop buying back-issues.

Baby steps, Casey, baby steps...

_casey_

*And pornography distribution.

Random Reviews - Fantastic Four: 1 2 3 4

2008-08-25T23:00:00.021-04:00

It's possible that I'm more susceptible to the whims of writer's block than your average blogger.

Living in a nerdy version of Fred Sanford's house, I constantly trip over excuses not to write... Hey, is that the DVD of Izo that I bought about three years ago and haven't watched yet? What about that copy of The Sun Also Rises that I bought and promptly used to prop up my desktop speakers? And tempting me from my bedside is Batman choose your own adventure book I bought in 4th grade and have read 100 times by now.

So, like a judo master, I decided to use my opponent's strength against him. I closed my eyes, reached into the pile, and said "I AM GOING TO REVIEW THIS THING!"

What I grabbed was Grant Morrison and Jae Lee's Fantastic Four: 1 2 3 4

Reading Final Crisis and the JLA story Rock of Ages it's become pretty clear over the years that Grant Morrison would have a great bit comics-author make-out with Jack Kirby if he could. They're both all about big, crazy ahead of their time ideas, and both sometimes a little weak on delivering those ideas in a story. So when Morrison gets hold of Kirby's most famous creations and uses it to stage a five-dimensional chess match, I get a little nervous.

1 2 3 4 avoids falling into a downward spiral of Morrisonian craziness, though, by letting the structure of the mini-series work for it. Taking place over four issues, each member of the Fantastic family gets 22 pages to take front and center... and by putting Mr. Fantastic's issue dead last.

So any and all discussion of "prime movers," alternate realities, and dimension warping machinery that Mr. Fantastic would otherwise be Morrison's mouthpiece for get put as far away from the reader as possible, and for three issues, we get to read about the characters.

Morrison writes the Human Torch and the Thing relatively deftly. The Thing is made human early on in a "be careful what you wish for" twist. As for the Torch, it's hard to lend depth to a character whose whole shtick is that he's a one-dimensional airhead. Their parts weren't especially great or boring, but I think even a well written version of either character would seem flat next to this story's version of Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman.

In my favorite part of the book, Sue and her friend Alicia Masters share dinner... for twelve pages. Excessive in any other book, but here one detail makes it work - Sue goes through eleven pages of it completely invisible.

Running to Alicia's apartment to get some time away from being in the Fantastic Four, Sue drinks wine and talks... mostly about Reed. She talks mournfully about being ignored by Reed, how she wishes he would talk to her, and how he seems to "look right through her." That kind of lazy metaphor works here (Looking through the Invisible Woman, haha, get it? Groan.), because it's with Alicia, a woman who is totally blind. When around the one person who can't tell if she's invisible or not, Sue still chooses to be transparent.

Looking for that privacy and some time away, Sue needs to be invisible so she can hide from the one person left who can see us - us, the reader.

All through this sequence, Sue emotes through a wine glass, which artist Jae Lee imbues with tremendous personality. It dips, it rises, it tilts and represents the ups and downs that come from having this conversation about her husband.

So when Namor the Atlantean Sex God shows up at the end of the sequence to take her away demanding "Susan, let me look at you," she drops the glass and becomes visible. Sue doesn't need the glass, or to be invisible - there's finally someone worth being seen by.

It's a great marriage of character, conflict, and something that can only happen in a Grant Morrison super-hero comics, and I ate it up.

one sentence about peanuts (part 1)

2008-08-24T19:13:00.013-04:00

Schroeder is a total bad-ass.

(More updates to come, I promise.)

Friday Night Fights - Educational Edition

2007-04-13T19:29:00.000-04:00

Props to The Ebon Devourer of Worlds.

Friday Night Fights!

2007-03-30T22:55:00.000-04:00

The Question Says:

The ends justify MY FIST!

Bahlactus Brings The Friday Night Fights!

This Cat Thinks He's Spider-Man

2007-03-16T09:06:00.000-04:00

(Click For Original)

Odd Place For Innovation - The Mighty Avengers

2007-03-13T23:38:00.000-04:00

Today we're taking a look at some new things being done in comics. This has minor spoilers for Marvel projects, specifically those involving people who may or may not "Avenge" things. With that, let us commence:

Brian Bendis is an influential guy.

Love his work, or hate his work, you can't deny that Bendis has popularized a more fast-paced, cinematic style of dialog in popular comic books. Through the use of short bursts of incomplete sentences, important beats of repeated key words or phrases and Bendis' total lack of fear in using technical terms and real world slang very quickly made him our very own David Mamet/Aaron Sorkin.

In fact, looking back over his body of work for Marvel, cinematic is kind of the key word. The Bendis work in Daredevil, especially, brought a film noir atmosphere to the Marvel Universe that managed to be both very gritty and somewhat grim thankfully without involving Venom, The Punisher, or Spawn (What's up, 1990?). It felt like a great gangster movie, and as I've said before, I consider this work to be the absolute best modern run of super-hero comics to date.

This trend reached it's zenith a few months ago, when Civil War concluded, it's story crushed under the influence of books like The Authority and The Ultimates. In Civil War, readers saw everything wrong with making comics more like film - scenes that on film would be packed with action were shrunk down to one panel rendering them cramped, images that would have been awe inspiring or exciting became boring when rendered in static. Pages that could have been used to character or story, or heck, anything were taken up by huge splash pages to better evoke big-scale "widescreen" action. I can think of no better example in recent comics that is a clear example of not writing for the medium that you're working in.

So it's in this darkest hour, with that heavy hand of influence that Brian Bendis brings the comics innovation, and like The One Ring it's found in the most unlikely of places:

The Mighty Avengers #1

What's so innovative about this issue? Let's put the content aside. The Mighty Avengers is on the surface your standard super-heroes smash story, and the last page was especially ridiculous:

Seriously... there better be a good reason
for this nonsense in issue #2.

However, separating the content from the technique, this book does things in some brilliant new ways.

I got into a discussion of what defines "innovation." The two devices Bendis brings back to mainstream comics are thought balloons and back-story caption boxes. That's right - Thought Balloons are back.

Back? Then how can it be innovative? I got into a discussion about this with Mike at Comicazi. He described Bendis' use of these old comic book conventions (not THAT kind of convention) as more of a "return to form," and as such was not innovation. But it's the elegance of their implementation and seamless integration into the story that makes this issue such a great example of how to use the medium of comics to show things no other medium can do.

Remember the days when you'd pick up a comic, and Peter Parker would say something like, "Boy, it sure is good I got rid of that alien costume!" and there would be a teeeeeeeny box in the corner saying the likes of "Spidey picked up the costume during Marvel's Secret Wars! - Smilin' Stan!" While those were informative and a great way to make sure noone felt totally lost going into a book for the first time, they were more than a little obtrusive.

In this issue, Bendis works those back into the story in case someone left on the planet doesn't know what happened in Civil War, and he does it through Iron Man's armor. The "HIT TAB" boxes gave us access to what Tony's armor would tell him, but really referenced the read to Civil War, or to the time the Avengers met Ares. Very smooth.

But really? What did you read this far for? That's right - Thought Balloons.

Ever get the feeling that someone isn't saying exactly what they mean? That they're mind's in another place entirely, or that they have something more to say? Well, film can convey a character's thoughts loosely through action - a quick glance or camera movement - or clumsily through voice-over. Prose can simply spell it out, but there's obviously the complete lack of visuals in a novel or short story. Or now thanks to Brian Bendis, comics can use Thought Balloons to do it.

This device does everything right. It better fleshes out the characters by showing the reader a side of them that not even the others in the scene get to see. It manages to give us multiple points of view to the story without the use of multi-colored caption boxes. And it shows us what the characters really care about.

Take the example on the left -

Throughout the book, Tony Stark is talking to Carol Danvers, and his mind is on math, his armor, an emergency elsewhere. Though at one point, she really grabs his attention, and by placing a thought balloon that mirror's Tony's words Bendis is able to deftly emphasize that she's got his attention. I was blown away.

These two new tools, I hope, will take main stream comics closer to where they need to go; Towards becoming a medium of their own, something capable of communicating in a unique way, something that's more than just a static movie on paper.

Kudos, Bendis.

-casey-

Saturday Morning Reviews

2007-03-10T01:32:00.000-05:00

Good morning, dear Readers! Here are a few reviews for those of you looking for something to grab at your local shop this Saturday.

52: Week 44

Well, the Great Weekly Comics Experiment is coming to a close in just eight more issues, and after a shaky start, I'd say it's a success. I'm progressively more excited for 52 every week as it ramps up to its conclusion - a sign that the exceptional group of writers they've put together is doing something right. Because of that eight week countdown (No pun intended. Wait, is that even a pun?) the book has begun to wrap up its stories at a startling pace.

We get the exposition needed to complete the rather gory twist from the end of last issue, and along with that, a fight finally worthy of the might of Black Adam. It's been too long since we've seen him cut loose against someone on his own level. But with that kind of build up, with the suspense of not seeing this character unleashed for 43 issues, the last blow ended up a little anti-climatic. We also finally arrive at the destination Montoya's story has been chugging towards for a month or so now... it's one that I've come to accept, if not celebrate. While this issue isn't the best DC has put out in recent weeks, I was sad and excited throughout, and provoking a real emotion out of me is rare enough in a capes and tights book to warrant recommendation.

Phonogram #5 (of 6)

One part Harry Potter and a second part High Fidelity, Phonogram is a book where people use magic through music, and Pop is a powerful force. Not taking us through the usual fantasy paces of introducing a new realm of magic (there's no bespectacled young lad stumbling into it, Phonogram a la books of magic or the aforementioned Potter series), Phonogram goes another route. It introduces us to David Khol, a phonomancer who's losing his power and his identity when the Goddess of Brit-pop is missing. Khol is long burnt out when we join him in the story, and grasping at straws - think John Constantine with a better record collection.

In Khol is where you'll find the beauty of Phonogram. It makes you feel for a truly worthless character. David Khol is self-centered, an outdated music snob, and uses women frequently and with wanton disregard. By all rights we should hate him. It's through a couple cute tricks that creators Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie keep us empathizing with him - The book is a black-and-white six-issue mini-series from an independent publisher, and David does have genuinely good taste in music. So in reading this, we're snobs right along with David, how could we judge him? In this issue, Khol finally finds his way through some demented memories of when his power and Brit Pop were at their peak, and we finally get some answers about him, and the goddess Britania.

Extra mention should be made of the Glossary of every music reference, along with an essay by Gillen, in the back of each issue. There's even still space and hard work left for a letters page. Well done all around.

Feeble Attempts
by Jeffrey Brown

This was a complete and pleasant surprise to me! Anyone who frequents this blog knows that I really feel for Jeffrey Brown, he manages to juggle real romantic joy and heartbreak in one book (like Clumsy) and then seamlessly move to absurd or satirical comedy (Bighead) in another. So when something as good as a new Jeffrey Brown sneaks up on me it's like forgetting it's Halloween and having trick-or-treaters giving me the candy.

With no introduction other than a comic about a young Jeffrey with dreams of X-Men pin-up artistry, Feeble Attempts presents itself as a collection of Brown's unpublished work to this point - work that is happily representative of Brown's aforementioned range, the self-deprecating title another piece of his unique brand of subjective honesty.

The stand-out piece of the book for me was Brown transcribing his day on September 11th, 2001. It's entitled "Ok, Bye" and while the attacks on that day dominate his comings and goings like it did everyone else's, the title shows what was most important to him - the panel where he and the girl in his life decide to stop talking for a while. This is the kind of understandable self-centered thinking we can all relate to. That relatability is the core of Brown's appeal.

At $5, this is the perfect Jeffrey Brown Primer - like the adventures of Cycloptopus? Pick up Bighead. Did "I'm Not Your Girlfriend, Jeffrey" cause tightness in your chest? Go read Clumsy or Unlikely. I cannot recommend this enough, and it's definitely:

BOOK OF THE WEEK!

-casey-

Links:
Jeffrey Brown at Top Shelf Comics
Phonogram

Why I'm Not Up In Arms About Captain America

2007-03-08T10:55:00.001-05:00

Now, we're dealing with real acid here. So I want to see SPOILERS, people, SPOILERS!

So my fellow blog-o-pimps are all a flutter about certain recent events. So why haven't I weighed in about this supposedly epic turn? Why am I not upset about The Death Of Captain America? I give unto you this, from the top of my head:

List of Marvel Comic Book Characters Who Have Died and Returned:

Jean Grey
Aunt May
Mary Jane
Norman Osborne
Captain Marv-El
Thor
Hawkeye
Bucky Barnes
Elektra
Wolverine
Spider-Man

And let us not forget -

CAPTAIN AMERICA.
TWICE.

During all this hoop-lah, people seem to forget that apparently dying and coming back to life is part of the man's Origin Story. He also seemed to die less than 10 years ago, and you can read an amazing issue dealing with his apparent death in issue #50 (pictured).

It's got work from Jim Mahfood, Kevin Maguire, and Evan Dorkin, and contains one of my favorite Doctor Doom moments ever captured in a single panel. But issues later Cap came back.

The reason all these characters come back to life is that they represent something larger than the toys and t-shirts they adorn. Super-Heroes like the ones mentioned are modern myth and they'll never really die.

But Marvel's got people talking again. They've got main-stream media outlets covering comics, and from what I've heard, Brubaker's got some great stories to tell.

So in the end, Steve Rogers will be back, but it'll at least be an interesting time until he does.

-casey-

Stop, Just... STOP - Wizard Magazine Edition

2007-03-07T22:01:00.001-05:00

A warning, as this post is spoilery for Captain America #25, a courtesy not given by major news outlets.

Here's a quick snippet from my G-mail In-Box today:

During the middle of the day, yesterday, I received that e-mail from Wizard Entertainment.

Just look at that subject-line. Go ahead, I'll wait. Look.

*Ahem*

Uh, Wizard? I've been meaning to tell you, most people don't have a chance to GO GET THEIR COMICS during the MIDDLE OF THE DAY. As such, you may not WANT TO GIVE AWAY THE ENDING of a book that came out THAT DAY in the SUBJECT LINE of your e-mail.

That being said, in a state of shock, I opened the e-mail, to find two pages linked within.

The first one, you can see to your right -

Let's not even discuss how something could be marked down from $85 when it came out TODAY...

But this book has not been out in some shops for even 12 hours as of this writing. It has a cover price of $2.99. However, if you feel that you need to spend litterally 25 times that amount for the privilage of never, ever, ever reading a comic book, then Wizard Entertainment is the company for you.

Isn't this the kind of wild, speculative market that almost killed the comic book industry in the Ninties? How's the golden goose meat taste, Wizard? I hope it's delicious, it's the last you'll be getting for a while...

There's seriously a whole page of this nonsense here.

Also advertised in the same e-mail was this particularly excellent statue:

Ah, The Ill-Fated Picnic Attempt Saga, chief among the great epic X-Men tales.
I know, were I to choose a particularly iconic moment in Rogue's history to immortalize in a statue, it would be said picnic.

So thank you, Wizard, for my daily dose of total nonsense. Now stop, just... STOP.

-casey-

Saturday Morning Reviews

2007-03-03T02:11:00.000-05:00

Hey Gang!

Every week I'm going to post reviews of three books from my pull list. Hopefully I'll stick with this regularly, and who knows, I might even add another regular feature in the future!

It looks like Marvel, like Wilco, was trying to break my heart this week. And not in that, "Oh god, Civil War!" kind of way, either.

Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #15

In case you hadn't heard, Sean McKeever, the guy writing hands down the best Spidey book on the shelves every month, is now DC Comics exclusive. To channel Charlie Brown for a moment:

AAAAAUUUUUUUGH!

So we've got to get our teenage superhero melodrama while we can.

Speaking specifically to issue #15, this is the confrontation issue, where everyone has Talks (note: big "T") with everyone else. Peter and MJ, MJ and Liz, Liz and Gwen, MJ and Spidey, Peter and Gwen, it's a round robin of romantic strife. What keeps it from becoming "The O.C./Laguna Beach/Whateverthedamnkidsarewatchingthesedays With Webs," is that every single character rings true. All of their emotions feel genuine and make sense, and even when characters make bad choices, they're not to forward a story - the choices are made because that's what the character WOULD DO.

One last related bit of praise for this book - This is the first time I have even remotely cared for Gwen Stacey. The sacred cow (an unfortunately phrased metaphor, but the most fitting one), of the Spider-Man Universe, recent writers who've tried to tackle the character have either done something fairly dull (For all my Ultimate Spider-Man love, I never cared about Ultimate Gwen), or just... just... no.

But the Gwen in this book is seemingly care-free, and I can understand completely why someone with the weight of the world on their shoulders like Pete would fall for her, and through his eyes we begin to like her a lot, too.

Daredevil #94

By all accounts, this should have been my book of the week.

Ed Brubaker managed to pick up on the momentum from Brian Bendis' work, which I will contend is the single best run on a modern Superhero title to date, so he had to do the comics-writing equivalent of leaping into the driver's seat of a speeding car. So when he knocked things out of the park with the Daredevil In Jail story arc, I could not have been more thrilled. It's been a fairly steady steam of goodness since then. So when this issue came out with the very cool John Romita (JOHN ROMITA!) cover, focusing on one of my favorite new Daredevil characters, my expectations were high.

This issue focuses on Milla Donova, Matt's WIFE. If there was ever a super-hero who would be better off single, it would be "There goes another girlfriend!" Matt Murdock. But during the Bendis run, they introduced Milla. A blind woman from Hell's Kitchen who's managed to become a hero in her own right, without the help of a radioactive isotope. When she's introduced, she's a crusader for those who slip through the cracks in the kitchen, lobbying to clean up the neighborhood she loves so much. Sound familiar?

After Daredevil saves her life, she hunts Matt down and their relationship begins. She's essentially put through Hell, but what do you expect when you date a guy who dresses up like a devil, but they stay together in the end. This issue takes a look back at the events since they've met through Milla's eyes, and I expected to get more of this already very fleshed out character,.
Unfortunately, Brubaker takes this woman strong of will, strong enough to stay with Matt, but vulnerable because of her blindness, and boils her down to something kind of dull and cliche:

Milla Donovan is essentially a policeman's wife. She sits at home, wondering if she's going to get "the call" something bad's happened while Matt punches crooks.

You know what, that's dull. Milla's been through so much more, she's here with Matt, after BULLSEYE of all people had her alone in a room... and she's worried about him, she sits up crying every night while he goes out, and it's bland.

What's more, there's a complex attraction and chemistry between the characters that I read in the Bendis run - both of them blind crusaders, both of them full of vision for their neighborhoods and how they should be - but Brubaker does the character a further disservice by having Milla tell us that she's "always had a thing for guys who would be trouble." That her friends "warned her to stay away." The good girl who loves bad boys... it's an archetype that permeates a lot of science fiction (What's up, Lost?), which may or may not stem from writers who were "the nice guy" growing up, and there's a time and place for it, but Milla Donovan? I just disagree. Whole-heartedly.

X-Factor #16

Reader poll time!

When was the last time you actually CARED for Superman's heat vision?
How about the last comic you read where you REALLY worried for the fate of Mr. Fantastic's stretchiness?

When did a super-power actually get you choked up? For me, the answer is this comic.

The latest issue of X-Factor follows Jamie as he goes around to collect another of the duplicates he's made of himself and sent out to learn the ways of the world. He's already had to deal with the aftermath of having one end up a S.H.E.I.L.D. agent, so this time he means business. But surprised yet again, this duplicate is a Reverend. With a family.

The dupe bolts and Jamie is left learning about the life he could of had, the life he more or less DOES have, and the reader goes right with him. Jamie feels for this dupe, this man of god and family, but has to take him with him anyway - even though no one wants him to. The characters debate the right to exist, weapons are drawn, and eventually a decision is made. It's really a great read.

It's also extremely rare that it's a good thing that writing draws attention to itself. Hopefully the reader should be so absorbed by character and story that the writing disappears (unless you're Grant Morrison, in which case you write yourself into the story). By making John Maddox a Reverend, Peter David gets a chance to shine through sermons, to play with words, and to examine exactly the nature of Jamie's relationship with his dupes. It was really a pleasure to read all around, and as such -

BOOK OF THE WEEK!

So that's it for me this week, Gentle Readers. Let me know if there's anything you read that was excellent that I missed, or if you've got something to say, just hit the comment button!
Till next week!

-casey-

What's Wrong With Civil War?

2007-02-26T23:00:00.000-05:00

Short answer? Everything!

Fiiiine, I guess I'll do the "Long Answer" as well.

(As one might guess, this post will be filled with Mighty Marvel Spoilers.)

So, for those of you who've stumbled onto this blog by sheer chance (or to leave nasty comments), and don't know what Civil War is, here's the rundown:

Speedball, of all people, gets a bunch of little kids killed when his team tosses a human bomb into a school.
Iron Man, and those on his side, see this as a reason to start registering all the super-heroes... because if the government knew Speedball's real name, then that would have stopped him from being an idiot? He does this by working with the government to restrict civil liberties! Yay!*
Captain America, who was busting his hump in trenches fighting Nazis for our civil liberties when Tony Stark was still a sparkle in his father's vodka-soaked eye, is against this. He demonstrates his dissent in the most patriotic way I can imagine - taking down an entire S.H.E.I.L.D. hellicarier.
Everyone punches each other.
Spider-Man generally acts pretty stupid during the whole thing.

Now, this setup has very real potential: a very grey area politically and morally which pits super-hero against super-hero.

While there are many, many problems with the WAY the story is told - What the hell are Captain Marvel and The Sentry doing during this fight? Are they busy taking down the Thanos level threat of Iron Fist dressed as Daredevil? Aren't they so mind-bogglingly powerful that they'd essentially END the fight on a whim? - my real problem is the moral of the story.

Yes, morals. At their best, I think superhero comics are a highly exaggerated morality plays - Spider-Man is the best example I can think of. Here's a man given extraordinary means, and when he chooses to use those means for selfish ends, he's punished for it by the loss of his uncle. This is a very clear lesson, one that every comic book fan learns - with great power comes great responsibility. A truer version of that sentence would be "With great power comes great responsibility to do good." Spider-Man becomes a hero through good actions (going beyond the law to capture criminals) towards a greater good (protecting the powerless).

Civil War could have been a great testing ground for which of those is the most important - the ends (protecting the powerless), or the means (going beyond the law to capture criminals)? Ask 100 people that question and you'll no doubt come back with a healthy mix of answers, with no clear winner. What could be a better way to have an audience root for either Captain America or Iron Man without either of them being clearly "evil?"

The problem in Civil War is that, in the end, Iron Man achieves something that is (I believe to be) fundamentally immoral. A government should not restrict the civil liberties of any of it's citizens for the theoretical protection of other citizens. But even if you accept that this is "okay," the means employed by Iron Man and his crew are so beyond what could be justified by this end that it boggles the mind. Let's run it down, shall we:

Hiring a Russian super villain to attack Washington D.C. to prove his point.
Cloning Thor for use as a weapon.
This directly leads to the murder of Bill Foster - Black Goliath.**
Letting Taskmaster, Lady Shiva, Venom, and BULLSEYE out of jail and onto the streets as a government black ops squad, the new Thunderbolts.
Detaining American Citizens in an off-site prison, without due process, for an unspecified amount of time.
The actual prison was the Negative Zone, for god's sake, described in Amazing Spider-Man as a place that literally saps the will of the occupants.
Which, I do believe, counts as torture.
Unleashing the DEADLY Thor Clone upon Manhattan a second time!

So now the war is over, and Iron Man has done all these things, the repercussions for which are... what? They're non-existant. Iron Man's side wins the war, and anyone with abilities beyond that of mortal man are forced to register with the government for the protection of the people. And what's more, Tony Stark is made the head of S.H.E.I.L.D. The most powerful spy organization on the planet.

I want to reiterate that.

The man who deemed it was okay to circumvent protections guaranteed people in the constitution has now been put in charge of the largest espionage organization on the planet. This, to me, is wholly terrifying and horrible. Yet in the book, it's treated as if Tony's getting the reward he's worked so hard for, and claims he has even more "ideas." Civil War ends with Tony looking off into the sun-set, inspired by the "Good" he's done.

So I ask you this - What moral does this teach? That abuse of power begets more power? That if you abuse the people to protect them, you'll be given a greater opportunity to do both? And most importantly, in this situation, what separates someone like Iron Man from someone like Doctor Doom? They've both employed force and fascist tactics to protect their respective countries, only one does it for the people, other for the literal country. And is that really a difference at all?

I think the most graceful part of this book was potentially unintentional - I've read an interview with Mark Millar suggesting that what I'm about to describe was simply to allow their to be two winners in this battle.

If the world of the Marvel Universe is now one where the ends justify the means, no matter the moral or ethical standards of either, then I can think of no better metaphor than Captain America, the symbol of liberty, freedom, and, "What's right," in Marvel Comics, surrendering and being locked away to rot.

-casey-

*Hey, didn't they do this story in Powers? Man, the writer of that comic must b- Wait, what? ...oh.
** A character killed essentially because he was black. That's a whole other kettle of fish.

Yeah I'm Back, Back In Black...

2007-02-24T15:56:00.000-05:00

Sorry for yet another lengthy delay from updates, but some sage-like advice from Bahlactus has gotten me back onto the blogging wagon.

So here are some links to prepare your delicate pallett for the sauciness to come:

Kevin writes an open letter to comics fans that burns with the clensing fire of a thousand suns!

The aformentioned Afro-Devourer Of Worlds puts out the call to comics bloggers!

Ragnell's post is sad and hilarious due to it's inherent truth!

Manhunter lives! SHE LIIIIIIIIIIIVES!
(More on this one, later.)

Ok, so I'll be back later with thoughts on Civil War's wrap up (Spoiler warning - someone gets punched,) and any news that gets me all tingly that trickles in from the NYCC this weekend.

-casey-

A Note To Captain America

2007-02-08T17:21:00.000-05:00

Dear Steve,

I know things have been rough lately, and the super-hero registration act has really gotten inside of your head, but I'd just like to remind you that super-soldier serum or no...

It's still a bad idea to punch metal.
(click for bigger version)

A fan,

-casey-

Adam Beechen, Teen Titans, and Cassandra Cain

2007-01-31T22:28:00.000-05:00

First, a thanks to Ragnell for posting about, and drawing my attention to this. After commenting on her post I thought further about, and am expanding upon, my thoughts here.

I would also like to give a warning that this post is LONG. VERY LONG.

Newsarama broke the story that Geoff Johns will be leaving Teen Titans and replaced by Justice League Unlimited and Robin scribe Adam Beechen.

As I intend to discuss stories from Robin, Teen Titans, and things relating to Batgirl:

Here There Be Spoilers

The majority of Geoff Johns' run on Teen Titans was spectacular. While I haven't been crazy about the things going on in the book after the One Year Later jump, the first few story arcs were excellent. Bringing in the Young Justice characters and mixing them with the remaining members of The New Teen Titans was a great way to bring in new readers who hadn't picked up a Titans book before, but still keep fans of the Wolfman/Perez run happy. Johns then added some great villains like Deathstroke (this was four years ago, before he was completely over-exposed), an updated Brother Blood, and (in my favorite arc) future versions of the Titans themselves.

Due to delays, a truly unfortunate two-issue fill-in by He Who Must Not Be Named, a serious down step in the art after Mike McKone left for Marvel, and my overall disinterest in the line-up after One Year Later, I dropped the book.

Adam Beechen is a writer who first caught my attention with Justice League Unlimited #5.

I think for obvious reasons:

In which Blue Beetle is left alone in the satellite on Monitor Duty, and has to defeat The General. It's full of humor, a surprising amount of action, and due to legal reasons the only time we've seen the animated series style Blue Beetle. It's excellent. Based on the strength of this issue, I picked up the trades of the series, which at digest size are $6.99. They're worth every cent. Beechen tells amazing one-shot stories about the League, and not having to worry about the cost of a show is able to showcase characters like Stargirl, The Question, Adam Strange, and even VIBE. Yes, that's right... VIBE. So when he was announced to take over Robin, I put the book on my pull-list.

His first story arc on the book is now infamous for changing the character of Batgirl from a force for good into the leader of the League of Assassins.

While the given motives for Cassandra to change into this evil ninja criminal mastermind were questionable at best (Daddy didn't love her, she wanted Robin to be by her side), I'm not entirely against the idea of this change for three major reasons.

1 - At the end of her own book, immediately before the One Year Later jump, Cassandra had a life-changing quest to find her mother. She ended up fighting her mother to the death, discovering what it meant to be "the one who is all," and decided that Batman's way might not be the way for her. Immediately after, during Infinite Crisis, all of Cassandra's non-Bat friends and family were killed, as well as her new home of Bludhaven completely destroyed by Deathstroke.

If any thing's going to cause someone to snap, it's killing your mom, then coming home to find all you friends dead and your home a radioactive wasteland.

2 - Speaking specifically as this character affects Robin, he has absolutely NO rogues gallery. What makes Batman great is The Joker, Two-Face, The Riddler, etc. This is why no one cares when Batman fights villains like Doctor Phosphorus - Batman is usually only interesting when thrown into contrast with his villains. Robin has no such catalogue of criminals, which is why he's usually most effective in a group, like the Teen Titans. Cassandra Cain as the head of the League of Assassins is a GREAT villain for Robin!

3 - Robin stories should be a reflection of Batman stories. He's basically mini-Batman, and what makes a good Robin story in my mind is one in which we get to see how the character contrasts and compares to Batman. Cassandra Cain, head of the L. o. A., with her army of ninjas and grand designs is part Ra's Al Ghul, and by wanting Robin by her side she's part Talia Al Ghul. So we get to see how Robin would handle stories similar to the Dennis O'Neil 70's Batman stories, and Cassandra Cain could potentially be even more dangerous than Ra's Al Ghul to Robin, as she's closer to him than Ra's ever was to Batman.

This, however, was tossed out the window with this week's Teen Titans #43.
I'm tired of writing it, you're tired of reading it, but I feel the need:

For the love of god, SPOILERS.

So apparently Cassandra had not become evil of her own volition. I'm really opposed to this. To see why, let's run down the character's history one last time:

Cassandra was abused by her father, David Cain, who used her as a living weapon.

Then she found her way to Batman, who used her as a living weapon. That point might be in contention among fans, but I think that since Batman simply loosed her onto Gotham City's underworld based on her fighting skill, and never even taught the character HOW TO READ, then he gets the, "You used her!" treatment. If you want, you can chalk that up to another one of pre-Infinite Crisis Batman's blunders (see: Brother Eye).

When she finally broke away and sought out her own identity, she became completely evil and arguably insane to get back at David Cain and to win the alliance, and sub-textually love, of Robin.

Now with this new issue of Teen Titans, we discover that Cassandra has been brainwashed by Deathstroke, who is using her as a living weapon. And not only is he taking away her free will, but the motivation for doing this have nothing to do with who she is, or what her character traits are, but instead because brainwashing and using her would distress Robin.

So arguably one of the strongest female characters, one who has BESTED the greatest martial artist in the DCU, has never been used outside of her own book as anything other than a tool for male characters.

Could this change? I'm sure she could, at the end of the arc, snap out of things. But looking at the pattern of events, and the way the character's been handled, I'm not sure it will.

What do you guys think?
Will this end well for Cass?
Will she still be Batgirl by the end of the arc?
And does such continual abuse of a character solely for the benefit of other male characters grant her a spot on the Women In Refrigerators list?

Let me know what you think.

-casey-

52 Words On 52 - Week 38

2007-01-27T23:34:00.000-05:00

This is my now weekly feature on DC Comics' 52. 52 words giving my impressions on whatever went down last issue. As a warning to those who don't read it or are waiting for the 300 trades that this will be collected in, I'm going to get specific.

So, I'm totally serious here: SPOILERS.

52 on 52: Week 38

Will Magnus eating cold beans and building radioactive men is fairly hilarious and disturbing. The Bible of Crime: Book of Apokolips! Does that make Grant Morrison a prophet?

This is really the end of The Question.
How many deaths does one hero get?

I wonder: Was he the man or the butterfly?

So that's this week. As someone who's read most of the published Question stories, and has a great love for the character kicked off by Greg Rucka's Huntress: Cry For Blood story, I'm kind of bummed. Look for something about him to come.

-casey-

DC Teaser Image

2007-01-26T01:19:00.000-05:00

NEWSARAMA broke this teaser image for an upcoming DC Comics event tonight.

For those of you who are click-lazy and link-poor, here's the image in question:

(click for larger version)

So there are some things I notice about this image:

Poor, dead The Question. Combined with Blue Beetle they've got a good start at a graveyard for Steve Ditko characters going.
Also down among the dead is what looks to be the Phantom Zone projector?
All the ex-characters except for The Question died during Infinite Crisis. That kind of puts the timing of this event into Question (so to speak). Does this take place immediately after 52?
If so, Superman wouldn't be around yet.
Costumes, costumes, costumes - Donna Troy is in her old Wonder Girl outfit, Batman is wearing a really bizarre Arabian Bat-Suit, and...
...is that Red Robin? With Kingdom Come Starman showing up in JSA last month, it's looking more and more like Kingdom Come is some kind of canon, be it multi-verse or alternate future.
Speaking of alternate futures and the multi-verse, holy CRAP, is that Flash really Barry Allen?
It's a very couple-y image... Ion and Donna Troy used to be a thing, and Mr. Miracle and Barda are married. This draws odd attention to Canary and Green Arrow being distanced from one another.
Is there any other reason for Barda and Mister Miracle to be there? Do they seem out of place to anyone else?
Mary Marvel looking off to the sky seems like she's only there to draw attention to Captain Marvel's absence.

SPECULATION:

At the end of 52, Skeetz is destroyed, and as he "ate" the Phantom Zone last issue, this releases Kryptonian Super Criminals to menace the Earth. Hence the destroyed Phantom Zone projector, and the destroyed Statue of Liberty (what's up, Zod?).
This is the big "World War 3" event DC has been pushing.
Batman returns from the desert because of this. His costume is not, actually, an Elseworlds thing. It's meant to evoke the old school Neal Adams Batman stories, which is what Grant Morrison tried to return the character to after the 1-Year Later jump.
Red Robin is actually Jason Todd, who's given up his Red-Hood persona and has nothing to actually do with Kingdom Come.

And finally, I have one COMPLAINT/RANT:

For the love of god, DC, please stop only showing us Wonder Woman as she affects Batman and Superman. She's in this picture, as far as I can tell, only to be there for Superman to cry to. In Infinite Crisis, her only real role seemed to be to convince Batman not to kill Luthor, and to be there for Superman of Earth 2. Can we get some REAL character development, or at least the acknowledgement that Wonder Woman is a character worthy of her own story? A character worthy of her own, MONTHLY comic book?

Since Infinite Crisis she's been making 75 cents to Batman and Superman's dollar.

So if there's anyone still reading after that, please comment with your thoughts of what all this could mean, what you speculate lies in the future for the characters in this image... DISCUSS!

-casey-

Music: Yes, Music

2007-01-22T00:27:00.000-05:00

So, I've decided that I'm going to start posting here about music I like. There will be tags at the bottom for comics or music. I hope that, beyond my taste in music expanding and improving my writing about it, this new turn in the blog-o-machine will cause me to update more.

Holy crap! Has anyone else seen the release list of CDs this week? My wallet is hiding in fear with my debit card, holding each other tightly and weeping, promising each other that everything will be okay, like extras in Independence Day or Deep Impact.

Here is the run-down:

Piebald - Accidental Gentleman

I've only recently gotten into Piebald - the last three months or so - but after being shoved into them as if they were a sliced open taun-taun by my sister and friends, I'm completely in love with their non-hardcore, happy indie-pop-punk mix. Their songs for the most part, are adolescent, but not in a bad way. Singing about road trips with girls, their old tour bus and The Catcher In The Rye, the music colors your glasses rosy with youth no matter what you're looking upon.

I haven't heard anything off of the new album yet, I'm wondering what maturity has done to the band - members are now married, and one is a schoolteacher - but the reviews I've heard are overwhelmingly positive. I'm going to see them the day of the release, so I'll get to hear some tracks live before I hear them on CD.

The Shins - Wincing The Night Away

Does Zach Braff get a check every time someone new loves The Shins?

While the band was great 3 albums ago, they got a lot of success from being the keystone in the mix-tape for everyone that was the Garden State soundtrack. And even though most of the key tracks from that soundtrack were off of Oh, Inverted World (can anyone think of a non-Elliot Smith song more tear inducing than New Slang?), it definitely gave Chutes Too Narrow, their recent release at the time of the film, a push.

Now we're two years later, the expectations for their new release is even higher, and I can't wait to get my ears around it. Reviewed as a more somber piece than Chutes Too Narrow, I hope Wincing The Night Away proves the Shins are still the best at breaking indie rock hearts.

Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

Sugar cereal powered alt-pop, Of Montreal has proven to be some of the weirdest, happiest music I've gotten on mix CDs in the past. Springtime Is The Season features some of my favorite lyrics:

The winter's good for penguins,
Though brown bears must object.
When talk comes to the joys of winter,
They must interject,
"Hibernating in the snow just isn't where it's at,
because sleeping makes you skinny,
and we bears like to be fat."

More of their songs keep this whimsy, their warbling vocals on Jaques Lamuer (the volunteer fireman) or Everything Disappears When You Come Around (in the song, things litterally disappear) cause your smile to widen with each track. It's with these tracks in mind that I'll be picking up the new CD as soon as possible.

The Good, The Bad, And the Queen

Logic: Brit-Pop geniuses Blur haven't had a new album in 4 years. This is bad.

Reality: Blur frontman Damon Albarn keeps teaming up with people like Dan the Automator, Dj Danger Mouse for new Gorillaz albums and this new project The Good, The Bad, And the Queen. I kind of don't care?

I mean, what more does a CD have to have for me to buy it? It's produced by the "I can't lose even if I tried!" Dj Danger Mouse, who's put out pretty much nothing but gold as far as I'm concerned. The Grey Album mashing up Jay-Z and the Beatles spawned a sea of imitators, and on many tacks Danger Mouse out-produced and out classed the actual producers from Jay's original.

Follow that up with Alban's first Danger Mouse collaboration the Gorillaz cd Demon Days which sits atop a mountain of critical acclaim, then move onto the slightly underrated but personal favorite Danger Doom with MF Doom - a CD completely about Cartoon Network's [Adult Swim] line up. Where then next? Why, the gospel techno hip-hop mash up of Gnarles Barkley, with partner Cee-Lo. This is a disc hot with pretty much everyone. I actually helped a fifty year old woman find it at work the other day, and when I asked if it was a gift, she looked at me sideways and said "Uh, it's for me."

So we've got the frontman from Blur and Gorillaz, producer of Danger Doom and Gnarles Barkley, and that's not enough for you still? STILL? How about Paul Simonon, the bassist from The (mother fucking) Clash? How about Simon Tong, of The Verve fame?

God damn, I wish I had this disc NOW.

COMICS TIE IN:

Interested in Brit-Pop? Check out the amazing Phonogram (phonogramcomic.com) which blends music and magic into this amazing modern fantasy tale of music snobbery gone horrible wrong.

So four CDs in one week is not a lot for some people. But for me, looking at this list, I honestly don't know what to do I'm so excited.

I'll be broke for a long time, but it'll be oh, oh, OH so worth it...

-casey-

Stan Lee Fights The Marvel Universe

2007-01-19T23:34:00.000-05:00

In the course of my day, today, I came across not one, not two, but all three of the following pictures of Stan "The Man" Lee.

Since he could not be reached, I will be providing the "Picture To Stan" translations.

Let us begin.

"So, True Believers, by demonstrating my dastardly kung-fu on Steve Ditko's sanctimonious ass, I inadvertently created Spidey's now legendary Web-Spinning pose!"

"Marvelites and Marvelettes, these are my secret decoder rings! Take a look at Joe Quesada sometime, you'll decode their imprints on his face from me slapping him around.

Hard."

"Ha-Ha! Fuck you, Jack Kirby!"

I love you, Stan.

-casey-

52 Words On 52 - Week 37

2007-01-17T23:57:00.000-05:00

Ok, this is a new feature. Let's give it a go, shall we?

Also, this is a WEEKLY comic book, so these posts are going to be SPOILER heavy. Also, if you don't have $2.50 every week to spend on this series, why do you care about having it spoiled?

52 on 52: Week 37 -

Supernova’s really Booster Gold! I thought Ray Palmer, back to atone for his nutty ex-wife. Buddy’s back, too? By god, this issue’s heartening. It’s nice that DC might not kill all the characters I like. Question, Booster, Buddy: Any more fake deaths before the end of this? I guess that’s The Question...

I should post one of these every week for the next 15 weeks, until the series is done. Look for more updates soon!

-casey-

Uh... A Month? What? Scott Pilgrim, Yes.

2006-05-25T00:36:00.000-04:00

It is excellent.

-casey-

Flight of the Conchords

2006-03-22T01:28:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, I discovered this band on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and frankly they're the funniest thing I've seen in a long, long time.

Thanks to the power of YouTube, I'm presenting you with the video that kills me more or less every time I watch it.

Enjoy.

Links!

Flight of the Conchords - Link!
Flight of the Conchords Multimedia - What the Folk!

Tommorrow I'll be back with reviews for this week!

-casey-

Whee! Comics! Pull List for March Thus Far

2006-03-17T21:56:00.000-05:00

Before we begin, I have to follow through with a threat -

"Blue Beetle is better than any character Alan Moore could EVER come up with! Oh yeah, I said it!"
- Aaron Trites

This comment was SCREAMED during an argument about the book Birds of Prey. In one particular story arc, Barbra Gordon has talked the retired Ted Kord into riding around in The Bug, his floating beetle air-ship thingee, with her. Ted talks about how he's retired from super-heroics with Barbra until they see a train on fire. He is reluctant to get involved, until Babs talks him into suiting up and rescuing some people. Afterwards she points out that he should keep the costume on, and keep super-heroing.

If this sounds familiar, that's because it's a scene practically stolen from WATCHMEN, the most read and acclaimed graphic novel of ALL TIME. Now, I know that the character from Watchmen, Night Owl, was based on the Blue Beetle, but that doesn't excuse just TAKING a scene from another book! When I pointed to this as an example of sloppy Birds of Prey writing, Aaron had the outburst above, which I assured him would see print on the internet immediately.

Thank you for that.

At some point, I swear to high heaven, I will get a regular blogging schedule. In the mean time, thanks to you who have stuck around when I do post (I'm talking to YOU, secret stalker!).

I would like to take this opportunity to sound the SPOILER ALERT!

The Pull List!

Marvel Comics!

Captain America Vol. 1 - The Winter Soldier -

This was definately the Marvel comic I was most excited about. It's written by Ed Brubaker who was half of the writing team on the deservingly-gushed-about-by-me Gotham Central. The art is nothing to sneeze at either, with an art Steve Epting rocking the present-day Cap action, and Michael Lark doing pencils on the World War II flashbacks. So with a high-profile team in place, and 17 months of everyone from Aaron at Comicazi to Wizard Magazine telling me it was great, I picked up the trade.

And I could not put it down.

Until I was done reading it, and I haven't picked it up since.

This story was an odd experience for me, someone who reads comics over and over again. It was completely engaging, it had international intrigue, all the Cap "face" characters such as the Red Skull and Sharon Carter, and the action was big without being Ultimates-over-the-top. But for whatever reason, after reading it, I was done with it.

So what, you're asking, didn't work? Well, and I warned you about spoilers, but Ed Brubaker kills the Red Skull at the end of the first issue. The Red Skull is an icon, and a hell of a villain, so his death has little impact on me as a reader because... well, he's coming back. I know it probably won't be Brubaker to do it, but if the villian is really villianous, he cannot die.

I paraphrase from the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game Handbook -

"If your villian dies, there's no body found. If the heroes find the body, then they find a robot. If it's not a robot, then it's a clone. If there's a body, and it's not a clone, and the villian is really dead, then he probably wasn't a very good villian o begin with."

Basically don't expect me to flip my wig when you plug the Red Skull - that crazy Nazi bastard will be back eventually.

Also, the book tries to ret-con some pretty serious stuff in regards to Cap's last mission with Bucky, and does it in an odd way. Instead of simply saying how it was, with Cap saying, "I've never told anyone this before..." or the like, Brubaker has long dormant memories awaken in Captain America by way of the Cosmic Cube... Seriously, the Cosmic Cube made Steve Rogers remember that his young partner was tortured by Baron Zemo before his "death". I think it would have been more interesting to actually show Cap coming to this un-blocking on his own.

So in general this trade did not live up to the considerable hype, and maybe I'll give it another read at some point, but for now if I want Cap, I'll just re-read Geoff Johns' Avengers trades.

Powers #17 -

I'm going to come clean. Seriously. I have no idea what was happening during the big fight of this book. Walker gets new powers and... wins? Maybe? Against something? I'm not sure. At least it's interesting.

Also, Brian Bendis proves that some of his strongest stuff doesn't need dialog, as we get a glimpse of Deena Pilgrim tempted to take a very bad way out of her current situation.

Ultimate Spider-Man #91 -

Kitty Pryde and Spider-Man are ADORABLE.

Kitty gets a new costume to fight crime with Spidey and not compromise his identity as Peter Parker. This is all good stuff up until we hea back to the X-Mansion and Ultimate Deadpool, a character every bit as unneccessary as Ultimate Moon Knight, rears his ugly head. Hopefully he'll be proven interesting in the next issue?

X-Factor #4 -

This issue closes the book on X-Factor Investigation's first official case, and it's not quite as interesting as the way Layla Miller handles their frist UN-official case.
There's some more Mutant Town stuff in there as well that's interesting - apparently people who used to be mutants are still feared and hated right there with the people still mutants. So Stong Guy and Wolfsbane make it clear that mutant town is a haven for any mutant, past present or future.

And yes, if you were wondering, I do get a check from Marvel every time I say "mutant" this review.

Mutant.

The Pulse #14 -

This issue of The Pulse was the last, and it abandoned the format of a newspaper suppliment that wasn't really working for Bendis, and gave us all what we really wanted - one more issue of Alias.

The story of how Jessica Jones met Luke Cage is incredibly sweet, and one I'm glad we got to hear. It's a quite a bit sweeter than their first meeting in the pages of Alias which was illegal in many, many states. The whole thing is told to little baby Noname Cage-Jones, who remains unnamed by issue's end.

I'm glad that we get more of Luke in New Avengers, but let's hope Jessica doesn't dissapear into the background, as she's one of the few new unique, strong, real characters in the Marvel U.

Next Wave #2 -

Did you ever have a classmate, or a friend, who desperately wanted to be funny? Oh, they'd spout out whatever came into their heads that passed for wit, but more often than not it would simply be an ol' eye-roller? Ladies and gentleman, that friend has a job writing Next Wave.

I do not like this comic.

Everyone else loves it, so I will continue to try and see the good in it, but so far I've been presented with jokes unoriginal (Ha, ha! Machine-Man calls humans "meat-bags!"), and obvious (Look at Fing Fang Foom's pants! They're purple! He's a dragon wearing pants! HILARIOUS!). Outside of one excellent Douglas Adams moment describing human beings as "the Elvis of snack-food" to giant monsters, I was bored.

DC Comics

Jonah Hex #5 -

That ugly cuss Jonah Hex always gets his man, and this issue is no exception. Here is a book that gives you absolutely no reason to wait for the trade - every issue is self-contained, each story great. Keep it up, DC. I swear to god though, if this book jumps forward "One Hundred & Fourty One Years Later" after Infinite Crisis, I will be very irked.

Batman - Year 100 #2 -

In this issue, Batman... does something other than run from Police.

I'll admit that Paul Pope's take on the Dark Knight doesn't have the most original premise, pitting Batman against the police in a dystopian future, his art style is perfect for the gritty, organic world he's creating. In the first, all we got was Batman running away from football uniform clad Police, but in issue #2 we're thankfully given more of a look at this future Batman, his allies and tactics.

There's also a page where this year's Commisoner Gordon is looking at footage and documentation on The Batman from years past. This page, where we see the Thirties Batman and the Seventies Batman as seperate entities, make me wonder if Pope is trying to untangle the twisted timeline of Batman - the costume changes, the tone changes - that Alan Moore and Frank Miller have tackled so sucessfully in The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns. Good luck, Mr. Pope, you're standing in an awfully big shadow.

Green Lantern Corps: Recharge! #5 of 5 -

This mini finishes off with Guy Gardener getting some respect for once! He takes charge in a way that his ego has always told us he could, and thanks to that, the Gaurdians make him a sectorless Green Lantern! It thankfully looks like he and Kilowog will the focus of the upcoming Green Lantern Corps ongoing series that's out in a few months.

While this book is part of regular continuity the publishing schedule kept it out of Infinite Crisis' path - Kyle Rayner is still flying about as a Green Lantern, Oa is still the center of the of the Universe. With Kyle allready converted into Ion, will there be other major changes to Corps members during Crisis?

Y: The Last Man #43 -

This book continues to be fun, thoughtful and unpredictable.

This is the first part of a new story-arc, which means a combination of talking heads about both the plot and whatever fun facts that popped into Brian K. Vaughn's head. Also a great deal more romance, both overt and tragic (Dr. Mann), and subtextual and misguided (355), than we're used to. Kind of a slow issue, but the last page, as usual, keeps you wondering until the next one comes out.

Seven Soldiers: Frankenstien #3 -

Of the three reamaining Seven Soldiers books, this one simultaneously made the least amount of sense and the least to do with the giant crossover that was the point of these miniseries.

This story, entitled The Water!, managed to simultaneously share all the traits of Grant Morrison's best and worst writing. It's fiercely imaginiative, and has that classic feel of the genre he's aping - Frankenstien reads like an old E.C. Horror book on acid - but nothing makes sense outside of the author's head, and nothing inside of the story operates in the parameters of any kind of logic.

Why does the water turn some things into fierce predators and some people into weaklings? It just DOES.

This was a huge problem I had with Morrison's JLA: Rock of Ages story-arc, wherein the Jusice League prevent an apocalyptic future ruled by Darksied from happening by saving a magic rock from destruction. The same magic rock was being used by Lex Luthor to control Jemm (a telepathic alien), and essentially anything else Luthor wanted it to. They never say how it's doing these things, or why it'll prevent Darksied from conquering Earth, it simply does.

These over-powered, story driving plot McGuffins had been kept out of his Seven Soldiers work thus far, a fact which aided my enjoyment of them SIGNIFICANTLY. But when I read this, I was incredibly frustrated.

Doug Mahnke's art is very, very pretty though.

Seven Soldiers: Mr. Miracle #4 -

On the other hand, Morrison shows in Mr. Miracle that he's really the only person who should be alowed to handle Jack Kirby's New Gods. The people of New Genesis as homeless bum-gods, Darksied as basically Ving Rahmes from Pulp Fiction, and a dimension jumping Mr. Miracle still trying to escape his greatest trap.

In the end, it's compelling, complex, and the greatest compliment I can give it is that I stopped thinking about the original Mr. Miracle after a few pages.

Seven Soldiers: The Bulleteer #4 -

The final issue of The Bulleteer managed to really push it over the top for me. Up until now, the story felt secondary to the art and the concept - a woman who's husband turned her into a super-hero to fulfil a sexual fantasy. Issue four is devoted almost entirely to the back-story of her husband's Super-Mistress, and it shines some unpleasent realistic light on Silver Age style stories.

What makes this title work though, is that while everyone around The Bulleteer is absorbed in the DC Universe and super-hero life, she sees the absurdity of theses people's lives. It's very reflexive, with Bulletteer questioning why she even got into costume, and after the big fight super-fight scene, doing what I've never seen a hero do before - asking someone to call an ambulence for the loser.

Infinite Crisis Secret Files -

Well, that cleared things up quite a bit!

Most Secret Files stories are superfluous, and sub-par. Breaking the trend, the Infinite Crisis Secret Files is well written, well drawn, and crucial to understanding the new Crisis for people who aren't familiar with old-school DC. People like me.

This issue is a look at life inside the "paradise" Alexander Luthor built for himself, Lois 2, Superman 2, and Superboy Prime. Superman runs around trying to do nice things for Lois, and we see how much she becomes his entire world after the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, setting up his actions in Infinite Crisis #5. It does the same for Superboy, showing how Luthor basically spent the enitre twenty years stuck there subtley torturing him. He didn't seem too well glued together to begin with, so Luthor messing with his mind makes the Teen Titans fight in #4 a little more believable.

The most important thing DC does with this book is to use Superboy pounding on the walls of reality to excuse any major glitch in DC Continuity (Hawkman's very existance and history for example), or wipe away things they'd rather just forget (Jonah Hex in the future?). I really enjoy when they can explain poor story choices with a cool in-continuity event.

Infinite Crisis #5 -

And here's the big one.

While it's a good issue, it seems to be full of more problems than the other four. Rather than just run down what happened, I'm going to ask some spoilerific questions, and leave it up to you to answer -

I know asking questions about time travel is simply asking for trouble, but...

Booster Gold comes from the future with knowledge of the events of Crisis. Why isn't he able to do more? Why doesn't he foresee Superboy Prime breaking out of the speed-force at the end of this issue? Instead he comes in and says, "I know of one of your failings, and I am here to prevent it!" And how does he prevent it? With the new Blue Beetle! He's supposedly the only one who can see the Brother I sattelite, but they don't explain why. My speculation: Blue Beetle is the only new hero to emerge since Max Lord had control of Checkmate, so Brother I doesn't know how to hide from him. We'll see if there's another explaination - for now, his costume looks still looks damn cool.

We reach my biggest problem with Infinite Crisis #5 - Pretty much everything with Wonder Woman.

In the last few pages of Wonder Woman's previous series, she sees a riot in Boston, and comes down to the people throwing bricks. There she asks them if this is how they would want to be remembered, and inspires them to put down their weapons and help put out the fires. She puts hope and awe in them, and they become better for it. The whole crux of Wonder Woman in two pages.

In Infinite Crisis #5, we see the same scene, the same riot, but this time, in a completely different set of events, Wonder Woman looses her temper and engages these regular people in a fight. These actions were so incredibly out of character for her, even considering the crisis. That aside for a moment, before a violent Wonder Woman thrashes more powerless people about, Earth 2 Wonder Woman returns from Olympus.

(For sanity's sake, from here on out, our Wonder Woman will be refered to as Diana.)

She said that her husband, Steve Trevor, died using her last bit of power teleporting Wonder Woman to Earth. After a brief talk where Diana is told by her older counterpart that she needs to go to Superman, Earth 2 Wondery Woman does for Diana what Steve Trevor did for her, dissapearing into the aether to send Diana across the barrier to Earth 2.

My question is this: Why does Wonder Woman have to sacrifice herself to teleport Diana to Earth 2 when our Superman simply FLEW there ten pages earlier?

For that matter, in a book that's re-defining the roles and attitudes of the "Big Three" in the DCU, Wonder Woman is written as increasingly blood-thristy. When she does finally come around towards the Diana we know, her purpose seems only to serve Superman's character, something I firmly object to. Geoff Johns is doing a great job serving some of these characters, especially Batman, but Wonder Woman is getting the short end of the icon-stick by my read.

There was a lot of things I did like, but I was so put off by this that I felt let down. The good stuff is the Superman fight on an empty Earth 2 - Jerry Ordway does a great Action Comics #1 homage there, and there's a bit about how all the new post-C.o.I.E. characters would have been from Earth 8 had the multiverse lived on. I think when the next two issues come out, this will have been the lull before the true chaos, so let's hope it all pays off in the end.

Teen Titans Annual '06 + Teen Titans #33 -

The annual was was absurdly delayed. A Valentine's Day issue, it came out last wednesday, after Teen Titans #33 came out. Since most of the events lead into #33, a good deal of this stuff was given already given away.

In the Annual, we get to see Tim Drake - Robin - really come into his own as a leader of the Teen Titans, something that bodes poorly for Cyborg's odds of making it out of Crisis. He and most of the other Titans are helping relief effort after Chemo is dropped on Bludhaven, and even Superman gives Tim the thumbs up to lead the clean-up.

Back in Smallville, things get a little too TV's Smallville, with a recovering Conner and a de-powered Wonder Girl. I really enjoy this pairing, it always made sense to me that the two Titans who felt so overshadowed by their mentors would get together. In this issue, however, they sleep together, and the Kents are suprisingly mellow about it. Superboy answers a call to Titan's tower from Nightwing, and leaves Wonder Girl behind. In #33 we learn that after Conner leaves, Wonder Girl strikes a deal with Ares to regain her powers... how they might change because of this is still a mystery.

Most of the rest of this issue is spent doing the dueling caption box thoughts of Superboy and Nightwing as they make their way towards Alexander Luthor's lair in the arctic. Nightwing is an odd match for Superboy who spends most of his time with, well, Robin. He even points out at one point that it's like "hanging out with your friend's older brother." This is basically to flesh out Conner more before his big showdown in Infinite Crisis #6, and they do a pretty good job. I've been shown more depth to this character in the past two years in Teen Titans than in the entirety of his own series. This could just be to kill him, though. DC is mean like that.

All in all, these were the best two issues of Teen Titans we've gotten in a long while. The next issue is One Year Later, so who knows what's happening or even who's still alive to fill the team's roster.

That's it for me. I'm pooped. I'm so tired, I'm going to go read some comics.

Did I mention that I like comics?

Thanks for reading.
-casey-

UPDATE!

2006-03-17T21:47:00.000-05:00

The YouTube video I posted below was taken down, for some reason.

It was a trailer for an upcoming Samuel L. Jackson movie.

What movie, you ask? Oh, just a little movie called...

SNAKES ON A PLANE!

It has snakes! And planes! Well, okay, one plane!

If you're still interested, and after the title how can you not be, here is a link...

SNAKES ON A PLANE!

Revel in the absurditity and awesomeness.

-casey-

This Isn't Comics Related, But...

2006-03-17T14:08:00.000-05:00

It Is Here...

Have You Seen This Man

2006-03-12T23:42:00.000-05:00

The picture you see above is the DC Direct Blue Beetle action figure from 2002.

I didn't KNOW this existed until a week ago, and as you might notice, it is now 2006.

I've searched eBay, I've made phone calls, I've asked people at Toy Shows to keep an eye out for me... to no avail! So I figured I'd use the meager soap-box afforded me by the internet to beg anyone who stumbles upon this website and knows anything regarding the wearabouts of one Theodore Kord to get in touch with me, and I'll exchange some cold hard cash for your blue molded plastic.

BWA-HA-HA-HA!

-casey-

Comic Shop Box - What I Got In February

2006-03-12T19:23:00.000-05:00

Readers and Readettes,

I'm back, for now, and since I haven't done any Pull Lists for this month, I thought I'd take a bit and do the entire month of February in one shot! Next post will be in a few weeks, that Wonder Woman look back I've been talking about, I've been re-reading all the back issues so I hope it'll be worth the wait.

Anyway, here goes nothing:

MISC Publishers:

The Middleman: Vol. 1 -

I kind of stumbled upon this one... I saw the trade paperback at Comicazi, and the art caught my eye, but with a strained budget I couldn't spend 10 bucks on an unknown collection of four issues... oh, what a fool I was. Later, with my lady, we were digging through the quarter bin at Newbury Comics when I found the first two issues: it's solid gold.

At first glance, this story about a cool-as-ice agent of a secret society that cleans up supernatural occurrences seems to just be a Men In Black rip-off, but it after reading the sense of humor and adventure in this book feels more like if Johnny Quest met Bugs Bunny. One of the keener things is that where in Men In Black they had to use a Neuralizer to wipe the memories of witnesses, in The Middleman they just chock it up to people rationalizing things to stay sane.

Any other reservations about originality were cast aside when I picked up the first issue of Volume 2, which features Sensei Ping, an untrappable martial artists who wears a Mexican luchadore mask. It's fabulous.

I also discovered, after the fact, that the art I like so much is done by Les McClaine, an ex-Comicazi regular! Here's a link to his site, Johnny Crossbones!

Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty #4 -

Ennnnh. I'm usually enthused, but my patience for this book is wearing thin. Fresh up until the last few issues, Ashley Wood is running out of tricks that we haven't already seen in Metal Gear Solid 1, and the plot is overly complex and murky... On the other hand, so was the plot of the game. I'll tough it out, because I wish I were Solid Snake, but anyone who's not a crazy fan should wait until IDW puts out Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater which does this crazy stuff with a 1960’s cold-war twist.

Put the Book Back On The Shelf: The Belle & Sebastian Anthology –

An Open Letter To Newbury Comics: Peabody, MA Location –

Dear Newbury Comics,
You are fairly awesome - you put out a yearly zine letting me know what music you liked from the past 365, and always have friendly people working with you. You even let me paw through the loose Star Wars minis when someone opened the box already. So it is with a heavy hand and heart that I write this. While I appreciate that you discounted Put The Book Back On The Shelf by five dollars, WHY DID YOU PUT A BIG PINK STICKER ON THE COVER? Now, the damage was not irreparable... after some long, hard work with a razor and some Goo-Gone, it came off. But I was tested, and tried... we can stay together, but it may take some time to re-build trust.
I love you, Newbury Comics, and can't wait to see you again this weekend.

Now that that's done, if you like Belle & Sebastian, there's no reason not to get this book. It covers a good deal of their rather prolific career, up to Dear Catastrophe Waitress. The different creators they got managed to pick and choose perfectly when to adapt the lyrics of the songs, when to tell a story with the tone of the songs, and when to just let the lyrics tell the story over their pictures. Piaza, New York Catcher is the best of the book, and I get more than a little choked up when I read it.

When Zombies Attack! #1 -

A new piece from Jim Mahfood about cops who handle zombies and vampires in a town where that's the norm. As Middle Man is to adventure, this book is to horror. There's a bit less of winking and nudging in this one, though. It's got a gritty truck-stop flavor, and reading it the town feels less like a suburb and more like the rural south with slightly more flesh eating. A solid read, and Mahfood proves again that his art is good for pretty much any genre.

Marvel Comics:

Powers #16 -

I want you to think about the concept of a Green Lantern Corps.
A group of aliens pick locals from each sector of space, and grant them powers to protect said space. Now picture that concept on as much acid as you can get your hands on, or the equivalent amount of Grant Morrison's Blood, and you'll have a good idea of what this issue of Powers is like. Throw in a really odd movie reference, and viola, instant Bendis Love.

New Avengers #16 -

Just as much Bendis! Not as much love!
Wait, why does that get an "!"?
The readers get another look inside the now inept S.H.E.I.L.D., something every recent Marvel writer has decided to do... it's getting to the point that I wonder how this new director got the job after Nick Fury? Did she loose a bet? Someone needs to show her getting the job even remotely done, just to add some believability to her as a nemesis. Also Alpha Flight dies. If you look at that sentence proportionately to the rest of this summary, that's about how much space their deaths took up in the actual comic. With very few actual Avengers in this comic, I have to question the pacing of a story, even if it's just started.

Daredevil #82 -

Way less Bendis! Way more love!
This book was brutal. Ed Brubaker decided that when everyone says "Boy, it's been a rough year for Matt Murdock!” he should reply "YOU ARE ALL PANSIES!" and cause further havoc in everyone's favorite blind lawyer. Michael Lark's pencils are welcome as always, and I miss them both on Gotham Central like a vegan misses cheese. The ending is a shocker, unless you read Previews (See: my earlier post)

Ultimate Spider-Man #90 -

Equal Bendis and Love!
The perfect balance is struck in Ultimate Spider-Man.
Um, this book is great? It comes out twice a month, and is always great? I don't know what to say about Ultimate Spidey except that it's the only title I buy those sweet deluxe hard-covers for.

X-Factor #3 -

Mutant Noir!
Multiple Man runs a detective agency and employs Siren, Wolfsbane, M, a de-powered Richtor and Strong Guy (who I still don't 'get'). The art is care of Ryan Sook, so it's as dark and silky smooth as the finest dark chocolate, with Peter David's writing providing an ironic sense of humor for a smidge of bitterness. I hereby proclaim this simile complete!
I typically don't buy X-Books, but this one jumped to the top of my read pile after issue #1 off the shelf.

I Heart Marvel: Web of Romance -

Speaking of "Off Radar," Marvel did a whole month of romance comics in celebration of Valentine's Day, most of which were tremendously boring or just plain dumb. All is forgiven, however, because Marvel put out a comic that is the essence of Spider-Man:

Super-powered fights and not knowing quite how to handle girls.

In this ish, Spidey is at a loss for what to get his wife Mary Jane this Valentine's Day, and consults everyone from Captain America to the Mandrill. Pete comes through in the end, as always, and even gets to have some fun at the expense of Johnny Storm. This was a great read.

She Hulk #5 -

While this wasn't the best issue of this book, I'll still take She-Hulk a hundred times before I pick up almost any other book.

X-Statix Presents: Dead Girl #2 -

X-Force/X-Statix was WAY ahead of its time. About a privately owned Mutant Super-Team, the book drawn by Mike Allred and written by Peter Milligan featured bizarre characters like the super-sensitive Orphan, electric-sweat-wielding Anarchist, green blob with a video-camera Doop, and of course Dead Girl.

When a group of heroes and villains come back from Hell to make trouble for Dr. Strange, the sorcerer supreme goes to Heaven to put together a team. Also, he complains about his hemorrhoids and re-incarnates Dead Girl out of prime cuts of meat. It's insane, completely, but fun.

Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #3 -

Oh me, oh my, do I loves me this book. In fact, the name of this blog should be changed to Casey Loves Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane.

Like Web of Romance, it takes the melodramatic romance of early Spidey comics blends that with the fun of Peter Parker's secret identity and then shifts the focus to the utterly charming Mary Jane Watson. This issue is about Mary Jane joining a production of Othello at the school, and all the social pitfalls that come with changing cliques. The whole thing has the same fun nostalgic charm as an episode of Degrassi Jr. High, but with Spider-Man walking around in his civvies.

Don't judge me.

DC Comics:

Rann/Thanagar War Infinite Crisis Special -

This was the only comic I got this month that really tied into Infinite Crisis in any direct way, and it was a yawn - possibly a yawn and a half?
Some anti-climactic deaths, confusing pencils and something… odd happening to Kyle Rayner, my favorite Green Lantern adds up to disappointment.

Seven Soldiers: The Bulleteer #3 -

Bulletteer is the weakest of the Seven Soldiers series yet it's still strangely appealing.
Bulletteer is Morrison's take on the Nineties Super-Hero - the scantily armored busty lass - is reflexive enough to keep my interest. The ludicrousness of the whole situation is on every page, and none more than the last one of this issue.

Y: The Last Man #42 –

Young 355 in Boston! Woo-hoo! BOSTON REPRESENT IN A POST APOCALYPTIC WORLD WITHOUT MEN!

Ahem.

I really liked this issue! The flashbacks give us a good look at how messed up 355 really is, and why. I'll be sad when it's over.

JLA #125 -

Thank GOD this is over.
What can I say? When a key part of your big cross-over is to break-up the JLA, maybe you should end their book, instead of dragging it out in some half-assed Key story-line? The art was abysmal, and it tied in more with the story from Justice League: Elite than anything else, something I had to learn by going "Hey, Aaron, who are these people?" even though I've been reading this book since day one.

I have great faith in Brad Meltzer's upcoming run that takes place One Year Later, and let's hope that Booster Gold and the new Blue Beetle make the roster!

Jonah Hex #4 -

Jonah Hex shoots a LOT of people, and damn, if it isn’t fine reading.

Teen Titans #32 -

Teen Titans is suffering badly from artist Mike McKone's departure. I know a lot of fans are having trouble believing the recent romantic developments but overall the story is just kind of bland. Everything about this book, from its’ characters to it's creators, are stretched too thin across the DCU right now.

Maybe that's a problem inherent in having a book starring teen sidekicks, but I thought the point of Teen Titans was for them to develop outside of their roles as diminutive Supermen, Batmen, and Wonder Women – so it would have been nice to see their development happen here instead of in Crisis or Detective Comics or whatever titles things are going down in.

Gotham Central #40 -

Come back, Rene!

Gotham Central was one of those rare titles full of real people instead of supermen: people braver than any of those dressed in tights and Kevlar. Gritty and mature without being exploitive or pornographic, every issue of Gotham Central said something about standing ones ground in a city so corrupt it needs a man dressed like a bat just to contain the chaos. This book will be sorely, sorely missed.

This is the issue where we see what's to become of Crispus Allen's killers, and watch Rene Montoya spiral further downward. It's the finale to the book, and as the cover suggests, Rene's time with the GCPD. She's become a good friend over the years, and I'm hoping that something can shake her out of this during 52. I know that everyone who reads this book will be there for her.

Wonder Woman #226 -

This was the perfect ending to this series, something that was a big conflict with a scene in Infinite Crisis #5. But I leave you with something Greg Rucka signed on my copy of #195.

"She gives us hope."

While typing up this list, I noticed that I'm getting less comics than I used to... this is for two reasons:

The first is that Marvel is putting out less and less comics that interest me. While Daredevil and She-Hulk remain great, and there are surprises like Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane or X-Factor, the majority of their books... aren't that good. Not "great", good.

Spider-Man is without a doubt my favorite comic book character, and his flagship book is just crummy, with gimmicks, crossovers, costume-changes, and silly characterization bogging it down.
Instead of seeking fresh looks at new characters, Marvel seems to be repeating their pattern of giving two or three really great creators an back-breaking load of work: while they've laid the pressure off Bendis in recent months (cutting his work-load down from nine books to three), I'm a little scared for Ed Brubaker's work, which might suffer under the weight of Captain America, Books of Doom, Daredevil, AND his upcoming Uncanny X-Men run.

The second reason is that DC is culling their titles in the wake of Infinite Crisis. Out of the titles I listed, all but two were limited series, and three of them ended this month. That being said, I've been furiously adding new books to my pull-list, books like Blue Beetle, Paul Dini's Detective Comics, and Checkmate. I have high expectations for these books, as I'm losing a lot of the comics I used to rush to the store to get before.

Here's hoping DC reaches the finish line as neatly and excellently as they've run the race.

So that's February for me! In writing this, I've become two weeks late on March, so hopefully I'll get something for that up soon.

Thanks for reading!

-casey-

Lack of Updates

2006-02-08T13:43:00.000-05:00

Hey.

So I'm working on a screenplay, and hoping to put it into production in the coming months.

Unfortunately, with a 32 Hour-A-Week job, school five days a week, and a girlfriend who I don't really get to see as much as I'd like as it is, the ol' Blog is going to take a hit...

So instead of writing a few little updates each week, until this script is done, I'm going to just write a big piece every now and again. The next one will be about Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman run. After that, probably a breakdown of All Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder so far, and then some Infinite Crisis mojo.

So keep your eyes open, and hopefully soon I'll get back to a more regular schedule.

Thanks for reading,

-casey-

A Correction, An Omission...

2006-01-26T22:01:00.000-05:00

Or: The Perils of Late-Night Blogging...

First, a correction from my last post.
Wonder Woman #225 isn't actually the last issue of this volume! This is nothing but good news, as an extra issue of Wonder Woman is always a good thing. I'm not sure why I thought this was the final issue, but me and The Lady were all worked up, and now we get to continue being all antsy and teary-eyed for another month. That being said, the post looking back at the last 31 issues of the book will come at the end of February, you know... When the book is actually over. I discovered that it wasn't the final issue first when I read it today, and saw "Next Month..." in the back, and then when I got home and received an e-mail correcting me.

And since I've read it, a brief review!

Wonder Woman #225 -
What better way to take your character out of the middle of an action scene without having her run away? In this one, Athena plucks Diana out from above the sea where Paradise Island used to be for a chat, in which a great deal of questions about the Gods of Olympus get tied up. We also get a really great response from Diana about why she stays: it's the heart of the character, simple and true, and I got a little lump in my throat when I read it. Great character work on everyone, from the Gods to the staff at the embassy. Also, Ferdinand wears a trench coat and fedora, Ninja Turtle style. I look forward to seeing how this chapter in Diana's life ends.

And I can't believe I left this out when writing up my pulls for last week.

Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #2 -
This book is so much fun. A lot of people look at it sideways, like it belongs on the WB, but there's far more Archie than Dawson's Creek in these pages. The first issue was Mary Jane trying to corner Spidey to ask him out on a date, which provided a great deal of comedy, some of which in the "wink-wink" variety when she professes her plan to Peter Parker and we get to be in on the joke. When people moan and complain that comics aren't "fun" anymore, I like to generally ignore them while I bury my nose in this fine book.

So that's it, and remember kids: Don't Post Things On The Internet past 11 P.M.! It's a great way to embarrass yourself!

Till next time,

_casey_

Shameful: My Pull List for 3/4 of January!

2006-01-25T00:57:00.000-05:00

Okay... Please, forgiveness?
Because sadly this blog does not rain pennies down upon me, and I need to get an education, and because I've been catching up on the new season of Gilmore Girls (what? I don't work ALL the time...), I kind of let my pull-list back up. So here's all the books I've either gotten or will be getting in January. The bonus of doing this late is that I've actually read some of them!

I'm also going to get all wacky and group them by publisher... Okay, KINDA - the Big Two and then Misc.!

MISC:

Metal Gear Solid Vol. 2 TPB & Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty #3 -
Good stuff, and I'm glad that they seem to be publishing the entire game series as comics. Ashley Wood's art is perfect for this surreal world of giant shamans, cloned secret agents and giant, war-head launching tanks. The only bad part is that you don't get the signature sound-track that comes with the game...

Penny Arcade: Attack of the Bacon Robots -
Does Penny Arcade really need me to talk about it? It's a enjoyably profane comic, and the second listing here that's video-game related. It's also the only webcomic that has a CONVENTION all about it. Here's a link to the site, where you can read the comics archived in this volume, but I want to have it bound and bathroomable:
Penny Arcade!

Sexy Chix -
Have I mentioned lately how much I love anthologies? Because I do. Throw in dozens of amazing female creators, from Gail Simone to Jill Thompson to Joyce Carol Oates, and you've got something that should make you sit up and take notice. There's a lot of hoopla about the name of this book, but if our friend 50 Cent has taught us anything, it's that you can't really fight marketing.

WETA Kong vs V-Rex Statue -
I know that this is not a comic book.
I know that it's something that, priced at 500 dollars, is what I like to call a "relationship-ending-purchase."
That being said, it's King Kong, and he's fighting a dinosaur... And he could be doing that in my living room every day till I die.
Feel free to pick one up for me.

Marvel Comics:

Daredevil #81 -
Last Bendis/Maleev issue! The Murdock Papers has been an amazing ride, and I can't wait to see where all the characters end up by the last page of this issue.

New Avengers #15 -
I was really impressed with the last issue, not just with Frank Cho's always outstanding work, but with the depth of Jessica Drew's backstory. It's easy to have a character that betrayed a team seek redemption, and often kind of dull, but to draw an incredibly complex and logical series of events leading to what happened in #13 is well, art. Good show, Bendis.

The Pulse #13 -
What? ANOTHER book I love that Bendis is leaving? The Pulse is more of an off-beat superhero title, and it sadly didn't receive the editorial support of DC's excellent Gotham Central. I'm hoping the new creative team (whoever they are)
understands the behind-the-scenes concept, and gets the book on a monthly schedule.

She Hulk 2 #4 -
Woo! Scott Kolins! He did some amazing work back on Avengers & The Flash with Geoff Johns, but they lured him to She Hulk because of the former. This is a flashback issue, shining new light on the events of the Avengers: Search for She-Hulk story arc that Kolins penciled, and giving us a peek at the aftermath. It's amazing character work, and Dan Slott shows us that even though he's brilliantly funny, he can tug a heart string or two when he needs to.

Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do #6 -
This took a surprising turn with the last issue... And no, I don't mean "It came out." While the Dodson's work has a very cheese-cake feel, work like this and Trouble really highlights their subtle expression work. There's a lot of emotion packed into Kevin Smith's script for #5, and I hope #6 continues the trend.

Ultimate Spider-Man #89 -
This issue ties up the Silver Sable arc. Lately this book has fallen into the trap that Brian K. Vaughn's run of Ultimate X-Men has: spending each arch introducing the "Ultimate" version of some character from the regular Marvel U. Ultimate Spider-Man is a whole big sandbox full of toys: play with the ones you've got for a bit. The next arc introduces Ultimate Deadpool but at least we get some Spidey/Kitty pride interaction.

DC Comics:

All Star Superman #2 -
"Can YOU Guess The Secret of Superman's FORBIDDEN ROOM?!"
I miss the days before barcodes, when that would be a big box taking up 1/4 of the cover. The fact that it's on there at all is really a testament to the wacky silver -age feeling of the book. While generally not a member of the Morrison/Quietly Mob (I say mob because they CAN get violent), I'm really enjoying this book.

Green Lantern Corps: Recharge #4 -
Kilowog says to pick up this book, poozers.
While I'm not nutty about Hal Jordan coming back to life, or the direction they've taken his series in, DC at least did us the favor of returning Guy Gardener to the ranks of the Green Lanterns and restarting the Corps. Look for this to turn into a monthly OYL, and for this to lead into Ion, which I'm really looking forward to.

Infinite Crisis #4 -
The Crisis gets bloodier. Weather this issue is more extreme than the Freedom Fighters scene from #1 is up for debate, but there's no arguing that this is a big issue. I really don't want to spoil any of the stuff for you, but now that all the exposition is done, I can't imagine how much nuttier it's going to get in #5.

JLA #124 -
Dawn Raven? More like YAWN Raven!
I feel like a lot of books DC is putting out right now are just waiting to be canceled and re-booted. The Flash had the same problem: Geoff Johns finished his run, and since there was a few months left before the book ended, they've had some really bland filler stories featuring Vandal Savage. JLA, on the other hand, brought back the Key, and ties up the loose ends from the Justice League Elite mini series. While I don't mind Green Arrow getting some face-time, with all the insane things that the League could be dealing with right now his fling with Dawn Raven shouldn't be at the top of the list.

Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle #3 -
A particularly cool take on the New Gods, where the people of New Genesis seem to be homeless crazies, and DeSaad is a conniving therapist. I'm curious to see how this all ties into the Seven Soldiers books, as right now it seems to be in a parallel kind of universe. I have faith as the other soldiers stuff have been an impressive, lego-like piece of work.

This brings us to the last book I'm getting this month:

Wonder Woman #225 -
Issue #225 marks the end of Wonder Woman Vol. 2, and the end of Greg Rucka's tremendous work on the book. This was a character that I wasn't really attached to one way or another 30 issues ago, and now I'll fiercely defend her and the title. I'm going to post a big look back at this particular chunk of Wonder Woman on Saturday/Sunday, and give some speculation about the future of the character. Something this great deserves it's own post.

That's it for me, folks. That's a big chunk of change (especially if I somehow score that Kong statue... With my discount it's only 450 dollars... hmmm...).

Until next time!

_casey_

Buy This...

2006-01-19T01:21:00.000-05:00

During my last breakup, a big part of getting through it was reading through all three parts of Jeffrey Brown's Girlfriend Trilogy. After that really cathartic reading of Clumsy, I remarked how good these were to read while I was heartbroken, but how they were just as amazing to read when I was happy in love.

It's that unique quality in Brown's bio comics that makes them stand out - he manages to make your heart swell and then deflate just as big and flat as his did. All this, using 4 (or sometimes 2) panels a page drawn in ball-point pen.

So this new one, Every Girl Is The End of the World for Me will definately make my list of things to read come April. The title alone sends me back to highschool, when I got a deadly crush on every pretty girl I knew (with the exception of a few lasting ones).

Brown also does a great deal of funny, funny shit. Be A Man is his re-telling of Clumsy if he'd been more "macho". Also, anyone who likes Super Hero comics should pick up BigHead, in which the titular character battles villians such as The Puncher. Brilliance all around.

Order Jeffrey Brown's work here (or at your local shop!) - TopShelf Comix
Visit his website here - The Holy Consumption

-casey-

Solicit Problems...

2006-01-18T15:15:00.000-05:00

The biggest problems for comics retailers is that books are solicited 2-3 months in advance. That means, before issue #1 has even hit the stands, they have to determine their need for issue #2. This can cause some serious shortages if the book is a break-out hit. The fist example that comes to mind is Ultimate Spider-Man (USM). USM started off back in 2000, when Marvel began their "Never Reprinting" rule, before they did the political "Well... I guess if we print it with a different cover, it's not the same, right? So we're really NOT re-printing! Heh-heh ::wrings hands greedily::" move.

Now, USM was something that had been done a few times: re-tell the Spider-Man story without having to worry about how many times he's fought who or when or which lady he was with at the time. Not knowing that Bendis was about to become a hit mainstream writer, and not knowing they had a slightly fresher take on the concept than any bland Spider-Man Year One kind of deal, comic shops didn't order too many of issue #1. Then they cut orders on #2, since it lacked that big shiny #1 which seems to move comics. Seeing this, Marvel cut the print run on #5, which was about to go to press.

Then #1 made it to the stands, and KA-BOOM! Home run for Marvel. However, the demand for #5 FAR out weighed the print run... check out the Price Guide for Ultimate Spider-Man. Look at the price for #5. It's higher than #3 & #4 combined! So because everything's done so far in advance, things can get way out of whack.

Enter Previews.

Previews is the monthy book put out by Diamond, the company that, in all honesty, has a monopoly on the comic book distribution across the country. In previews, they give cover art, hints and things to come, and slightly dodgy plot summaries of up-coming issues. They try to keep it vague because, hey, owners are readers too!

Now, as you may have noticed, I've reached a certain point in comics nerdity, to the point where I, say, keep a blog about them. I read the previews each month to make sure that nothing I'm excited about slips under my radar. And sometimes, I find something expressly cool that maybe isn't getting the full media blitz of a publisher like the "I think I'm too cool for school" Nextwave is.

With all the changes going on in the DCU, it's pretty dangerous to read the solicits, since they're ads for books during the One Year Later period, and pretty much HAVE to reveal who makes it out... if they're advertising a Green Arrow issue with Ollie Queen on the cover, then hey, I bet Ollie doesn't buy it in Infinite Crisis.

So what have I done for my Previews fix? With nothing earth-shattering going on in the coming months, I assumed, wrongly, that the Marvel previews would be safe... Now, if you don't care about spoilers, by all mean, click THIS. Daredevil is the book I'm furious about.

Bendis still has an issue left on his run, Brubaker's first issue hasn't even hit stands yet, and they're giving away this MAJOR event in Daredevil's life! I understand that it's a catalyst for the story to come, but COME ON! Give us a chance to be suprised, moved, and hurt. Whatever drama was packed into the moment of revelation on the page has been stripped away and left us just turning pages until it happens. I've seen an issue of Previews where Marvel blanked out a cover of Amazing Spider-Man because it had the face of Gwen Stacy and Norman Osborne's illegitamate child on the cover. That horrible secret required protection and this didn't? This is the same fury I'm filled with when I see movie trailers, that instead of hinting at the film and giving us a taste of the flavor, simply spoil every detail of the plot up to the climax.

I know these aren't really meant for fan consumption, and are a tool for the retailer... but again: the retailers are fans too. And the reality of the situation is that fans DO read them, and I've found it's a great tool for finding out when things like trades are coming out, or again, little books that I might have missed. They even put an order form for people with Sub-Boxes to give to their local shop's owner to make sure they get exactly what they want.

So at what point is it the responsibility of publisher to warn us of spoilers, how explicit should these solicitations really be, and at what point do we just give up reading Previews?

Tonight, or tomorrow if I can't get to it, my picks from last week and this!

-casey-

Two Sweet Art Projects: Too Bad I Can't Draw

2006-01-15T02:40:00.000-05:00

Tonight I've got two links to some terribly keen art projects.

The first is from LiveJournal. Yours, Truely is suckered with a certain fondness for Babs Gordan, the first Batgirl. So when a friend kicked me towards this, the Draw Batgirl project, I spent entirely too much time clicking back and forth through the various Batgirls, new, old, or entirely new concepts.

Here's my fave so far -

What can I say, I'm a fool for the classic costume!

It's by a cat called Ian J.

He's got a LiveJournal where he posted this (Linksville!), and a website where all sorts of cool illustrations are up (Link to the Past!).

I'm a big fan of both Brian Lee O'Malley and Andi Watson, so it says something that this sketch is my favorite over the ones they did.

There are seriously hundreds of these things, and if you have some free time and love comics, give it a click. If you're a busy fella or gal, I take no responsiblity when you fall terribly, terribly behind after clicking. It's all the Pretty, Pretty art's fault.

Draw Batgirl!

The second project is something I found through MySpace (yes, I have a MySpace account... Leemee alone.) Jim Mahfood posted on his page about it, it's called Drink And Draw, and it's exactly as it sounds.

A gaggle of artists get together with alcoholic beverages and pens of various inks and draw whatever they want. The end result is completey groovy.

Here's one of Food's pieces that I love.

It's got this crazy romantic Ralph Steadman-y quality too it, thanks to the ink-blot/lizard combo.

You can find most of the Drink And Draw stuff on their MySpace page:

Drink And Draw!

This particular picture was yanked from Mahfood's personal page, which itself has no shortness of awesome:

FOOD ONE!

So that's it for me kiddies. Tomorrow I might be able to swing the always late Pull List for last Wednesday. Next week maybe I'll get to some reviews?

Here's hoping, and see you soon...

_casey_

Pull List Week of 01/05

2006-01-07T01:39:00.000-05:00

Comics ho!

New Avengers: Breakout TPB -
FINALLY. I beleive I've allready expressed my qualms with this "overpriced hardcover and then the paperback trade months later" nonsense.
That aside, I've read this trade in single issue form allready, and frankly - I dig it. I was resistant to it at first, mostly because it's called "New Avengers," and while it's a very cool, these characters don't seem to gel as a team in my mind the way the old Avengers do. It's nothing I can put my finger on, but put this trade side-by-side with Young Avengers and... something... is missing.
Once you get past it, the art is mighty pretty, and Bendis gets to shut-up all those people who complain that he can't write action. On top of the action, though, we get the Bendis Spider-Man, who in my opinion is the best version of the character swinging around the Marvel U right now. I highly reccomend it.

Marvel Zombies #2 -
They talk about Spider-Man eating his wife and aunt.
This book is completely crazy and utterly awesome. The covers alone are worth $2.99.

Gotham Central #39 -
I'm so sad this is ending. At least it's on the creator's terms and not canceled by DC Editorial. If anyone hasn't been reading this book so far, I won't go into what it's about, but it should be my most intense read of the week. A bonus note: Greg Rucka has said they're going to reprint this entire series eventually in trade, so start picking them up now and avoid the rush! BUY IT!

Jonah Hex #3 -
What's cooler than pirates?
For those of you who answered "Cowboys!" Then you, sir or madam, are correct. While ninjas would have also been an acceptable answer, Jonah Hex has none. It's just nice to read a comic that is self-contained, beautifully drawn and features a scarred character with a firm yet undefinable moral code.

Seven Soldiers: Frankenstien #2 -
It took me a loooong time to get on board with this Seven Soldiers thing, but now I'm totally absorbed in it. I'm not sure where, exactly, it's headed though. The first issue of this comic featured a decapitated magician and weird psychic slug things. So I have no clue what's coming in this ish.

Superman: Sacrifice TPB -
Let's play everyone's favorite game "How Many Times Can We Get Casey To Buy Wonder Woman #119?!?!" Apparently the answer is at least three (the issue, this, Omac trade) but PROBABLY four, as they'll reprint it in the appropriate volume of Wonder Woman.
The sacrifice arc itself isn't that impressive, and other than getting to see Darksied wearing boxing gloves it had me screaming "MOVE IT ALONG!" as we got teeny tiny little clues about what was going on in each issue. Luckily the payoff, the Superman/Wonder Woman fight, was more than worth it.
Four times, though?
I should just burn the money, right?

Teen Titans #31 -
Everything that's going on with Superboy, and the Titans off in space with Donna Troy and we're reading about Brother Blood? Geoff Johns might be stretched too thin over at DC. Well, I'll give the issue a fair shot anyway, but the title has been hurting since Mike McKone left.

Y: The Last Man #41
The origin of Agent 355! They've been doing quite a few asides to the main story lately, and while I'm glad for the depth it gives to important characters like 355, and supporting characters like Hero, I have to wonder if it means that the actual Y story is coming to an end. I know Vaughn is only doing a set number of issues, but I don't want it to end. Good things never last, Mr. Denham.

So that's it for this week, I'll give you some pocket reviews as soon as I pick up my books! Hope you grabbed some good stuff this week!

_casey_

Livejournal Feed!http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

2006-01-02T18:00:00.000-05:00

A teacher, excellent author and fellow blogger Michael A. Burstien created a Livejournal feed for this very page! In case there is more than just me and him reading it, I'm posting the link here once, and after that I'll be over in the link bar yonder!

Here's the info, just click the link and then add it as a friend!
Casey of Earth 2: Now On LJ!

Here's Michael's website, and a link to his own blog, which I read daily.
- MABFAN.com
- MABFAN's Musings

_casey_

Coolest Comics Couples - 2005

2006-01-02T17:42:00.000-05:00

So I'm a little TOO into the romantic aspect of fiction, and comics are no exception. So here are the five couples that got together (or should have) over the past year that hit the right chord with me, be it a funny one, a sad one, or one that makes me go "Awwwww..." louder than a bucket of kittens.

5 – Spider-Man and Luke Cage;
Oh, c’mon. Did you see these two in the pages of New Avengers? Luke probably sneaks across the hall to Spidey’s room for a little Alias #1 action once the lights go down in the Avenger’s Tower. If you listen closely, you can hear Iron Fist crying.

4 – Scott Pilgrim and Kimberly Pine;
This one takes place in the past, but a 4 or 5 page montage of Kim and Scott gave us so much insight into her character, and made me fall head over heels. At first she's rescued by Scott and things are grand and adventurous, but later there's a panel depicting what I took to be their first time together and it's heart-felt, and romantic and real. To hear how Scott asked Kim out, skip back a bit to my favorite lines from last year.

3 – Matt Murdock and Milla Donovan-Murdock;
Finally Matt Murdock gets the nice, stable woman he deserves. Thank god he's over his ninja/spy/ex-porn star phase. Milla on the other hand didn't really win the stability lottery, but hey, she’s married to Daredevil. I really like them as a couple, the dual blind saviors of Hell’s Kitchen, one by night and the other by day. Now if only his arch-enemies and ex-girlfriends* would stop barging in on them while she’s in her underwear…

2 – Ultimate Spider-Man and Kitty Pride;
That Peter Parker, It’s about time he found himself a nice Jewish girl. While it was heartbreaking to read Peter cut M.J. loose, these two seem made for each other. They’ve only been together for two issues, but they’re dynamic is a charming one. Spidey can’t trust anyone normal to be around him, since they keep getting hurt, so a Super-Girlfriend is perfect. Kitty on the other hand is a misfit in a house full of mutant super-people, so someone who understands alienation is good for her. Also, as any lady who's stooped to our level knows, nerds try harder.

1 – Diana (Wonder Woman) and Io;
“Whaaaat?,” you say? Go back, and re-read Greg Rucka’s Wonder Woman run. In every scene between these two, there is a tenderness, concern, respect and care between the characters that can’t be construed as anything other than romantic love. Diana is the first name Io utters when coming back to conciousness after a battle with Ares, and Wonder Woman recognizes Io by scent alone when her sight is gone. Wonder Woman #224 was told from Io’s perspective, and was an almost completely tragic ending to their expertly crafted romance.

Tomorrow a look back at some of the odder titles that I've really dug from 2005, followed by a look at the last year's CRISIS, and what could be coming!

_casey_

Comics 2005! The Lame and the Slightly Amusing

2005-12-30T15:11:00.000-05:00

Well, I’m back!

I’ll give you a moment to regain consciousness.

Well, it’s almost a new year, and part of my many, many resolutions is to update this silly blog more often! I’m aiming for at least twice a week; hopefully I can kick it into a Monday/Wednesday/Friday kind schedule. Right now, however, let’s take a look back.

Over the last year, I’ve read a lot of comics, epic and intimate, horrifying and humorous, and most importantly, amazing and just plain crappy. Here, in the last post of my first calendar year of blogging it up blog-school, let’s shoot a glance towards the latter.

This is the stuff I was impressed with… not so much. Sadly, most of the comics I felt were ill conceived or poorly executed (or sometimes horrifyingly both) were from the publisher of my childhood, Marvel Comics. Before I get into what I haven’t really liked, I should make a special note that I haven’t read Ed Brubaker’s Captain America, something universally praised by my peers. I’m waiting for the trades on that one. And oh, how waiting for the trades at Marvel has changed this year!

Before this year, I could get the trade of a story-arc a month or two after it’s competition… but now, if it’s something like the Brubaker Captain America, New Avengers, or Wolverine, we get the Marvel Premier Hardcover line. A fairly transparent moneymaking scheme, Marvel tacks an extra five dollars onto the price of a given trade for two small pieces of cardboard and an extra piece of paper for the book-jacket. I’m all for hardcover comics when warranted - Ultimate Spider-Man is collected three paperback trades apiece into oversized hardcovers, but New Avengers, for example, has reached it’s fourth story arc, 15 issues in, and there hasn’t been a soft-cover printing of it’s inaugural story.

Waiting has been sort of a theme at Marvel this year, because in the war on release dates, they lead the charge. DC has only really had the problem with All Star Batman, which really suffers from an odd six-week printing schedule, across the street Marvel has racked up an impressive, star-studded list of late books.

Suprisingly we saw the printing of further installments of Kevin Smith’s Spider-Man/Black Cat – The Evil Men Do, a mere 3 years late! Not to be outdone by his buddy, Joe Quesada, the Editor in Chief released Issue #1 of Daredevil: Father in April, following it up with Issue #2 in August. What If…? Month’s parody book Wha Huh? came out five months after the event was over, thanks to the Marvel legal department. Nick Fury waged a Secret War against the country of Latvaria, and we learned how it ended in the pages of New Avengers and The Pulse, since the last issue of this “summer event” came out during the last week of December. Probably the most impressive is Iron Man, who can’t seem to get a title past that crucial issue #5 mark.

Lateness aside, both companies were guilty of some less-than-stellar decisions from their editorial departments. Marvel decided it was time to kill Spider-Man and bring him back to life, all in one twelve-issue cross-over called "The Other", encompassing even a newly launched Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, something that kept me from picking up an otherwise enticing new Spidey title. Over in New Avengers, they introduced Ronin; a new Avenger who Daredevil claimed had the same intricate knowledge of the Japanese mob and operations of The Hand as he has! Ronin’s identity was revealed to be… Echo. A Native American deaf woman who spent her life as a boxer-slash-pianist, exploiting her ability to replicate any action she sees, until she became romantically entangled with Daredevil. How ANY of this adds up to a lifetime of knowledge of the inner workings of an ancient, Japanese secret society of ninja is beyond me. Just disappointing.

DC, on the other hand, made a few more long-lasting and far more irksome decisions. The return of two characters from the dead in particular bother me. The first is Jason Todd, the infamous dead Robin. He's back, as the Red Hood, and he's here to take revenge on Batman!... which is possibly the least interesting thing he could do. We spent the better part of the eighties and early Nineties watching Batman agonize over Jason’s death, now we get to see it all over again! Where a more interesting story could have been found, instead we get a fairly standard revenge tale, and the Batman universe continues to get grimmer and grittier.

Yippee.

The second return is that of Hal Jordan. I know I’m in the minority on this one, but I’ve always been a rabid Green Lantern fan. Even when I was sorting through my DC Animal Crackers as a toddler, I’d save G.L. as the last to be devoured. Hal had, however, become somewhat stale by the time the excellent Emerald Twilight came around. Kyle Rayner became Green Lantern of Earth, and after a long initiation period, became a respected hero and a powerful member of the JLA. Hal also became a far more interesting character posthumously, as the host for the Specter. Kyle Rayner was sadly fazed out of the JLA and the spotlight by John Stewart, thanks to his inclusion in the Justice League cartoon show. And then came Rebirth. All the guilt Hal had for killing the corps, for Zero Hour, all the pathos and penance he went through as the Specter… wiped away and made meaningless with a little bit of ret-conning. Suddenly he wasn’t responsible, it was an evil ring alien thing? Way to take your only flaw out of an otherwise flat heroic character.

Finally, the most disappointing thing in 2005 is a single sentence:

Rob Liefeld penciled two issues of the otherwise excellent Teen Titans.

That is all.

So those are my downs for the year… Not too numerous, but I felt the need to point them out. If we don't acknowledge history, we're damned to repeat it! Or at the very least, ret-con it.

I’m hoping to close out the year with things I really loved in comics, because that stack of long-boxes casts a big shadow over the pile of disappointments. So rather than making a wholly negative post, I’m going to close it out with my five favorite bits of dialogue from comics from the past year.

#5: Guy Gardner, to the Super-Buddies: JLA Unlimited #4 –
Guy: “Fasten yer seatbelts, you pathetic losers --- cause yt’s gonna be a bumpy ride!!!”
(Sidebar: The title of this issue was even better... "THIS GUY, THIS--- GARDNER!")

#4: Wolverine, to Magneto: House of M #8 –
Wolverine: “Lost your power over metal, have yuh? ::SNIKT:: I haven’t!”

#3: Spider-Man and Luke Cage, about the unresponsive Ronin’s identity: New Avengers #13 –
Spidey: “Is it Shang Chi?”
Luke: “Does that SOUND like Shang Chi?”
Spidey: “That's how Shang Chi sounds when he ignores me." (To Ronin) "Are you Foggy Nelson?”

#2: Scott Pilgrim and Kimberly Pine: Scott Pilgrim Vol.2 –
Scott: “I like you Kim, we should be dating. Also, do you want to play drums in my band?”
Kim: “Yes, Scott! Oh yes!!”

And my personal favorite... the line that I have been repeating non-stop since reading, nay, since someone TOLD me about it...

#1: Batman & Robin: All Star Batman & Robin #2:
Robin: “Who the hell are you, anyway, giving out orders like this?”
Batman: “What are you, dense? Are you RETARDED or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I’m the goddamn BATMAN."

So that's it! Hopefully I'll be back either tomorrow or Sunday with my favorite things from the year, ranging from Wonder Woman's Would-Be Girlfriend all the way to Hulk Versus the Devil Dinosaur!

See you soon!
-casey-

UPDATE COMING!

2005-11-28T00:37:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I just picked up two completely amazing anthologies, True Porn Vol 2 and Project Superior, and there's nothing that makes me want to write about comics more than really great comics.

Sorry for the delay, to whomever might be reading. UPDATE TOMORROW!

_casey_

The Morality Of Wonder Woman

2005-10-07T14:20:00.000-04:00

This is a post I made at another message board, in regards to the moral question posed by Wonder Woman's killing of Maxwell Lord in issue #119. It has been somewhat editied for context, but not for content.

A recap, for those not reading Wonder Woman, Adventures of Superman, and The Omac Project -

Maxwell Lord, former manager of the Justice League, is now in control of the international espionage agency Checkmate. He had abused the agency to spy on Metahumans around the world, and had compiled a complete dossier on every one of them, with the help of a sattelite, Brother I, that he stole from you guessed it: Batman. One person discovered this in time, Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle, an old friend of Max's. Max then promptly killed Ted. Things got even crazier when Max began targeting metahumans for termination using living machines called Omacs, controlled by the sattelite. The Justice League was fast on the trail of discovering who was pulling the strings of the Omacs when Max played his trump card - he had brainwashed Superman and was in complete control of him. Superman's first order was to take out the League's detective, and Superman beat Batman within an inch of his life. He was stopped, barely, by the league and before Superman could be contained, Max took control again and called Superman back to him. The only one who could stop him was Wonder Woman, and they proceeded to have the most gruesome Superman/Wonder Woman fight ever put to ink and paper. Wonder Woman was able to break Max's control over Superman for a moment, using the Lasso of Truth, but Max pointed out, she "couldn't keep me in this lasso forever! As soon as I'm free he'll be mine again." Faced with this propect, Wonder Woman snapped his neck, killing him. This raised the question - did she do the right thing?

I think Wonder Woman did exactly the right thing.

First I feel I should address the idea of non-lethal superheroes vs lethal ones.

I've found that there's a pretty black and white division in comics as far as characters who kill go: either they're like Superman, who are against killing an enemy under any circumstances what so ever, or they're the Wolverine and Punisher characters, who almost seem to kill regardless of the situation. This has to do a great deal, I feel, with the way comics matured. Kept in pre-adolescence by our own comics McCarthy Era, and the implementation of The Comics Code, it wasn't until the eighties when things became "grim and gritty", and we skipped over adolescence as a form and hopped right into this faux adult hood, where everything was over-sexed and over-violenced. With the exception of very early Steve Ditko The Question stories, Wonder Woman is the first character I've seen take a very well thought out approach to killing (And even in the early Question stories, the character absolved himself of any responsibility thanks to his very unusual ethical code). When the threat is big enough, and someone, in this case a hero, is in the position to act to prevent that threat from ever rearing up again, the only moral or ethical thing to do is to kill.

When thinking about Wonder Woman herself, we have to remember that Diana is not a regular person who was bitten by a radioactive spider, or a regular person who uses a magic word to become super. She’s unlike Superman, too, who isn't from Earth but was still raised by the all-American family. Diana was brought up in a culture completely removed from almost any other on Earth, with different views on love, religion, and yes, the sanctity of life. They are warriors, primarily, and while I'm sure life is respected on Paradise Island, I doubt the concept of having to take a life in battle was taboo. If there's no other choice to reach victory in battle (and why fight if it's not a matter of life-and-death anyway?), then killing is wholly acceptable.

Wonder Woman has made these views clear on several occasions in recent comics. Her advice to Superman about how to handle Ruin was to "put him down" over in Adventures of Superman. And in her own book, earlier this year, she fought a Medusa threatening to turn an entire world to stone, and faced with a mass murderer, Diana beheaded her. Medusa may have looked like a monster, but she was no less alive than Max Lord. No one questioned the nature of her death.

Maxwell Lord had the single most powerful being on earth, and he made him a weapon. This weapon was not only a living being, not only one of Diana's closest friends, but also the greatest hero the world has ever known. She had to stop him, and her options were to either take away the weapon, or keep Max from pulling the trigger ever again. Instead of killing or exiling Superman, the best option was to kill Max, take away his ability to hurt everyone ever again. The word EVERYONE is important here, because Max isn’t some crazed lunatic, who could simply kill a few people with his bare hands… he was using Superman in a way that could cause destruction on a level unimaginable to us, a death toll that would take years to count.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about putting Max in a coma, or mind-wiping him. Both of those options, in recent comics, have not worked out terribly well. Zoom II, over in The Flash, was in a coma for about a year before he got up and began tearing the Flash’s life apart again. There’s also the moral issue of putting someone forcibly into a coma, and how different from that is death if you never intend to let him or her awaken. As for option two, I don’t think I really need to do anything more than point to recent issues of JLA or almost any other DC title to show how well mind wiping works out.

I don’t think that Diana did this as a snap judgment. All of the other possibilities and options were considered, and killing him was the only one where she could be sure that the world was safe from Maxwell Lord. It’s easy to see her speed, her strength, and her flight, but one of Wonder Woman’s powers is to see with the wisdom of Athena. She made a decision, there is a panel in issue #119, where this all happens, where Wonder Woman looks at Max, makes the decision and does what needs to be done in the quickest most humane way possible, and she feels no guilt over it.

I’m sure there is a great deal of regret she feels. I’m sure it would have been easier to use one of those other options to stop Max, and it would have made her feel better. Wonder Woman doesn’t serve herself, she serves the world, and what was best for the world was for Maxwell Lord not to be in it. It could be argued that Batman’s views are incredibly selfish, considering the number of times he could have killed the Joker and saved hundreds of lives, but doesn’t in order to be able to sleep during the day.

Wonder Woman did the only moral, ethical thing she could do by killing Max Lord, and put the good of the world above her own feelings.

My Pull List At the Shop or OW! My Wallet!

2005-10-05T00:35:00.000-04:00

Today I decided to finely tune my list for the box held for me at Comicazi.
I thought I'd share the results with all o' y'all -

DC Comics -
52
Adventures of Superman - Greg Rucka Trades Only
Batman/Superman - Hardcover Trades Only
Gotham Central - Trades Also
Green Lantern Corps
Infinite Crisis - George Perez Covers Only
JLA
Jonah Hex
Justice League Unlimited - Digests Only
The Omac Project
Raan/Thanagar War
Teen Titans - Trades Also
Wonder Woman

Vertigo/Wildstorm -
Ex Machina - Trades Only
Fables - Trades Only
Y: The Last Man - Trades Also

Marvel Comics -
Astonishing X-men - Trades Only
Captain America - Brubaker Softcover Trades Only
Daredevil - Bendis Trades Also
New Avengers - Softcover Trades Only
Powers
The Pulse
Runaways - Digests Only
She-Hulk - Trades Also
Secret War
Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do .
Ultimate Spider-Man - Hardcovers Volumes Also
Ultimates - Trades Only
Wolverine - Mark Millar Softcover Trades only
X-Factor

Other Publishers! -
Boneyard - Trades Only
Conversation
Grounded
Metal Gear Solid - Trades Also
Scott Pilgrim
Sharknife!
SuperF*ckers!
Walking Dead - Trades Only

Misc! -
Anything by -
Bryan Lee O'Malley
Jim Mahfood
Jeffery Brown!

So that's my list, which I'm really happy with. I've got the best of each company, and alot of cool indie stuff when I need something that doesn't have so much punching in spandex.

If you see anything that's sorely missing, please lemme know!

_casey_

Pete and Repeat are In a Boat...

2005-09-28T00:47:00.000-04:00

DAMN THAT'S HOT.

I know I allready posted the new Scott Pilgrim cover today, but then I ran into this totally bad-ass Sharknife! Volume 2 cover.

Sharknife!, while it doesn't posses the same indie-rock heart as Scott Pilgrim, is groovy as all get-out, and Corey Lewis draws fighters so dynamic, you're likely to get punched in the face while reading it. What other comic gives you a list of the hero's special moves?

Check out Corey Lewis' Sharknife Website!

Also, the new cover references The Hieroglyphics, who are unbelievable.

God bless Oni Press.

_casey_

Oh SNAP!

2005-09-27T14:45:00.000-04:00

This is the first time I've seen this, poached off of Amazon.

Check out Bryan Lee O'Malley's website if you think this cover is as awesome as it ACTUALLY IS. Radio Maru

The only way this could make me happier is if it were called "Scott Pilgrim 3: Now With More Kimberly Pine"!

_casey_

Pull List and Reviews for 09/08

2005-09-11T21:34:00.000-04:00

We’re gonna try something a little different this week!
Since I ACTUALLY got down to the store, and ACTUALLY had money to buy books… ta-da! Reviews of what came out this week, plus a few other things in my box and what I actually thought of them…

At Least This Week, The Books Were Late!
Pull/Review List from 09/08:

- Serenity #3 – Wash Cover!

For a book that has Wash on the cover, there was sadly little Alan Tudyk action on the inside.

This is the finale of Serenity, an series that leads right into the movie of the same name that opens at the end of the month. Based on Joss Whedon's show Firefly, if you like the show, if you’re going to see the movie, then you’ll probably like this comic. Sadly, I didn't see much in this book to draw the average comic reader towards the box-office on the 30th, as something about the show’s characterizations and pace is lost when adapted to tiny boxes. Much of that can be attributed to the truly excellent acting on the show, but also the story inside is a bit rushed, probably to get all the issues out in time for the movie. Had they given it a little more time, we could have gotten more of the people, a better set up for the villains, and perhaps a little clearer depiction of the action, which gets a little confusing as to what’s actually happening in the end of the book.

If this was your first dip into the Firefly universe, go see the movie or Netflix the show anyway. And if you’re buying it because you love the show as much as I do, hell, this review is meaningless anyway.

- Ex Machina Vol 2. – Tag;

CURSE YOU AND YOUR CLIFFHANGERS, BRIAN K. VAUGHN!

Even in trade format, how they haunt me.

This second arc about a superhero that becomes Mayor of New York delves further into the extra-terrestrial source of Mayor Hundred’s ability to talk to machinery, and how exposure to it hasn’t affected everyone else in such a positive way. It’s a good superhero story in of itself, but that’s not REALLY what this book is about.

Vaughn uses science fiction, like any good sci-fi writer, as a springboard to discuss social issues, from School Vouchers to Same-Sex Marriage. While I don’t agree with everything said in the book, and Mayor Hundred sounds a bit pompous occasionally, I fully buy that’s how the characters would express their beliefs.

On top of that, he tackles something that I haven’t seen tried anywhere else, and that’s an Elseworlds-esque take on the bombings in New York on September 11th. In the book, the main character is an engineer, a superhero who can talk to machines. So when one plane crashes into a skyscraper in his hometown, he rockets (literally), to the towers, and commands the second plane to land, saving thousands of lives. It’s respectfully executed, realistically done, and just really bold of someone to do.

While I do tend to be a bit writer-centric, again Vaughn has found a team of artists who manage to illustrate his story stunningly. Tony Harris’ pencils manage to give ludicrous things like The Great Machine’s costume a layer of humanity on top of the fantastic, while still creating a realistic New York and it’s populous. People have different body types and are expressive, something which I appreciate more and more. Tom Feister and JD Metter on respective inks and colors bring the book alive. Applause all around.

- Gotham Central #35;

This is the best book DC or Marvel is publishing.

Another great chapter of this story of dead Robins, a concept witch was inspired to begin with.

Buy it, add it to your sub-list, order the first two trades and feverishly hunt down all of the back issues.

- Villains United #5 of 6;

People seem to be going bat-shit over this series, but to me, it’s lost some steam since the first issue. Gail Simone pulled a great slight-of-hand when the book came out, changing the focus from what people assumed was going to be the Secret Society of Super Villains and instead giving us principles like Ragdoll, Cheshire, Deadshot and Cat-Man of all people. But as of a few issues ago, we’re getting a bit too much “behind the closed doors of the society” nonsense, where instead of spending more time with the mismatched characters that make the book interesting, we get to see Lex Luthor in a meeting with Vandal Savage. While it provides for a few humorous quips, it lacks substance. Cat-Man and the rest suffer a bit, sort of just re-saying and re-doing everything they’ve been saying and doing for three issues now. Even the big, two-page “LOOKIE ALL THE VILLIANS” spread seems a bit stale five issues in.

Also of note, two characters who haven’t appeared since the first Crisis show up, something that is explained and speculated on with far more detail and expertise here, as my pre-Crisis DC lore is rusty, at best.

- Y: The Last Man #37;

I need to change my background image to one of Greg Rucka and Brian K. Vaughn skipping hand-in-hand, happy that they’re bringing good comics to me near weekly. It seems every Pull List now, I’m writing up 3 or 4 books I’m sort of lukewarm on, and then doing back flips over something put out by one of these two gentlemen. Coincidence? Fanboy over-hype? Simply good writing? I choose the later.

Yorick Brown’s story continues as he finally reaches the place he set out for in issue one – Australia. GOD, TAKE FOREVER, YORICK. So what, there were no trains to the coast! So what you couldn’t take a plane! So what you had to contend with Lesbian Pirates! Beth’s not going to wait around forever, there are other fish in the sea… oh yeah, “last man on earth.”

This ish is told from the point of view of a reporter hunting down rumors of that aforementioned last man, and it affords Vaughn the opportunity for lots of winking and nodding at the reader regarding our hero’s previous adventures, and boy does he take them! It’s still a damn good read, and with only twenty-some issues to go in the series, I hold each issue even dearer than the one before.

Also in this issue: COCK!

- Ultimate Spider-Man #82;

I don’t know what it is about the way Bagley draws Black Cat, but she reminds me of a girl i knew from high school. It’s not so much the way she looks, but it’s the black, latex cat suit.

Wait. Reverse that.

Anyway, damn. For all the nonsense Spider-Man puts up with in the Ultimate Universe, he forever out-pimps both his regular Marvel U counterpart and Luke Cage combined. He gets a new girlfriend in the Annual, and now the Black Cat comes back and all but jumps his barely post-pubescent bones. We also get a little taste of Moon-Knight who is, not suprisingly, less interesting than either Spidey, Black Cat or Elektra, also in this book. I know Marvel’s trying to re-vamp him a bit, but don’t we have team-up books or crappy, regular Marvel Universe Spider-Man books you can toss Moon Knight in? Put him in New Avengers or something, there’s enough going on in this title.

So that’s it, kind of a slow week. Tomorrow or Tuesday I’m back with some reviews of books released weeeeeks ago that I finally bought (The Sacrifice arc and it’s aftermath, mostly), as well as an article on that pesky game Animal Crossing, which has sapped most of my time for writing into it’s vortex of pretend fishing and pretend paleontology.

_casey_

- One last time; For Lily.

Earth 2 Casey

Wizard World: My Haul

Game Designer weekly E-Mail #1 - E3

Audio Booin' The HMX After Party

I Have Never Been So Excited for a Solicitation In My Life

Joe Quesada Says: Ladies, Give Me Your Money And Shut Up

Geoff Klock on Watchmen

Digital Dollars

Ninja-Star Power

Burnout: Paradise - "Panama" > "Paradise City"

President Elect Barack Obama

Coming Next: "Guy Holding Boom Mic" Star Wars Masterpiece Figure

Workplace Harassment: Dan Teasdale Edition

The E-Mail Saga of Casey & Earle

Sackboy to Nikko - FUCK YO COUCH

Respect Your Audience

Let's Play The X-Men Guessing Game

For anyone wondering why the posts have been slow...

Missing the Point - Marvel Noir Part 2

Oh god, oh god no...

Missing the Point - Marvel Noir

One sentence about Peanuts (part 2)

Today on MySpace

I'd love to take off into these woods and get good and lost for a while...

Get Free From the Middle Man

Damn Fools - Ben Curran Edition

Okay, I'm sorry, this is the last one...

I should probably start saving these up...

GAAAAAAH

Bad Box-Art Theater

Adventures in Google Advertising

Damn Fools - PVP Comics

Random Reviews - Fantastic Four: 1 2 3 4

one sentence about peanuts (part 1)

Friday Night Fights - Educational Edition

Friday Night Fights!

This Cat Thinks He's Spider-Man

Odd Place For Innovation - The Mighty Avengers

Saturday Morning Reviews

Why I'm Not Up In Arms About Captain America

Stop, Just... STOP - Wizard Magazine Edition

Saturday Morning Reviews

What's Wrong With Civil War?

Yeah I'm Back, Back In Black...

A Note To Captain America

Adam Beechen, Teen Titans, and Cassandra Cain

Read More Comics - Vol 1

52 Words On 52 - Week 38

DC Teaser Image

Music: Yes, Music

Stan Lee Fights The Marvel Universe

52 Words On 52 - Week 37

Uh... A Month? What? Scott Pilgrim, Yes.

Flight of the Conchords

Whee! Comics! Pull List for March Thus Far

UPDATE!

This Isn't Comics Related, But...

Have You Seen This Man

Comic Shop Box - What I Got In February

Lack of Updates

A Correction, An Omission...

Shameful: My Pull List for 3/4 of January!

Buy This...

Solicit Problems...

Two Sweet Art Projects: Too Bad I Can't Draw

Pull List Week of 01/05

Livejournal Feed!http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Coolest Comics Couples - 2005

Comics 2005! The Lame and the Slightly Amusing

UPDATE COMING!

The Morality Of Wonder Woman

My Pull List At the Shop or OW! My Wallet!

Pete and Repeat are In a Boat...

Oh SNAP!

Pull List and Reviews for 09/08