I
left my thumb drive at home, so I can’t work on the fifteen
different posts I have in progress right now. Thankfully, I do have
my backup drive, so I can use one of my old comic book posts and work
on a Comic Book Update.
I’d
love to do this monthly, but it doesn’t ever seem to happen. I
guess that’s fine since I’d really like more than a single issue
of a comic to have gone by before I start talking about it. I haven’t
taken an inventory lately, so I might very well forget about a title
I’m reading. If I do, I’m going to drop it because it obviously
isn’t all that great.
All
in all this is still a pretty good time to be a comic book fan.
All-STAR
WESTERN
This
title has truly found it’s pace and become one that I put near the
top of my stack. Jonah Hex and Amadeus Arkham continue to have a fun
and interesting relationship and their adventures only promise to
become crazier as the series goes on. I hope that the main storyline
continues to revolve around these two. The backups have been very
hit-or-miss, though the current story featuring Nighthawk and
Cinnamon is very good. We’ll see how next month’s Bat Lash is.
Side
Note: I actually have a little pipe dream about Hex and Arkham. If
you read any of the Arkham City Stories from Batman:
Arkham City
then you know they delved even further into the history of Gotham
City than the game itself did. This is something that has been a
central plot point of Scott Snyder’s Batman comics for some time
now. I would love it if the next Batman
game featured flashback gameplay of Jonah Hex similar to Arkham
City’s
Catwoman stories. It stands to reason that the next game will involve
Gotham City itself, seeing as we had more than enough glimpses of the
thriving, bustling city in the background of this last game. You
could stand on top of a building and watch the rest of Gotham from
behind the prison walls.
But
anyway, it would be very cool if the next game followed along with
the ongoing narrative of the history of Gotham City. I’d love to
play as Hex or even Arkham in a wild West Gotham setting.
ANGEL
& FAITH
Faith
is now on board with Angel trying to resurrect Giles. I thoroughly
enjoyed the storyline with a newly-sane Drusilla using a demon to
extract people’s feelings. To me it felt like a bit of a statement
on the proliferation of mind-altering prescription drugs in today’s
society – something I have a bit of a problem with. I think people
– doctors and patients – are abusing the shit out of prescription
drugs in order to not feel things that we as humans were meant to
feel and cope with. I think it is making individuals and society in
general weaker and less capable of dealing with day-to-day life. “I
don’t want to deal with stress and the consequences of my
decisions, so I’m just going to take this little pill/let this
demon suck the feelings out of me.”
Of
course, Christos Gage may never have intended that, but it’s
certainly what I got out of it.
Also,
I’m a little disappointed that Juliet Landau’s Drusilla
miniseries got indefinitely postponed. I don’t know what happened,
but I was curious to read it. Mrs. Troublemaker said that Landau had
written one before and it wasn’t very good, though.
I
just read the latest issue after I wrote all of that and it’s
great. Christos Gage put together another great story – this one a
sort of one-off about Giles’ aunts – and Chris Samnee subbed in
for Rebekah Isaacs on pencils. It’s a fun read and a good
jumping-on point if you aren’t reading this one.
ANIMAL
MAN
This
book very much has the feel of an ongoing television series. From
time to time there is a certain amount of resolution, but the bigger
picture is an ongoing narrative. The parallels with this title and
Swamp Thing
are very well done and I can’t help but feel that once the Rot has
been dealt with (however temporarily that may be) the Green and the
Red are going to come into conflict and that is going to be some
crazy shit.
BATMAN
INCORPORATED
Finally,
Batman, Inc.
has returned to comic book shops. After the excellent Leviathan
Strikes!, the first issue
of the post-New 52 reboot opens with the most ridiculously bloody
opening a mainstream comic book has ever featured, to the point where
it is clearly farcical. Batman and Robin are chasing some sort of
wacky cult-looking guys and they end up in a slaughterhouse. By the
end of the sequence there are hundreds of gallons of blood all over
everything and Robin has dubbed a new member of the Bat Family –
Batcow. It is another amazing cinematic opening from Grant Morrison
and Chris Burnham and it’s followed by a pretty good story that
sets up the closing portion of Morrison’s massive story arc. I
love Grant Morrison’s Batman.
BATWOMAN
So
after whatever happened with Amy Reeder, Trevor McCarthy took over
art duties on this title. I was familiar with McCarthy from his work
on the excellent Batman:
Gates of Gotham and
couldn’t wait to see what he did on Batwoman.
It’s great. I’m amazed at how different the styles of JH Williams
III, Amy Reeder, and Trevor McCarthy are; and yet how well they mesh
together and manage to not interrupt the ongoing narrative.
BATMAN:
THE BRAVE & THE BOLD
I
think the shop might have forgotten they are supposed to be pulling
this one.
BUFFY
THE VAMPIRE SLAYER SEASON 9
I’m
feeling a little bewildered again. I wasn’t too sure how I felt
about the storyline of Buffy’s consciousness being transferred into
the Buffybot. It was funny and it allowed a way out of the storyline
of Buffy being pregnant, but it’s starting to feel like it might be
another case of the comic overreaching the show’s boundaries, the
same way much of Season 8 did. I still feel like the
characterizations are good and the overall story of the world being
cut off from magic isn’t bad, but we really need to get back to the
things that I was enjoying so much at the beginning of Season 9 –
demons after Buffy for her college loan, roommate issues; regular
things done with a supernatural slant. This robot business is a bit
much.
Speaking
of a bit much, judging from the cover of the newest Previews
we have a Spike miniseries coming soon. Now, I haven’t read the
blurb yet but I’m guessing it might be the story of just how the
heck he ended up in charge of a spaceship full of alien bugs. While
I’m curious about how exactly that happened, I’d almost rather
they left it alone. The less said about some of the more sci-fi
elements of the Buffy comics, the better.
DANGER
GIRL
I
thought this was going to be an ongoing series, but it just wrapped
up with issue 5. I guess maybe IDW is simply going to continue on
with Danger Girl
in a miniseries format, which is just fine with me. If they restrict
it to times when they have good talent with good ideas rather than
trying to force out a monthly series that means the quality should
remain as high as it was with this mini – “Revolver”. If you
are a fan of the idea of a bunch of characters that look like Disney
Princesses shooting stuff and blowing things up you should buy this
when they collect it. The story was fun and the art was just
beautiful.
DANGER
GIRL VS. ARMY OF DARKNESS
Last
time I mentioned this one I wrongfully accused my comic shop of not
pulling it. Turns out the thing is just terribly irregular, like my
Uncle Bob. I’ve enjoyed it thus far, but I’d suggest just waiting
for the trade if you’re interested. At this rate they should have
the final issue out by 2014, so keep an eye out.
DEMON
KNIGHTS
A
new story arc starts with the next issue. I’ve been enjoying this
one, though I can’t say it’s essential. Even though Madame Xanadu
is in this title and Justice
League Dark, there has been
no crossover or referencing between the books.
FRANKENSTEIN:
AGENT OF S.H.A.D.E.
The
last issue tied directly into the events of Animal
Man. Frank and company
traveled to where Buddy’s wife and son were confronted by an
infected agent of the Rot. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the
shit really hit the fan. I am very excited at the prospect of these
Vertigo-esque titles sharing a close continuity and it was so cool to
see the events of this issue unfold and to know the history.
GI
JOE
The
aftermath of the world-changing events of “COBRA Civil War” and
“COBRA Command” – the storylines that ran through all of IDW’s
GI Joe titles – continue to be explored in the various titles. It
looks like they are going to be diverging into their own separate but
related narratives once again rather than being chapters of a single
story. COBRA
and GI Joe
appear to be continuing on unchanged, but Snake
Eyes is now Snake
Eyes & Storm Shadow,
due to the pair teaming up to take down COBRA High Command. I like
the way this situation came to be and this was probably the smoothest
and most logical turning of both ninjas we have ever seen. No Brain
Wave Scanners or hypnosis involved – just good, old-fashioned
revenge as a motivation for the team-up. Kudos to IDW and the various
creative teams on these titles for reinvigorating a franchise and
telling stories that are familiar and yet entirely fresh with
characters that are the same.
GI
JOE: A REAL AMERICAN HERO
I
dropped this title. For one issue. I didn’t care for the whole Blue
Ninja thing. But then I read the Annual and it was pretty awesome. I
thought about all of the ridiculous concepts that GI Joe has
presented over the years and decided that cyborg ninjas wasn’t that
bad. Also, I really missed reading the book. It’s fun, it’s
innocent, and once a month it gives me a thrill to read something
that I know eleven-year-old me would be loving.
GREEN
LANTERN
The
pacing is starting to slow down here a bit. I believe the last five
or so issues have been promising “The Secret of the Indigo Tribe
REVEALED!”. Granted, they did finally reveal the secret, but it was
almost kind of a let-down. I won’t spoil it here.
HINT:
It has to do with the Green Lantern Corps. Because fucking
everything in Geoff Johns’
GL world does. There’s no such thing as an alien threat anymore.
Everything
goes back to the Guardians.
HACK/SLASH
There
has been an arc going on pretty much since Image relaunched this as a
monthly series. I like the arc for the most part, but the Samhain
stuff got old for me. That’s done now and I think we can move on to
finding out what the heck is up with Vlad. I’m still enjoying the
book and I love Daniel Leister’s art.
INVINCIBLE
IRON MAN
(I was going to put Marvel's trailer for the series up there, but there was an ad in front of the video. I will not post something that is an ad before an ad)
I
like this extremely slow-moving story an awful lot, but if the thing
on the last panel of the last issue I read is for-real the new Iron
Man suit I hate it.
JUSTICE
LEAGUE DARK
This
book has been a struggle for me. I like all of the characters
involved and there have been moments of brilliance, but overall Peter
Milligan’s writing has been just a bit too weird and non-linear for
me. Or something. I don’t know quite how to describe it, but every
issue of this comic has left me feeling like I was missing something.
I hung in there, constantly hoping the day would come where I could
go, “OH! I get it,” and it never did. But as of next month (I
think), Jeff Lemire is taking over writing duties and I am very
excited about that. I think he will be able to maintain the book’s
weird tone while giving it a cohesiveness that Milligan never could.
Okay,
so now I have read LeMire’s first issue and it is, indeed,
fantastic and weird and cohesive. I don’t want to shit on
Milligan’s work because it had value, but LeMire’s Justice
League Dark is just a much
better book. The title has essentially reset without discounting any
of what we have already seen. I strongly recommend you pick up issue
9 and see what you think.
PUNISHER
So
very good. The Punisher actually took on a protégé of sorts, only
to have her turn on him. Can’t wait to see how this turns out.
SAGA
All
around brilliance. And the last issue featured a panel which reminded
me so very much of Berke Breathed’s work it was almost painful:
I
guess because his art form is mostly lost now. Yeah, there are
webcomics, but those aren’t special and surprising in the way that
the newspaper strips could be when they were at their best. The
internet is quite literally unlimited – finding quirky, clever
things there is nothing. But finding something like Bloom
County or Outland
in something as pedestrian as a newspaper showed you that there was a
certain amount of magic in the real world. That special things could
still have their own place amongst the stock market reports, the ads
for sales on electronics, and the stories of rampant crime.
I
guess that one panel by Ms. Staples reminded me that we are losing
more of that magic and that innocent wonder every day; largely thanks
to said internet.
Sorry
– you should really read Saga.
I think most people won’t be bummed out that it is so wonderful.
SHADE
As
the twelfth and final installment approaches I find myself getting
more bummed out with every issue. Yes, all of my comics make me sad.
Maybe I should try some Abilify.
Kidding.
Anyway, Shade is one of those series that makes you feel like a fancy
pants for reading it. The art is so beautiful (currently by Jill
Thompson) and the story is so fascinating. It’s complex and easy to
understand at the same time. I can’t wait to read more of James
Robinson’s work if it is all like this. Very much like Neil
Gaiman’s Sandman,
this is classy, intelligent stuff that even an ignoramus like me can
understand.
STAR
WARS: BOBA FETT IS DEAD
Well
of course he’s not really
dead (I think). But it’s going to be an interesting ride to find
out the hows and whys. Also, this continues the story from Blood
Ties, in case you read that
one. If you didn’t you should because it was very good.
SUICIDE
SQUAD
Good
stuff. I feel like Deadshot is being characterized well and Adam
Glass is successfully developing the other characters that I was
previously unfamiliar with. I still think Amanda Waller should be
fat, though.
SUPERMAN
FAMILY
I
picked this up for Lil’ Troublemaker because I always heard so many
good things about Art Baltazar’s Tiny
Titans. We read it together
the other night and I have to say I didn’t like it at all. And it’s
not because it’s a kid’s comic. We read Spongebob
(which I find much more tolerable than the show) and Brave
& The Bold and those
read fine. We read children’s books all the time. This comic just
didn’t work for either of us. The writing was not clever or cute in
any way and the art was just kind of poor. I’ll be dropping this
one.
SWAMP
THING
Swamp
Thing is still my favorite
book out of the New 52.
UNCANNY
X-FORCE
So
Psylocke has left, Fantomex is gone, and the whole team is pretty
disillusioned. Except for Deadpool, who is just deranged, but who has
also lost his healing factor. If you don’t buy any of the other titles I recommend you
should buy this one. Uncanny
X-Force is the very best
comic I read by a long shot.
VENOM
Flash
is in deep shit. I am loving this book in a way that I do not usually
enjoy the type of books where horrible things keep happening to the
main character.
WALKING
DEAD
No
spoilers here, but holy shit The
Walking Dead #98 – you
are a jerk. This is a great comic and everybody should be reading it.
If you have watched the show and don’t like it, don’t let that
put you off the comic. The comic is much better.
WONDER
WOMAN
I
can’t wait to see what Diana has in store for Hades. The last issue
really left me feeling that she is not the helpless victim that the
last couple of issues have painted her to be. I’m not very happy
that Cliff Chiang is apparently done with the book. The new artist is
just not at the same level, though he seems to be trying to ape
Chiang’s style.
X-FACTOR
The
dynamic with Havok and Polaris and Madrox is great. I’m really
enjoying seeing the new team operate. Peter David is a master of
keeping things fresh and providing just enough slow, permanent
change.
CROSSOVER
O-RAMA!
AVENGERS
VERSUS X-MEN
I
am loving this crossover for the most part. It feels like Marvel’s
Mutants are truly being considered a major portion of the Marvel
Universe. Another impressive thing is how well defined every
character’s role is. They have managed to make Wolverine the most
sensible character in the entire story and further reinforce his role
in Wolverine and the X-Men.
Granted,
I still don’t understand exactly why Cyclops thinks the Phoenix
Force is going to save all of mutantkind when all it has ever done is
destroy; but I’ll go with it.
Main
Title – This one is
great. I was annoyed at all of the Bendis-esque dialogue in #1, but
subsequent issues have been written by Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker, and
Matt Fraction, much to my enjoyment. This covers all of the central
events of the story. If you just want to know what’s going on, this
will do it, but I do heartily endorse some of the tie-ins.
Also,
the use of the Marvel-Vision app (or whatever it is called) is
brilliant.
AVX
– Okay, this is not
for everybody. It’s big, stupid fun that’s all about two comic
book characters beating the snot out of each other, Marvel
vs. Capcom style. Each
issue features two match-ups of punching, smack-talking action. I
personally love it and appreciate that it brings a bit of levity to
the goings-on of the overall story.
Avengers
– This is the title
that covers the main portion of the Avengers’ side of the conflict.
It’s pretty good at showing the interactions of the teams and the
members and Bendis seems to be trying to not make everybody talk like
Spider-Man. This one is pretty much essential.
Avengers
Academy – I hadn’t
read this title before AvX, but I was able to pick up the gist easily
enough. There is a group of young, powered individuals that are under
the supervision and instruction of the Avengers. They obviously have
no place in the middle of the conflict, so they are taken to the Jean
Grey School of Higher Learning since that is under Wolverine’s
supervision and is neutral to the conflict. Or at least, that was the
idea. When the school’s mutants come into contact with the
Avengers’ young charges things naturally get complicated. This book
isn’t essential, but it is great.
New
Avengers – This one
is really weird and out there, but is well worth reading. It deals
with the fact that one of the old Iron Fists (I didn’t even know
that Iron Fist was a legacy character) had been specially groomed to
host the Phoenix Force. It also ties in a bit with Jonathan Hickman’s
amazing but way-over-my-head S.H.I.E.L.D.
miniseries.
Secret
Avengers – The first
issue that tied in with the story was cool – dealing with a team of
Avengers being sent out into space to confront the Phoenix Force
head-on before it got to Earth. Thor, Beast, Captain Britain,
Valkyrie, Noh-Varr (I think – I don’t know who the heck this guy
is) and some others do their best to slow down the cosmic entity. But
now they’re dealing with some story on the Kree homeworld that I
don’t get at all. Captain Mar-Vell is back from the dead and doing
something-or-other. I’m so lost I feel like I missed an issue, but
I didn’t. I would say go ahead and skip this one if you’re not
already buying it.
Uncanny
X-Men – This book
features the X-Men’s side of the story. It is excellent and even
though I don’t quite get Cyclops’ point of view, I empathize with
what he is trying to accomplish and what his team is up against. This
is a must-read.
Wolverine
and the X-Men – This
one deals with how the mutants at the Jean Grey School for Higher
Learning are dealing with the conflict. Being young, they want to be
involved with what their elders are dealing with, but Wolverine and
the staff have decreed that they must not. At least, until a Death
Squad is sent looking for Hope and the Avengers show up to make
trouble… This is a great book that I was already reading, but it is
not essential for your enjoyment of the main storyline.
X-Men:
Legacy – This is my
favorite book of the entire crossover and a lot of it has to do with
Rogue. She’s long been my favorite X-Men character and is the focal
point of this title. She has been left in charge of the Jean Grey
School when a team of Avengers show up to “make sure they stay out
of the action”. As you might guess things get hot and the shit hits
the fan. Rogue does what she has to do. Again, this is not essential,
but it is great.
Overall
I am enjoying “Avengers Versus X-Men” and I’m glad I told the
shop to pull all of the involved titles. They aren’t all winners,
but there are a couple like X-Men:
Legacy that I wouldn’t
have bought on my own.
NIGHT
OF THE OWLS
Man,
I was so excited about the payoff to Scott Snyder’s master plan for
Gotham City. I expected intrigue, dark secrets, and a classic moment
where the Dark Knight would turn the tables on his seemingly
unbeatable foes – the Council of Owls. I thought we would be
getting a narrative with twists, turns, and surprises that would be
remembered for years to come.
Instead,
we’ve gotten a massive, multi-title crossover that basically
amounts to the same thing as AVX,
except the fights take twenty pages and everybody is fighting
basically the same bad guy.
Batgirl
– I stopped buying
Batgirl
a few issues ago because I could not stand the way Gail Simone was
writing Barbara Gordon. I picked this one up just because and I’m
actually glad I did. It’s not a bad read and I enjoyed seeing a
more competent and confident Batgirl fighting one of the Talons. The
Talon backstory in this one is pretty neat and the resolution is
interesting. I’ll stick around and give the title another chance
when this Owl business is done.
Batman
– Herein lies the
main portion of the story – Bruce Wayne dealing with the Talons and
developing a plan of attack against the Court of Owls. This is the
best of the books, and I actually recommend you read it. It has the
most consistency with what I perceive to be the tenets of the
storyline. Nothing in this book will make you think, “This is
stupid and doesn’t make any sense.”
Batman
Annual – I read this
a few days ago and I still
don’t know how I feel about it. They have either revolutionized or
ruined the character of Mr. Freeze, who until this issue was one of
my favorite of Batman’s villains. The story itself is actually very
good and the way that Freeze is tied in with Night of the Owls is
cool (HA), but the effect it has on the character of Victor Fries has
yet to be determined. I think they have reduced him to being just
another Gotham City nutjob, but some Facebook folks feel that I am
wrong:
And
yeah, his new costume and haircut are retarded.
Batman:
The Dark Knight –
Skip it. This just rehashes Talon backstory already covered in other
books. It’s a complete waste of time. It’s almost like they just
spliced material from other books together and called it an issue. I
hadn’t planned on buying this, but the shop stuck it in my box so I
did. I wish I hadn’t.
Batman
and Robin – This book
continues to be great. The last issue features Robin versus a Talon
and it’s pretty great. Seeing Damian take control of an Army unit
was hilarious.
Catwoman
– This was actually a
pretty good story, but to me it totally undermined the seriousness of
the threat that the Talons are supposed to represent. Honestly, all
of the books have been doing that; this was just the one that made me
realize it.
Here’s
my problem – the Talons are so dangerous, so deadly, that just one
of them not only almost kills Batman; but almost succeeds in driving
him totally insane. This last was demonstrated by Greg Capullo doing
his best Sam Keith impersonation.
But
now all of Batman’s buddies are just kicking the Talons’ asses
all over Gotham. Even Catwoman, her new electric boy toy, and fucking
Penguin
manage to defeat one. Penguin. Somebody defended that by saying that
it took all three of them. Did you see the names I just mentioned?
Come on. And then you start to think about the fact that Batgirl
survived one. Robin beat one. Nightwing beat one. I bet Alfred took a
couple out after he escaped from the Batcave Panic Room. Think about
this – Talons infiltrated the Batcave, forcing Batman to retreat
and hide in a Panic
Room. Then he had to put on
this gigantic Bat-mech suit just to survive
long enough for Alfred to drop the temperature in the Batcave to
eighty below zero or something and freeze the solution in the Talon’s
blood that makes them so darn hard to beat. Batman not only did not
defeat those Talons, he almost didn’t live.
And
now Penguin’s shooting one dead. This is my problem, and one that
is common across all forms of media – a threat is presented as
nigh-unbeatable and then is just sort of de-powered for the sake of
the story.
Nightwing
– I think I might
kind of hate what’s going on I here. I’m not sure. It turns out
Haly’s Circus – where Dick Grayson was raised – has been the
training ground for the Talons for decades. They train these kids and
if they’re good enough they get recruited by the Council of Owls to
be their assassins. Dick was next in line, but Bruce Wayne’s
presence at his parents’ death screwed that up so another kid from
Haly’s was recruited. But Dick never really seemed to be fit the
Talon profile anyway, hence he was referred to as the “Gray Son”.
Groan.
I
really do not want to criticize Scott Snyder’s masterpiece, but it
just isn’t really working for me. There are parts that are really
cool, and there are parts that feel like they are trying too hard to
explain things that do not need explaining. And the Council of Owls
itself seems like too vague and removed a threat. We need some more
characterization of these people. I understand that they are
anonymous, but that actually makes the stakes seem a little bit less
real. I’m sticking with this and am very curious to see how it
wraps up, but I think involving so many of the Bat books was a bad
move. It has diluted what otherwise might have been a very strong
story.
EXILED
This
one kind of snuck up on me. New
Mutants has already covered
a lot of theological/mythological ground, but I wasn’t ready for a
direct crossover with any Asgardian books.
The
deal is that the New Mutants’ neighbor across the street is
actually a lost Asgardian hero in disguise, hiding from some
particularly nasty evil beings. Of course said beings are unleashed
upon the world and the Asgardian in hiding uses a spell to change
everything.
The
story starts with Exiled
#1 and runs through New
Mutants and Journey
Into Mystery in five
chapters. The narrative goes straight through each title, so there’s
not really any skipping anything. I am thoroughly enjoying this. You
might as well, depending on how much you like Mutants and mythology
and seeing the two intersect. I recommend it.
OTHER
COMIC BOOK STUFF
GAY
GREEN LANTERN
Let
me be absolutely clear here and say that I do not care what anybody
else likes doing with their genitals. If you are a lady who likes
other ladies, that is fine. If you are a dude who likes dudes, that’s
fine. If you are a dude who claims to like both I think you’re
lying to yourself, but whatever. Good for you.
Also, DC Comics released that picture of flaming Alan Scott to accompany their blog post about his sexual orientation. That was not my choice. Though I did find it fucking hilarious.
I
also do not care that Alan Scott is gay now. Whatever. Gay comic book
characters are not new or particularly newsworthy, despite what DC
Comics and the mainstream media would have you believe. Batwoman has
been around for years and Northstar came out of the closet long
before that. And what about Midnighter and Apollo? DC Comics is not
rewriting the character of Alan Scott for narrative purposes, or to
promote awareness, or even just to be interesting. They are doing it
to cash in on the current mood of the nation – the President
Obama-approved “Everybody Has To Love The Gays” movement.
If
you think that sounds bigoted of me or prejudiced or whatever, then
you can just fuck off because you are part of the problem. This whole
media phenomenon is objectifying homosexuals in the worst way
possible. Rather than treating these folks just like everybody else,
they are being treated like some sort of freakish occurrence that has
to be coddled and supported like a mentally disabled child. Some
people don’t like homosexuals. Whatever. Nothing the media and the
President do is going to change anything about how bigots feel except
to make them feel more justified about their feelings. And quite
frankly, the general attitude of “You must
accept these people” puts me off. I have known gay people all of my
life. I had a friend in Middle School that was gay and he had a rough
time. But he never wanted any kind of special acknowledgement or
attention. Most of the homosexuals I’ve known in my life just want
to do their thing. They don’t want anybody fighting for their right
to fuck in public or whatever the next step in this ultra-pro-gay
campaign is going to be. People are born homosexual. But this
atmosphere makes it seem like these folks have made some kind of huge
choice or sacrifice that we should all applaud them for. That’s
absurd.
This
guy I worked with at a music store once told me he was so fucking
sick of having to talk about how gay he was all the time. There was
this pressure to be the gayest gay he could be. He didn’t want to
lisp or wear flashy shit or any of that. He just loved dudes. It was
his inclination. He’d never felt any other way. But there was this
forced pageantry to it that made it even harder than it should have
been.
Think
about this – wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where nobody
gave a shit if anybody was gay? Shouldn’t that
be the goal?
Sorry,
I didn’t mean to get up on a soapbox but I am just sick and tired
of the fucking circus that has been created around people’s sexual
inclinations. I don’t even think that’s really appropriate for
public discussion, so you can tell what an old fogey I am.
Anyway,
Alan Scott can be gay all he wants. I don’t give a shit and neither
should you.
Batman:
Arkham City – Harley’s Revenge
Arkham
City is one of the best
video games I have ever played in my life. It drove me to complete
every (in-game) objective. Even after I beat Riddler I felt compelled
to go back and find every single one of that green bastard’s
trophies (now they’re even releasing prop replicas of those damned
things and you had better believe I want one). I am now in the
process of trying to complete the irritatingly difficult VR
Challenges and Physical feats (or whatever). I managed to glide 150
meters without using the Grapnel Boost the other night, but I can’t
seem to glide 30 meters 5 meters above the water at all.
And
just so you know, I don’t give a crap about the other Riddler
Challenge stuff – the ones where enemies swarm you. Being swarmed
in combat is the least fun part of Arkham
City and I am certainly not
going to do it when I don’t have to. I did do the Batcave Challenge
just to do it, though.
Back
to my main point, the first real expansion (aside from the Catwoman
stuff that was available upon release) for the game came out the
other day and I downloaded it immediately. I hadn’t followed it too
closely and had no real idea what was in it other than Harley in a
different outfit.
It
turns out there are a few cool, new things in this expansion. First,
you actually get to play as Robin. That’s pretty great, because
quite frankly I saw the Robin and Nightwing downloads as a waste of
money. If I can’t play them in the actual game I don’t give shit.
So now you can play as Robin and he’s pretty fun. And there is an
actual new story. It’s good, so I won’t spoil it; and it also
implies that future chapters will be coming. Hopefully more
Nightwing.
I
totally felt this was worth my ten bucks, though I did complete the
story in under a couple of hours. I do need to go back and pop some
more Harley balloons, though.
P.S. - Every time I do one of these updates it gets harder to navigate the various publishers' sites. I go there for pictures because I figure they're not going to protest somebody using their images to promote their products. But their sites are ridiculously cluttered and difficult. It's hard to browse past issues and some sites - like IDW and Image - almost seem like they haven't been updated in the past 15 years. It's depressing. DC's is typically the easiest, but it has been updated and is no longer quite as simple to navigate.
-Phantom
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