Captain Boomerang:
How cool is this? When I got my mail yesterday upon coming home from a really rotten day at work, there was an envelope in it from Jim DiBartolo. Jim is the upcoming artist on Rex Mundi, and one of my Netflix friends, and we've talked about TV, movies, comics, etc. via email. When I saw him in San Diego, I asked if he was sketching and he said that he'd rather do something at home and send it to me. I asked about Captain Boomerang, and though he hadn't read Suicide Squad, he went and did some research and absolutely nailed the character in the picture you see below.



The scan really doesn't completely do it justice. It's terrific.

Of all the things I hated about Identity Crisis, I think the thing that most irked me personally was that Meltzer killed off Captain Boomerang. I know, it sounds stupid, but Boomerang was one of the coolest parts of one of my favorite comics, John Ostrander's Suicide Squad, and now he died like a punk, written by someone who clearly didn't get the character.

Cool as Hell Comic Shops:
I'm proud of my store, don't get me wrong, but good lord, the new comics shops opening in New York just look so damn cool.

Rocketship is one, and Riot is the other. Go look at the design of these stores... they're just amazing.

Netflix:
Just because I haven't mentioned it lately, I have to once again say how much I love Netflix. I wasn't sure when I first joined, a couple years ago, that it would be worth it. $20 a month for as many DVDs as I could rent sounded good in theory, but would I really watch enough to make it worth it? As it turned out, the answer was a very loud yes.

In recent weeks, I've caught the entirety of The Job, the series that Dennis Leary and Peter Tolan created before Rescue Me. I like Rescue Me a lot, and I think the second season has been even better than the first, but I think I liked The Job more. I really wanted to know what was going to happen to those characters, and while Leary's character in The Job was a jerk, I think Tommy Gavin (from Rescue Me) is more damaged. I've actually come to hate the character and start rooting against him at times. He's still interesting as hell to watch, but he crossed past likeable and sympathetic about four episodes ago.

This weekend, I've got a potpourri of indie or foreign films to watch. Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut (a cult flick I've never seen), Criminal (on a Maggie Gyllenhall kick after seeing her on The Daily Show, which began with a rental of Secretary) and Infernal Affairs (the Hong Kong flick about a cop undercover in the mob and a mobster undercover in the cops, which I've heard great stuff about.)

Now all I have to do is work about four more hours and I can get home and watch one or two of those movies.

Weekly Comics to Come:
For the week of August 17, 2005

ALREADY READ:
Batman Journey Into Knight #1 (I stopped reading when Batman explained to a thug that he was wearing a kevlar vest. Looks pretty dull, and the art by Tan Eng Huat is disappointing compared to his previous work as well.)
Birds Of Prey #85 (One of the few DC titles I'm still reading, and it continues to be great. I'm a little wary of the surprise on the last page, but I have enough faith in Simone to keep reading anyway. Solid martial arts action in this issue as well, although the two pencillers/two inkers thing hurts the artwork a little.)
Fragile Prophet #1 (Intriguing story about a young man and his little brother, who may have a psychic gift)
GI Spy #1 (Fun spy action book in World War II. Review HERE)
Hunger #3 (Really enjoying this one, an unusual zombie tale where the zombie is the protagonist, coming out from Speakeasy)
Livewires #6 (Good ending to a great miniseries, plenty of imaginative action and humor)
Noble Causes Vol 4 Blood & Water Tp (I think these are the stories where I started to be won back over to Noble Causes again, as it went back to full color and longer stories)
Runners Bad Goods Tp (Very entertaining spacefaring adventure. Review HERE)
Seven Soldiers Klarion The Witch Boy #3 (I'm starting to lose the plot a little, but there are still enough weird ideas and gorgeous art in the Seven Soldiers books to keep me reading)
Top Ten Beyond The Farthest Precinct #1 (I didn't have much faith in a non-Alan Moore Top 10 book, and this one didn't do anything to give me faith. If it weren't Top 10, one of my favorite books with all kinds of potential, I'd say it was just mediocre superheroics. As is, I'll say that it's pretty terrible.)

HAVEN'T READ:
Dragonlance Chronicles #1 (I read and enjoyed the Dragonlance trilogy when I was in high school. Not sure if my interest in the characters and story remains. Guess we'll see.)
GI Joe Snake-Eyes Declassified #1 (My GI Joe fandom has pretty well died out beyond nostalgia for the Marvel stuff, but they sent me a preview copy, so I'll at least take a look.)
Godland #2 (First issue was cosmic adventure fun with terrific artwork, looking forward to seeing the confrontation between hero and villain in issue two)
Maxx Book Five Tp (I think this is the final Maxx trade. At any rate, I've been picking all of them up, and though the story gets just bizarre as it goes on, the whole thing remains enjoyable and looks great.)
Of Bitter Souls #1 (New Speakeasy series with art by Norm Breyfogle, a favorite of mine from the '90s)
Queen Bee Sc (Really looking forward to Scholastic's offering from Chynna Clugston, about warring teenage girls with telekinetic powers)
Rex Libris #1 (The tale of an intergalactic librarian from Slave Labor Graphics. Could be fun.)
Rocketo #1 (I've read issue zero of this, and it was a little scattered storywise but gorgeous to look at, so I'll keep up for at least an issue or two)
Small Gods #10 (Start of a new story arc in the sci-fi/psychic/cop/crime book from Image. I missed the second arc for the most part, but the first trade and the Small Gods special were top notch.)

Thursday night:
Almost lost the daily posting thing only a couple weeks in, but I got in just in time for a quick note about tonight's activities. My buddy Chris Nicholas is having a birthday tomorrow, and a party tomorrow, but tonight he went with a few friends who couldn't make the party to a Korean restaurant here in town.

I haven't had Korean food since I lived in New York, but I liked it then and I still like it now. We went to Korea House and had a great meal of duck, bacon, beef, pork and chicken bul gogi, which means it's cooked on the grill in the center of the table. There's also an assortment of veggie dishes, my favorite of which were the potatoes in sugar and of course the kimchee. Really good food, and I'll definitely go back.

After that, we retired to the nearby coffehouse Texspresso to grab a little dessert and chat for several hours about movies, books, politics, all the sorts of stuff that people talk about. An enjoyable evening with friends old and new.

Want to be in a book?:
Neil Gaiman has the info on bidding to be in books by Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Stephen King, Lemony Snicket and Jonathan Lethem.

Fantasy Football - but with comics:
I probably should have posted this *before* the draft, since I now think it's basically closed until the next "season," but I followed a link a week or two back to Metti Publisher, a fantasy football style thing for comics.

For those who don't know fantasy football, basically you pick real players, add them to your fake teams and then your fake team performance is judged by the real stats that the players rack up during the season. With Metti Publisher, you "draft" a handful of writers and artists, put them into positions and then your score is judged by the position those writers/artists (and more importantly, the titles they work on) rank in the top 100.

It was an interesting challenge, because most of the writers and artists I really like aren't super-popular and the industry does tend to reward characters over creators, so the safe bet is to pick whoever is on Infinite Crisis, Superman, Spider-Man, etc. My inclination if I'm playing a "fantasy" league, though, is to pick the writers and artists I would actually employ if I had my own publisher, and could let them create their own titles from their own imaginations.

I think I hit a pretty good balance, though. My draft came through today and I've got a pretty decent bench: Gail Simone and Robert Kirkman (my Monthly Writers), Dan Slott and Peter David (my Special Writers), Andy Diggle and Sean McKeever (temporarily on my bench) are on the writing side. Pascal Ferry and Michael Lark (my Monthly Artists), Phil Hester and Scott Kolins (my Special Artists), Cameron Stewart and Cliff Chiang (Cover Artists) and Mike Huddleston, Frazer Irving and Darwyn Cooke (temporarily on my bench).

As you can see, it's definitely not my ideal real world publishing plan. In truth, if I wasn't judging on whether they're prolific and successful enough to be in the top 100 more often, I'd be putting all the guys on my bench into the field, and I'd probably have both Darwyn Cooke and Phil Hester on the writing staff as well. But it's not supposed to be an ideal representation of publishing, just kind of a fun game that plays using some of the numbers in the industry. I'm curious to see how I do, but given that my emphasis these days is on books that are mostly selling outside the top 100, I'm betting I won't place too well. I did get some of the buzz and up and coming creators, though, so that may pay off for me.

I was kind of amused to see that I knew a lot of the names in the game, but not necessarily in my league. Steve Rolston happens to be in my league, which is cool, but my local friend Nate Southard is playing and I found out not from talking to him on Friday or Saturday but by seeing his name in one of the other leagues. The strange wonders of the Internet at work.

Comic Book Magazines:
Coming off a weak Chicago Con scheduled too close to San Diego and of course the Atlanta/Heroes Con fiasco, I'm sensing the backlash against the premier offline comics magazine Wizard. You can get a sense of it in Heidi's report and Augie's report, to name two sources.

Which got me thinking, maybe it's time for someone to launch a new comics magazine. Wizard has been under assault for years now because they basically represent the industry to a lot of folks (the monthly sales at one time were higher than any monthly comic, and anecdotal evidence from my experience in retail shows that a lot of readers are still taking their cues from Wizard and little else), and the face they put on the industry is one that is maybe a little childish, certainly driven more by hype and "hotness" than quality and artistic achievement.

That's to be expected, really. Why have so many comics magazines (Hero, Combo, etc.) fallen by the wayside when Wizard survived and thrived? It's because Wizard has something that Spider-Man, X-Men, Superman and the rest have... they're established. Familiar. Comfortable. They got established by riding one of the last waves of new stuff that broke through to the general public, the emergence of Valiant and Image publishers.

In other words, they rode to prominence during the speculator age. Speculation and hype and style over substance is coded into Wiard's DNA. Sadly, it also seems to be present in the DNA of a lot of comics readers these days, and so there's a vicious cycle of Wizard hyping the stuff that's already popular, people buying the stuff that is popular, and Wizard reports on what people are buying. You can't really fault Wizard for being what they are, just as you can't fault a lot of folks for being frustrated that the primary face of our industry represents some of the worst aspects of it.

But could a new magazine knock Wizard off the perch? Offer up a slightly more adult viewpoint, without becoming too dry, too old school or too snobby? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say: Nope. The place once held by print has been subsumed to a great deal by online media, and it would be damn near impossible (if not actually impossible) for a print source to compete with what's being done by literally hundreds of people whose turnaround time from source to print is minutes or hours and whose geographical spread means that it's essentially a 24 hour news cycle. It might be different if these folks were all amateurs, but most of them (or, more immodestly, us) have been at this for years, and many come from a background with ties to the published world of comics.

Better yet, the Internet comics journalism world is free. So a new magazine would have to be so good as to overwhelm not only the longstanding stranglehold Wizard has on that segment of the market, but to make consumers think "even though I can get the same news, interviews and reviews online, this has *something* worth paying for in it." It's not an impossible task, but it's definitely an uphill one.

Sorry if that was all a bit scattered. Just some thoughts I was having. And I didn't even touch on Comic Buyer's Guide, The Comics Journal or any of the other magazines that are also covering the industry these days, or my thoughts on the downsides of the free Internet economy for those who are actually providing the news, interviews and reviews.

My Weekend:
This was a relatively busy weekend for me. My wife and I drove down (along with my buddy Nate) to Beerland at around 9:30, 10:00 on Saturday to go and see The Blue Flames open for The Flametrick Subs. The Flames were good, but the Flametrick Subs (and Satan's Cheerleaders) were, as always, great. It was a late night, and by the time Suzanne and I got home, it was about 2:15 and we were exhausted, but it was a lot of fun.

Sunday I slept in, but then went out with my friend Chris to meet Andrew Boyd and his girlfriend Robyn (whose name I hope I didn't misspell) for the Texas Rollergirls Roller Derby championship. I'd never been out to Roller Derby, but I'll definitely go again, as it was a lot of fun. I regretted sitting on the floor for the first half, as my legs were killing me, but Chris and I stood for the second half and had a good time. I think by the end we'd almost figured out how the game was played!

Today, I slept in (again... my weekend routine is to catch up on sleep) and then mostly bummed around. Put more antifreeze in the car (I think it needs a tune-up, but I'm holding out because there's only about 500 miles until the next oil change, which is close enough to just go ahead and to the 90,000 mile service), played with Katy, cooked up some teriyaki chicken on the grill (good) with a cheesy potatoes and broccoli packaged thing I got at HEB (not so good) and then installed Thunderbird to replace Outlook Express. After a few false starts with password stuff, I'm enjoying it as much as I enjoyed the changeover from Internet Explorer to Firefox... love the RSS reader capabilities. I thought I was enjoying RSS links in Firefox, but having the content "pushed" to my email reader is even better.

And now... I go to forage for snacks, play some more Burnout 3 on the PS/2, watch more of The Job: The Complete Series (currently rented from Netflix) and maybe even get something productive done like taking some pictures for my upcoming next round of eBay auctions.

(Hey, don't look at me... I said right upfront that daily updates meant they'd often be more boring than usual. ;)

Wizard World Chicago - That's it?:
While I was in San Diego, like most folks, I missed what was actually announced at San Diego. Came home to a veritable deluge of news from the major and minor publishers, which took me a few days to really catch up on. Since I wasn't going to Chicago, I figured I'd be able to read the news as it came in and keep up better. And I was able to do that... but that had a lot to do with the trickle of actual news.

Now granted, some of the big announcements mean little or nothing to me. I'm no fan of Michael Turner's work, so I couldn't care less about whether he's doing all his company-owned stuff at Marvel or DC, and I'm no big fan of Joe Mad's stuff either, although I do think the drubbing he's likely to take from Battle Chasers fans about finishing the work he started is well-deserved. Jeph Loeb at Marvel is mildly interesting, as I always like his stuff with Sale a little bit better at Marvel, but given that I'm off most of the big books at Marvel and DC, it hardly matters to me who is writing them, because I'm not likely to be reading or enjoying them. And Brubaker/Lark on Daredevil is the worst kept secret in comics, so that hardly counts as a major announcement... more like an expected and overdue confirmation.

No, mostly it seemed to be the companies patting themselves on the back over how great their comics are. Ultimate Universe - The Gold Standard. Odd, then, that the sales and buzz on those titles is slipping, isn't it? Crisis Counseling. Yes, we get it, Infinite Crisis is going to infect (excuse me, affect) every single book in the DC Universe. Things aren't going to be cheery and light in the wake of House of M? Well, gee, given how the new "grim 'n gritty" is selling, that's a shocker. Wizard's reputation for hyping stuff that's already popular ought to get a boost out of this Con, since that's pretty much what seemed to be going on.

You'll all have to pardon me for being a killjoy... but my vague feelings that the worst of the '90s has made a return in a newer, tougher-to-kill form were just strengthened by all the hype (excuse me, news) coming out of Chicago.

So this is what Saturday morning looks like:
I must say, I don't care for it. Sure, it's pretty, sun is shining, birds are singing, but it's just so damn early! As a result of one person being on vacation this week and my desire to get off early to go to the Flametrick Subs show tonight, I volunteered to switch shifts with the other manager and get up at 8:00 on Saturday to work the 9-5 shift. Fortunately, gaming didn't go as long as it usually does (usually around 2 or 3, last night it was more like 10:30), although I stupidly went home and watched TV until around 1:30 anyway. I'm a night person, and just have trouble sleeping until it's gotten past midnight by an hour or two.

Fortunately, there is caffeine. And caffeine is good.

Weekly Comics to Come:
For the week of August 10, 2005

ALREADY READ:
Action Comics #830 (Still the best Superman title, but the Infinite Crisis tie-ins are weakening my interest, and villain of choice in this issue gets on my nerves fast)
Adam Strange Planet Heist Tp (Fantastic action adventure with gorgeous artwork. Given that I'm enjoying Rann-Thanagar War, the follow-up, for the most part, I'll almost certainly pick this up)
Box Office Poison Complete New Edition Tp (Good to see this back in print. Review HERE)
Captain America #8 (Not crazy about the whole Winter Soldier plot, but Brubaker does a good job of selling the explanation in this issue and has some nice action as depicted by Epting)
Fables #40 (The Adversary revealed! Maybe? It's a fun issue with some great revelations, and Little Boy Blue continues to be an unexpectedly great badass action hero)
Gravity #3 (Continues to be one of Marvel's best books, with an old school Spider-Man vibe and a story you couldn't really do with Spider-Man)
Incredible Hulk #85 (Tied with House of M: Fantastic Four for the best thing to come out of the House of M. Peter David is making great use of the new Scorpion and her backstory for this story, and it's sort of off to the side of the House of M story, so you can enjoy it as just an alternate history tale)
Mage Vol 2 The Hero Defined Hc (First hardcover was terrific, second story is even better, been waiting for this. Hope there are no (or at least fewer) typos in this deluxe hardcover, though)
New Warriors #3 (So much fun. The secret origin of Microbe, the team deals with a flat tire and we see their producer's pitch meeting with the network for the Warriors reality show, which is hysterical. Also, the best art of Skottie Young's career so far)
Runaways Vol 1 Hc (The whole first volume in one giant hardcover. If not for the Top Shelf releases, would probably be my favorite read of the week)
Spiral Bound Gn (Review coming soon, but this all-ages treat about secret newspapers, a monster in the park, sculpting classes and a variety of other things is a great read)
The King Gn (Really terrific story based on the myth of the living Elvis. Review HERE)
Tricked Gn (Alex Robinson's new graphic novel, an ensemble piece about fame, secrets from the past and romance, among other things. Review HERE)

HAVEN'T READ:
100 Bullets #63 (With the war between the Trust and the Minutemen heating up, this book remains one of my must-read titles)
Cast #1-2 (This one was apparently big in the Phillipines, it's about a boy who decides to try out for drama at an all-girl school and features some really nice art)
Concrete Vol 1 Depths Tp (Looking forward to seeing Dark Horse's repackaging of Concrete... especially since I haven't read a lot of the Concrete stories yet)
Ferro City #1 (Very nice looking art on this "robot noir," hoping the story is as good)
Hero At Large #1 (Superhero comedy from Speakeasy)
Mort Grim (Buzz book from San Diego, I have a copy but haven't read it yet)
Rann Thanagar War #4 (A bit sprawling, but kind of fun space opera/action stuff so far)
Seven Soldiers Zatanna #3 (Hooray! More Seven Soldiers! This one has a snarky and fun sense of humor and gorgeous artwork by Ryan Sook)
True Story Swear To God #14 (Always good to see another issue of Tom Beland's autobiographical/romance/humor book)
Villains United #4 (The Suicide Squad vibe and general skill of Gail Simone keeps me hooked into this one despite its deep Infinite Crisis ties, although I do hope that the original artist (Eaglesham) returns for issue four)

This Just In:
Matt Haley is awesome. Check out these commissions on his site, and keep an eye out for his work on G.I. Spy #1, as well as some sweet-looking covers for Firestorm and Hawkman.

Just happened to be surfing the web and pointed out to his site and figured I'd give other folks a pointer to these cool commission sketches. It's amazing how many cool original pieces of art are out there on these artist's pages... Scott Morse and The Wildstorm guys are two more examples.

More Comics Stuff:
You'll note on the left column of the blog that I've added a couple more comics-related touches. I've got a Current Favorite Monthly Titles, which is my counterpart to Current Favorite TV series, as well as my five favorite first issues of the month and my ten favorite graphic novel reads of the month.

A couple things of note in how I organize these things, for those who care. These listings are alphabetical, not by rank of how much I liked them in comparison. I've narrowed it down to five or ten, beyond that is further narrowing of which one I liked best than I want to do on a monthly basis, at least right now. My criteria for what makes the list is when I read them, not necessarily when they were published. And thirdly, I was pretty strict on the monthly series, in that it has to be a series that is solicited and actually printed monthly, and it has to be either ongoing or a long ongoing (at least 30 issues) instead of a limited series. This is why, for example, The Atheist (bimonthly), True Story Swear to God (bimonthly) and Livewires (limited series) didn't make the list. In each case, I've provided a link for the listing, usually to one of my reviews (for further info on my opinion), but in the case of the monthly books and books I haven't reviewed, I've provided links to official publisher or creator sites or the best source of info I could find relatively easily.

Finally, the updates are for the month of July... August just barely started. So all my favorites will be anywhere from a week to a full month old, but these are meant to be sort of "standing" preferences anyway.

I may, if I feel ambitious enough, start doing a Favorite Miniseries of the month and Favorite Indie Books listing at some point... but not yet. My plan is to update these lists every month, although I reserve the right to do it more frequently or less frequently as the mood strikes me.

Spycraft 2.0:
It's been a little while since I've done a gaming-related post. Yesterday marked the release of Spycraft 2.0 (or at least, my first chance to buy it). I loved the original d20 Spycraft, in large part for the Chase rules that were so innovative in building an exciting mechanic into a relatively non-combat part of the game. I felt it could use some tweaking, and the additional rules being bolted on from the supplements were getting to be too much.

Enter Spycraft 2.0. It's still not perfect (there's a ton of rules here, and I can't help but feel that paring those down would have made it more approachable, and I still hate that a grenade can potentially do basically nothing to someone standing next to it), but it's got a lot of improvements and all that I loved about the original system.

Notable improvements: A speeding-up of the "gearing up" process (which bogged down every Spycraft game I played), introduction of "interrogation, infiltration" and a few other mechanics along the chase lines, a revision of the skills system and an expansion of the core classes without losing all the really good ones.

I'm excited about playing Spycraft again, although I'm curious how my players are going to react when they have to rebuild their characters from the ground up using their original concepts and the 2.0 rules.

The Basement Tapes:
If you're not reading Comic Book Resources's The Basement Tapes, a weekly back and forth about various industry topics by Matt Fraction and Joe Casey, you should be. While I don't always agree with them, and in fact sometimes vehemently disagree, this is smart, funny and eloquent discourse on the industry.

Today's topics: Retailers and publishers, and the relationships between them. This gets discussed a lot, usually by folks who don't know their ass from their head, let alone the vagaries of publishing and retailing. Again, there are some things in this column that I think are 100% wrong, but there's a lot of interesting discussion there.

I know Fraction has done his time in retail, and you can tell in the way he talks about the realities of the situation. I'm not sure about Casey, but I'd guess he hasn't, because he does have some ideas about the direct market that haven't been borne out by my five or six years working in that side of the market. For example, the notion that DC or Marvel should send out full copies of their most spoilerific hypefests to every retailer, trusting the retailer not to spoil it for customers, is a remarkably bad idea. For every one or two retailers who would properly use that information to order more efficiently, there are a dozen who would mark it up and sell it to their customers, and the stuff would wind up on Ebay about five minutes after the previews hit the retail level.

Fraction, I think, has some sympathy for the burden on a retailer's time, but he missed a point, I think, in talking about web resources for smaller publishers. These web resources are a fantastic idea, and any retailer worth his salt spends some time on the Internet checking up on the latest in comics news and indie publisher previews, but... there are way too many independent publishers for any retailer to keep up with all of them. No mystery about one reason or another, it's just a matter of time as the resources pile up.

Note that this isn't my column on retailing. These are a couple of the points that came up in my head from reading The Basement Tapes, and this happens every single time I read the column. It always gets me thinking, analyzing, wondering about the industry and the mechanisms that make it work.

A New Job:
No, I don't have one. Truthfully, I suck at looking, I hate looking and I haven't been doing the reading of classified, the constant updating of resumes and the networking required to get one. I enjoy my current job enough that I'm not desperate to get out (as I was when I was working at Austin Community College as a marketing assistant), but I'm also realistic that I don't really want to be managing a comics shop for nine bucks an hour when I'm forty, if I can avoid it. The realization that I probably won't be getting another raise, ever, no matter how well I do my job, hits me every now and then and makes me realize that it's foolish to stay in this job.

Problem, of course, being that I have no idea what else I want to do. I have no real desire to go back to school and learn a new trade, if only because there aren't any trades I'm dying to learn. I have a lot of expertise in customer service, a pretty vast knowledge of comics and other pop culture and a mind with a bent for organizing, but when I combine these traits, what I get is the equation that I'm perfectly suited for... managing a comic book store. And I'm not quite rich or gutsy enough to try opening a new comics shop in a hotly contested area like Austin, and I don't want to move away in the name of opening a new shop in an area I don't know. Truthfully, I don't want to move away at all, but I probably would if I could find a job with some growth potential in an area I liked (such as California or the Pacific Northwest or even New York, now that I've gotten more used to the idea of the city).

So yeah, this is mostly me bitching about job stuff. But y'know, if anybody has any suggestions (or even better, good job opportunities), drop me a line.

New Mini-Comics Review Blog:
Found this link off of The Beat, as Size Matters, a new blog by Shawn Hoke, has been set up to review mini-comics. I'm a big fan of the format, and glad to see these comics (which sometimes are more creatively satisfying than the work that's being professionally produced, and often are a "first look" at creators who will become big talents in the medium) getting a spotlight on a regular basis.

Million Dollar Baby:
I rented this from Netflix just before I left for San Diego, and finally got around to watching it on Friday night. I was completely impressed, even with all the hype and awards that surrounded the flick. Amazing performances from Hilary Swank, Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman, fantastic writing and great dialogue from Paul Haggis and beautiful shot composure by Eastwood and his crew. Yes, it's got a downbeat ending, but it's not as depressing as I was expecting, and I found a lot of the early part of the movie quite funny and quite moving as well. The boxing matches in particular are shot really well.

Comic Collecting Software:
I've just never been organized enough to put my comics into a database. Well, organized isn't probably the right word. Maybe I've been too lazy to sit down for what's likely to be a weekend or two to input all my comics in so that I've got a good record of them. I had a couple failed attempts with MS Excel about 7-8 years ago, and before that with some rinky-dink Mac program I don't even remember, but both times I gave up about one or two longboxes in.

However, it's a good idea, and for those less lazy than I, I provide this link to Comic Keeper, a new comics database software that retails for $25-30, rather than the $250-300 that the granddaddy of them all, Comic Base, goes for. If you've always wanted to computerize your collection info but didn't want to drop hundreds, this is definitely worth a look.

Weekly Comics to Come:
For the week of August 3, 2005

ALREADY READ:
Fantastic Four Unstable Molecules Tp (It lacks a punchy ending or a really strong structure, but it's got some great moments and terrific Guy Davis artwork, so I'm glad to see Marvel reprinting it. Now how about a trade of Thing - Night Falls on Yancy Street, which was one of the best Fantastic Four stories Marvel has published in years?)
Gotham Central #34 (The Teen Titans come in to talk about the supposed death of Robin, and the politics of cops and Batman are explored when one of the cops takes a shot at him - Another great issue)
Hero Squared #1 (Not just an also-ran companion to Formerly Known as the Justice League and Defenders, this is Giffen/DeMatteis on an original concept, and with this first issue of the miniseries, I've warmed up considerably - review coming soon)
Hip Flask Mystery City (It's not entirely coherent this time out, but it's beautiful, as all the Ladronn-illustrated Hip Flask stories have been - an annual treat)
Pvp #0 (Mostly a "clip show" for new readers, but also has a really sweet "secret origin of Skull" new feature, and it's 50 cents!)
Sandman Presents Thessaly Witch For Hire Tp (Bill Willingham's Thessaly miniseries isn't as great as his Fables work, but it's still pretty entertaining)
Season Of The Witch #0 (The first issue of a new fantasy series, with some solid action, a likable heroine and great artwork)
Stupid Comics #3 (More Mahfood-y goodness!)
Y The Last Man #36 (A focus on Beth, Yorick's long-lost girlfriend, and what's she up to, as good as the book always is)

HAVEN'T READ:
Antique Bakery Gn Vol 1 (Lene Taylor and Ginger Mayerson covered this on their podcast, and while it definitely doesn't sound up my alley, the insanity of the premise, the execution and the (I kid you not) scratch and sniff cover is too strangely compelling not to mention)
Fantastic Four House Of M #2 (Probably the best thing to come out of House of M so far, as John Layman explores what happens to the other master supervillains when one of them takes over)
Grimjack Killer Instinct #6 (The return of Grimjack concludes - hope we'll see more Grimjack soon)
Jsa #76 (I think the Day of Vengeance tie-ins and various other Infinite Crisis flavorings may have killed my interest in this book, as they have so many others in the DCU)
Justice #1 (Krueger, Ross and Braithwaite turn their attention to a grimmer, grittier Superfriends. Could wind up being great old school kind of fun, but these are the guys who bored me to tears on Universe X, so we'll see)
Karma Incorporated #1 (Folks in the business of revenge for money from Viper Comics - I'm expecting dark comedy)
Legend Of Grimjack Vol 3 Tp (Yay, more classic Grimjack reprinted from IDW!)
Lions Tigers & Bears Tp (The first issue of this was all-ages fun, and then I lost track of it, so I need to check this trade out)
Marvel 1602 New World #1 (Not real optimistic about a continuation of Gaiman's 1602, which I wasn't crazy about in the first place, but Pak and Tocchini both have talent, so I'll at least give it a look)
Marvel Visionaries John Romita Sr Hc (Love these Visionaries hardcover, love Romita Sr.'s work)
Mnemovore #4 (The story lost me a little bit on the last issue, but the art continues to impress and I'm hoping that the story will rope me back in as well)
Serenity #2 (Enjoyed the first issue quite a bit, looking forward to the second one)
Ted Noodleman Bicycle Delivery Boy Tp (Early work by Ryan Ottley, the glimpse I had in San Diego looked pretty solid)
Top Ten The Forty Niners Hc (Alan Moore and Gene Ha present the last Top 10 story, or at least the last one with Moore's name attached, and thus the last one for me)
Wildsiderz #1 (J. Scott Campbell returns with a concept that sounds Saturday morning cartoon inspired, and which could be fun - although the preview book was not terribly promising)

More Stuff to Review:
I've already covered the stuff that needs reviewing from San Diego, here's what makes up the majority of my comp pile at the moment: Dark Horse Book of the Dead, Conan #15-17, Chronicles of Conan Vols. 5-7, Conan Vol. 1 (yep, there's a Conan feature in the offing), 2 Sisters, Ojo TPB, The Wandering Schoolgirl, Nothing Left to Lose, Punish the Dead, The Ride, Iron Ghost #2, Firestorm #14-15, Zombie King #0, Qwerty, Billy the Kid's Old-Timey Oddities #2-3, Children of the Grave #1-3, Johnny Raygun #1-4, Tabloia #575-576, The Norm Magazine #6-7, Ghostbusters #1-4, Night #1-2, Symbiotes #2-4, Helios #2-3, Club 9 Vol. 3, Small Gods Special #1, PVP #0, Season of the Witch #0, Guncandy #1, Body Bags #1, Bonerest #1, Grounded #1, Battle Pope #1, Wildguard: Fool's Gold #1-2, The Gatesville Company #1, The Atheist #2, Invincible #24, Armor X #4, The Walking Dead #20, Hero Camp #3, Girls #3, Stupid Comics #3, Star Wars Empire #32, Man With the Screaming Brain #3, Usagi Yojimbo #85, Strange Girl #2 and Mickey Mouse Meets Blotman.

That's not all that's getting reviewed... two things not on the comp pile that are in the soon to be reviewed pile are Teenagers From Mars TPB (finally bought this and really liked it) and Godland #1 (haven't read yet, but looking forward to it), and there will certainly be some other DC/Marvel stuff along the way, but that's a pretty good look at 90% of what I'll be covering in the next few weeks (and probably longer to get to some of it.)

Why Heidi MacDonald is awesome:
I've read a lot of Con reports, written one of my own, but this is probably the best overview of the general "vibe" of San Diego that I've read. And she never even uses the "show with no buzz" catchphrase that has become the default description, either.

Flametrick Subs:
So it looks like I'll be heading out with some of my group of friends to see the Flametrick Subs (and Satan's Cheerleaders) on Saturday, August 6th at Beerland. I'm working until 10, of course, so I'll be arriving a little late, but the Flametrick shows are always a lot of fun, so I'm looking forward to it.

In other news... leaky ceilings are no fun, whether you have them at home (the knowledge that I am going to have to replace our entire roof at some point haunts me) or work (there's a big 'ol leak in front of our counter at work). I'm just saying.

We don't need no water:
So I woke up around 11:45 (hey, cut me some slack, I was up until 3:30) and my wife is saying "If you can take a shower in about five minutes, you better do it, they're about to shut off the water."

Turns out that when they were working in our neighbor's yard yesterday, it was on the water main, and so today they're turning off the water for the whole street. So I rushed through my shower, got my teeth brushed and got dressed. When I came back in to shave (electric razor, thankfully) a few minutes later and tried to rinse out the sink... no water.

Glad I'm going to work, but I feel sorry for my wife and daughter, who are here without water for several hours. It'd probably drive me nuts, just knowing that it wasn't there if I needed it.

Monday routine:
Well, it's been almost a week since I got back from San Diego (I'm about five hours shy of when I actually landed in Austin), and I'm just about rested, recuperated and back into some sort of routine. My Monday routine tends to be putting off mowing the lawn for as long as possible, and that's part of what this posting is all about, too. It'll save me a couple minutes where I'm not thinking "I should really go outside and mow." Not sure why I put it off so much, as it's really not that hard a thing to do, especially when I put on my iPod and listen to music or a podcast or an audiobook the whole time, but I just never feel like doing it.

Also on the chores list today is balancing the checkbook, another chore I put off constantly that always takes about 10-15 minutes when I finally sit down to do it. I did get one thing done today, and that was emailing some of the folks that I talked to in San Diego to follow up and say thank you, hello or whatever. My Con coverage at Fourth Rail is now complete, and includes the Con report, my sketchbook and a review of the sketchbooks I picked up.

And now, for no reason other than I want to, a list of all the stuff I got at San Diego that is awaiting review (not counting the two that are getting reviewed tomorrow, Tricked and The King): Invincible Vol. 1 HC, Bumperboy Loses His Marbles, Passion of Da Keef, Small Favors Vols. 1-2, Arsenic Lullaby: Year of the Fetus, Rose and Isabel, Spiral Bound, aeiou, Scalawag, 1000 Steps to World Domination, Smoke & Guns, Northwest Passage 1, Gunpowder Girl & The Outlaw Squaw, The Fly Chronicles, Ballast, Solstice, Brickman Begins, Afterworks, Crowpsey, Raider 2&3, Yets!, The Travels of Gulliver, And Then One Day #s 1&4, Flytrap, Crispy Cornflakes, Slop #5-6, Hector Spector, Mort Grim, Agent 44, Horus, Sketch Crawling, Wannabee #1, Foxymoron #3-6 & X-Mas Special, Western Tales of Terror #5, Elk's Run #3, Rocketo #0, Henagi the Ninja Girl #1, Hieroglyphs, Fragile Prophet #1, Voicebox Summer Preview 2005, The Last Battle, Hero Squared #1, G.I. Spy #1, Hip Flask: Mystery City, Students of the Unusual #1, Fear Agent Preview and Burn #1-2.

This is of course on top of the roughtly 2 foot stack of graphic novels and single issues in my comp pile to review. So I'm gonna be busy reviewing for a while... but I thought y'all might enjoy a preview of some of the stuff that's going to be in the column for the next month or two.

TV Catch-Up:
Catching up on my TV from the last couple of weeks (Love ya, Tivo!) during the last couple of days. The Inside continues to be watchable but disappointing given the talent involved, so I honestly won't be too sorry to see it go. Battlestar Galactica has started off strong in season two, with some great suspense stuff involving the cylon raiding party aboard Galactica and some really excellent character stuff. Loved the confrontation of sorts between Apollo and Tigh at the end of episode two.

I've also been catching up on The Daily Show. I love the show, especially when some blowhard (such as Bernard Goldberg) comes on and just gets torn to shreds by Jon's logic and humor. I always leave the show a little frustrated with the abuses of power going on in our country right now, though... I'm continually stunned at how much shit this administration (and it's hatchet man, Karl Rove) gets away with, and even when they get called on it, they just kind of skate by and no one is punished for their transgressions. I imagine this is how the conservatives felt when Clinton just deflected every attack they made on him, except with Clinton it was about blowjobs in the White House, with Bush it's about soldiers being in Iraq and a CIA agent whose cover was blown by her own countrymen.

Podcasting:
I've been sort of getting into the idea of podcasting lately. I have subscribed to a few podcasts now that iTunes is offering them, including Indie Airplay, the Monday Show with Sara Routh, Augie's Pipeline podcast and the iTunes New Music Tuesdays podcast. I've been looking for some good comics commentary or Austin-central podcasts, but haven't found anything yet... recommendations are welcome.

I'm also toying with the notion of doing a podcast myself. Probably a sort of "week in review" for comics, maybe some kind of back and forth commentary with myself and somebody else (it'd be great to do audio Two in One reviews with Don, but he's kind of in Canada, which makes it difficult, plus we're both tremendously busy with schedules that never coincide), who knows? I've downloaded Audacity on Augie's recommendation, now I just need to look into getting a microphone for the computer and seeing how hard it is to work the software and MP3 encoding.

Chance of this actually happening: Probably about 50%. Chance of it being regular instead of fading away so I can watch more TV, play more videogames, read more comics and play more with my daughter: About 25%.

Advice, recommendations on content and presentation and offers of help greatly appreciated.

Friday Night:
Just recently picked up Burnout 3 for the PS/2, now that it's dropped to $20. I had already played the game heavily when it was rented and loved it, so I was glad to finally get the game to have whenever I feel like crashing cars. Since we weren't having our regular game this weekend (the GM is off racing his Mini somewhere), I invited some of the crew over to my place to play the game. Burnout 3, for those who haven't played it, is a racing game where you try to crash other cars, narrowly avoid oncoming traffic and even engage in a "crash mode" where you try to cause the most spectacular crashes for the most monetary damage.

You know the crash physics are good on a game when a group of five guys watch a fictional crash into a wall at high speeds and respond with a visceral "oooohhh! ouch!"

Heroes Con vs. Wizard World Atlanta:
The news of Wizard's shot across the bow of long-running comic convention Heroes Con is spreading across the web. Newsarama has a pretty good rundown of what's been said so far.

I've been meaning to get out to Heroes Con for some time, especially given that my sister and brother-in-law live down there. Given the number of pros who haven't gone in the past but who are going this year as a show of support, as well as all the good I've heard about the show, it sounds like 2006 is the year to drive down with the wife and kid to visit relatives and hit Heroes Con.

You may be able to hear the crickets on the floor of the Wizard World Atlanta Con, if this keeps going at the rate it's going. Or they'll wise up, apologize and move the Con. I've been to two Wizard Worlds (the first one in Chicago and the one two years ago in Dallas) and have always come away unimpressed in comparison to the original Chicago Comicon, San Diego, even the small press shows like SPX and STAPLE.

Weekly Comics To Come:
Every week, as part of my retail job, I run down the invoice of what's coming into the store next Wednesday. I also pull out the stuff that looks interesting to me, so I figured why not take that list, make a few brief comments and try to make that the regular Friday update on my new daily blog? Will this continue, or will it be one time only? Time will tell!

ALREADY READ:
Astro City The Dark Age #2 (Very interesting stuff about the Silver Agent)
Capote In Kansas Gn (Fantastic semi-biographical story of novelist Truman Capote, certainly one of the best graphic novels of the year and a must-buy)
Daredevil Vs Punisher #2 (Fairly standard Daredevil/Punisher material, but done with style by David Lapham)
Hulk Destruction #1 (Decent but forgettable beginning of a spotlight on Hulk foe Abomination. Peter David writing is pretty good, if a little hard to follow at times due to time jumps, Jim Muniz art is sort of OK but not much more)
Runaways #6 (Great follow-up to last issue's reveal about Victor Mancha's parentage and good finale to the first arc of the returned series)
Silent Dragon #1 (Beautiful art by Leinil Yu, not quite sold on the story yet but the futuristic Yakuza/military tale does intrigue)
Spider-Man Human Torch Im With Stupid Digest Tp (Amazing and totally overlooked Spidey/Human Torch LS by Dan Slott and Ty Templeton in cheap as hell $8 digest format - If not for Capote in Kansas, this would probably be my pick of the week)

HAVEN'T READ:
Bill & Teds Most Excellent Adventures Vol 2 Tp (First volume was kind of fun, this is the remainder of Evan Dorkin's take on the slacker duo)
Courtney Crumrin Tales #1 (Naifeh explores some of the supporting cast of Courtney, starting with warlock Uncle Aloysius)
Cute Manifesto Tp (A collection of Kochalka comics)
Dead West Vol 1 Gn (Looking forward to reading this undead western by Rick Spears and Rob. G, creators of Filler and Teenagers From Mars)
Godland #1 (Mind-blowing cosmic fun mixing Kirby with the deconstructionist style of Automatic Kafka by Joe Casey and Tom Scioli)
JLA Cyberforce (Really? Cyberforce? Isn't it 2005? And Silvestri, the only possible draw for these characters, isn't even involved)
Losers #26 (More kickass action from Diggle and Jock. Sorry to see it go in 2006, and yet happy about the notion of seeing the wrap-up)
Nightwing Year One Tp (Fun formula superhero by Dixon, Beatty and McDaniel - fits right in with the Batgirl: Year One and Robin: Year One trades by the same writers)
Previews #25.8 (Down the Line should follow next week)
Queen & Country Declassified Vol 3 #2 (First issue was terrific, looking forward to seeing more of this IRA/SAS tale)
Star Wars Republic #77 (After this, two more issues to go in the great Ostrander/Duursema run on Star Wars: Republic)
Tick Days Of Drama #1 (New Tick! It's kind of lost its luster for me, but all the Tick comics, with or without Edlund, that I've read have been enjoyable)
Usagi Yojimbo Vol 19 Fathers And Sons Tp (The finale of the Usagi/Jotaro story, as great as Usagi Yojimbo always is)
Western Tales Of Terror #5 (Contributors this issue include Steve Niles, Scott Mills, Tony Moore, Small Gods creators Jason Rand and Juan Ferraya and Tom Mandrake)

Daily Updates?
I've resolved to try and post something daily on this blog. As I am remarkably uninteresting, no doubt many of these posts will be utter nonsense. Take this one, for example.

Anyway, new blogs to add to my daily reading list (that should have been on there long ago): The Comics Reporter and Bags and Boards. These came up as I reached day two (Thursday) of my Con report, which will no doubt frighten and disgust in its length and rambling nature when I finally get it finished and posted (I'm betting on Monday) at Fourth Rail.

Still haven't really turned on the TV since getting back from San Diego, aside from watching the two episodes of Family Guy I had saved (I needed a laugh). The first episode of Battlestar Galactica second season, the latest Rescue Me and about a week and a half of The Daily Show all call to me. As do my new copy of Burnout 3 for PS/2 (purchased right before I left) and Scrubs: Season One DVD (already watched from Netflix, but would like to rewatch).

Also need to read some of the Marvel First Look stuff from next week: Runaways, Daredevil/Punisher, a couple others. Already read the DC stuff I wanted to, which meant reading Wildstorm's Silent Dragon (interesting start, though not the slam bang opener I had hoped for) and... uh... something else I've already forgotten.

See, I told you... daily = rambling. Hopefully I'll improve as I get into the groove. Or, more likely, give up and go back to semi-monthly updates.

Read So Far:
I've got an enormous pile of graphic novels and comics to read coming off San Diego, and it's going to take me a while to get to reviewing them all.

So far, however, I have read: Gunpowder Girl & Outlaw Squaw, And Then One Day #1 & #4, Small Favors Vols. 1-2, Bumperboy Loses His Marbles, Arsenic Lullaby: Year of the Fetus, The Passion of Da Keef, Invincible HC, aeiou, Scalawag, Tricked, The King, Smoke & Guns, 1000 Steps to World Domination and Spiral Bound. Reviews of all of these should hit relatively soon (next couple weeks, hopefully) but the quick hit favorites are the Invincible HC (packed with extras, so damn cool!), Tricked (worth the wait), The King (better than Three Fingers, which I loved), Smoke & Guns (insane fun) and Spiral Bound (all-ages greatness).

*sigh* I was this close to being caught up on all my comps before San Diego, now I've got a huge backlog again. Ah, well, it's all stuff I'm dying to read and review! :)

I Have Returned:
Back (finally) from the big San Diego trip, a day later than planned thanks to delays and other related BS from Southwest Airlines. This is the first time I've had major flight trouble in a while, and definitely the *last* time I'll fly through Las Vegas on Southwest if I can avoid it. While our customer service in San Diego was great, friendly and accomodating in what were unbearably difficult circumstances, we got nothing but frustration and anger from dealing with the ranking manager on duty Lance Thibodeau in Southwest's Las Vegas branch. He was of course mildly more helpful than the woman who first greeted us with a surly "That means nothing to me" when we told her we were the six misconnects from Austin and got more surly and unhelpful from there, but he was basically a sarcastic and useless tool and we had to badger him to get us the hotel rooms that had been promised us in San Diego if we wound up stranded in Vegas.

Aargh. This will of course all show up in the con report on Fourth Rail in a few days. Oddly, I just finished perusing Newsarama, which has all the news that I missed while on the floor of the Con, and realized that most of it holds little to no interest for me. It's all about DC/Marvel plans, and while there are a few intriguing bits, the big hypefest books that are going to sell don't really hold much attraction to me. Does this mean I've lost interest in comics? Well, given the stacks of graphic novels and sketchbooks I picked up in San Diego, and the fact that I'll probably go read a few more when I finish typing this, not really... it just means that I'm getting tired of bullshit hype and would rather have creators doing their thing instead. San Diego was a nice reminder that there are still a ton of people out there beyond DC/Marvel, and the reports of good sales from most everyone I talked to a welcome reminder that there's interest in this kind of thing from fans as well.

Fantastic Four:
Just as I seem to be out of step with the majority of comics buyers relating to the two event stories going on at DC and Marvel, I also seem to be somewhat out of step with the consensus on comic book movies so far.

Because honestly, I liked Fantastic Four. Certainly better than Batman Begins. Why? Well, mostly it comes down to fun. Batman Begins is dour and lifeless, Fantastic Four feels like the sort of fun I'd rather have in my comics. It is true, in a lot of ways, to the spirit of the team that was instilled by Lee and Kirby in their legendary run.

I'm not saying it was a great movie. There are any number of logical inconsistencies that add up, and if you let yourself keep asking questions about the variations in science, the bizarre flip-flops in characterization that a few characters suffer (poor Doom worst of all) or why on Earth someone thought it was a good idea to use that music at that time, you'll probably hate it.

However, if you can go with a flow and ignore some of the Hollywoodisms (and these days, to enjoy an event movie you pretty much have to ignore some Hollywoodism), Fantastic Four is a pretty fun, even action-packed take on these characters that does justice to at least 3 1/2 of them. Doom gets short shrift in the script, but it's nothing that couldn't be fixed with a sequel that has him taking over Latveria and becoming the Doom we'd all prefer, and I like to think that Julian McMahon could handle that role and that the missteps as Doom in this movie are due more to script failures. Jessica Alba is, as with Sin City, a bit miscast, as she doesn't quite make me buy into her as smart scientist Sue Storm (btw, I like changing Sue from '50s housewife to Reed's scientific equal, whether it's here or in Ultimate FF), but in general she's still pretty good. Michael Chiklis, as expected, is great as The Thing, and the effects actually work to make us believe him as the Thing. A little old school, maybe, could have used a bit more CGI touch-up maybe, but certainly not as bad as early shots would have led you to believe. Ioan Gruffudd is given the difficult job of bringing major-league stiff Reed Richards to life, and he pulls it off admirably.

Of course, Chris Evans as Johnny Storm steals the movie. He's the guy actually enjoying himself when the powers comes along, he gets some of the best special effects and some of the most effective humor and action sequences. I would have guessed before seeing the movie that Chiklis was the best bit of casting, but Evans is the real find, he just embodies everything that Johnny Storm should be. Oh, and I like the change that he is the team's pilot, not just Sue's younger brother who tagged along on the mission. I wasn't down with all the changes made in this story from the original (Doom as business tycoon feels like lazy writing, for example) but I did like quite a few of them.

Maybe it's lowered expectations, maybe I'm willing to forgive a lot in the name of fun... but unlike Batman Begins, I see myself buying Fantastic Four when it comes out on DVD. And although Batman will get a sequel and FF might not, truthfully I'd rather see that reversed, because I'd love to see these actors meet again, this time with Doom at the head of Latveria, as he should be, and with all the origin stuff pushed out of the way to make way for a stronger story.

A Good Weekend:
I don't technically get holidays at my job, but because Sundays and Mondays are my regular days off, and because many of my friends were enjoying a three-day weekend, I got to enjoy this holiday weekend quite a bit anyway.

Friday night was a DVD release party for the STAPLE DVD at Austin Books. I did the interviews with Scott Kurtz and Michael Lark on the DVD, and I thought Gary Bartos and Doug Benning did a terrific job putting the DVD together. If you've got any interest in seeing a series of interviews about a first-time (very successful) small press show, this DVD is well worth a look. For me, the coolest thing was hanging out at Austin Books with my friends Chris Nicholas, Dave Lamplugh and Nate Southard as well as out-of-towner Toby Craig and DVD director/producer etc. Gary Bartos. Much good conversation and a fun, cheap late dinner at Taco Cabana made for an entertaining evening.

On Saturday, before going in to work, I went to the Red River Cafe with Gary, Chris, Dave and Toby and had brunch. Good food, more good (if weird) conversation, lots of fun. Then on Saturday night I went with my buddy Dave Farabee to see War of the Worlds. Dave was unimpressed, but I was pretty happy with the movie, and the suspense pretty much had me hooked in throughout. The very end is a little bit too pat and sentimental, but most of the movie I liked.

My wife and daughter had been out of town on Friday and Saturday visiting relatives in Dallas, so I was glad when they returned on Sunday, which also happened to be my wife's birthday. After spending the day playing with Katy, Suzanne and I took her over to my parents' house to spend the night so we could have an evening out. We went to The Melting Pot, an *awesome* fondue restaurant. It's pricey, special occasion fare all the way, but it was just amazing food. Melted cheese and bread, apples and veggies, a "Pacific Rim" sampler of meat (which included duck, teriyaki steak, pork, chicken, shrimp and potstickers) that we cooked at the table and an amazing dessert course made up of chocolate, marshmallow fluff and graham crackers made for a great meal. Truthfully, I ate a bit too much, and regretted eating that last bit of cheesecake (dipped in the chocolate), but I couldn't resist.

We then went to see Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which I also liked quite a bit. Pitt and Jolie had great chemistry, Liman's direction is as sure and sharp as his work on Bourne Identity and Go and the story might have been easy to read, but the action was solid and the general writing pretty decent.

Tomorrow, we'll go over to my folks' house for burgers and brats on the grill and Katy's first experience with fireworks (Black cats and sparklers). A good weekend. And now it's almost 3:00 AM and I should really go to bed.

Batman Begins:
I'm already sick of talking about it. Working in a comic shop, everyone comes in and immediately asks "Seen Batman yet?" Apply to any other comic or geek-related movie, and you might get why I'm just tired of talking about all the geek-tainment much, much faster than most. Especially since really, I have to be a buzzkill on this one. Batman Begins is a decent flick, but it is not the great definitive Batman movie everyone is making it out to be. It seems like as comic fans, we've all become so desperate for a good comic book movie that any halfway decent comic book movie gets called great.

Don't want to spoil it for anyone, so all I'll say specifically is that the first half, the Bruce Wayne half, is pretty good, and I bought into most of it. I thought Bale did a great job playing Bruce Wayne in general. But his Batman is so over-the-top angry that I felt like Bale didn't "get" superhero acting and was almost verging on camp. Liam Neeson and Michael Caine were both terrific, and in fact their characters' relationships with Bruce were so much more interesting and believable than the one he had with Katie Holmes (who I like, but who really didn't belong in this movie... others have suggested Talia as a more obvious love influence, and a likely stronger female presence, and I totally agree). Gary Oldman was good, but his Gordon was toned down to a borderline comedic presence at times, and I think Oldman could have pulled off the badass Gordon from Year One if only the script had allowed it. Then there's the second half of the movie, the Batman vs. supervillain half, which seemed like a completely different film. The plot doesn't really make much sense, and it's like the whole thing suddenly went from ultra-real to over-the-top sci-fi, and it didn't work.

Overall, my sense was: Good casting (with a couple exceptions), good direction, weak script. Good movie, but I'm unlikely to see it again. Bale provided the best Bruce Wayne we've yet seen in films, but I thought Keaton was a better Batman. And nothing live action has even come close to touching the animated series, which got it all right in all the right ways.

Favorite superhero movies for me remain The Rocketeer and The Incredibles, with X-Men 2 trailing just behind, and X-Men and Spider-Man quite a distance beyond that.

Oh, and I'm in almost total agreement with Scott Kurtz (of PVP) and Peter Travers (of Rolling Stone, who also nailed Episode III right on in his review).

iPoooooodddddd!!!!:
Read that in a sort of Star Trek II "Khaaaaannnn!" inflection. See, I sent my iPod Photo in for repair due to battery problems a little while back and got back (in rapid time) a new iPod Photo which seemed to be working perfectly. No sign of the previous problem. The previous problem being that for some reason, even when fully charged, when I disconnected the thing from the power adapter at work and brought it to my car, it would sometimes just conk out and refuse to reset or act like it was alive. After two days or so of dormancy (when it had drained most of its remaining power), it would respond to a reset and allow me to power it up, working a few days and then doing the same damn thing.

It just did it again today. And I'm remarkably frustrated with it. I can't decide if its superstition that the work connection has something to do with it or if the iPod mini cord is somehow different than the iPod Photo cord (despite looking identical) and I've now screwed up two iPods. Hoping that when the damn thing comes back on, I can do a software reboot and fix it. If anybody out there reading this has had the same problem or has any tech advice, I'm all ears.

Next Fall Season:
I love this time of year. See, I'm one of those weird folks who loves reading the Previews of what's coming up in comics, watches the movie trailers on the Apple site about once every couple of weeks and watches pilot season with interest. I want to know what's next, because even if everything is disappointing me now (as is often the case with comics and movies at the moment, although happily not TV), something great might be just around the corner.

TV networks had their "upfronts" this week, and given that this new season gave me two new shows I loved (Lost, Veronica Mars) and some shows that impressed me again or still (24, Arrested Development, The Shield), I'm excited to see what happens next. There was only one big schedule conflict (although it is a doozy), something I always worry about when networks are shuffling their schedules, and there are a few promising shows. Also, Veronica Mars, which is probably my third-favorite show (behind Arrested Development and The Shield), wasn't even on my radar until early in the season last year, so there could still be some surprises waiting. Here's what I'm looking at for next season (not counting midseason):

Sunday 8 PM
Family Guy (FOX) - If Fox can stop screwing with the timeslot, and thus my Tivo, so that I wind up getting the lackluster American Dad instead of this show. It's been on three times, I've seen it once.

Monday 7 PM
Fathom (CBS) - Intriguing alien invasion show (third of its kind on three networks), aliens are some kind of "new sea life," but the cast and producing crew don't stand out, and there's no way *anything* could compete with:

Arrested Development (FOX) - I'm so thrilled that this show got a third season renewal, and will be watching every week.

Monday 7:30 PM
Kitchen Confidential (FOX) - I like the cast on this one: Bradley Cooper from Alias, Nicholas Brendon from Buffy, etc. I also like the premise, about "bad boy" chef Anthony Bourdain, and I want to watch the show if only because it's lead-in is AD and I'll see what FOX is pairing with that. But if it's not good immediately, I'll probably switch over to:

How I Met Your Mother (CBS) - Premise sounds dull, typical relationship type stuff but with the twist of being narrated from the future by the successful couple. The cast, however, includes Alyson Hanigan and Neil Patrick Harris. I'd rather see both of these actors on drama, because I think they're stronger there, but I'll at least check this out.

Monday 8 PM
Emily's Reasons Why Not (ABC) - Heather Graham was really good in her Scrubs guest shot, so maybe this comedy about her as an advice columnist will be funny. But I'll probably watch:

Prison Break (FOX) - A season-long show about two brothers planning a prison break? Has 24 in its DNA, and sounds like good, pulp "guy soap opera" fun in that vein.

Tuesday 7 PM
Bones (FOX) - Premise sounds too CSI, and a little boring, but it's got David Boreanaz from Angel and there's nothing on opposite that I want to watch, so I'll at least catch a few early episodes.

Tuesday 8 PM
My Name is Earl (NBC) - Jason Lee as a low-rent crook who wins the lottery and then tries to right all the wrongs of his old life? Good casting (also has Jaime Pressly and Ethan Suplee), good premise, no timeslot competition, I'll be watching. But two of those three apply to Joey, and I gave that up, so it'll have to be good to earn its place on the Tivo.

Tuesday 8:30 PM
The Office (NBC) - I like this when I watch it, so I might watch more. Or I might not.

Wednesday 8 PM
Lost (ABC) - One of my favorite shows of this season. You can bet I'll be watching, although it might be on a friend's DVR because:

Veronica Mars (UPN) - MOTHER FUCKERS! They renewed the show and put it up against ABC's ratings juggernaut? Don't get me wrong, the only thing that could get me to choose against VM is Arrested Development, but I'm not most of America, and this could easily kill the show if they're hoping to see ratings improvement. Jesus, what are they thinking?

E-Ring (NBC) - Bruckheimer-produced drama about the Pentagon. Mildly interested, has Dennis Hopper (!), but up against these two other shows? I'll never see it.

Wednesday 9 PM
Invasion (ABC) - Another "alien invasion" show, this one probably has the best chance of success, since it's lead-in is Lost. Cast isn't instantly recognizable by name (although I know some of the faces), but the general approach sounds interesting, and again, no timeslot competition for me.

Thursday 7 PM
Alias (ABC) - Almost lost me early this season, still nowhere near as good as it was in seasons 1 and 2, but has regained my interest enough that I'll watch if nothing better is competing. And nothing is.

Thursday 8 PM
The Night Stalker (ABC) - No love for the original, my original interest in X-Files has turned to hatred, and yet... this sounds like Kolchak crossed with the Fugitive, and a good underlying central mystery can help a show. Curious to check it out, at least.

Friday 8 PM
Threshold (CBS) - The third alien invasion series, hampered severely by the involvement of Star Trek's Brannon Braga and Blade: Trinity's David Goyer, but boosted given that it features Carla Gugino, one of my favorite actresses, as well as some other notably good cast. I'll watch, although not if it's on opposite Battlestar Galactica.

And that's it. Mind you, some of my favorite shows aren't in this upfront, including all the intriguing looking midseason stuff like The Unit (Shawn Ryan and David Mamet) or The Inside (coming in June, really looking forward to this one) or the stuff on cable networks like Sci-Fi (Battlestar Galactica) and FX (The Shield), but that's what I'll probably check out come the Fall season.

Star Wars: Episode III:
I tried like hell not to get my expectations up above the "this is gonna suck" level that I had after Attack of the Clones, but I apparently didn't manage it, because I was still really disappointed in this movie. A few neat moments, but most of the emotional resonance comes from John Williams's score and the nostalgic ties it has to the actual good Star Wars movies, and all of Lucas's many directing and writing foibles are on display in this flick. It is the best of the prequels, but that still ranks it amongst some of the worst crap I've seen in a theatre.

Seriously, this thing is getting good reviews from the fanboy quarter on Ain't It Cool all the way to the critics in the mainstream press, and I'm left wondering what movie they saw that I didn't. I wanted it to be good, wanted the hype to be true, but man... it isn't. Episode III wasn't as boring as Episode II, but it's still miles away from good.

Life and Times of Juniper Lee:
And this is a reminder to set my Tivo for Judd Winick's new show on Cartoon Network, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, in May. Yes, I'm using my blog as a reminder system now. I can't help it, my memory is swiss cheese, and only getting worse as I age. :)

Mark Ricketts' Webcomic:
This is just a link to remind myself (and anyone else who might be reading this and like good comics) to check out Mark Ricketts and Jay Washer on BEATITUDE.

Is this thing on?
Well, let's see, I last updated in... huh. 2004.

Hey, I've been busy! No, not busy, what's that other word? Lazy. Actually, I have been busy, but mostly the reason I haven't updated the blog is that it just doesn't occur to me, and usually I'm spending time playing World of Warcraft, watching DVDs (either from Netflix or my copious post-Christmas/birthday stacks) or Tivo (I'm roughly a month behind on The Daily Show), writing reviews or, more likely, playing with Katy.

So it's another big update of what's been going on in my life, which are probably of no interest to anyone but myself, but it's the Internet blogger age, so I'll post my thoughts anyway.

Games: I love World of Warcraft. I bought the Collector's Edition from a friend of a friend just before Christmas, and have been playing it in fairly devoted fashion ever since. My character is Marrok, a level 47 Dwarf Warrior on the Gilneas server, who is an Armorsmith & Blacksmith (level 255), Cook (level 275) and Miner (level 260-something). Yeah, I can geek out about the game for a while. Anyway, it's really fun, much more repeat fun than City of Heroes, the first MMORPG that I played, and I paid up front for 6 months to get a cheaper rate and don't regret it at all. The upcoming D&D Online is tempting, and maybe by the time it comes out I'll be ready to depart World of Warcraft for a new game, but I'm not sure... it's a really great game. And has made it unnecessary for me to pick up any other games for PS/2, although I do want to give God of War a try at some point.

iPod: My last post indicated that I wanted an iPod Photo. I bought one after Christmas and for the most part haven't regretted it at all. I got to show off a slideshow of Katy pictures for family on a recent trip to Arkansas, and that was a lot of fun, and I love having all my music in one little box that plugs into my car stereo. I was a bit annoyed to find myself having battery problems about a month ago, but I sent it in for warranty service and got a new iPod back almost within a week, so I've got no complaints about Apple's service. I do wish I'd held out until the price dropped from $500 to $350, but then I would have gone many months without all my pictures and music in my pocket, so I'm not too terribly disappointed.

Movies: I haven't seen a ton of movies in recent months. I rented Garden State and really enjoyed that, but mostly Netflix has been occupied sending me TV DVDs. However, I did see Sin City, which was amazing, and just last night I went with some friends to see Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, which was equally amazing. Lots of fun, fight sequences that have all the visual innovation of the Matrix movie with better story and characters, so involving that I didn't really even notice the subtitles because I was so involved in it. Owen Gleiberman at EW described Chow's style as "Tex Avery meets Quentin Tarantino," and if you throw in a little bit of Bruce Lee, I think that's about right. My buddy Dave got me the soundtrack as a belated birthday present, and it's terrific too.

TV: I changed up my "current favorite" TV listings over on the sidebar. Alias is gone, because I'm still watching but increasingly skeptical about the new direction it's gone in, while 24 has returned, recovering nicely from the season three stumble for what has probably been its best season ever. The Shield is also having a great season so far... no surprise, as that show has really never even had a bad episode (aside from some misfires in the Mamet episode where I didn't think he "got" the show), but I've been taken aback at just how much I'm liking Glenn Close's character, and hoping that she'll stick around for more than one season. Also digging ABC's new spy/PI drama with comedic touches Eyes, although given the ratings, I'm not sure how long I'll be able to enjoy it. I was also shocked at how good the Sci Fi Battlestar Galactica was, and cannot wait for it to restart in July. Oh, and Arrested Development and Veronica Mars continue to be my favorite shows, coming in just below the Shield. Delighted that Mars is getting a season two, very hopeful that Arrested will get a season three. It's actually been as good or better in season two than it was in the brilliant first season, and cracks me up like no other show on TV.

Deadwood: I list favorite shows that I watch on Tivo, but I don't have HBO, so there are a lot of shows that I watch on DVD. Doesn't mean I love them any less, just means that I'm patient and don't mind the "wait for DVD" (akin to waiting for trade paperbacks) approach. Deadwood is a recent discovery, and I adore this show. I haven't watched the last disc (although I probably will as soon as I post this), but the first season is just great. It might be my favorite thing ever from HBO, and was almost enough to get me to sign up for the network if I didn't already have so many demands on my time and plenty to watch. Of course, I haven't watched The Wire yet, which everyone also tells me is really good, so I can't say Deadwood is the best thing on HBO, but I can say that it's my favorite thing so far, beating out Sopranos and probably even Band of Brothers, although that one's really close.

That's it. Everything else is either comics (which I cover ad nauseum over on Fourth Rail), boring day-to-day life stuff (like my sink being clogged up in the latest of seemingly neverending house expenses) or talking about how cute and smart and wonderful my two-year-old daughter Katy is.

Early November Update:
So let's see, a fair amount has happened since the last time I posted. I think there was some kind of election, but I've blocked it all out to keep from screaming and going mad.

So, what else? Well, I saw the Incredibles today with my lovely wife, and my take on it, some 10 hours later, is that it is probably my favorite Pixar movie and is certainly the best superhero film ever created. It's got its funny moments, as with all Pixar films, but it also has tremendous heart, fantastic action, a true understanding of superheroes from both a story and a visual side and a '60s Silver Age superhero/cool Bond espionage vibe that is unbeatable. Not that any of this is surprising, really. Pixar has never let me down, Brad Bird (writer/director of this and The Iron Giant) is awesome and Michael Giacchino (composer for this, Alias and Lost) is both exceptionally talented and perfect for the material. Great work by the voice cast as well, especially Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson and Brad Bird, all of whom just brought so much life to their characters.

TV season is rolling along surprisingly well, given that most of the new offerings this season looked awful. But while much of the TV landscape is a wasteland of reality shows and scripted TV so dumb it might violate the Geneva convention, the bright spots do shine all the more brightly. Veronica Mars has turned out to be great, a little overly cutesy and impressed with itself at times but just on the right side of quirky, with exceptional writing and some great casting. Lost hooked me after about three episodes, and though I'm still not prepared to say it's better than Alias, it might just be as good. Bravo, meanwhile, has a cool new show called Long Way Round about Ewan McGregor and his buddy Charley Boorman going from England to New York by way of Asia on BMW motorcycles, which I'm really enjoying so far. Arrested Development has started up again, which is great news for those of us who enjoy intelligent comedy. And Drawn Together on Comedy Central, on the opposite end of the spectrum, is crude in imaginative ways, not quite up to South Park's level of outrageous humor but definitely entertaining in an "I can't believe I'm watching this" kind of way.

My faith in mankind has been shaken a little this last month or so (don't worry, I'm still not going to talk about the election), and part of that is that somebody broke the passenger window of my car and stole my radio while I was parked in front of my house! $750 and a great deal of hassle later, the upside is that I have a new, cheaper car insurance policy with better coverage and a new, cool in-dash radio/CD player for the car. It has two features I've wanted for a while, the ability to play MP3 CDs (I now have over 800 songs across 5 CDs that comprises most of the music I want to listen to in the car) and an audio in-jack for my next big tech purchase, an iPod.

I'm waiting on Christmas money to see if I can afford one. My original plan was to buy the 40GB deal, maybe even spring the extra $50 for the cool black and red U2 limited edition, but then I went over to Apple's site and saw this. Now I can carry around all the baby pictures I want along with my music. I can't wait to pick this up, and very much hope finances allow me to do so in January.

Late September Update:
Yeah, I'm just not real good at the concept of blogging, which is meant to revolve around frequent updates. Most of my web effort goes into The Fourth Rail.

However, there have been a few things worth noting on this site. Most notable is that I took a weekend trip a few weeks back out to New Orleans for the N.O.D.I.Y. alternative media show. Put together by Leo McGovern, who runs the free magazine Antigravity in town (which happens to syndicate Snap Judgments as well), the show was unusual and a lot of fun. Music, a variety of things besides comics, a night-time show and a bar right there (the whole thing was held in a warehouse sized bar called Twiropa), I had a lot of fun. Probably would have had more if I hadn't been wiped out from the 10-hour drive, but the Saturday after, when we just bummed around New Orleans, was plenty of fun.

I was there with my buddies Chris Nicholas and Dave Lamplugh (creators of the minicomics You Chose Right The First Time) as well as Toby Craig (creator of the Engine minicomics and more), whom we had picked up in Houston. On Saturday, we all walked around, got plenty of pictures (and Toby and Dave got plenty of sketching done), had breakfast at Cafe Du Monde, lunch at Central Grocery (where we had their awesome Muffelettas) and dinner with Leo and his girlfriend Michelle at a place Leo picked out called Mandina's. We then hit a few of the coolest bars I've ever been to, thanks to Leo and Michelle, which were more local places and not as swamped as the Bourbon Street joints. I discovered my new favorite drink, Coke and Absolut Vanilla, and maybe had a *little* too much of it, but it was a good time.

That's the really exciting stuff that's gone on. Otherwise, I've been playing the hell out of Burnout 3, which I rented from Gamefly, and much as I enjoyed Burnout 2, this one is sooo much better. It looks better, and the addition of the ability to steer your car after you wreck is just genius. I also like the "Road Rage" events that consist of you trying to wreck as many opponents as possible. It's been getting rave reviews at the game sites, and I can see why. I desperately want to hold onto it, but will probably give it up soon so that I can rent Star Wars Battlefront and X-Men: Legends, both of which I'm also hearing good things about.

New Fall TV season has started, and is pretty much just as bad as I thought it was going to be. However, there are a couple bright spots. Joey is a guilty pleasure, just like Friends was for the last four or five years of its existence. Lost had an intriguing opener, not quite the throat-grabber that Alias was for me but certainly interesting. And the real winner of the Fall season so far for me is Veronica Mars, which had a very smartly-written pilot, plenty of charm mixed with a little darkness (not unlike Rob Thomas's previous show, Cupid) and a terrific cast, highlighted by the lead actress. Surprisingly enough, UPN might have my favorite show right now, although there is room for Lost to overtake it, and of course, it *will* be overtaken when The Shield, Alias or Arrested Development start up again. Still, well worth a look.

Other than that, I've also been lucky enough to find that Trio is running Spaced, the Britcom by Shaun of the Dead creators Simon Pegg and Edward Wright, and it is every bit as funny as the clip reel they put together in San Diego indicated. Happily, I'll have every episode of Spaced on my Tivo in just a few days, and this has spurred me to organize a trip to the Drafthouse to see Shaun of the Dead next weekend. Still bummed I missed Pegg and Wright when they were in town to premiere the film, but ah well.

Robert Rodriguez Scares Me:
I finally sat down to watch the DVD of Once Upon A Time in Mexico tonight. I'd already re-watched the movie, but I sat down to watch Rodriguez's commentary and the extras. Rodriguez's commentary is great, as he just talks constantly throughout, and it's both extremely technical and yet accessible to the casual viewer, funny and light without being stupid or lightweight. Then I watch the Ten Minute Film School, Ten Minute Cooking School and Inside Troublemaker Studios featurettes, and I realize that Rodriguez is talented in so many areas that he doesn't even realize how rare it is.

Rodriguez can compose scores (kickass ones, too, like the one for Kill Bill), direct and write movies, speak intelligently on sound mixing, editing and other movie technical shit that I barely understand, play guitar, cook, mess with CGI/digital effects... it's frightening. It also makes for a very entertaining DVD, and bodes well for the upcoming Sin City. I mean, I'm predisposed to like Rodriguez already because he's a comic book fan who resides in Austin (like me) and because he's made several movies I really love, but realizing just how far his talents range makes me all the more happy that he's the guy doing Sin City.

Meet the new game... same as the old game:
Well, since I had only played once in about three weeks, most of my superhero group had outlevelled me and several of my friends had quit, I decided to call it quits with City of Heroes. I enjoyed it when I played, but I wasn't feeling the addiction anymore, and couldn't justify $15 a month for something I was only playing for a few hours a month. Still, early May to mid-August is a pretty good run for a game, and I'll definitely be back on the game at some point... just not right now.

I'm also getting my superhero buzz from a new Mutants & Masterminds game I started with my regular gaming group. It's the first time I've played M&M, and I like it so far, although after having played pretty much Champions only for about 10 years, it's taking some adjusting. The superteam, as is typical for my gaming groups, is more than a little bit strange. There's a speedster social worker who got his powers from being caught up in an alien drug deal (Torque), the electrical blaster who was sort of the head of a gang in a bad area of town until reaching adulthood and becoming a superhero (Bolt, although originally he was Shock, and before that he had no official superhero name), the '60s vocalist for a third-rate band who got sucked into 1993 by a dimensional invasion and was granted a number of weird powers like transmuting objects into other objects, teleporting and animating objects (The Shifter) and, off a dare, a plant guy (Doc Nightshade). They chose The Outcasts for their team name, and it's looking pretty appropriate. First session was fun, though, and while I'm still getting the hang of the power levels/balance, I think M&M may wind up overtaking Champs as my favorite superhero RPG.

I've been playing SSX3 on the PS/2 a lot lately, and my love of console games got the better of me. With City of Heroes funding turned off, I decided I could once again justify my subscription to Gamefly, the Netflix-like service for videogames, and started that up again (Net savings from CoH to Gamefly: About a $1 a month. Nice one, Randy). At any rate, though, I currently have Spider-Man 2 out for rent, and while the plot and some of the dialogue is just hokey as hell, occasionally crossing the border into downright stupid, the webswinging through New York is really addictive and fun.

So there you have it. Three loooong paragraphs about my videogame habits and gaming. Good God, does anyone read this blog? If so, I'm deeply sorry that I don't have anything more interesting to say. My wife's got cute baby stories on her blog, maybe you should visit there. :)

F/X does it again:
OK, I finally realized that I'd had enough of guilty pleasure trash TV Nip/Tuck, especially since I barely have time to watch everything I want to anyway, but F/X has replaced that show in my personal Tivo lineup with Rescue Me, a great little drama with touches of comedy that reminds me in a lot of ways of what I like about The Shield without really using any of the elements of that show, save a pretty solid ensemble cast and sharp writing.

Dennis Leary, as it turns out, can act, the rest of the cast is highly entertaining and the show has made me laugh and tear up, especially in light of the shocker moment of the fourth episode that puts Leary's character into a whole new situation with his wife.

Justice League Unlimited:
I was not a huge fan of the previous Justice League series on Cartoon Network. Despite a few really good episodes, mostly I thought it was a pretty big comedown from the amazing Batman: Animated Series and the almost-as-good Superman: Animated Series. Not enough story, and the action, while good, wasn't good enough to keep up with it. The dialogue tended to be kind of "kiddy-fied" and so did the stories. Oh, I watched it, and I think I've actually seen every episode once (and the good ones a couple of times), but I kept thinking, "Damn... it could have been so much more."

If the first episode of Justice League Unlimited is any indication, it might be "so much more." A note perfect (well, his voice was too young for me, but that's quibbling) Green Arrow, some great chemistry with Captain Atom and Supergirl, Brimstone (from Suicide Squad, and that's major bonus points in my book), and a ton of DC heroes, both big and small, in the background? This is the DC Universe cartoon I wanted to see. Not to mention that they didn't lose the action, in fact Green Arrow in action was some of the coolest superhero stuff I've seen in animation.

Turns out maybe the hour-long two-parters were giving the creators too much room to move. With only half an hour, and a wider cast of characters, they seem to have tightened up the stories and the dialogue (I chuckled at several lines in the episode) while maintaining what worked about the previous series. Looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.

Random TV Thoughts:
Thanks to my wife having started watching the show back when BBC America ran a marathon, I've checked out Coupling, and found it to be absolutely hilarious. It's currently in season four, which is where I started watching, but the episodes I've seen inspired me to rent the DVD of season one from Netflix, and it turns out the show has been laugh-out-loud funny from day one.

Which means that yet another TV show on my must watch list doesn't come from American network TV. The stuff that I always go for from the Tivo when I get a chance to watch TV these days is Coupling, Celebrity Poker Showdown (so pleased that they did basically *two* seasons this year, with another round starting right after the first championship match) and Dinner For Five.

Which is good, because I like watching TV, and the slate for next season is just bloody awful. The Lost is intriguing, but it's on ABC, and will probably be cancelled before its time, although given the leeway they've given Alias, maybe that means showrunner J.J. Abrams can save it from that fate. Beyond that? Nothing new really caught my eye, to be honest. I'm mildly interested in LAX because of the cast (love Blair Underwood) and because I've always had this weird idea that an airport would make a great setting for an ensemble comedy or drama story, and some of the midseason stuff sounds intriguing, but come September, I'm not really gonna care much that the new TV is starting.

Paul O'Brien Hits The Nail on the Head Again:
Article 10: Foursquare Panels - Paul's online reviews are probably my favorites on the web (yep, including mine), but I'm just as pleased by his biweekly forays into industry analysis on Ninth Art. This one in particular is a look at the controversy over Gary Trudea's latest Doonesbury strips.

I can't really add much, because Paul has a pretty cogent analysis here, but I will say that as much disgust as I have for our current administration, I have even more for the illogical zealots who pretend that any examination of it, even if it's only mildly critical or arguably apolitical, is anti-American. The crap on TV and in movies these days has me worried about the lowest common denominator already, but the level of discourse about politics is even worse. Maybe we should start instituting a basic IQ level for people to vote?

The End of Angel:
Fantastic. It should have been two hours, really, but then, it really should have been the finale at the end of *next* season, when Whedon and company had time to really explore all the interesting developments they had set up in the last few episodes. This show has, in my opinion, been stronger than the series that it spun off from, not just because the last two or three seasons of Buffy were soooo uneven but because aside from some very worrisome stuff with Conner around season three, Angel has been pretty consistently great. The darker tone meant that I had an easier time going along with the darker stuff that happens to our heroes, where on Buffy it just felt a bit wrong. And it's amazing that the show started with two of my least favorite characters in the Buffyverse (Cordelia and Angel), added another that I pretty much hated (Wesley) and by the end had made me like all of them and even put Wes, poor tragic Wes on my list as possibly the best Buffyverse character period. Aside from Xander, who became completely uninteresting and poorly written right around season four or five of Buffy and never completely recovered.

Hell, the fifth season of Angel even made me love Spike again, a character I had grown to hate ever since he went from villain to goofy anti-hero who dominated the Buffy show. And that ending... oh, that ending was perfect, the kind of thing that takes real guts to do (especially with a rabid, judgmental and already pissed-off fanbase) and even more skill to pull off.

Then the WB puts up this little trailer at the end thanking the fans and the show for five years? Like it's not entirely their fault that the show is ending now, like the creators and the cast and crew didn't want to do more? Complete and total BS, and while I don't think the ire of a bunch of genre fans screaming "boycott" is really going to affect their bottom line, I do think they'll have a helluva time launching any kind of genre programming in the future if they decide to try it again. Certainly I'm not watching anything on WB next season, although in fairness that has more to do with their schedule being total shit than any kind of boycott decision on my part.

City of Heroes:
How do I love this new MMORPG about superheroes? Let me count the ways:
City of Heroes