Random Friday Rundown
Comments Off | Posted: May 5th, 2006 | Filed under: UncategorizedThis morning, I walked past one of the local coffee shops on the way to my preferred local coffee shop and I saw a certain employee of said coffee shop on her way in for a day’s employment. Every time I see said employee, I think to myself “Wow, that woman has awesome breasts.” Also every time, I realize she’s looking at me and thinking “Would he stop staring at my awesome breasts?” I then attempt to avoid eye contact and slink off.
This is just one of the reasons that Ragnell is going to beat the living crap out of me one day.
A huge batch of comic reviews? I don’t really feel like ‘em this week. Sorry about that. If you’ve been wondering at the image extravaganza for the last few days, it’s because work is in Extra Mega Crunchtime Mode Extreme and staring at another keyboard and coming up with content when I get home is actually pretty detrimental to my mental well-being. I have learned, though, that posting an image from Rex Libris will double the number of hits to my web site. If you’re one of the visiting librarians, welcome! Please look at the other content and realize I am a gibbering moron at this time.
Anyway, back to this site’s usual subject matter. Yes, I read Infinite Crisis: a big “eh” to everything but the penultimate pages showing the big 3 acting like human beings for a moment or two. It’s not coincidental, I’m sure, that the only bit in Kingdom Come that I truly loved also involved a last-minute scene involving the same three characters acting like people for a moment after all the horror they’d experienced.
Civil War has an immensely satisfying Captain America Beats People Up scene, some heavy-handed political commentary (From Millar?!? The deuce, you say!), and really lovely art by McNiven. Civil War is a very professionally put-together comic that holds a minor bit of interest in me because of a few fictional people that I have an affinity for, but that’s all it is to me. I’m not familiar enough with the current state of the MU to be upset over characters doing something untoward, so maybe I’m not upset when some people think I should be. Alas, alack, etc.
I completely failed to notice that Adhouse’s Noble Boy by Scott Morse was shipping this week, and it’s a lovely thing. With a format like a children’s book and thick, glossy card stock pages, this is the sort of package that fetishists like myself really appreciate. The only real exception I take to the venture (echoed by the lovely Sara when she opened the book) is the unfortunate choice of all-caps Gill Sans Ultra Bold for the typeface. That just won’t do, people.
Yes, this is the sort of thing I think about sometimes.
I’ve mentioned my admiration for Ennis’s MAX run on The Punisher, but the storyline in the latest trade paperback, combined with my recent thoughts concerning capital punishment, really gave me pause a few times. I mean, here’s a comic about a man who does awful, awful things to people who truly deserve it. and I derive some sense of pleasure from the experience.
The hypocritical dichotomy this presents is not lost on me at all. Why should I want a scumbag like Moussaoui to live while rooting for Frank Castle to make sure that the Romanian slave traders get what’s coming to them? Is my enjoyment (and admiration) of this material derived from my compartmentalization of my entertainment choices in a neat little box? Is it because I secretly want to go out and murderate those who cause our society harm?
My theory is that I love this material because it’s deeply, blackly funny to me and I get the same kicks from this as Jim does from the adventures of Jack Bauer. The Punisher, much like Captain America and Batman is hyper-competent and while he may have the occasional stumbling block – running out of ammunition, a civilian getting caught in the crossfire, etc – he always, always gets the job done and maybe that’s what I want. His war may never be over, but at the end of each of these perfectly-executed justice fantasies, the bad guy is disposed of.
For someone who wasn’t going to write a lot about comics, I sure filled some white space there, didn’t I? Speaking of comics, that thing with the Mysterious Publisher appears to be proceeding apace and while I got some truly great submissions for this whole thing, the nod went to Benjamin Birdie, who took a pretty poor test script and turned in this lovely thing:
According to the Mysterious Publisher, an announcement of sorts for the actual project may be happening early next week, if my beloved art monkey turns in his work on time. If you are said art monkey, get back to work! Less blog reading and more panels! Chop chop!
