No Ego Problems Here!

Kimberly Elizabeth Fox 8/28/1955 - 6/11/2008

2008-08-21T15:11:00.002-04:00

I've been holding out on posting here, as I didn't know what to post.

Many of you probably know this, but for those that don't, Kim passed away in June @ the Hospital Univeristy of Pennsylvania from complications of her heart condition.

Kimberly was a great woman, and loved by many. If you want to know more about her battle with her health over her last few months on this earth, you can look @ my blog ( http://geekyblog.blogspot.com ). I will also be posting info and stories about Kim as I come to terms with the loss of such a great person.

I am currently working on restoring Kim's website ( http://www.kimem.net ) and finishing her story, EXPO Summer, as I promised her I would. I will post here, and on my blog, when more info is available.

-Piper

P.S. I'm sorry for those of you I failed to notify, but she had many friends, and it's hard.

Counting down to zero...

2008-04-11T09:46:00.002-04:00

Um, yeah. It has been a while. Countdown is almost finished, and my comics reading has been irregular enough that I have no freakin' idea what's going on there... but I am enjoying the ride.

Health update: Ahem. leessee. Congestive heart failure, bad heart murmur, heart valve replacement. 'nuff said?

And folks, let's cut Piper some slack on the servers, okay? She's been hard at work there, doubling our bandwidth, tripling the number of servers we've got on line, and a whole pot-load of other stuff, and to do it all and keep somewhat on schedule she's been doing it all without my help. I'm still in hospital -- haven't been home since February -- Piper has been carrying the load. In addition to doing the server work, she's been here at the hospital with me most days. She's pulling an inhuman load, and she deserves lots of credit for her efforts.

Donations wouldn't hurt either, kids. All this stuff comes at a price... And now I'm returning to my sickbed and Piper gets her laptop back. - ;) Kim

23 skidoo...

2007-12-31T09:47:00.000-05:00

Hobbyist or Terrorist?

2007-11-23T04:21:00.000-05:00

On Nov 22, 2007 5:28 PM, xxx wrote:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040524-638410,00.html

Interesting article. Paranoia strikes deep into the heartland. I know they want to make sure nobody's doing anything nefarious, but a lot of these folks seem to have forgotten (or just don't seem to care) that going for a wander, with or without cameras, is a legal activity. I swear, sometimes it seems just like what we used to be told about the evils of the Soviet Union. *sigh* Personal freedoms sure seem unimportant to the decision-makers; of course, their personal freedoms aren't the ones being taken away. And remember never to go hunting with Dick Cheney.

I'm pretty sure you guys don't celebrate anything like our Thanksgiving holiday (after all, it was to commemorate the early settlers freedom from youse guys!), but ours went pretty well. Piper and I basically stayed in, cooked, watched movies, and played with our various computers. Piper left for work a little while ago (which is why I'm doing email at 4:00 AM); but then again today is Black Friday here, the biggest shopping day of the year. Her store is opening at 5:00. Ick!

Hey, that whole "warrantless surveillance" thing is supposed to be snatching and reading all contacts between US citizens and dem furriners. You suppose someone (or at least some server somewhere) is wasting time with this email? Welcome to the magic world of Carnivore or Magic Lantern or whatever they call the durn thing nowadays. That last sentence alone is probably going to make someone waste their time looking at it. *shrugs* Oh well, hourly work. If they weren't snooping into my mail they'd prolly be reading someone else's Viagra ad. *LOL*

Gee, do you think I'm a bit ticked at the whole attitude that 'we can't afford any longer for people to do what they want or have privacy nowadays -- it's too dangerous a world out there'? Have they forgotten what it is they're supposed to be protecting? If it weren't for the fact that it's the Republicans behind all of this -- and God, how they've changed from the days when they decried the 'nanny state' -- I'd have sworn these folks were the remnants of the '60s "Better Red Than Dead" faction. *sighs*

So much for my ranting. I guess it comes with being retired -- I get to sit on the sidelines and bitch and moan about how the country is going to hell in a handcart.

Anyway, before I head back to bed, Piper mentioned that you've got a compilation of Gaby, Book Four? Would you be willing to send a copy? That's the one thing that's stopping me from reading Four; I don't want to go through the effort of grabbing all the separate chapters.

Thanks. I'm going back to bed, as the whining puppy is trying to encourage me. Unless, of course, she wants to go outside. *groans*

Love,

- Kim ;)

Counting away...

2007-11-09T10:27:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you've noticed a distinct lack of postings over the past month. Sorry 'bout that.

I haven't lost interest in Countdown or anything, it's been an issue with my health. As you can guess, my health hasn't been particularly good of late, and, sadly, things aren't really looking up just now.

I'm going to continue reading Countdown and its related crossovers, and thinking about what I'm seeing, but I'm going to be taking some time off from posting until I'm in somewhat better shape.

'be seeing you!

29 and counting...

2007-10-10T16:28:00.000-04:00

One page? ONE LOUSY PAGE? You can see the cover to this issue, over there to the right. Notice it features Karate Kid? Attacking Brother Eye? So, HOW MUCH space does it get in the book? One grifing page!

And yeah, my earlier HAL-9000 comment was pretty much dead on.

The Challengers are now on Earth-8. They're captured, the 'evil' monitor meddles, resulting in their escape, and the Jokester is killed. Monarch shows up to recruit someone or other.

The Jokester's death is a shame. He'd been developed as an interesting character, and I'd have liked to see him hanging around for a while, to further explore him and the differences from the Joker.

Jimmy Olsen meets the Newsboy Legion in the sewers. He's happy because he's finally among friends.

Maybe. They say they're in the sewers looking for Jimmy, thinking he's gonna need help. The main flaw in this is that he's only been in the sewers for five minutes. Truly amazing they could find out about his 'escape' from Cadmus and get there so fast.

I'm reminded again of a major theme of the title: Not everyone who opposes you is your enemy; not everyone who helps you is your friend.

Holly Robinson is still fighting sea serpents. Um, last issue wasn't she fighting sharks? Was there a timeslip between issues? Remember, "Time is broken."

Piper and Trickster are having lunch at a truck stop with their new friend. It turns out the threat to slit Piper's throat was just, um, a misunderstanding. Yeah, I can't explain it, either.

Mary Marvel, well, she's getting good at abusing her power. That's about all need be said about her this issue.

Recent issues have been pretty good, and this week was quite a disappointment. There seemed to be lots of continuity glitches this week. I'll be back next week when I'll hopefully find something worth writing about.

30 and counting...

2007-10-03T16:11:00.000-04:00

The numbers are getting smaller, and the stories are getting bigger. In another month we'll reach the halfway point, and at that mark the title changes to "Countdown To Final Crisis". The storyline is getting more cohesive, less a random series of events and more a story that's going somewhere. If only the book had started this way.

Jimmy Olsen is still being tested by Cadmus, and things are still out of control. He seemingly splits in two -- Stretchable Olsen and Giant Ghostly Olsen. They're both sharing the same mind, but the stretchable one feels he has to escape, and leaves via the sewers. Big Immaterial Olsen confirms that it's as gross as it sounds.

The big Ghostly Olsen just jogged my memory. DC once had a feature called "Cave Carson - Inside Earth". One of the stories dealt with people being split, the ghostly half looking much as Jimmy does here. I'm wondering if the writers might have delved back that far and connected this to that? If so, kudos.

I'm wondering how he could so easily escape through the sewers. First of all, you'd think they'd have precautions against just such a thing, and second they'd want to avoid infiltration through the same means. It's been obvious for decades that Cadmus has crappy security, but I had no idea they were this sloppy. Three million dollar robot guards and yet they leave the drains uncovered. Sheesh!

Karate Kid and Una are taken to Brother Eye by Buddy Blank. Brother Eye (who comes across in this incarnation as somewhat like HAL-9000) immediately diagnoses the problem. Val (Karate Kid) has been infected with the OMAC virus. It's in an incomplete form, but still enough to prove fatal. However, there's a second virus there, which seems to be interacting. Brother Eye closes with an enigmatic "It seems the great disaster has come to me."

It's probably worth noting that I'm somewhat irked as I write this. Due to my computer doing a choke-n-puke, I lost everything I'd originally written beyond this point. Ah well, such is life.

Holly Robinson reaches Themyscria at last, or at least almost reaches it. The warrior candidates end up having to swim for land while fighting a school of extremely large, vicious, eyeless sharks. I know Holly has been suspecting that something is off-kilter, but this, if naught else, should be a flare-lit tip off that something is seriously wrong.

Piper and Trickster are hanging around the battle between the Justice League and the villains, mainly to make sure the league took their warnings seriously. Foolhardy at best, they manage to do some good when they destroy the Joker's plan for ruining the wedding while they get their revenge on Poison Ivy.

In making their getaway, they are taken by the Ace Of Spades from the Royal Flush Gang. He's apparently a fan of Dexter, since he copies a scene from the very first episode of the series. Good taste in television, not that it's likely to please Piper.

Which brings us to the last storyline seen this week. The Challengers have now reached Earth-15, where they meet other versions of themselves. This world appears to be what we once all envisioned for the future of the DC Universe, back in the days when everything seemed simple.

Donna Troy has become Wonder Woman, and Jason Todd has grown up to be the Batman. (By the way, this version of Jason is a prick, too, though it works better with the Batman costume.) Ray Palmer's daughter (?) has become the Atom, and Kyle Rayner is, um, Green Lantern. This is pretty much back in the seventies how we thought the future would unfold .

Seeing this, there's a bit of nostalgia for what never was, and I'm glad that somewhere there's an earth where the dreams from a more innocent time came true.

31 and counting...

2007-09-28T00:37:00.000-04:00

Countdown 31... and I am feeling better, thank you very much.

We begin this week, with the Challengers. Now on Earth-3 and looking for the long-missing Ray Palmer, they immediately run into the Crime Society.

The Crime Society is an intriguing new version of Grant Morrison's Crime Syndicate, itself an update of the old Earth-3 Crime Syndicate. All these, of course, are alternate versions of the Justice League.

They fight the Society, and spend about as much time bickering amongst themselves, finally leaving when "Bob" determines that Ray Palmer isn't there. When they leave, they have an addition, the Jokester.

This is one time when I wish there wasn't so much advance promotion. Between the internet news sites and DC's own site, we have a fairly good idea what's coming up -- heck, I've already read next week's Challengers segment, where they visit Earth-15. The problem with all the promos and advance peeks is that there's very few surprises left. We know the broad outlines of what's coming, and just wait for it to play out.

The Jokester could have been quite a delightful surprise dropped into the mix, but we already know he's a 'good' version of the Joker, going to join the team, and the father of the late, lamented, Duela Dent (aka The Joker's Daughter also aka Harlequin). Kinda takes the edge off those revelations, doesn't it?

I'm not suggesting going back to the old model of telling us nothing until the book is released, but there has to be a happy medium. Doesn't there?

Monarch, by the way, stops by Earth-3 to recruit the Crime Society to join his forces. Countdown: Arena tie-in?

Oh, by the way, Captain Carrot (pictured somewhere to the right if all works correctl;y) is part of the Countdown mix. I'm not sure which earth is his, but the coming Captain Carrot And The Final Ark miniseries is a Countdown tie-in.

Holly Robinson is leaving for Paradise Island. She knows something is wrong here, but can't quite put fer finger on it yet. She sends a letter containing her suspicions to Selina Kyle (Catwoman), but makes the tactical error of mailing it from the shelter's front desk, where it's promptly destroyed.

One suspects she should be a little less trusting of those whom she's suspicious. One ongoing theme buried in the subtext of Countdown is the question of "Who can you trust?". Who are your friends and who are your enemies? As we've seen amply demonstrated, everyone who helps you is not your friend, and everyone who thwarts you is not your enemy.

Mary Marvel would do well to realize this, but I'm thinking it's a bit too late for that at this point. She kills three security guards by turning them to stone. It's pretty much done without remorse and without reflection. Yeah, in theory she (or some other magic-user?) could reverse it, but that's a false argument. Eclipso makes sure one is really dead by breaking off his head with the flick of a finger.

One thing -- in comics, how can things like this be reversed? Once they're dead, well, turning their bodies back to flesh would just leave you with fleshy corpses, wouldn't it? Think of how many times the Spectre has killed using just this kind of transformation. (I'm especially reminded of the Michael Fliescher/Jim Aparo days in Adventure Comics -- what I consider pretty much the definitive Spectre run.)

Jimmy Olson is being tested at Cadmus. Ever noticed these things always go wrong?

We've got a first look-in at Mxyzptlk walking his, um, fish and chatting with his girlfriend. For those who came in late, Mxy is a resident of the 5th dimension, and has this thing for amusing himself at Superman's expense. He gets, well, sucked through the 'walls' of his dimension and vanishes.

One thing I'm trying to figure out, there once were two of him. You had Mxyzptlk and Mxyztplk, one from the fifth dimension of Earth-1 and one from the fifth dimension of Earth-2. So, nowdays are there still two fifth dimension and two Mxy's? Or is it just the one?

Karate Kid and Una find the home of Buddy Blank, and ask for information about Omac and Brother Eye. They also meet (and scare) his grandson. The grandson looks suspiciously familiar. Suppose he might be the once-and-future Kamandi?

Finally, the Monitors meet (or, conceivably, are still meeting. Don't these folks ever go to the bathroom?) and discuss the Jokester's joining the Challengers. I dunno, though. I've been wondering about the Monitor who has this monomania for stopping the Challengers and the "aberrations".

I think he's one of two things: either a proxy for Darkseid, or a new (alternate?) incarnation of the Anti-Monitor.

Dexter... (aka 32 and holding...)

2007-09-26T22:18:00.000-04:00

My review and comments on Countdown 31 will be slightly delayed because of health issues. In the meanwhile, here's a little plug for Dexter, a great TV series airing on Showtime. The first episode of season 2 will be on this next Sunday evening. Check it out!

32 and counting...

2007-09-20T11:03:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the batchelorette party... But first:

Mary Marvel discovers she can't trust Klarion. Why she jumped to the snap decision that she could in the first place is a mystery, considering she just met him moments before. Her emotional reactions have, as we've seen, been regressing from a reasonably mature level towards those of a small child... Or, to put it into somewhat politically incorrect terms, those of a severely emotionally retarded person.

Now, having seen in the past how Black Adam (the source of her powers) viewed the world in stark black and white, and was always hyper-sensitive to taking offense at the least provocation, one can't help wondering if this emotional immaturity is endemic to this version of the powers? Somewhere, I'm thinking, one of the "gods" who contributes their powers isn't quite what (or who) we've been led to believe.

Eclipso finally reveals herself, and I'm guessing she knows more about the nature of Mary's powers than anyone else. How? Not sure, though since Eclipso's powers themselves are rooted in God's powers, it may be a carry-over from that. I don't usually comment on the back feature, but in this case it (the backstory of Eclipso) it's quite pertinent. And, I'll note, it does go into some depth on the Godly source of Eclipso's abilities.

Jimmy Olson, who's looking increasingly frazzled, winds up at our old friends The Cadmus Project (another Jack Kirby creation). He starts to unburden himself of the reasons he wants to be a super-hero. You can feel the earnestness, and the feeling that he's an outsider wanting to join the fraternity. It's interesting how his storyline here careens between low humor and pathos. I'm sure it's on purpose, but it certainly complicates getting a handle on his storyline.

The Challengers of the Undefined take a wrong turn at Albuquerque and end up on Earth-30, in which there's a Soviet-era Superman. They get out of there posthaste, and end up on Earth-3, the home of the Crime Syndicate. This is the world where their equivilant of our heroes are evil and rule the world.

Of course they immediately run into the Syndicate.

When did Kyle Rayner change from the Crab-Face to the more traditional Green Lantern garb? One suspects there was a degree of miscommunication on the art side. Either that of there's been a degree of miscommunication on the reader side. Isn't this why there's supposed to be editors? Perhaps they should be less involved in the plotting of the story (Leave it to the writers? What a radical idea!) and more involved in making sure the product is ready to go out the door?

Pied Piper and Trickster manage their escape from Zatanna's house, but in the process they manage to create a fair amount of pandemonium at Black Canary's batchelorette party. I wonder whose Porsche they stole?

At to the party itself, there's way too much going on for me to even begin to summarize. The highlight for me was Supergirl and Stargirl's attempts to get their hands on some alcoholic beverages. Heh.

Buy it. The party itself is worth the price of the issue.

----------------
Now playing: Bread - Mother Freedom
via FoxyTunes

33 and counting...

2007-09-13T08:44:00.000-04:00

Starting with the cover, there's a new element in Countdown 33. Kyle Rayner is on the cover, and he's back wearing the 'crab-face' version of the Green Lantern uniform. Am I the only person who liked the crab-face mask? Back when he was the only Green Lantern, and his original costume didn't match the traditional Hal Jordan version, there was a lot of flack tossed DC's way. I liked the different costume. It looked good, and in the time-travel issues (where Kyle fights side-by-side with a young Hal Jordan) Kyle's design stood up well against the traditional model.

Inside? Yes, it's Kyle! The Challengers Of The Whatever are trying to get Donna Troy back from the evil Queen Belthera, and failing, when Kyle drops from the sky seemingly out of nowhere (durn, the Guardians Of The Universe really are omniscient!), he grabs right into the portal and drags Donna back.

It seems Kyle has been sent by the Guardians to tell Bob The Monitor that Ray Palmer (the previous iteration of The Atom) has left the nanoverse and headed out into the multiverse. Given that Bob is a Monitor, and the departures don't seem to have been all that recent, Isn't Bob supposed to know all this already? After all, monitoring things is supposed to be what the monitors do best. Between Bob and the rest of the Monitors, there certainly seems to be a pronounced lack of omniscience. Good thing the Guardians are on the ball.

Kyle seems awfully friendly to Donna Troy, considering that, last time I looked, he was her ex-boyfriend. Gee, it's nice to know they still get along so well.

Ryan Choi (The.. oh, you know who he is.) get snagged up by a giant hand. Where the hand might be coming from, I dunno. Considering they're in the nanoverse, at least two levels deep, it can't be someone from "our" level of reality. They've not bug sized, they're sub-atomic in scale. So where's the hand coming from? More importantly, who? If not for the bare skin on the hand, I'd almost suspect The Spectre. But no, despite the Neal Adams-inspired art this issue, I seriously doubt he'd be brought into this mix, especially at this late date.

Once The Atom is taken, the majority opinion is to forget him and move on in the search for Ray Palmer. I understand how important finding him may be, but I tend to agree with Kyle that one doesn't just leave a man behind. For good or ill, it comes across as much too cold. It definitely tends to prejudice me against the team. I thought a big part of the reason for the series of crises was to remove the moral ambiguities from the heroes, and let them be heroes again. This certainly isn't helping.

The art, by the way, has picked up in the last week or two, and the Neal Adams style rendering isn't bad, though there's a few panels with some clumsy interpretations of Keith Giffen's layouts. All-in-all, though, they're improving greatly in the art end of things.

Turning away from the sub-atomic realm, Wally West (The Flash) is still dealing with Trickster and Pied Piper. He becomes convinced of their innocence, takes them to a safe place, and warns them to stay put -- or else. Of course, Trickster's first instinct is to escape, and, well, that turns out about as well as anything else he does.

Mary Marvel and Klarion -- I'm having some trouble following just what happened here. Mainly what I got from it is that he's being controlled by Eclipso.

Jimmy Olsen is running for his life from folks who turn out to (arguably) be his friends. Not much more to say here.

The editors are finally throwing us a bone with a page of notes on story crossovers so far. It's a big help in finding where stuff is going on that's not shown in the book. I'd still like to see embedded editor's notes or a regular page of notes, but this is at least a big step in the right direction.

34 and counting...

2007-09-07T10:26:00.000-04:00

And then there's Piper and Trickster, hanging upside down many stories above the streets of Gotham. As we all know, that's going to be the least of their problems. First a confrontation with the Batman, followed in quick succession (sorry!) by the Flash. To say Wally's pissed would be quite an understatement. After all, Pied Piper was his friend, and to have Piper participating in Bart's death was beyond unforgivable.

Still, Wally's reaction seems a bit -- off. When they claim that Bart's death wasn't their fault, and they were acting undercover; then tell Flash what Poison Ivy and Deathstroke are up to, he turns darker and angrier, possibly on the verge of murder. So, is this really Wally? Our Wally? What's really up here?

Jimmy Olsen, meanwhile, is being examined by John Henry Irons (aka Steel). They're using machines that are supposedly CAT scanners, albeit "metaphysically different", that look more like iPod-enabled barber chairs. Things, ahem, go wrong, and Jimmy, with swollen head (one suspects this is an evolved Future-Jimmy from the silver age) overloads and 'attacks' the machines. I'm just guessing here, but I think the core of Jimmy's issue is that he's carrying the Anti-Life Equation around in his head. This can't be good.

The Challengers of the Clueless are still dealing with Queen Belthera. There's a fight (You don't say!) and Donna Troy pushes the Queen into a portal into which the queen wanted to go anyways. At the last instant, Belthera grabs Donna and drags her through the portal with her. Why? I don't know, he's on third, and...

Aside from the senselessness of dragging Donna with her (and leaving Bob the Monitor behind), there's the question of when/how/why was Ryan Choi turned human again. One senses that Queen Belthera might be powerful in her magic, but isn't the brightest bulb in the fixture.

Aside from that, though, the change back obviously did happen, somewhere between issues. A lot of elements in Jimmy Olsen's story have been happening between issues, as well. Jimmy rips Clark Kent's shirt open, exposing the Superman Suit, and next we see, Superman is introducing Mister Action to the Justice League of America.

The Powers That Be say that what happened between wasn't shown because it was too obvious. Well, yeah, we can guess most of what happened, but why should we have to? Many things, interesting happenings and even discussions might have happened. After all, Jimmy now knows Superman's Secret Identity. Maybe they did in one of the Superman titles. I wouldn't know. I'm way behind on reading them, and shouldn't need to in order to know what's going on. This is just basic storytelling, people.

Again, here's where either an editor's note or a page-of-references would be invaluable. In a title like this, I'd really like that page. Something like Kurt Busiek did in Power Company. It'd point to the backstory elements and where they came from, as well as pointing the reader to connected happenings in other titles. I know Dan Didio doesn't like them, but they are really needed in order to make the book accessible, and to help it be the 'spine' it was meant to be.

Holly Robinson is still fighting in the arena, and her foe turns out to be, as expected, Harley Quinn. Athena tells the two of them that they've 'passed', and they're to be taken to Paradise Island to become full Amazons.

There's just one little detail. It's been revealed elsewhere, but not in Countdown, that this isn't really Athena.

Athena is being impersonated by Granny Goodness, one of Darkseid's minions, who's recruiting humans to form a new Female Furies. Kind of important stuff to know, and it's not as though it was being held as a surprise. After all, it's already been revealed in another title. Editor's note, anyone?

Mary Marvel encounters Klarion, and at least there's enough in the dialogue to tell us what's going on. To be continued...

Finally, Karate Kid and Una finish their meeting with Elias Orr, who tells them of Brother Eye, and directs them to a scientist named Buddy Blank. We're obviously getting closer to the world of Earth A.D.

Once they go off on their merry way, we discover who's Orr's employer. It's Desaad, another of Darkseid's minions. Seemingly on New Earth, all roads lead to Apokolips.

35 and holding...

2007-09-06T00:54:00.000-04:00

It didn't strike me until today that comic shipments were going to be late this week because of the holiday. Whups! More tomorrow...

35 and counting...

2007-08-29T14:20:00.000-04:00

We've arrived at Countdown 35. Please return your seatbacks and tray tables to their upright and locked position.

In the Palmerverse, um, nanoverse, our heroes (The Challengers of Whatever) awaken to find they're prisoners of Queen Belthera, who claims to rule the dimension. She transforms the Atom, Ryan Choi, into a bug creature. Malicious or uncaring and capricious? Umm. I'm going for malicious.

Perhaps a tad predictable, especially her 'turning' of Bob the Monitor, but then again, it does fit in with the Darkseid plot. Looks like he's going to have some competition for ruling the multiverse.

Mary Marvel, still under the influence of Eclipso, continues her battle with Zatanna. Now, however, Zatanna has regained her footing, and she wipes the floor with Mary. She not only shows her the door, she makes it impossible for Mary to ever find Shadowcrest again.

Jimmy Olsen, once again, has had his dreams shot down. Auditioning with the Justice League, his powers failed because he wasn't truly in danger.

Karate Kid and Una get their face-to-face with Elias Orr, who's apparently working for Checkmate. He claims to have the answers Val needs, but time will tell (so to speak).

The Monitors (or, as I prefer to think of them, the Legion of Righteous Self-Important Arrogant Busybodies *, fret about Kyle Rayner (formerly Green Lantern, Ion, and now Parallax) and the possibilities for chaos if a certain low-probability event happens. So, of course, they decide he should be killed, which attempt will presumably precipitate the very event they fear.

* It just occurred to me that the title could also rightfully belong to the Guardians of the Universe. Maybe that'll be another Countdown spin-off? Monitors Versus Guardians?

They also, by a 'wink and a nod', decide that Bob the Monitor must die, as well.

No Piper and Trickster segment this issue, but based on the next issue's cover I'm guessing they have a major role in that issue.

Holly Robinson begins her "purification ritual", and as she realizes she's being armored but not armed she grows increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. Once the battle starts she kicks butt. Not too big a surprise, since at one time she was Catwoman. The only person she doesn't wipe the floor with is a masked competitor whose mask carries a sort of smirk. I think I'll go out on a limb here and guess that behind the mask is Harley Quinn.

You've probably noticed that this week I haven't groused about the art. It's nothing spectacular, but good solid workmanlike drafting. I didn't see anything particularly eye-catching, just good solid art. It's kind of a shame that it's worth remarking on that the art is competent.

Again, the story this week was nothing to write home about, but the pacing was much better than in the early issues. Not trying to cover every story in every issue is a good move. It gives the story more room to breathe, allowing it to feel more like a story and not just an unconnected series of events. I still feel the difference is in the editorial side of things. Mike Carlin and his assistants have a much better feel for the material than the previous editorial folks.

Sean McKeever has a good touch with the dialogue and captions. My only objection is that he's overusing one transition technique, where in the last panel of one scene we get the first thought of the next scene. It's a technique that works, but by the time it's noticeable it's been overdone.

What can I say, if that's my biggest kvetch with the issue then the book is on the right track.

Don't forget, go out and spend that three dollars a week for Countdown. Despite it's faults, I believe the book is well worth your money. Let's show DC that there's a demand for this type of book.

Please remain seated until the blog comes to a complete and full stop. Thanks for flying KimAir, and have yourself a great day!

Lies, Damn Lies, and Previews

2007-08-28T16:22:00.000-04:00

There's been a tendency in recent years for both DC and Marvel to lie about forthcoming developments. Both Dan Didio and Joe Quesada have done this and been caught repeatedly, and basically taken the attitude of 'got one by you, didn't I?'.

Gone seem to be the days where they'd just shut up about things they didn't want to reveal, or even being truthful but allowing the listener/reader to make wrong assumptions. It now seems to be accepted that lying is an acceptable tactic to keep plotlines secret.

I know that, with the pervasive communications about what's coming up, it takes more creativity to keep the wraps on. We've come a long way from waiting for the next issue of Mediascene or The Comic Reader to get a few tidbits, but that doesn't give the companies license to lie to the fans.

36 and counting...

2007-08-23T03:59:00.000-04:00

DC's Countdown hits issue 36 this week. For those of you who haven't been paying attention, that doesn't mean we're 36 issues in. It means we have 36 left to go.

Now that that's settled:

We begin this week with the Challengers of the Beyond (or Challengers of Beyond, or Challengers from Beyond, or Challengers from the Beyond. It's all kind of confusing, since they were named in convention panels rather than in the book, and there's several versions of the name circulating. Some direction here, please?)...

Um.

We begin this week with the Challengers of the Whatever, still down in the nanoverse, seemingly stuck and fighting a party of insectoid creatures. They're pretty much defeated, Atom can't reach his belt controls to shrink his way free, but he can reach... Eh?

Is it just me, or is there a slight gap in logic here?

Oh, and a mystery (and english-speaking) armored character holds the "bang stick" in question. How? Where is the character speaking from? The visible forearm appears to be 'framed' by, um, tree limbs? The perspective of the scene makes it appear that he (?) is watching them on a screen (or in some sort of scrying portal). I'm wondering whether Giffen's layouts more clearly showed the character in front of a viewer and the penciller misinterpreted it. And the 'tree limbs'? There's indication in one panel (page 2, panel 2) that there's trees around, maybe. They could as easily be part of some floating rocks in this Brunner-inspired level. I'm deliberately not looking back to Countdown 37 to see whether there were trees around. If I have to do that to find out, the artist failed.
I've got a lot more criticisms of the art in this issue. I'll mention some elsewhere, but it looks like the artists just aren't very good. I'm sort of used to their slotting some second-tier artists into the mix on the weekly books, but this past two weeks we seem to be dredging down to the third-tier. I'm sorry if this offends anyone (mainly the artists in question and their wives and girlfriends), but it's true. They're just not ready for prime time -- a major book from one of the 'big two'.

At least this week we can see that the artists did render the book instead of tracing over the layouts. Some of the linework shows up a bit, well, strange. It's not that the artist has a quirky style, it's just a lack of experience. More on this later.

Aside from the art, nothing much has gone on with this plotline for a while. They've shrunk to a world which looks kinda like the Amazon-ish jungle where Ray Palmer used to live. They've shrunk from there to the Frank Brunner inspired cosmos where they got some hints to the Great Disaster. I know DC has faith in this 'team' -- there's a number of specials scheduled, and rumors of a regular monthly title later, so shouldn't they be having more happen than acting as a placeholder waiting for the specials?

Zatanna is still training Mary Marvel in magic, until Mary explodes over nothing. It turns into a major battle, tearing up Zatanna's house and unleashing various magical energies. Mary is operating on a level of pure emotion, not intellect, but there's more than that. It's not unlike Lindsay Lohan being told that she can't get plastered, do lines, and have semi-public sex on the riverboat in Disneyland. What's that you say? Reports are that she did just that? I'm sure it's just a pernicious rumor.

It's all about the sense of entitlement that means there's a blow-up when anyone tells her "no". She's been increasingly unstable since gaining Teth Amon's (Black Adam's) powers, but this time it's way over the top. Is it the levels of power that're hard to adjust to, or something intrinsic in the powers? You might think so, but no.

It's Eclipso. Jean Loring must have found her way free. Where did this happen? Is this a new development, or did I miss it in a title I don't read? She's manipulating Mary, freeing her from moral constraints and all maturity in her responses. Why? We'll find out, though I suspect this thread may yet converge with the impending Great Disaster plotline.

Speaking of which, last week the book was rife with foreshadowing. This week, nothing. It might be coincidence, but it reads to me like someone made the decision that they should be inserted last week to please the fans, and this week it's been forgotten. There's a lot of improvement in the pacing recently, but this seems awkward. The references, maybe, could be sprinkled a tad more evenly? Larding one issue with it, then dropping it next issue just seems clumsy.

There seems to be lots of folks around 'New Earth' who have more than an inkling of the Great Disaster and what it all means, but aside from cryptic comments they haven't shared their knowledge, even among the hero community. Why? There must be a damn good reason, but we haven't a clue what the reason might be.

Jimmy Olsen is living inside his own head, thinking he's about to be admitted to the Justice League of America. Dream on, Jimmy.

The art here is particularly weak. Jimmy, when he's shown, looks 'flat'. I'm thinking this is another of those 'inexperienced artist' issues. It's as though the layouts called for certain perspectives, and the artist isn't quite up to the task of illustrating the shots. I'm really thinking DC needs to re-evaluate who they're assigning to the art duties on Countdown. They don't need to lock their A-list artists on the book (although it'd be fascinating to see), but they DO need to use artists who are at least competent. At the very least what about assigning inkers who are able (and authorized) to 'fix' the art when it falls short?

One nice touch, done by someone with a wicked sense of humor (whom I suspect to be Keith Giffen) is the 'Last Supper' arrangement of the JLA. Any significance to Batman being in the Jesus position?

Karate Kid and Una arrive at the hidden base of the 'legendary' Elias Orr. He was identified to me as being a former henchperson of Lex Luthor. Maybe so -- was he one of the scientists in 52? Here's another of those places where a scorecard is needed. I know they're resisting it fiercely (though they've done it at least once) but either editor's notes or a text page are needed to point readers to needed background info. They seem to feel it's both unnecessary and disruptive to the book, but it is really annoying when those moments arrive (in every issue to date) where we need to know more about who these people are and why we should care (and in some cases, how did they get into their current situation).

There's been a fair amount of criticism on the title, and DC (or at least Dan Didio) has been quite defensive about their handling of Countdown. I like the book a lot, but there are some things that need fixing (such as the art) and listening (and maybe even taking action) won't hurt. Don't be defensive. The criticism isn't to impress with our incisive wit, but to help evaluate and improve the book. Happy readers are ones who will return to spend more money on the product, so why not try and please them just a tad?

Maybe it's just the way the art was done in this issue, but there's more than a passing resemblance between Elias Orr and R. J. Brande. Given this is a Legion of Super-Heroes thread, that's an interesting coincidence.

There's no Holly Robinson / Harley Quinn segment this week, which is a bit of a shame, since the Holly segments and Piper / Trickster segments are my favorites.

Speaking of Piper and Trickster, they left off last issue as prisoners of Poison Ivy, and this issue they talk their way out of it by pretending to have been sent by her new (and unnamed) patron. They manage to string her along until the patron shows up, and boy, he's pissed!

It's Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke, the Terminator.

This (along with the Holly / Harley plot) where I have no idea where the story is going. It doesn't look like it's going to lead into Salvation Run, but then again who knows?

37 and counting...

2007-08-15T18:36:00.001-04:00

The tone of Countdown is evolving. No longer just a series of unconnected events, the story is finally moving forward. Karate Kid is told that whatever disease he has, it's either an alien virus or one from the future. Both, maybe?

This sets Una off, with under her breath mutterings about the coming of the Great Disaster. We're seeing a lot of recent indications that it's upon us, and I suppose it's about time. as I recall, when Jack Kirby originally created stories involving the disaster, it was supposed to have arrived in August of 1984. If that's wrong, it's my swiss-cheesed memory to blame. But I'd swear I once read a story back in the Kirby era that set the Great Disaster for August 28, 1984. Any verification -- or corrections?

By the way, Oracle appears to have an MRI unit in her hidden base of operations. Even for the ultimate data geek, this seems a bit much. It's not like she used to be a physician or something (and even if she had been it would be a bit ludicrous). Barbara Gordon was a librarian who wound up in Washington as a congresscritter. Normally members of congress aren't known for keeping MRI gadgets in their offices. Even Bill Frist passed that opportunity by.

Oracle comes up with the dossier on a 'mythical' biotech whiz named Elias Orr, who just might be good enough to help Karate Kid. I'm not sure why, but that name feels like it should be ringing a bell somewhere. Does anyone recall seeing a character of that name somewhere in the past of DC or it's ancestor companies? (Fawcett, Charlton, Quality, Wildstorm, etc?)

Mary Marvel and Zatanna arrive at Zatanna's ancestral home, which seems to be a mixture of the House of Mystery and Hogwarts. Her home, Shadowcrest, seems to be designed along the Tardis lines, that is, much bigger on the inside than the outside. I almost expected to find Skeeve and Aahz backing through a door while escaping some sort of pickle.

I have to note, by the way, that throughout this issue, the women all seem to have overly-large eyes and big heads. I know that neotony is a commonly-used way to make characters seem more cute, but it's done to excess here. Zatanna, on page 5, goes from a raven-haired Mary Jane Watson to someone who's had about three times too much botox in the course of two panels. What happened here? I'm suspecting that someone tried following Keith Giffen's layouts a bit too slavishly, without drafting the characters themselves, and wound up thoughtlessly following lines that were never intended for a final rendering. Whatever happened, it looks grotesque.

(I should probably mention that the art accompanying this article is NOT from this issue of Countdown.)
Who Dat?

Donna Troy, Jason Todd, Bob the Monitor, Jason Choi (aka The Atom) are now, I understand, considered to be the group Challengers of Beyond. The impression I'm getting is that, after Countdown, this may become it's own title. In the meantime, they've already announced some specials featuring the Challs.

Down at another level of the Palmerverse (which still sounds stoopid to me; anyone mind if I just settle for calling it the nanoverse?) they've found a group of, um, wizards who're performing some sort of ceremony. They chat with one (small) witch, who looks suspiciously like someone from the Levitz/Giffen Legion of Super-Heroes.

In short, Ray Palmer has been and gone, and now the Great Disaster is nearly here, which is why the wizards are scarpering off Right Now!

Piper and Trickster have a knack, doncha know, for being able to fall into a flower bed and end up deep in the fertilizer. That's actually an apt simile, because here they break into a greenhouse to steal vegetables (lo, see how the mighty have fallen) and discover it's the lair of Poison Ivy. As to the question, "what are the odds?", Trickster says it best. "This is Gotham! You can't swing a dead sidekick here without hitting a super-villain! We shoulda known the odds'd be pretty damn good!"

Speaking of Poison Ivy, her erstwhile partner, Harley Quinn is showing more signs that she's not over the thing that made her idolize and copy the Joker, she's just transferred her allegiance to Athena. There looks to be, possibly, a bit of a crush on Holly Robinson, as well.

Finally, Jimmy Olson is mulling over his attempt at joining the Teen Titans. Knowing it didn't go at all well, he tries to think through how his powers work. And, in mid-mull, he makes a discovery... He realizes that Clark Kent is Superman!

How? Dunno, but I'd guess it has much the same mechanism by which he knew who Jason Todd was when he saw the Red Hood.

The penciling in this issue is credited to "David Lopez with Mike Norton". Inks are "Don Hillman II with Rod Ramos" The only one here that's much familiar to me is Rod Ramos. I know he's better than what I'm seeing here. By and large I don't think the problem is with the inkers. The penciling, though, looks like someone just enlarged Keith Giffen's layouts and did a light penciling on top of them.

One strong indication is that a lot of things I'm seeing look much like Keith Giffen's type of raw layouts. A lot of the time, his layouts aren't so much drawn as cartooned, to give the person doing pencils an idea of what to draw. I'm seeing an awful lot of that bleeding through. Page 12 has a good example. In the first panel, Piper and Trickster are running, and Trickster is rendered like someone out of the old Mad, back when it was a comic. It looks like, instead of interpreting the layouts, they're tracing them and just adding detail, some of which isn't appropriate for a finished page. See again the Zatanna faces back on page 5.

Something needs to be done to prevent this in future issues. The art teams aren't having to race to do every issue, so why does the art look like it was done in incredible haste?

Final? crisis...

2007-08-12T12:26:00.000-04:00

I've been enjoying Countdown, really I have. I'm enjoying it more since it's editorial change-over, but I have been liking it since the beginning. But...

Let's go back several years. We've got a DC Universe that's fairly cohesive and where things fit together. Problem is, it's more than a bit dark. I'm not really sure how this happened. After the original Crisis On Infinite Earths, things were much lighter in tone. We had the JLI, which was very light, almost to the point of being a humor book. This lasted a while, including various spin-offs, but eventually it was gone, replaced by the darker and more serious JLA. Which then broke up and was reformed. Which then broke up and was...

Batman, somewhere in here, lost his way, and he became almost the epitome of dark. New black costume, his back broken (by Bane), and his city destroyed, there was, for me at least, no reason left to read his titles any more. It was a relentlessly depressing and out-of-touch reality.

The "Post-Crisis" Superman was also lighter in tone, concentrating more on the mythic than on the dark. That started changing when we hit the era of the "Death of Superman". Somehow, once we were through that, things were never the same. The stakes had been raised, and things were ever-darker.

Green Lantern's city was destroyed in the course of the Superman epic, and it drove him mad. He, well, changed, and became the villain Parallax. As Parallax he tried to remake the universe. He partially succeeded. What came out of it wasn't the universe he'd wanted, but it was somewhat different, and darker still than the previous iteration. Eventually he redeemed himself saving the earth, and died, only to eventually become the Spectre. Actually his death caused Hal Jordan to become less dark. His Spectre was more a creature of redemption than of punishment. So, of course, that promptly ended and he went on to his not-so-eternal reward.

I could continue on, itemizing the roster of the DC Universe, but why? Hopefully by now you get the idea. As time went on, the universe continued to darken, and the heroes went from heroic to, well, I'm not quite sure how to describe it. Between personal tragedies (such as the new Green Lantern's girlfriend being murdered and her body stuffed into a refrigerator for him to find) to less-than heroic behavior (such as Power Company, the super-team that was just in it for the money).

Things hit their nadir when the "Identity Crisis" struck. Instead of a 'cosmic' type crisis, this one was personal and much closer to home. Sue Dibny, the Elongated Man's wife, was murdered in their home, and all indications were that it was done by one of the Justice League's villains. As things developed, we discovered that the League had been doing some less-than-heroic things for quite a while, mindwiping villains and making them more than a little bit ineffectual. THEN it turns out that they did it to Batman, as well!

The upshot was a further darkening of the DC Universe. The original, 1930's era Superman, who was still alive off in a pocket universe, was increasingly angered and disappointed in what he saw happening, and took steps to fix things. Of course, things didn't go to plan, but the world was once again remade in the Infinite Crisis.

A major goal of this partial reboot was to 'lighten up' the tone of the heroes, and to return them to being, well, more heroic. In some ways it worked. The Justice Society disbanded and then restarted, this time with the idea of 'making better heroes'. It made incremental differences in Batman, returning him to gray and lightening him up a fraction. Others, though...

In the run-up to the crisis, Wonder Woman killed a villain, Maximilian Lord. Not by accident, but intentionally. That didn't change in the soft reboot. The intention was there for the universe as a whole to lighten up, but somehow the changes rapidly went by-the board. The first year after the crisis was skipped over, in favor of showing a 'One Year Later' universe where the changes had shaken down. Regrettably, they basically settled down to the status quo ante. Aside from the characters involved in 52 you'd have hardly known a year had passed. Out of 52 we learned that the changes in Infinite Crisis were more extensive than we'd thought, though not 'here at home'. There were 52 different but identical universes. Mr. Mind, though, managed to disrupt the fabric of spacetime, and all the worlds changed -- so we now have 52 parallel universes.

In Countdown, we're seeing something -- something? -- going on that's going to change and redefine the DC Multiverse. Again. And we already know that following Countdown is Final Crisis.

I'm really hoping that Final Crisis is, in fact, final. We've had several years of flux that's taken a well-ordered universe, albeit one which is way too dark, and created an amorphous mish-mash of realities. It was roughly twenty years between Crisis On Infinite Earths and Identity Crisis. Since Identity Crisis it's been a headlong rush from crisis to crisis.

I believe it's getting past time for some closure. What I want to see coming out of Final Crisis is a well-ordered universe that can be used as a good sandbox for telling stories. After several years of flux, it's getting tiring to try and keep track of who's who and what's what. I think DC is at the point of diminishing returns with the whole "Crisis" concept. It's time to wrap this up and move on to other kinds of stories.

If they want to do another cosmic redefinition, how about putting it on the schedule for, roughly, 2028?

38 and counting...

2007-08-08T16:27:00.000-04:00

Mister Action! Robin! Hero versus Her... um. Never mind.

Once again, Jimmy manages to make a fool of himself. Oh, it's not that he doesn't have the powers, it's that he hasn't taken the time to think things through. So, he goes and applies to the Teen Titans for membership. Only thing, it didn't occur to him in advance that his powers only work when his life is in danger. So, no powers when he tries to demonstrate. Ouch.

I'm assuming his powers somehow know whether an attack is going to be life-threatening. Does that mean there's a sentience behind the powers? Otherwise, how exactly would this work?

Mary Marvel and Zatanna find their cruise ship under attack, and find themselves fighting Slig, of the Deep Six. Things don't turn out well. We do get our first glimpse of Eclipso, though. For anyone who's forgotten, she's also known as Jean Loring, the person who set into motion the whole sequence of events leading from Identity Crisis to Infinite Crisis to 52 to Countdown and, next spring, Final Crisis.

Pied Piper and Trickster have their confrontation with Batwoman and The Question, and they don't end up looking too good. On the other hand, they do get let go once The Question decides they're morons who would have been incapable of killing the Flash.

We get a brief look-in at the Monitors, who've realized that Bob, Jason Todd, and Donna Troy are missing from the multiverse, along with Ryan Choi. One of them ties this in with the missing Ray Palmer, Ryan Choi's predecessor as The Atom. For folks who are supposed to be nigh-unto omniscient, and who have theoretically been keeping their beady little glowing-red eyes on Jason and Donna, they certainly mucked this one up.

Oracle (Barbara Gordon) is simultaneously fighting the Calculator in two different arenas. First, there's the attempted hack on her database servers, and secondly there's a global virus attack (intended to sew chaos and distract her from fighting the hack). Need I mention that she shuts both down cleanly, mightily pissing off Calculator in the process.

We also get to see some of the other heroes fighting the chaos. Superman, Power Girl, and Supergirl keeping aircraft from colliding. We've got Green Lantern rescuing a space shuttle whose computers are down. The JSA recaptures escapees from "Stryker's Island" in Metropolis. Okay, Metropolis is loosely based on New York (as is Gotham City, for that matter), but is it really necessary to have stupidly named and thinly-veiled versions of New York's landmarks? Stryker's Island? As opposed to Ryker's Island in New York? Shgeesh. It's a name that might have worked in the forties or fifties, but nowadays it's enough to pull you out of the story. At least it did for me.

Oh, and we saw Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters stopping some nuclear-tipped missiles from successfully launching. It seems they thought that dropping nukes on our allies would be a Bad Idea. Silly heroes. They should have checked first with George W. and Dick C. They wouldn't have been distressed by an accidental nuke or seventeen.

Finally, we have the start of the postponed meeting between Oracle, Karate Kid, and Una. We don't find out much new, but what we do discover... if true, it's a big one.

Oh, yeah, just one more thing... Darkseid. We're starting to get a clue of his plans, and I'm beginning to think he's been a prime mover behind the scenes for several years now. He's working on something called the New Multiversal Dynasty. This sounds double-plus-ungood.

39 and counting...

2007-08-01T14:19:00.000-04:00

Countdown 39 (from DC Comics, in case you haven''t been paying attention) doesn't flow quite as well as the past few issues, but it's still a big step above the early issues of the series.

Karate Kid and Una break into Oracle's 'inner sanctum, only to find that someone is doing a fair job of hacking her system. This is a bad thing beyond what you might expect, since she's got one of the world's most comprehensive databases of information on superheroes -- including their true identities. Ouch!

Piper and Trickster are still hiding out beneath the Penguin's Iceberg Lounge. After a nice meal (courtesy of Penguin) they're interrupted by the Suicide Squad. Plus, Trickster suffers another attack of homophobia. Their squabble ends abruptly when they're confronted by the Question and Batwoman.

Traveling deeper into the, um, Palmerverse (no ego problems there, either, I guess), Donna Troy, Jason Todd, Ryan Choi, and "Bob" end up in what looks a lot like Frank Brunner's version of a Doctor Strange dark dimension. I guess they shoulda taken a left turn at Albuquerque.

Mister Action seems able to handle street-level crime easily enough, but he's not really too attentive to the details. Getting distracted by the grateful -- and somewhat passionate -- thanks for saving a woman's purse, he begins mulling joining a team. In the process he forgets about the perp, who rapidly (and cautiously) slinks away. Jimmy's got hero potential, but he's also got potential to become a joke.

Holly Robinson is starting to see through Harley Quinn's facade. Yes, she's no longer idealizing the Joker and emulating his behavior, but she now seems to be devoted, in the same unhealthy way, to Athena.

Athena explains to Holly that her facility isn't designed to be able to handle persons with family responsibilities. Holly's "somewhat dubious" about all this, and Athena invites her to sit in on a "self-esteem workshop". I'm wondering just what goes on in the workshops. I guess we'll find out shortly.

By the way, as you may have notices, I'm generally not covering the back feature, the serialized History Of The Multiverse. Mainly this is because it's not really a story. It's basically an illustrated discourse on how we got from the original Crisis On Infinite Earths to the present. As such it's a fairly good precis. As a story, though, well, it's a dead zero. The way it's structured we have the Monitors standing around telling each other what they already know. It's pure exposition with no real story attached. As such there's nothing really to go over. I'll probably mention it if there's anything new that's worthy of note. It'll be ending soon, anyways, as the back feature turns to biographies of the villains.

40 and counting...

2007-07-25T18:01:00.000-04:00

And Keith Giffen finally arrives. It's noticeable, and a definite step up for the art.

Countdown 40 is again moving the plot forward. Whatever caused the stagnancies in the early issues appears to have gone. My presumption is that the difference is the change from Mike Marts to Mike Carlin in editing. Mike Marts is a good editor, but he doesn't seem to have had a good handle on how to do either a weekly comic (the pacing) or a crossover event (what to include where). Mike Carlin has experience with both, and it shows in the finished product.

Way down in the, um, Palmerverse, we've got Donna Troy, Jason Todd, Ryan Choi, and "Bob" the Monitor in what's similar to, but not the same as, the Amazon jungle from Sword Of The Atom. Confused yet?

After a fight with the locals, they discover they're all on the same side (gee, where have I heard that plot before?) and they get some leads on where to head next to find Ray Palmer. Plus, here's the first real substantial connection back to Identity Crisis. I'm hoping they'll develop this further. Otherwise, the motivations behind his actions seem pretty empty. Why did he vanish? Grief? Despair? Embarrassment? So far we don't know. I'm looking forward to finding out.

Mister Action's uniform still looks kinda doofus to me, but based on his first outing, this might just work. Jimmy Olson is obviously trying to base his costumed persona upon Superman, but we'll see how effective is imitation. And Lois is right when she says "So it's true-- all the good names are taken." Jimmy could have been a bit more imaginative in choosing a name. Oh, I know it's because in a previous incarnation of the DC Universe he was "Mister Action" for (if I remember rightly) WGBS News, the station's sort-of-ombudsman.

We have a look-in on Mary Marvel, who's looking for help from Zatanna. Mary really does have some serious anger issues, though I have to admit having shared similar feelings towards hecklers.

Holly Robinson is getting a bit uncomfortable with some of the policies of the Athenian Women's Shelter. We're starting to see a few cracks in their facade -- just what is their real agenda?

Darkseid is making a bit more of an appearance here. He shows a few unexpected depths, though he really doesn't want anyone to know. I mean, he really doesn't want anyone to know. Plus, we see someone whom I think is Bug, though I had thought he was killed a few decades ago. Then again, on "New Earth", who knows?

Piper and Trickster follow through on their idea to enlist Penguin's help in hiding -- at least briefly. We get a connection (finally!) to the events of 52, as well. Where's that going to lead? Well, that's the question.

41 and counting...

2007-07-18T21:32:00.000-04:00

"Seriously. Nice work."

That's the opening line to Countdown 41, and it's also a fair review of the issue, as well.

At last, as we've seen in the past few issues, the story is finally starting to move forward.

Trickster and Pied Piper find a (somewhat damp) way out of their predicament, but find themselves in a bit of a different pickle, ending up in Gotham City. They're (as they put it) "public enemies numbers one and one-A!" Trickster seems to have an idea, though, as to where they can go for help. Seems he's buds with the proprietor of the Iceberg Lounge.

Jimmy Olson is trying to implement his idea -- to become a superhero -- and, by this point it seems like he's got a truly doofus plan to achieve it. I dunno, in the end it might all work out, but to me it looks like it's mainly got potential to humiliate him beyond all description.

Mister Action?

Mary Marvel just gets a look-in here, as she questions the changes to her personality since she gained Black Adam's powers. She's not as oblivious to what's been happening as it's appeared. It looks like she's about to pick up a mentor, welcome or not. Can anyone say Eclipso?

Donna Troy, Jason Todd, and Ryan Choi, along with Bob the Monitor (you had to be there), have left for the Palmerverse, in search of Ray Palmer. First stop, the jungle land from the long-ago Sword of the Atom.

Back in Gotham, at the Athenian Women's Center, Holly Robinson has to restrain Harly Quinn from trying to demonstrate their peacefulness by breaking a few heads. While she might be off her infatuation with Joker, she certainly hasn't lost the violent edge she had as his girlfriend. Question is, is she still homicidal?

Finally, the Legionnaires tell Karate Kid that he's not to return to the 30th Century. This is the 30th Century Legion, right? Doesn't look much like the 31st Century one. Then again, there's been so many reboots of the Legion that I've lost count. He stays behind with Una, one of the parts of Triplicate Girl. Without her counterparts, I'm not sure just what, if any powers she has. Umm. Maybe this is the current continuity explanation of Duo Damsel?

42 and counting...

2007-07-16T12:43:00.000-04:00

Beginning with the death of the Flash (from Trickster's dream point-of-view), Countdown 42 is finally bringing in the event that the whole "Rogues" storyline was about. I think it was a mistake having the whole rogue build-up here, and then have them do the deed offscreen (in Flash 13), and then return to Countdown without even a look-in at what happened. Not everyone who reads Countdown reads Flash, and the folks who'll later read the collected edition won't have immediate knowledge of the events of Flash 13. So yeah, I think belatedly showing what happened is a good idea.

Then we see they've been captured and handcuffed together by Deadshot and Multiplex. Who they're working for is (pardon the expression) up in the air, though they do make it clear they're working for some sort of government agency. The captured duo do manage to stage an escape, only to discover (belatedly) that they were being held in a moving airplane.

The expression "look before you leap" comes to mind.

Mary Marvel, probably because of the long-term coma, is a tad out-of-date on who's who in the DC universe. Not knowing that the Riddler is now one of the good guys, she's on the verge of taking, um, drastic action against him when she spots him in the vicinity of a robbery. Convinced to give him a chance to prove himself, they wind up fighting Clayface. Mary goes awfully close to the line... She throws Clayface into orbit, with the idea that he'll be freeze-dried, and eventually re-enter. As she puts it, "He's just dirt... and dirt will come back to earth sooner or later!"

We can see how she seems -- split -- in her reaction to what she did. Part of her is shocked and horrified at her actions, the other part takes a 'good riddance to bad rubbish' attitude. It certainly seems as though she inherited more than just her powers from Black Adam. Riddler suggests, not entirely in jest, that she find a mentor, one who specializes in dealing with anger management issues. DC has already hinted that she gets involved with Eclipso, whom I suspect isn't who the Riddler had in mind.

Batman and Karate Kid have a brief scene that -- well, I can't actually figure out what's the purpose of the scene. It doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know, and doesn't do anything to illuminate the characters. We know it's a couple of pages transplanted from another issue. So... was this just put here to fill two pages that would have otherwise have been occupied by something that was deleted? Perhaps we're seeing the first effects of the change in editorship?

Holly Robinson and Harleen Quinzel (Harley Quinn) have a discussion about Harley's recovery, and her recruitment by Athena. Granted that Athena is a god (small "g" type), I'd have thought Harleen was too far gone to ever break away from the Joker. So, is she posing as cured? Or, has she finally put Joker into her past?

Jimmy Olson is still working on the idea of becoming a super-hero, without a lot of success. There's not much more to be said about that, at least for now.

Donna Troy, Jason Todd, and the Monitor pay a visit to Ryan Choi (the Atom 3), enlisting his help in searching for his predecessor, Ray Palmer (Atom 2). We've been told that Ray is the key to averting the Great Disaster. We'll see.

Palmerverse?

43 and counting...

2007-07-07T12:46:00.000-04:00

Well, it's about time!

The story is finally starting to move. Whether it's because Mike Carlin is now co-editing, I don't know, but it is an auspicious beginning to his coming on board.

So, the main thread this issue is the funeral of Bart Allen (Flash IV). He wasn't Flash for very long, but in his roles as Impulse, Kid Flash, and Flash, he was central to a lot of things going on within the DC Universe.

The Flashes are native to the Central City/Keystone City twin cities on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border (no prizes for guessing which lies within which state!), and they do seem to have a somewhat different relationship to the locals than pretty much any other super-heroes I can think of.

(On an aside, why don't se see the term "super-hero" much any more? Old timers are called "mystery men", and modern ones are "metahumans", but nobody seems to use "super-hero" nowadays.)

The first part of the issue is narrated by Jimmy Olson, who goes into some depth on the special relationship between Flash and the twin cities. Oh, by the way, isn't the Flash Museum in Central City? Or is this another of the 'discontinuities' that will be addressed in the series? (Kind of like the whole JSA/All-Star Squadron being transplanted to Washington DC thing?)

Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, and Bart Allen's identities are now a matter of public knowledge. Now the only Flash whose identity isn't known is Wally West. Ironically, originally he was the only Flash who was open with his identity. I know the in-story rationale is that most of the family and friends of the various Flashes are gone, but there's a few key persons left. Joan Garrick (Jay's wife), Iris (West) Allen (Barry's widow, Bart's Grandmother, and Wally's Aunt), and Linda (Park) West (Wally's wife) and Wally and Linda's twins. It's not going to be hard at all for folks to put two and two together and figure out that Wally is Flash III, and there are some nasties out there who would love a chance to do to the Flash's loved ones what they did to Flash.

The Rogues are still out there.

Two of them are at the funeral.

Pied Piper and the Trickster showed up. Piper, I suspect, really did show up to pay his respects. Trickster, moreso, because he's the Piper's friend. Nice thought, guys, but not the smartest move in the world.

Monitor (well, one of them) is there, with Donna Troy and Jason Todd. He wants them to take off right away to search for Ray Palmer (Atom II), who vanished (literally!) at the end of Identity Crisis. They know more about this than we do, but the basic idea is that Ray is the key to averting the "Great Disaster".

I'm not sure where the "Great Disaster" plot is going, but since in my (admittedly bad) memory it was supposed to have happened in 1984, I am curious to see how this all plays out.

One suspects that Monarch (aka Captain Atom) has a large hand in this, as will Sinestro and his all-new Sinestro Corps, especially as the leaders of the Corps seem to be almost anyone who's been responsible for a "Crisis" in the past decade or two. Including the supposedly dead-and-gone Anti-Monitor, responsible for the original Crisis on Infinite Earths way back in 1985!

On a (presumably) less cosmic note, Holly Robinson has been taken in at a women's shelter run by Athena (yes, the Greek Goddess), and is just starting to relax when she meets one of her fellow guests, a former psychiatrist named Harleen Quinzel. You might know her better as Harley Quinn, the Joker's girlfriend!

Definitely, the story has finally started moving forward. Hopefully now we can get some momentum going.

44 and counting... (Finally!)

2007-07-02T19:42:00.000-04:00

Here we are, with a much-delayed look at Countdown 44. Many thanks to Piper for picking this up for me.

This week I'm not going to do a page-by-page review of the issue.

From the start, I've been a supporter of the book. It started off with what I considered a really good kick-off. The story took a character whom nobody cared about since she was created by Bob Rozakis, and made us care about her -- and then promptly killed her off.

Not that I'm happy about the death of the Joker's Daughter, but it was well-done and started the series off with a bang. And it was well followed-up upon, what with Jimmy Olson visiting the Joker himself.

There was lots of character bits and plot set-up. And it's been good. But we're about eight weeks into the series and nothing much has happened here. Oh, things have happened, such as the death of Flash IV (Bart) at the hands of the Rogues, or the revival of Flash III (Wally) at the hands of the Legion of Super-Heroes, the attack on Washington, DC by the Amazons, etc.

But they've all happened offscreen! Here in Countdown we've seen the build-up to some of it, and the aftermath of other parts, but not the actual events. Granted, the place for the death of the Flash was in his own title, but here it feels so peripheral that it hardly justifies Countdown as being the "spine" of the DC Universe.

(As an aside, the death of Flash II (Barry) was done within the pages of Crisis on Infinite Earths, but in that case the Flash Comic was being canceled, and the story there ended immediately prior to Crisis.)

The problem with Countdown, it seems to me, isn't with the writing -- everything I've seen appears well-written, but it's poorly paced, and it appears (so far) that most of what Countdown consists of is interstitial material. Nothing that's critical to other series', but material that kind of fills in the blanks from other stories.

Now, there's story throughlines in Countdown that appear to be specific to the series -- Mary Marvel, Jimmy Olson, and (possibily) Holly Robinson. Everything else, though, seems to be just filler material for other series. Even Forerunner appears to be there to provide a lead-in to her own feature.

Head writer on Countdown is Paul Dini, so the slow (some might call it "lack of") pacing seems puzzling. Paul is a much better writer than this. I'm inclined, at this point, to ascribe the problems with pacing (and ill-handled interconnecting to the universe) to the book's editor, Mike Marts. I know he's basically unfamiliar with the DC Universe, but the principles of storytelling should be pretty much pan-universal.

I know there's a LOT of dissatisfaction with the book among fans, and I'm guessing that it has translated into flagging sales for the series. Given one thing that was announced last week, it looks like the Powers That Be at DC have taken note and are doing a mid-course correction.

Starting with the next issue (this week's forthcoming Countdown 43) Mike Carlin is joining as co-editor, and over the next dozen or so issues Mike Marts is transitioning off the book. Mike Carlin is experienced at the weekly thing, since he was editor of the Superman books some years back when the franchise was run as a de-facto weekly comic. Anyone remember the "corner boxes" (actually triangles) that showed where the books fell in sequence?

No disrespect intended to Mike Marts, but I'm guessing that he wasn't well-suited to doing the weekly-comic-with-lots-of-interconnections-to-other-editors-books thing. I'm certainly expecting the pacing to improve dramatically as Mike Carlin's vision begins to have a presence in Countdown.

And, oh, by the way, haven't we had enough crotch shots of Mary Marvel? We get the idea. Lets move on.

45 and holding... (Updated)

2007-06-28T03:24:00.000-04:00

There may be a day or three delay in my post on Countdown 44. I don't have the book in hand yet, and it may be another day or two before I have a chance to pick it up. Oh, well. I'll be right back with my review and synopsis.

UPDATE: It's Sunday, July 1 and I still don't have my comics from last Wednesday. *sighs* Nothing much to be done about it just now, I fear. As a few of you may know, I've got some health issues going on, and they've been interfering somewhat with my doing things this past week.

I even tried, as an expedient for getting the write-up done, going to Demonoid and downloading the comic, but it seems their health this week is even worse than mine. Sheesh! Some weeks you just can't win for losing.

The Fastest Man Alive?

2007-06-21T03:32:00.000-04:00

It should be taken as a given that everything on this blog is spoiler warning worthy. This post is, more than even the usual. You've been warned.

So.. In Flash #13, released yesterday, The Flash (Bart Allen) was killed. Kilt daid. Not that there aren't holes left so that, if the powers-that-be wanted, they could bring him back. He was killed in the presence of his grandmother, Iris West Allen, widow of the second (Barry Allen) Flash. Let's just say it wasn't a very happy issue.

In Justice League #10, also released yesterday, the Flash is brought back to life. This story has been ongoing for several months, straddling between Justice League and Justice Society, and it's been a few months since I figured out that it was leading towards reviving The Flash.

Only thing is, I was betting on it's being Barry Allen. Surprise! Who got revived was Wally West (Flash 3), his wife, Linda Park, and their twins (looking somewhat older than when we last saw them). Good going to them!

But... one little kicker... at the end, back in the Legion of Super-Heroes time, Brainiac 5 holds one of the lightning rods that were used, and a 'reflection' in the rod hints that Barry Allen is back, as well. Well, whaddya know?

45 and counting...

2007-06-20T17:09:00.000-04:00

Given the cover of this week's Countdown, wouldn't you figure that Karate Kid and the Justice League would be kicking some butt this issue? Well, not exactly. I'll explain in a moment.

p 1-4: Now there's some serious butt-kicking. Donna Troy and Jason Todd vs Forerunner. It's kind of the finish to a scene interrupted in progress last week, so it's kind of oddly placed; the climax to an issue as the beginning of the next one. Still, it works as a scene, and I suppose it'll be a bit less out-of-place when it's in a collection and will read smoothly with the preceding part. I do wonder a bit, though, have collection sales gotten to the point where they are now the 'dog', and single issue sales are the 'tail'?

p 5-9: Jimmy Olson is being watched. And no, I'm not referring to the bearded man on the street. Look carefully at the building behind him -- the one where Sleez was killed last week -- there's someone watching out a ground floor window throughout the scene. Who? Hard to say at this point, but in certain panels the silhouette is suggestive.

So, Jimmy's going to enter "Who Wants To Be a Superhero?" Umm. No. He does seem to want to recapture the feeling, in the worst way, though. I suspect he may end up doing so, in the worst way, of course.

p 10-12: Many years ago, when I lived in Indianapolis, I attended a showing of the stage play(s) WARP! (I was going to link here to Wikipedia, and for the first time EVER found a topic upon which they don't have coverage!) During an intermission, I was standing in the lobby, looking at some photos from the play, when another audience member sidled up to me, looked at the pictures for a few seconds, then without preamble turned to me and said "I just love women with knives." Needless to say, I beat a hasty retreat.

I get a similar vibe when I see some of the comments on Donna Troy with the machine gun. I just feel a bit icky and want to take a long shower -- not at the sight of her with the gun, but at the tenor of some of the remarks. Yick!

p 13: Short Holly Robinson scene here. Nothing much worth mentioning, except that the shadowed figure is definitely NOT the same person who was watching Jimmy. Not unless the person is both a shape changer and able to be two places at once.

p 14-16: So, both sides in the little intramural Monitor scrap are considered renegades. And yet, the greater body of monitors seem content do do nothing but bitch at the warring two.

p 17-18: We finally see the Justice League and 'guests'. It's mostly a character-expository scene, no butt-kicking here. I do like the "Sarah Conner" comment.

p19-20: Forerunner feels disgraced, shreds her hair, and, oh, yeah, by the way, Monarch shows up. Nice cliffhanger, this time.

Musings...

2007-06-18T15:21:00.000-04:00

So, a few hints out of the weekend-o-cons. Nothing has really been nailed down, but they've definitely laid out much more of their plans.

I'm not going to even try and summarize things... just go to the Newsarama site and there'll be a lot more detail than I can provide.

I'm interested in a lot of the things they talked about. There's the re-started Flash series, with Mark Waid writing. Can we all agree that this past series was botched from day one? Not to slam the creators, but they never seemed to be on the right wavelength for the character, surprising since they were the creators of the Flash TV show, which I'd thought was pretty good.

There's the (planned) change in writers for Justice League. Brad Meltzer had never made a secret of when he planned to leave, but now we know who'll be following him up. Dwayne McDuffie is a pretty good choice, though I'm not totally happy there'll be a roster change already. *sighs* Ah well, each writer on a team book brings his or her favorites with them. I'm hoping Prince Brion isn't one of the losses, though. I'd love a clue what's up with him -- especially since he's back to the original costume, the only one which has ever looked good on him, despite the bad memories.

I'm happy to see Doctor Fate getting a book, though only a limited series for now. I know it's related to Steve Gerber's illness, but I do hope the good doctor gets an unlimited series soon. And, of course, I wish the best for Steve.

Now, who's going to do something about giving Ralph and Sue Dibny their own book? Hell, if nobody else wants to, I'll volunteer to do it myself. (Hey, DC Folk, are you listening?) I can think of several interesting angles for their stories, and after all that was invested in their characters in 52 (indeed, as much as the readers invested themselves into the characters) it seems a shame to let them lie fallow.

DC announced that it has bought in to Flex Comix, a Japanese publisher of Manga, with a heavy concentration of on-line comics. Is it just possible that, among other things, it's DC's way of testing the waters for on-line distribution? As a former retailer (with a chain of five stores) I can see where a move like this might frighten the retailers (and moreso frighten Diamond), but there's a lot of potential revenue being foregone because neither they nor Marvel are tapping that stream. I know there's a LOT of fans who get their weekly comics via torrent sites and buy only collections in paper. With some sort of iTunes-like structure, they could bring much of the potential revenue back in-house.

Enough random musing for now. There's lots more news, and I may be talking about more of it shortly.

Field mouse follies...

2007-06-18T14:16:00.000-04:00

Latest news, such as it is... there's a field mouse habitat been established at the edge of our yard. First discovered by my dog, it seems to be housing at least a few of the furry little fiends.

Penny (the doggie in question) isn't exactly the most territorial of dogs. Many is the time she'll go outside and there will be one or more bunnies out grazing at the salad bar, and she'll totally ignore them. Well, till they decide to run. Then she (seemingly) decides they're playing a game, and she'll chase them as far as the edge of the yard.

Squirrels she likes to 'play' with, chasing them whenever one has the effrontery to step into the yard (at ground level, at least), and even follows beneath when they're leaping about from tree to tree, as they cross the mighty rivers of... sorry. got a bit distracted there.

But field mice? Here she reverts to type. Penny is half Chocolate Lab and half mystery dog, and she looks so lab-like we've never been able to figure out what the mystery half might be. I'm starting to think it may be some sort of terrier, because she's taken a more than playful interest in these mice. Whenever I take her into the front yard she strains at her leash to get to field mouse country -- strains so hard it's more like "Let's take mommy for a drag across the yard."

She goes straight for the hole, and starts trying to figure out how to fit herself into a burrow the size of a mouse. Surprisingly, she's been able to grab a couple of mice and carry them out of the burrow. And yes, I'm too tender-hearted for my own good. I make her drop the mice so they can scamper back to their hidey-hole. *sigh*

I'm not sure what the proper thing is to do about the mice... traps, I suppose, though I think I'll let that part of the operation to Piper. In the meanwhile, Penny has found her own solution to the mouse problem. The past day or two, whenever she goes out there, she pees on top of the burrow!

46 and counting...

2007-06-15T04:39:00.000-04:00

And here we are at week 46. I've made some comments here (see below postings) and at Andrew Hickey's Blog, but I guess this is the real start of my blogging Countdown. So, let's begin...

We're six weeks into the story, and we're finally starting to get a sense of what's going on. The story is unfolding gradually, and we're still in the "What the bleep's goin' on here?" part of the story. 52 started out from the get-go with a lot of densly packed stuff, and that grabbed a lot of readers right away. Countdown is structured in a more traditional manner, with the plot unfolding and building.

If the story follows the "three act paradym", which it so far appears to be, there should be a small climax and a big reveal somewhere within the next six issues.

p1: So just when did Jimmy age? He looks far older here than just about anything in which I've seen him. Could this possibly be the Earth-17 (Jack Kirby's Fourth World) Jimmy? That might also explain some of the recent continuity 'disconnects' we've seen with Jimmy and his supporting cast. That doesn't mean that "Goody" Rickles will be showing up soon, does it?

p2-5 I'm getting the feeling that whule the "SHAZAM!" thunderbolt kept Mary at the same age, the "sorry" thunderbolt has fully aged her into an adult. I don't think, by the way, that this is the Earty-5 Mary. I'm guessing it's either "New Earth" or one of the other worlds. Though nobody's said so specifically, there's been enough hints dropped that I can figure out that Earth-5 is the Jeff Smith Shazamoverse. Then again, as far as "New Earth" goes, I was thinking that the Rock of Eternity had been put back together, and that Captain Marvel's job now was sitting at the center of the rock in order to hold things together. Guess I should be reading The Trials of Shazam! to get a clue about this.

p6-8: Not much to say here. I like the handling of the rogues so far, and seeing what's been hinted in Flash I think they're in for a bumpy ride.

p 9-12: I'm inclined to agree with Olson; "What the hell is going on here?!" Nothing here dissuades me from my Earth-17 theory. I'm wondering if the mystery 'killer' might not be some version of the Black Racer. Or, could be a monitor, I suppose, but at this stage I'm inclined to think not. Whoever it was, Sleez has seen him before.

p 13-14: In the old days I used to wonder whether Johnny Thunder ever realized that the magic word to call out his Thunderbolt was "Cei-U", or whether he just used to say "Say You!" at appropriate times by accident. He never seemed to have a firm grasp on calling forth the Thunderbolt, but then again there were a lot of facets to life that he never seemed to have a firm grasp on. I'm getting the idea that Mary Marvel hasn't yet picked up on the fact that her new magic word is "sorry". And, by the way, what DID just happen to her?

p 15-20: Not much to say here, either. I'm still waiting for more developments. By the way, why does Jason wear a mask under his mask?

p21-26: It's a good recap if the multiverse is going to remain, otherwise why bother? Although, since it's been about 22 years since the first big Crisis, I suppose a "what has gone before" might be helpful to the readers who came in late, though the time for the recap might have been a special between the last issue of 52 and the first issue of Countdown. Oh, and by the way, Dinah's husband was named Larry Lance, not Larry Drake.

So, there's Countdown 46. How'm I doing?

A matter of justice...

2007-06-11T01:02:00.000-04:00

The new "Justice League of America" has a new headquarters. Well, actually, more than one. Part is in a satellite, where it's presumably secure against your garden-variety intruder. The other portion is located in Washington D.C., on the national mall.

To the right, by the way, is a photo of the new "Hall of Justice". Yep, that's a real building, though it's not actually located in DC.

When they revealed it in the JLA book, it was referred to as being on the site of the old "All-Star Squadron" and "Justice Society" headquarters. Interesting, since the All-Star Squadron was based in Queens (in New York City), at the site of the 1939 World's Fair. Their HQ was located in the Trylon and Perisphere, the central theme pavillion from the world's fair. The site, by rhe way, is now the location of the Unisphere from the 1964-65 World's Fair. The Justice Society's HQ, likewise, was in New York, in an upper-west-side brownstone. (Until recently. Now they're in a new headquarters in Battery Park.)

So... that's quite an error to make. How could the writer (Brad Meltzer) have been so careless? How could the editor (Eddie Berganza) let a howler like that one fly by?

Well, she's a bit slow, but eventually the solution comes to her. There's been a spate of "continuity errors" of late, most related in some way (presumably) to Countdown. My suspicion is that the whole "Hall of Justice" thing is part of this picture. This is going to be one of those 'bleed-through' things from a different one of the 52 universes.

Any bets?

Counting down...

2007-06-09T17:26:00.000-04:00

Try to get two persons to agree totally on anything, and you're in for a 'herding cats' experience. That said, I'm finding myself more and more in disagreement with the conventional wisdom on DC's Countdown.

I'm sorry; I like the series.

Many of the complaints seem focused around the series' slow start. Well, yeah, in the first issue we only had one death (and that was after making us care about a character who's never been on anyone's favorite list).

What I'm seeing is a build-up. The story is, after all, some thousand pages long. It's striking me that it's following the archetypal three-act structure. We're still in the first act; matter of fact, we're still prior to the point where "everything changes".

We've had the opening kicker; now we're getting the introduction of characters and themes, and yes, I'm enjoying seeing things unfold even without lots-o-fighting-guys-in-spandex.

It's not the way 52 was structured, true. 52 was, well, 'busy'. What with four main writers (five if you count Steve Wacker) 52 had a much less structured approach, more a mosaic, and that led to a real 'density' in the book. There was lots crammed in, and because of the piecemeal approach it sometimes seemed as though there was more story there than actually appeared on the page. For example, much as I enjoyed the space heroes storyline, what exactly happened there that couldn't have been told in a 'done in one' issue?

Countdown seems to me to be just hitting it's stride. I don't fault anyone for being left cold by Countdown. It's far different from 52, and isn't everyone's cup-o-tea.

Seeing the reviews of Countdown, I'm kind of motivated to do my own. There's nothing wrong with someone who doesn't like/understand it reviewing it on that basis, but the reviews aren't reflecting my tastes. I believe I'm going to be doing more postings on comics in general, and Countdown in particular, and find out whether anyone agrees with me. Or, for that matter, whether anyone cares.

About last night...

2007-05-01T11:43:00.000-04:00

Last night, a group of us stopped at a Steak 'n Shake for a late dinner. The group included myself, Piper, Cat Lochley, Scotty, and Terry. We were told to seat ourselves, which we did after some difficulty finding a clean table.

We looked through our menus and chatted, when it occurred to us that nobody had yet been by to take any orders, even for drinks. So we looked around and noticed that some tables had parties who had arrived after us and had already ordered. As we watched, two of these groups received their food.

We attempted to signal a waiter, to no avail. We finally reached the point of loudly calling for a waiter, but we were completely ignored. Ultimately we left, and drove down the road to a Waffle House, where we were served promptly and courteously.

Why weren't we served at the Steak 'n Shake? Good question. Nobody said anything to us (literally!), but we could take some good guesses, dealing with certain transgender status.

I was in tears in the car on the way to the Waffle House. Why do some persons think this is an acceptable way to treat persons of whom they may not approve or understand? I'm, well, I'm at a loss for words to describe my feelings.

I'd urge persons reading this to *NOT* patronize Steak 'n Shake restaurants, and to, if possible, communicate with the company just WHY you're not eating there. Please keep it polite -- don't sink to their level -- leave out the vituperation and maybe someone will notice a number of complaints on the same subject. Companies DO notice these things, and maybe, just maybe, it'll motivate them to clean up their act.

By the way, as I said, the folks at Waffle House were prompt and courteous. It could be that there wasn't any "reading" done, or maybe just that they didn't care about things like that. In any event, I was quite happy with the service and food there, and would encourage patronage at your local Waffle House.

Thanks for sticking with my rant.

Memories of Jack...

2007-02-14T17:52:00.000-05:00

A Short Story...

It was back in the mid-80's, and I was attending the Chicago Comicon. This would be during the time it was held at the Marriott O'Hare. It was a nice place, and fairly well spread out, but from the way it'd been remodeled and expanded over the years, much of the exhibition and meeting spaces were scattered all over the place. That year the artists room was a small conference room tucked back in the bowels of the hotel. Eventually I stumbled my way to the artists area, and as I approached I could hear quite a hubbub inside. I figured something worthy of notice must be going on. As I entered the room, here's what I saw. The room was comparatively shallow but wide. Banquet tables ringed the room, with artists sitting behind the tables, with fans clustered around their favorite artists. There were a few artists ranged along the left and rear sides, and one on the right.

The hubbub was coming from a knot -- no, crowd, of fans clustering around someone centered on the back side. Well, the era might give you a hint. Todd McFarlane. Yep, he was the hot artist of the day. There were scattered fans at the other artists, but even they kept casting glances to see if there was going to be an opening in the Todd fan corps.

The artist at the far end? Well, I'm sure you can see where this is going. Jack Kirby. Sitting perched on the table, idly looking around, and absolutely ignored by the fans. I thought I'd stop by just to say "hi", and we started chatting. Chatting -- well, we talked about lots of stuff, and before I knew it, most of the afternoon had passed. And the whole time, Jack was ignored by the fans. If memory serves, the only interruption was once when Jerry Ordway stopped by for a minute.

Jack was quite a talker that afternoon. I tried to pull away a few times, to not monopolize his time, but he kept the talk going. Well, either I'm more a sparkling conversationalist than I thought, or he was feeling a bit alone and abandoned. I had a great time being able to spend so long with Jack -- unfortunately the only time we ever met.

I know that comics has a large "flavor of the month" aspect, along with lots of other fields, but it was more than a bit upsetting to see someone who arguably built the industry left ignored.

Hey kids, what time is it?

2007-01-25T13:16:00.000-05:00

Jack Frost's House of Horrors...

2007-01-02T17:27:00.000-05:00

Don't you just love winter?

It makes me pine for the days I lived in Florida.

EH?

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

What is this?

I suppose I'll say, eventually.

Any guesses?

'nuff said...

2006-12-06T23:14:00.000-05:00

Doctor No

2006-12-06T17:42:00.000-05:00

Waaay back at the beginning of the James Bond films was Doctor No. Didja know that DC published a Doctor No comic? I had a copy many, many moons ago. I always wondered why they didn't do comics versions of the other films. Well, here's why.

'Nuff said...

2006-11-09T23:00:00.000-05:00

LONDON - A 22-year-old man suffered internal injuries after lighting a small firecracker he had inserted into his buttocks, paramedics said Thursday.

The incident took place Sunday, when Britain celebrated Bonfire Night, traditionally marked with fireworks to celebrate the Guy Fawkes’ gunpowder plot to blow up Parliament in the 17th century.

The man suffered burns and other unspecified internal injuries in the incident in Sunderland, 275 miles north of London.

Katherine Shenton, a spokeswoman for the North East Ambulance Service, said a caller had phoned in that the victim was bleeding after the firecracker exploded.

Several of the man’s friends recorded the incident on a mobile phone. The blurry images show a man bent over with his pants down and a white flash as the firecracker explodes.

The Times newspaper reported the man is a soldier who recently returned from Iraq.

Not gloating...

2006-11-08T13:40:00.000-05:00

Okay, the election is over. The Democrats have won the house, while the senate, as of this writing, hangs on the outcome in Virginia. As George W. described it, the cumulative effect of it was getting a "thumpin'". Immediately, Donald Rumsfeld is gone. That's good news.

The bad news is that all this was necessary.

Look, I'm a lifelong Republican. In college I was a campaign volunteer for Gerald Ford. I've only voted for two Democratic candidates in my life. (if you want to know: Ford, Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Dole, Bush, Kerry.) I'm not happy about having to split with, and in the last two elections advocate against, my party.

As has been said before in other places, I did not leave my party, my party left me. In recent years it has been captured by ideologues, and they've taken it in directions I find dangerous and thoroughly destructive.

Maybe, just maybe, with this election things have bottomed out. I hope so.

NYC may ease rules for gender change

2006-11-07T19:51:00.000-05:00

Hey... there's this from MSNBC:

NEW YORK - The city wants to make it easier for transgender New Yorkers to switch the sex listed on their birth certificate even without undergoing reassignment surgery, putting the city at the forefront of efforts to redefine gender.

Under present city rules, only people who can show proof of surgery qualify for getting a revised birth certificate. Even then, the only change made is the elimination of any reference to gender on the document.

The new plan, unveiled last month, would let birth records reflect the new gender. It would also allow changes for people who hadn’t had genital surgery, but could show substantial proof that they have undertaken other steps to irrevocably alter their gender-identity — like undergoing hormone therapy.

The policy change is one that advocates for New York’s sizable transgender community have requested for years, but which has taken on greater significance in a post-Sept. 11 world of increased security.

New Yorkers need to show picture ID to enter office towers, air terminals, public monuments and all sorts of government buildings. They need them to apply for a job too, or buy beer at a neighborhood deli.

The trouble comes when someone inspects those documents, and notices that a person’s listed gender doesn’t appear to match the way they look and dress.

“That can be a very dangerous situation for a transgender person,” said Cole Thaler, transgender rights attorney for the national legal aid group Lambda Legal.

'Outdated' system
Thaler said having a birth certificate with a gender that matches a person’s appearance will ease the way to getting other government records, including passports, drivers’ licenses and Social Security records.

Lorna Thorpe, Deputy Commissioner of New York’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, called the current system “outdated.”

“A lot of transgender persons use different techniques to switch genders,” she said. Some try hormones. A smaller number undergo surgery — in part because not everyone is medically capable of undergoing the procedure.

All but three states now allow people who have had a sex change to get a new birth certificate and New York City has done so since 1971. The city now issues about a dozen of the revised birth certificates a year.

Of the states that allow similar changes of birth certificates, almost all currently require proof of a gender-reassignment surgery.

Tennessee has a law expressly prohibiting a change of gender on a birth certificate. Ohio and Idaho also won’t allow the change because of court rulings or as a matter of administrative policy.

Go Vote!

2006-11-07T18:09:00.000-05:00

I did!

Zerophilia...

2006-10-17T00:18:00.000-04:00

I just ran across the following on IMDB... thought you might be interested...

Zerophilia

16 Oct 2006 8:12pm EDT - By Michael Rechtshaffen

Microangelo Entertainment Gender confusion is taken to the next, angst-ridden level in "Zerophilia", a quirky romantic dramedy about a young-adult male who develops a rare biological condition that triggers a highly unusual metamorphosis. Although writer-director Martin Curland deserves full points for originality -- not to mention avoiding those broadly sophomoric or campy sci-fi pitfalls that could have easily gone with the territory -- the admittedly thought-provoking results fail to make the full-blown transition from curious concept to substantial theatrical proposition. In the end, the film, which opened Friday in New York this weekend and expands to Los Angeles and elsewhere Nov. 3, feels more like an episode of "The O.C". with a chromosomal imbalance. Taylor Handley does thoughtful, committed work as Luke, a sexually inexperienced college student who "catches" the bizarre genetic virus after an anonymous one-night stand in a camper with a British woman (voiced -- talk about your weird science -- by Kelly LeBrock). While other hapless dudes might have run the risk of contracting the usual communicable diseases, poor Luke finds himself stricken with something that no dose of penicillin could cure: The encounter has set off a genetic condition that has begun to transform his body, both anatomically and emotionally, into that of the opposite sex. Understandably concerned, Luke's best buddy Keenan (Dustin Seavey) tracks down a zerophiliac expert, the decidedly loopy Dr. Sydney Catchadourian (Gina Bellman, who memorably played the part of the decidedly loopy Jane on the original British version of "Coupling"), who, for personal reasons, pushes him to go all the way and make the final transformation from Luke to Luca (Marieh Delfino). To add to Luke/Luca's confusion, in addition to finding himself attracted to the down-to-earth Michelle (Rebecca Mozo), his burgeoning female side is also starting to develop a thing for her brooding mechanic brother, Max (Kyle Schmid). Curland's script has some interesting, gender-blending observations to make about love and sexual attraction, but the low-budget production, while effectively cast and nicely shot (by Graham Futerfas), would have benefited from a more assured directorial hand -- one that might have been willing to venture away from those primetime small-screen confines and find the courage to play out some of the subject matter's inherently darker convictions. Visit HollywoodReporter.com for more ...

Don't read this...

2006-10-15T13:33:00.000-04:00

I've gotten flak elsewhere for linking to this blog, on the grounds that it's too political and the content will start controversy. Well, it's SUPPOSED to incite controversy. That said, though, keep the commentary HERE. Don't go off into endless back-and-forth colloquy on other boards. First of all, it uses their bandwidth instead of mine. Second, many folks there don't care about political matters, vehemently disagree with all the expressed opinions, and don't want to see the verbal foodfights.

If you're going to respond or comment, do it HERE. That's kind of why there's a comment capability here in the first place. Second, I've asked you to do any commentary here. Posting it elsewhere is just rude.

And, if you don't care for political postings, well, don't read this blog. There's non-political postings here, but for now the political ones will dominate. After the election I suspect the political ones will be, for the most part, going away.

Trust in the system...

2006-10-15T12:19:00.000-04:00

[WARNING: This is a somewhat political post. If you don't like reading political posts, what are you doing here? More to the point, you might want to skip this posting.]

The other day I went to see the new Robin Williams movie, "Man of the Year". The basic premise is that he's a late-night comedian who runs for president, and, through a 'bug' in the computerized voting machines, wins.

Good movie. Funny movie. But that's not the point. It's not hard to figure out that the voting machine company who knows of the software flaws and tries to cover them up for it's own advantage is a thinly disguised version of Diebold. The link back there gives a pretty good description of the outstanding issues with Diebold's machines.

It's been noted in the news recently that the white house, specifically George W. Bush and Karl Rove, has been blithely confident that, despite the recent scandals and the very unfavorable polls, the Republicans are going to retain control of both the House and Senate.

From the Washington Post: Amid widespread panic in the Republican establishment about the coming midterm elections, there are two people whose confidence about GOP prospects strikes even their closest allies as almost inexplicably upbeat: President Bush and his top political adviser, Karl Rove.
Some Republicans on Capitol Hill are bracing for losses of 25 House seats or more. But party operatives say Rove is predicting that, at worst, Republicans will lose only 8 to 10 seats — shy of the 15-seat threshold that would cede control to Democrats for the first time since the 1994 elections and probably hobble the balance of Bush's second term. ...
The question is whether this is a case of justified confidence — based on Bush's and Rove's electoral record and knowledge of the money, technology and other assets at their command — or of self-delusion. Even many Republicans suspect the latter. Three GOP strategists with close ties to the White House flatly predicted the loss of the House, though they would not do so on the record for fear of offending senior Bush aides.

Hubris? Refusal to face the likely reality? Or, possibly, do they know something about the upcoming results of the election in advance? Do they have good reason for their confidence? In ordinary times I'd consider the possibility of massive election-rigging in the U.S. to be ludicrous; but this administration has shown their willingness to violate accepted standards, any laws that get in their way, and even ignore the constitution when it's to their benefit. They've even got a history of suspicious election results.

It's a more-than-scary thought. I hope I'm wrong.

Nostalgia

2006-10-10T15:47:00.000-04:00

I'm just sitting here, missing the days when I lived in central Florida. Yes, it gets hot and sticky in the summer, and you've got bugs, snakes, and (depending on where you live) alligators to deal with, but it was just about never boring.

Pretty much each weekend the first order of business was to decide on what to do. Visit a theme park? Which one? You had three from Disney (plus their water parks), Universal, Sea World, Cypress Gardens (pictured above), Boardwalk and Baseball (gone now), or Busch Gardens.

Shopping? Aside from the usual malls you had the Belz Factory Outlets, Flea World (don't ask!) and downtown Winter Park (comfortable AND Swank!).

Sightseeing places galore. Where to begin? Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (Where they launched the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft from)? Kennedy Space Center (launching point for Apollo, Skylab, Space Shuttle, and forthcoming Orion missions)? If you're not into space, there's things like Bok Tower Gardens, Wekiva Springs, Lake Eola Park. Beaches? Daytona, Cocoa Beach (don't forget to visit Ron-Jon's Surf Shop), Melbourne Beach, Vero Beach, etc.

The east coast gets much of the beachgoing visitors, and has the best surf, but the west coast has the better water. You're in the Gulf of Mexico, and the water is warm and crystal-clear. It makes for a much more relaxing day than on the eastern shore. It's all in what kind of experience you prefer. Mu favorite beach was Indian Rocks Beach, on the west coast, a bit north of Tampa. Friendly, not over-developed, and all-in-all a comfy place to spend time.

There's so much more down there that I couldn't begin to list it all. I liked the climate, the people (who, oddly enough, were almost all from the north), and the whole central Florida lifestyle.

Why'd I leave? My job went north, and I followed. Silly me. My first winter in Milwaukee we had a week of below -20 weather. You can imagine I was missing Christmas lights under the palm trees.

Bloody good fun...

2006-10-10T14:31:00.001-04:00

There's a couple of books and a new TV series I'd like to recommend. The books are "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" and "Dearly Devoted Dexter", both by Jeff Lindsay. The series is Showtime's "Dexter".

It's kind of hard to describe the premise, at least in any way that will make sense. Short version, Dexter is a forensic specialist for the Miami-Dade Police, specializing in blood-splatter evidence. In his spare time he's a serial killer. He has a speciality there, as well. He only preys on "bad people" -- basically other serial killers.

It is kind of a "guilty pleasure" rooting for a serial killer, somewhat akin to a Hitchcock movie with their morally flawed protagonists. This takes that concept, though, and pushes it to it's limits.

Dexter seems a nice enough guy, until you realize that his nice-guy facade is just that, a facade. It's all posturing to convince folks that he's just a regular guy. Inside, well, he'd argue that he has no emotions or feelings for anyone or anything. In reality, though, he's got a lot more there than he'd ever be willing to admit.

This is somewhat of a genre cross. Dexter is simultaneously a thriller and black comedy, with a few horror elements thrown into the mix. If that's not your thing, you might want to skip it. Otherwise, go read the books, watch the show.

Apropos of nothing...

2006-10-07T19:03:00.000-04:00

Things have been a bit worked up the past few days, so here are some pretty pictures of EXPO 67.

More angst later.

- Kim

Terrible swift sword...

2006-10-06T03:41:00.000-04:00

I've been reading (and seeing) the weirdest possible defence of the house leadership in the past day or so. It basically goes that others knew about it too, otherwise how did they leak it? Therefore it's all their fault for not leaking it earlier, putting the kids at risk.

Um...

First of all, that "George Soros funded" organization that sat on it 'till five weeks before the election? They turned what they had over to the FBI back in July. Dick Morris? Anyone noticed that Bill Clinton fired him in 1996? That'd be, oh, roughly a decade ago. And Bill Clinton himself? What's his connection to the Foley transcripts again?

Oh, and don't forget the Drudge-reported story that the whole thing was a prank gotten out of hand. Give me a fucking break. This has got to be a new frontier in desperation:

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU OCT 5 2006 22:01:25 ET XXXXX CLAIM: FILTHY FOLEY ONLINE CHATS WERE PAGE 'PRANK GONE AWRY' **Update** According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal. According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, said he goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats. The primary source, an ally of Edmund, adamantly proclaims that the former page is not a homosexual. The prank scenario was confirmed by a second associate of Edmund. Both are fearful that their political careers will be affected if they are publicly brought into the investigation. The prank scenario only applies to the Edmund IM sessions and does not necessarily apply to any other exchanges between the former congressman and others. The news come on the heels that Edmund has hired former Timothy McVeigh criminal attorney, Stephen Jones. Late Thursday, Jones strongly denied the exchanges with Foley were a prank by the former page. Jones said, "There is not any aspect of this matter that is a practical joke nor should anyone treat it that way." But those close to Jordan Edmund stand by their accounts of what Jordan told them.As noted in the last two paragraphs above, the "prank" story has been refuted by the ex-page in question. Doesn't seem to satisfy the ever-partisan Drudge, though.

Okay, so the leadership has taken the position that the best defence is the proverbial good offense. Pure bullshit, but I suppose it's the best they can do, given the facts of the case. Even so, where exactly would this excuse them for burying the reports and pretending nothing was going on?

It's yet another attempt at cynically manipulating the public through misdirection and lies. This time (for once!) it doesn't seem to be working.

On their way to a much warmer place...

2006-10-04T18:40:00.000-04:00

I haven't written much on the whole Mark Foley scandal. What's to be said? He used his position to proposition teenage boys, had cybersex with some, met at least one for drinks and 'whatever', and it's still unknown whether he actually engaged in sexual relations with any pages.

Yeah, Foley is gay. So what? That, as a factor, is akin with the Catholic Church blasting gay priests for the church's pedophilia scandals. Makes a great red herring, helps turn the inattentive against gays, and has absolutely nothing to do with the case at hand.

My personal take on Foley and his acts: This man is slime. As an adult with a position of authority, he abused his position to proposition (and more?) teens for sex. His position implicitly put pressure on them to go along, or (at the very least) to shut up about it. We now hear that his activities have been going on for years.

The house Republican leaderships has been denying any and all knowledge of this -- taking the "nobody told us" route -- even though there's been a real laughable lack of anything like "getting their stories straight". Unfortunately for Denny Hastert (R - IL, and incidentally Speaker) there's three members to date who've 'flipped' on him. Every man for himself, I guess.

Now, Foley's former chief of staff (who, until today worked in the same role for Tom Reynolds) has gone public. Well, that puts the lie to that one. Lots of speculation out there that Dennis Hastert is toast. Of course, he's denying that he was ever told. Who's telling the truth? I dunno, though I have some strong suspicions. Things are happening fast, and I'm pretty sure truth will out, probably very soon.

How dumb do they think we are? The leadership has known for a long time about Foley and his extracurricular activities, but chose to do nothing. It's not that there was nothing to find. It's not that there was no basis to pry. Foley has been considered "creepy" by the pages for years, and every new class of pages has been warned about him. Seemingly EVERYONE involved with the house has known about this -- EXCEPT the republican leadership. Why didn't they know?

Simple.

THEY DIDN'T WANT TO.

Once ABC got hold of the story with the 'suggestive' emails, it took them a loooong time to find the damning IM's. Umm, it took at least 24 hours. So, what it basically comes down to is that the leadership could have know all about it with a minimum of effort, roughly equivalent to opening their eyes.

Why? Why didn't they want to know?

Politics. Purely politics. Under the Rovian system, you do anything to win. Anything. Whatever it takes. Ethics and morals have a completely different meaning than in the 'real world'. If it helps you to win, it's by definition 'good'. If it hurts your electoral efforts, it's by definition 'bad'.

So, stories of a pedasterist congressman reach the speaker. The congressman is from the speaker's party, so exposure of the congressman is 'bad'. (And if the congressman had been a Democrat, then exposure would have been 'good'.)

The short version is that Hastert (and the rest of the so-called leadership) blew off the danger to the pages, because doing something about Foley would have had a 'bad' effect politically. In their warped system of ethics, they did precisely the correct thing.

In the real world it's the kids that are important. You've got a pedasterist after their butts (literally!) and the top priority is to STOP HIM before he can do any more harm. It's not Hastert's concern, though. The scandal, now, that is a problem.

Priorities.

The ironic thing is that, if when he'd been put on notice that there was a problem, he'd done something about it, there wouldn't be a problem today. The scandal would have been long-since over, and there wouldn't be anything to distract the public from the was and terror.

Instead the house Republican Party is imploding, rumor has it that Dennis Hastert may be out as speaker as early as tomorrow (and, possibly, out of the house entirely) and there's speculation his won't be the only head to roll.

And, with everything going on, has anyone been doing anything to help the kids? At the end of the day, that's what this is supposed to be about.

"FoleyGate"

2006-10-02T20:10:00.000-04:00

I'm sure I'll write much more about this, but here's a possible ultimate in cynical behavior.

Sheesh.

Those sons-of-bitches in Washington...

2006-10-02T19:28:00.000-04:00

Jeezus! For THIS we've been at war for five years?

- Kim

Some adult language...

2006-10-02T17:33:00.000-04:00

Um, yeah. Last week was eventful, and provided a LOT of reasons for a complete change of government in the US. At the presidential level, there's not going to be any change for two-and-a-half years. Not much to be done there but grit our teeth and bear it. At the congressional level, in about five weeks it is time to "throw the bums out".

I've attached a cartoon on the subject from Erin Lindsay's comic strip, "Venus Envy". She says it one hell of a lot better than I ever could.

What the hell happened to the country I grew up in? How has the public managed to let themselves be stampeded into giving up over two centuries of hard-won freedoms in just a few short years?

An act of provocation that succeeded beyond its wildest aspirations, a lot of big lies and a slew of smaller ones, and people hand over the keys to their lives. IF (and its a huge IF) the terrorist threat is ever totally eliminated, do you really think this government will return the power they've taken? Return to us the liberties we've docilely handed over to our masters?

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK THE AL QAIDA BOMBERS WERE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH? You think it was about killing a few thousand New Yorkers? Destroying some expensive real estate?

Bullshit. The goal -- the ultimate goal of ALL terrorism -- was to create a political change. They wanted to change us into something that would help them in their battle against western civilization.

Ya think they succeeded?

Have they changed us? Changed our government, our society into something that wont -- can't -- effectively oppose them?

How do you fight fascists? By becoming fascist? I don't think so. The changes we've made in our government -- in our society -- by surrendering our liberty don't do a blessed thing to make us safer.

It's claims to the contrary, the government hasn't stopped or prevented a single terrorist attack in the US. The power the bastards in Washington have grabbed isn't about making us safer. It was never about making us safer. The purpose of unfettered power isn't safety. The purpose of unfettered power IS power.

Back in the saddle again...

2006-10-02T17:21:00.000-04:00

I'm posting again. Can you tell its election season?

Actually, I've been planning to resume for a while, but between one thing and another, well, you get the idea. *sighs* On the good side, I'm feeling much better now. Seriously.

No, really.

Okay, I spent about a week in the hospital last month. Congestive heart failure. Not fun, especially when they were trying to purge the excess fluid from my system and overdid it a bit, and my blood pressure kept crashing. Not a bit fun.

Ah well, I'm back now, and mad as hell. More follows...

A cry for help...

2006-04-01T22:01:00.000-05:00

Gosh, I can't think of what to say.

Literally.

I've had weeks when I felt better, but then, that's not altogether unprecedented. Day after tomorrow (Monday) I've got more heart surgery, but again that's hardly novel either (note the use of the term "more" surgery). Even ranting about Little George doesn't excite me much right now.

*Sighs.*

Oh, and I don't "do" April Fools Day. It's always struck me as an excuse for wanton cruelty. Yes, some things are at least relatively harmless ("Do you have Prince Albert in a can?), but most are designed to find humor in building up a persons expectations and then dashing them. Oh joy. What fun.

BTW, the image is copyright and TM Studio Ghibli, from the excellent film "My Neighbor Totoro". It's now out on DVD -- Buy it. It's well worth it.

I guess I could ask for a bit of help. There's a piece of music I've been looking to identify for years. I don't have a clip of it to post here. If I did, I guess I'd know what it is and not have to ask. It's used (or was when last I visited) in the film in the French pavillion at Epcot. It's used in the film "Beauty and the Beast" in the opening under the narration. And in the Woody Allen / Peter Sellers version of Casino Royale, it's played onscreen by David Niven (at the piano). I've long suspected it's by DeBussy, and it's identified as such in Casino Royale. I've looked and listened for years, and never been able to identify it. Sad, really, since it's obviously something famous, and my cultural education seems to be lacking. Anyone able to help?

Piper's been hard at work on the new server. We fimnally (!!!) recieved the final missing parts yesterday, and today she got the furschlugginer thing built. Next we (read: Piper) get to install the OS, software, and test the heck out of it. Then we migrate the Site and bring it up. I figger at the current rate we'll have everything in place by roughly, oh, 2055.

While I'm writing this, we've been watching SVU on the DVR. Would that sentence make a lick of sense to anyone from, say, 1995? Even 2000? For that matter, try explaining "blog" to someone from "2000". I'd be happy to try -- anyone got a spare time machine available?

What the heck did we all do before we had computers at home? (This question doesn't apply to anyone born after, oh, 1975.) How'd we fill the time? I was never a particularly heavy TV viewer, but I did one heck of a lot of reading. Books. On paper. I still read things on paper. The New York Daily News. Magazines. A few books that aren't available in any other form. The rest is either on the computer or, more likely, on my PDA. It's just so convienent carrying a whole stack of books in something the size of a slim paperback.

Power grab...

2006-03-18T03:57:00.000-05:00

I grew up in the era of LBJ and Tricky Dick. If either one of them had tried to arrogate this much power, well, there'd be holy hell to pay. I hope there will be now. I don't care if it's Little George or President Hillary or anyone in between, NO president should have that much power. They talk about the "slippery slope? I fear we're well down it and teetering at the falling-off point.

Click This!

2006-03-17T01:17:00.000-05:00

Just a few things I've run across that you might find of interest...

If you like all things Disney but are a bit lost with all the changes they're going through, these links might give you a bit of perspective.

It's not that I've lost my interest in politics. Here's one site I check out every day. WARNING: It's a liberal Democratic site, so persons who aren't might risk seeing something that doesn't conform to their worldview. Okay, okay. But keep in mind I'm a conservative Republican. So think just how disgusted I've gotta be with whats going on to faithfully follow TPM.

BTW, ya see the Donald over there? It's copyright and TM 2006 by Disney. Just giving them their props. Speaking of ducks (we were, weren't we?) who do you consider the best "duck" artist? The acknowledged master is, of course, Carl Barks, the "good duck man". Some prefer Keno Don Rosa, the spiritual successor of Carl Barks. Others prefer other artists (well, duuh!). There's too many to list here. Who's your favorite?

G'night, all!

Nothing Much...

2006-03-16T23:40:00.000-05:00

I'm still generally feeling better than I was before the defibrillater/pacemaker was installed. There's been good days and bad days, of course, but all-in-all the good days have been more common this month.

This isn't to say I'm feeling anything like I did before the heart attack. I get up to do stuff at 10 in the morning, and by 2 PM I'm just about ready to nap for the rest of the day. *sighs* Oh, well. I do what I can.

One sad thing is that I used to be a neat freak. Well, that's gone now, given my inbility to do more than the minimal amount of stuff around the house. (Can you say sty?) Piper and Pickles do their best to help, of course, but the bottom line is that there's lots of things I used to be able to do that I can't do any more. At one point the two of them decided to give my place a good housecleaning. I tried to help, just a bit, and within less than ten minutes I'd collapsed and wound up in the emergency room that evening (and inpatient for several days, too!).

In cooking, well, lets just say that the microwave has been my friend. And no, modern pacemakers don't freak at microwave ovens. Much. (err...) I have to worry more about things like, of all possibilities, security arches. I've been told by the doctors that, reassurances in the literature to the contrary, it would be a Bad Thing for me to dawdle in a store's security arch, and, oh yeah, don't even think about going through a metal detector. *shrugs* I'm told that I show them my "implanted device" ID card and the TSA folks will take me around the arch and do a 'pat down' search. Oh, that sounds like fun.

Enough of the 'pity party'. I'm alive and vertical, which is a whole heck of a lot better than the alternative. Piper and Pickles have been better friends than I deserve, and it's largely through their efforts I'm doing as well as I am.

Been a while...

2006-03-14T07:04:00.000-05:00

Dang! Has it REALLY been a year-and-a-half since I've left a posting? Umm, yeah.

There's reasons. There are always reasons. It's the GOOD ones that are harder to come by.

Yeah, the '04 election was more than a bit demoralizing. It'd be even more demoralizing if I thought it was an honest result. Uh, wait, maybe the other way around. Um, let me think on this a bit.

Actually, the biggest contributor to my long silence has been my declining health. Given my heart condition, and then pneumonia, that pretty well knocked the props out from under me for quite a while. In terms of strength, I went from working on the treadmill and doing some weight training three times a week to doing them... um... never. Literally no strength available. I've had all sorts of surgical procedures (lungs scrubbed, anyone?), diagnostic procedures (if you turn out the lights I might just glow a soft green), all of which only helped modestly if at all, and as I went through this all, leaving me with no enthuseasm to do anything.

So, the past few years have had no stories, no blog posts, and darn little of anything else.

Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa.

About ten days ago I had another round of surgery, this one to implant a defibrillator/pacemaker into my chest. It seems to have gone well. Everything, (I keep being told) is healing nicely. Best of all, though I had been warned to not expect this, I've got a lot more energy to do things, and the motivation to make use of said energy. I s'pose it could be psychosomatic, but if it is I'll take it. It's really nice having the taste to do things again.

Beyond this post, I'm working on a petty-much-total redesign of my web site. There'll be a few new features, if anyone cares. Instead of being primarily for my readers and fasns, this version will be primarily for me. There'll still be my stories and etc, my blog will be linked in, there will be a guestbook (this time for sure!), and the links are ones I use on a quite frequent basis. The reader will be welcome to use them too, but that's not their main reason. (Hey! Look how erudite I am! Lookit alla da classy links!) They'll be there to make it easier for me to organize and use my favorites.

The 'journal' is gone forever. I'll be blogging as the whim takes me, and it'll be about whatever I'm in the mood to vent upon. I'd suspect politics are going to be a part of this, as will selected events in my life, the occasional rant, and whatever few observations I may have worth sharing.

I really don't need to worry about censoring the comments. I'm living off social security disability, and as I understand it that's not likely to change. So no boss to be looking over my shoulder for me to be telling tales out of school. Of course, there are my partners in PP&F NetWorks (Bill and Piper) who aren't necessarily happy with this philosophy, but I don't report to them, just as they don't report to me, and besides I've never actually made a nickel off the company. It's doing well, well enough to be self-sustaining, but not so well that it's providing me with the lap (or any other body parts) of luxury.

Just for the record, what I blog here is my personal opinion, and doesn't represent the views of my partners nor of PP&F NetWorks, LLC. They do represent my personal opinions, though, and despite the fact that I have no desire nor intent to defame nor libel anyone, my comments might be a bit harsh. (Darn! I miss having a moustache to twirl.)

Just remember to apply the administrations mantra. If you like what I'm doing, I dood it all myself and the credit and glory goes all to me. Iff'n you hate it, well there were many hands contributing, mistakes were made, and IT'S NOT MY FAULT!

What, again?

2004-10-28T20:46:00.000-04:00

Yeah, it has occurred to me that so far my posts are overwhelmingly about politics. Ah, well, the election season ends next week (although it might be superseded by a judicial season) and then I can get to other topics.

I've been doing a fair amount of reading this week:

How much failure will it take for this country for realize that George W. Bush is a security risk? How many weapons and explosives must slip into the hands of murderers? How many terrorist leaders must slip out of our grasp? How long will Osama Bin Laden sit laughing at Bush for his incompetence? I like to think I understand this country. But this one is beyond me. How can anyone take Bush seriously as Commander in Chief? The man is a coward, personally and professionally. He has done more to undermine the armed forces of this country than any president in American history. We are vulnerable as never before. And for some reason, Bush still gets credit for "leadership." - Siva Vaidhyanathan from today's Altercation.

Haven't you seen enough political ads YET?

The latest video tape of al Qaqaa unearthed by a local ABC affiliate and now picked up nationally seems like pretty much game, set, match.

Then there's the annoying trait of the Bush folks to take whatever his opponent says and twist it into some strange Orwellian version of "spin".

And, of course, here's what George thinks of You:

'Nuff said!

- Kim

Creating his own reality...

2004-10-20T23:40:00.000-04:00

It's nice to know that George W. has complete faith in our soldiers ability to dodge bullets.

- Kim

Another Lie...

2004-10-20T04:43:00.000-04:00

Watching the news (MSNBC, BTW), they ran a clip of President Bush from yesterday, saying there are millions of doses of flu vaccine available for elder and at risk citizens.

Interesting. Mainly because Monday I tried to track down a single dose of the vaccine. (Note: while not a senior, I do fall into that "high risk" category, thanks to some ongoing cardiac problems.) Doctors don't have any. Health department doesn't have any. The state health department's emergency hotline says there should be some vaccine in-state within the next several weeks.

Where are they keeping these "millions of doses"? A vault in the White House basement?

- Kim

The Big Lie...

2004-10-20T04:30:00.000-04:00

Who am I? Why am I here?

Oh, wait, no. That was James Stockdale.

***

Okay, confession time. I'm a lifelong Republican. The first election where I was eligible to vote was in '76. Ford v. Carter. Not only did I vote (for Gerry Ford), I was a campaign volunteer in Milwaukee. Mostly I worked the phone banks, which will astound anyone who knows of my distaste for telephoning.

Only once in my life have I voted for a Democrat for president. That being said, I do NOT intend, under any circumstances, to vote for George W. Bush in this election.

It's not because his administration is corrupt, incompetent, or even comically inept, although any one of these would be more than sufficient to back someone else. It's not even because of his regressive positions on so many different issues. I live on Social Security, so I have no direct stake in his tax policies; I have neither the desire nor the intention to marry another woman, so I have no stake there, either. I merely find his policies abhorrent.

All that pales, however, before what I'd consider the prime issue. The man and all his surrogates lie. Not just "white" lies that don't really hurt anyone (though even that concept is problematical in an election), but massively and constantly, on a continuing basis. He denies saying things that have been captured on tape, and when confronted by that fact, he continues to deny. (So who DID say them, a really good actor pretending to be Bush?)

When confronted with unpleasant facts he at best denies them and accuses his questioner of lying (or "exaggerating"), never feeling the need to deal with reality. When the buzz about his pattern of lying grew too strong, his tactic was to start accusing the other campaign of "persistent and scurrilous" lying.

Has George W. Bush no shame? Seemingly not.

What he's been doing is something I was taught about in grade school. It was (and is) known as "The Big Lie". Basically what it amounts to is that one tells a lie repeatedly and loudly. Repeat it long enough and a certain proportion of the population will believe it. Another proportion of the public will be unsure, but their faith in the target of the lie will be shaken. In the end, at "worst" the opposing factor will be neutralized, at "best" they will be defeated by the lie.

I won't belabor the point. Many of you are of age to remember (or remember being taught) about the political forces in the past century who honed "The Big Lie" into a singularly effective tool of governance.

I shouldn't even need to draw the other obvious parallels between them and the Bush administration and it's "Homeland Security" excuses for erasing centuries of hard-won liberties.

- Kim

A Message in the Public Interest...

2004-10-18T01:39:00.000-04:00

To show our solidarity as Americans, let's all get together and show each other our support for the candidate of our choice. It's time that we all came together, Democrats and Republicans alike.

If you support the policies and character of John Kerry, please drive with your headlights 'ON' during the day.

If you support George W. Bush, please drive with your headlights 'OFF' at night.

- Found on the Internet, 2004

- Kim

Staring at a blank screen...

2004-10-15T05:30:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking of this for a while. Years ago I kept an online journal, and it was fun to write, but it was all about **ME** **ME** **ME** . That got a bit old after a while, plus I managed to pick up a stalker somewhere. Yick. So, after a lot of thought and some pithy advice from a friend (read: Ellen Hayes) I let the journal go.

Now, though, many things in my life have changed, and there's things I'd like to "speak out" on. I'm started working on rebuilding my site ( http://www.kimem.net , if anyone cares). As I feel like it, I'll discuss writing, food, politics, movies, and maybe occasionally a tid-bit or two about my life.

- Kim