Author: xeyeti

The Pull List – October 5th

| xeyeti

Let’s see what the first week of October had to offer, shall we?

Batman: Odyssey #4: Batman wigs out when he thinks a little girl’s been killed and goes to town on the guy who did it. How many times have we seen the “Batman snaps and nearly kills a guy only to be talked down” thing? Also, since when do EMTs and the police and the freakin’ Batman all just assume a person’s dead without checking for vital signs? Kind of an epic fail here, Neal Adams.

Chaos War #1: The Lion of Olympus is back, but all is not well. There’s danger a-comin’, in the form of the Chaos King (our good buddy Mikaboshi, who just happened to not return to Earth with the rest of the God Squad at the end of Sacred Invasion). Herc has to convince everyone he’s not crazy and that there is danger, which is no easy task. Good thing he’s got Amadeus Cho on his side.

Doom Patrol #15: It’s the Patrol versus the Chief! And the Chief is increasingly unbalanced, it seems, ’cause trying to graft Kryptonian DNA onto your own just isn’t a good idea. Plus, there’s that fantastic intro with Ambush Bug. I kinda want all comics to recap the plot like that.

S.H.I.E.L.D. #4: Things are getting even crazier, what with da Vinci birthing something in the heart of the sun (and let’s not even get into how he’s surviving being in the sun), Leonid getting a deeper look at his own role in things, and a not-quite-a-confrontation between da Vinci and Newton. Also, Nostradamus, who has some serious emotional problems after letting himself be locked up for several centuries. Interesting stuff and fantastic art as always.

Secret Six #26: Bane is not someone you mess with. At all. Skartaris doesn’t stand a chance, unless Scandal Savage’s Six can stop him. This comic, month in and month out, is one of my favorite reads. Simone delivers again!

In terms of trades, I grabbed the third Secret Six trade, Danse Macabre, which was quite solid (especially for a Blackest Night tie-in). Definitely some good stuff this week.

The Pull List – September 2010

| xeyeti

Man, getting through September without getting to read comics was tough! I did it, though, and ended up picking up all my September stuff the first week of October, so that wasn’t so bad. Let’s see what we missed, shall we?

Hercules: Twilight of a God #4: The finale to this miniseries gives the Prince of Power a right proper sendoff, letting him go head to head with a blackhole and, well, winning (even if he does give his life for it). Great art, solid if not particularly original story, and just a fun little ride all around.

Secret Six #25: Holy crap, Gail Simone is just downright evil. Catman attempting suicide by lion is pretty awesome, though, and the promise of Six vs. Six from this issue is gonna rule.

Batman and Robin #14: This issue was downright creepy. I kinda knew what to expect going in, what with having seen the preview and read reviews and such, but it was still a damn well done issue. I’m not a huge fan of Frazer Irving’s art, but Grant Morrison’s story is dead on. In the hands of a lesser team, Professor Pyg would just be ridiculous, but Morrison (and Irving, I have to admit) have me downright terrified of the guy. He ain’t right in the head.

Batman: Odyssey #3: I just…I don’t really know how to feel about this title. Sure, it’s Neal Adams and it’s Batman, but…it just doesn’t feel right. Everything is very over the top, everything is very exaggerated, and that’s fine and all, but…I dunno. The story’s a mess, the art’s not up to his usual high standard, and everyone…talks…like this!

Booster Gold #36: This title continues to be awesome. The cover is frankly fantastic, and the continued antics of Booster in the JLI days is hysterical. Also, I realize now I miss Ted Kord, even though I wasn’t really reading comics when he was still alive. Sad, really.

Doom Patrol #14: So the Chief just decided to keep a Kryptonian around to do experiments on? And now he’s all superpowered and crazy? Okay, sounds like a wild ride. I’m in. Giffen continues to make this a hell of a book.

Green Hornet: Year One #5: I don’t think I’d really realized it before now, but apparently this title isn’t a miniseries, it’s an ongoing. Which is awesome. Matt Wagner does period stories better than just about anyone, and seeing the young Britt Reid coming to terms with his place in the world and realizing the limits of working within the law to bring evil to justice…it’s great.

Invincible Iron Man #30: Tony Stark has a confrontation, a couple of cars blow up, and Pepper Potts comes to the rescue. Is there anything about this book that isn’t great? Well, I could probably do with a different artist, though Larroca’s art is far from terrible (just not terribly interesting to me).

Justice League: Generation Lost #9: I was skeptical when I saw that Judd Winick was running the show solo now, but it’s going pretty well, I think. We get more infighting among our heroes, Maxwell Lord hints at his plans and goals, and it’s just an interesting book still.

Welcome to Tranquility: One Foot in the Grave #4: I have mentioned Gail Simone is evil, right? ‘Cause she ups the ante here, pitting the villain of the piece against everyone’s favorite aviatrix, and that fork featured on the cover? It ain’t there just to look cool.

Avengers & the Infinity Gauntlet #2: So we’re already halfway through this miniseries and they’ve only just left Earth and filled up their space rig with gas. They’ve got two issues to defeat Thanos and save the universe. Sure, I think that they’ll do it, and I’d be willing to read an ongoing series by Clevinger about Spider-Man and Doom bantering back and forth, but I fear the ending of this is gonna be kinda rushed. We’ll see.

Birds of Prey #5: Black Canary is in deep trouble. So deep, that her friends are probably gonna regret trying to help her out of it. Things get worse for the Birds in the aftermath of the first arc, and Simone keeps things moving so quickly here that it’s almost disjointed and scattered (which I kinda think she did on purpose to leave the reader feeling off-balance, just as the characters feel). I find it interesting that Ed Benes already needs a fill-in artist. Let’s just go ahead and put Nicola Scott on this book and be done with it.

Deadpool #27: Steve Rogers sucker punches Deadpool. ‘Nuff said.

Joe the Barbarian #7: Joe’s grasp of what is and isn’t real is as tenuous as ever, though that may be because what is and isn’t real isn’t staying the same. This book is still pure, distilled awesome, from Morrison’s writing to Sean Murphy’s art to Dave Stewart’s colors and Todd Klein’s letters. This is like a comics dream team here, folks.

Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis #3: A face-off between the X-Men and a ruler who will do what it takes to protect his country, the use of a decades-old plot device from Excalibur, and the usual no-good-choices scenario that Warren Ellis writes so well…it’s a decent comic, and I’m kinda glad I’ve stuck with the series.

The Flash #5: The plot thickens as we discover that villains turned allies probably aren’t as friendly as we thought. Things go from bad to worse for the Flash, and look like they’re not going to improve anytime soon. Love the art in this book, too, even if Barry Allen is still something of a cipher.

Justice League: Generation Lost #10: Can I just say that Cliff Chiang’s cover for this book is absolutely perfect? Admittedly, all of his covers for the series have been great, but there’s just something about this cover in particular that really grabs me (it’s probably Batman).

Thor #615: Matt Fraction comes on board to write with this issue, and it’s pretty great. I love the basic concept – that if you leave a space empty, something else will just fill it up – and the art is great. There’s a cartoony feeling to it that I love and much prefer to the hyper-realistic art that seems to be more of Marvel’s house style lately.

Action Comics #893: Lex Luthor vs. Gorilla Grodd. Lexbots. This book continues to be pure awesome. And the Jimmy Olsen co-feature is perfect. I would read the hell out of a Nick Spencer Jimmy Olsen ongoing. Get on that, DC!

Atlas #5: I’m really sad that this is the last issue of Atlas. I was digging the title. I do like that it’s open-ended enough for the team to return down the road, maybe, but it still annoys me that this book basically gets killed off right as it’s finding its momentum each time. That said, it’s a pretty great sendoff for the team; everyone gets their moment to shine, the good guys win (of course), and there’s a nice little moment between Jimmy Woo and the spirit of his former enemy/mentor, Master Plan, that’s pretty great. Also, we should totally get a Ken Hale ongoing, because he is the single greatest monkey ever.

Casanova #3: Things get real funky here with an island of superintelligent cavemen and Casanova starting to realize he needs to grow up and grow a pair. Why have I not read this book before now?

Detective Comics #869: This story continues to irritate me. It’s implied that this is the Bruce Wayne Batman, but if so, he’s the most ineffectual we’ve ever seen him. Batman basically sits around shrugging the whole time, saying, “Well, what the hell can I do about all these impostor Jokers and impostor Batmen running around?” Then he kicks his feet up on the Bat Computer and eats a bag of chips. Lazy, useless Batman is not Batman. The art is still pretty great, though.

Wonder Woman #603: JMS’s take on Wonder Woman continues to do a whole lot of nothin’ for me. I mean, I’m still not even sure what the point of it all was. Why change her history? Why change her situation the way he has? It hasn’t really added anything to the story. This could’ve been done with the star-spangled shorts and tiara just as easily as the useless jacket and stretch pants. We’ve really gained nothing with these changes except for some publicity (which was probably the point) and some exasperation. Mostly the latter.

Holy Crap, Comics

| xeyeti

What with finally getting a paycheck this week, I was able to go and pick up all of last month’s comics. I’m still working my way through them all, so hopefully tomorrow or the next day I’ll have my thoughts on them. So far, though, I will say this: I read way too damn many comics, I think. It’s a huge stack. I’ve been working on them since Thursday night, and I still have three or four left to read.

In other news, I have tomorrow off, thanks to a drunkard who thought he’d reached a completely different continent a few hundred years ago. Way to go, Columbus. Your inability to figure out geography means I don’t have to work on tomorrow.

Terry Pratchett – I Shall Wear Midnight

| xeyeti

The long month of having no money is finally coming to an end. We got a rent check from my sister-in-law, which definitely gets us through until payday on Tuesday. So to celebrate, the wife and I each bought a new book: she grabbed the third book in The Hunger Games trilogy, and I grabbed the latest Terry Pratchett novel, I Shall Wear Midnight.

I’m a huge fan of Pratchett and his Discworld novels. The Tiffany Aching novels have been a bit hit and miss (Wee Free Men and A Hatful of Sky were both great, though I felt a little let down by Wintersmith), as was the last adult Discworld novel, Unseen Academicals, but this particular entry in the series (the last Tiffany Aching novel, apparently) is great. Whereas Academicals suffered from a lack of clear purpose or much of the trademark humor that Pratchett’s novels usually possess, I Shall Wear Midnight is witty, clever, and well-plotted. There are plenty of returning characters – including a nice bit with Eskarina Smith, the young woman who became a wizard back in the early Discworld novel Equal Rites – and a couple of new characters, including the guard Preston who is much smarter than he seems, an overbearing Duchess, and her daughter Letitia (who, at the point where I am in the book, is on her way to becoming sympathetic).

It’s nice to see Tiffany getting to grow as a character and even making mistakes. All too often in novels, the protagonist never makes mistakes, doesn’t do things for petty reasons, and is able to easily solve their problems. That ain’t the case with Tiffany; she’s a 16 year old girl, and she behaves like one (albeit a rather intelligent one). This means she sometimes does things because she is angry, tired, or frustrated.

I don’t want to give away what happens in the book, but it involves a being called the Cunning Man who has a mad on for witches in general and Tiffany in particular. Being as Tiffany is a witch, she has to figure out (on her own) how to deal with this. I’m about 2/3 of the way through the book, and it feels like classic Pratchett. Definitely recommended.

“We’ve Got Three Chords And Some Compelling Lies”

| xeyeti

I think of myself as something of a musician. Not a particularly good one, mind, but a musician nonetheless. I’ve been writing songs for the better part of a decade now, and I think I’ve managed to work up at least a handful of good ones in that time. Mostly, I’ve written them with my younger brother, who is definitely a better musician than I (but not a better singer, and that, folks, is just sad) and is usually responsible for the actual music part of our songs.

But lately, I’ve been getting into the instrumentation aspect more. I’ve been collaborating with a friend of mine who can write lyrics but not music, trying to help her come up with arrangements for some stuff she’s written (and, in the process, ended up writing some new stuff of my own that I’ve been tremendously happy with). It’s been a very fruitful partnership: in the three writing sessions we’ve had, we’ve managed to create five songs with lyrics, basic instrumentation, and all that jazz. We’ve sat down and used my (admittedly, fairly basic) recording equipment and actually developed some nice-sounding tracks, and it’s definitely spurred me on to work on some stuff even by myself.

The long and the short of it is, I love playing music. I do it just for myself, really, but I also like the idea of other people hearing it and enjoying it as well. To that end, I’m going to (after I finally get paid) get the added storage thing for the blog and post some of the songs here. So just a head’s up.

The Job Switch Blues

| xeyeti

Switching jobs has been, in a number of ways, a difficult transition. There’s the animosity leveled at me by my (now former) boss for leaving the week before inservice (which is actually a pretty common time for teachers to get hired and jump ship), adjusting to a new group of students (about half of whom I already knew, but that leaves the other half to get to know), and adjusting my expectations of behavior and ability in the classroom. The greatest difficulty, however, has been going the month of September without getting paid.

When I changed schools last year, there was overlap in my paychecks for September. I received my last paycheck from School A at the end of August and my first paycheck from School B on September 5th. It was great. This time, though, School B’s last paycheck hit August 20th, and I won’t get my first paycheck from School A until October 5th. Ouch.

That being said, we’re almost a month into the school year and I feel great. I’m in the groove, loving my classes and coworkers, and actually looking forward to going to work every morning. That sense of anxiety I used to experience is just gone.

Possibly most exciting is the start of Clubs tomorrow. We’re doing Music Club (meaning I get to teach kids how to play the guitar again), so I’ll basically get paid to rock out for an hour or so. It’s a joy.

Everything Old Is New Again

| xeyeti

So, despite not getting any bites on my resume this summer (I’m pretty sure there weren’t a whole lot of private schools in the area searching for new teachers this year), I have suddenly found myself with a new job.

Funny thing is, it’s my old job.

See, last week, I found the opportunity to return to my previous school (at a higher salary) in the same position but with more leadership opportunities and a sense of peace with myself. To say that I jumped at the opportunity was to put it much too lightly.

Telling my (now previous) employers that I was resigning was, on the one hand, a supremely wonderful moment, while at the same time a giant crushing moment of anxiety. My supervisor threw the most unprofessional fit I have ever witnessed, calling me unprofessional and ultimately declaring that I lacked integrity for waiting until the week before teacher in-service started to tell them (keep in mind I accepted the new job last Wednesday night and told them Thursday morning). She also insinuated that I’d purposely waited to tell them until the last possible minute as some sort of passive-aggressive dick move. Mind you, if I wanted to be a dick, I’d have waited until this past Monday morning (the first day of teacher in-service) to tell them, not give them at least a couple days’ notice.

But that’s all behind me now. I’m back at a school where I’m appreciated and where I don’t dread waking up every morning. I can also say (with perfect certainty) that, while working at my previous school did improve me as a teacher, I will be content with never setting foot in that building again.

On the downside, I don’t get any paychecks this month, so I probably won’t be buying any comics until October (which means no Pull List this month). I should have some stuff to post around here still, though, so we’ll just have to see what happens.

The Pull List – August 25th

| xeyeti

I was out of town all week, but I managed to pick up comics this week nonetheless.

Justice League: Generation Lost #8: Yeah, this is Winick’s gig now, no Giffen, which makes me quite sad (but has me hoping that Booster Gold will now move away from a parallel storyline with this title and go off in a new direction). The book’s not bad, and Lopresti’s art is great as always, but there is something just a little too rote about the proceedings. The reveal at the end isn’t telegraphed or anything, but it’s pretty obvious nonetheless; there is some good interaction going on between Fire and Rocket Red here, though.

Wonder Woman #602: Diana cuts loose on some soldiers and does some serious damage, finds some Amazons, and learns a little bit about sacrifice. It’s a decent issue and not as heavy on exposition as I feared it would be (it’s nice seeing Straczynski jump into action this early instead of having everyone spend the issue sitting around talking), but I’m still not sold on this “all-new Wonder Woman.”

Astonishing X-Men #35: This issue (finally) wraps up this storyline (and probably the series as a whole, since they’re switching the Astonishing line to mini-series), and while the art is good and there are some great Ellis lines (“Don’t be such a baby. You’ll almost definitely probably not die this time”), the whole reveal of who the “villain” is seems weak after the build-up we’ve had, and the whole thing just seems…kinda meh.

Detective Comics #868: Part Two of Impostors features more great art from Scott McDaniel, but the story itself is leaving me cold. I think my biggest problem is that it makes Batman seem ineffectual. That doesn’t really jive with everything we’ve seen about Dick Grayson (both as Nightwing and as Batman), and he seems to mostly be sitting around wringing his hands going, “Well, golly, I wish we could do something about all this.” We’ll have to see where it goes from here.

Batman #702: Part Two of Grant Morrison and Tony Daniel’s look at what happens between the end of Batman RIP and Batman’s crisis in time during Final Crisis. This is a pretty good issue, doing more than just filling in gaps: we get some nice mythology with the “God Bullet” that Batman shot Darkseid with in Final Crisis, further details on what the Omega Sanction actually is, and what’s happening to Bruce Wayne right now. It’s pretty cool, though I still really do not care for Daniel’s art.

Action Comics #892: This comic continues to be awesome. Luthor goes head to head with Deathstroke, finds some black ring energy, and basically proves that he’s pretty awesome. I really like the focus on Luthor as a character in his own right rather than as an arch-nemesis for Superman. Cornell and Woods are knocking this one out of the park.

Prince of Power #4: This issue concludes the mini-series and sets up the coming Chaos War. We get Amadeus Cho’s finest hour, a knock-down fight between Delphyne and Atalanta, and a (not-unexpected) return. This was really a perfect comic, with humor, epic battles, and some great character moments. I’m really looking forward to the next chapter in this saga.

I didn’t grab any trades when I was at the comic shop this week, but I did order the first deluxe volume of Ex Machina and the fourth volume of Walt Simonson’s Thor from Amazon. I’ve started in on Ex Machina, which seems pretty cool, and you really can’t go wrong with Simonson’s Thor.

Old 97’s – Mimeograph

| xeyeti

I love me some Old 97’s. I remember hearing their album Too Far To Care at a CD Warehouse when I was in college (man, do I love me some CD Warehouse! Used CDs, and you could find all sorts of crazy stuff that people would bring in and trade. And also fifty copies of any given Backstreet Boys album. That wasn’t so great, but it was funny), and I was just hooked. They always sounded like they were just on the verge of falling apart completely; the skittering drums, the half-shouted vocals, the blistering guitar work…these guys made having an emotional breakdown sound like fun.

Their albums since then have been, for me at least, a series of diminishing returns. Sure, Fight Songs, Satellite Rides, and Drag It Up all had some solid tunes and the good generally outweighed the bad, but each successive album smoothed away the rough edges, and Blame It On The Gravity just went for straight power pop with no rough edges (and missed the mark considerably, if you ask me).

Then I see Mimeograph, a four-song EP featuring covers of classic rock songs. The very idea sounds winning and engaging, and I’m thinking maybe they used this to cut loose and really have fun. But I guess the title (a reference to an old copy machine-type thing, for those of you who’re, y’know, young and don’t know how to use the internet to find things out) should have been a dead giveaway: these are raucous alt-country versions of classic rock songs, these are almost exact duplicates of classic rock songs performed with expertise and precision by a band that used to be much more fun.

It starts out with a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Rocks Off,” the four-on-the-floor rocker that kicked off Exile on Main Street. And…well, it sounds exactly the same, except Rhett Miller is singing. They stay so true to the original, they even keep the same vocal effects in the bridge. It’s sad. This could have been so much better; they could have reinterpreted it into something new rather than an exact duplicate of the original.

It doesn’t get any better from there. Sure, these four tracks are played well, and the band clearly enjoys the music they are paying homage to, and they are definitely better musicians than they were in the Too Far To Care days, but I really do feel this was a missed opportunity to recapture some of the energy and vitality of their earlier albums. Their cover of the Fratellis’ (the newest song here) “For the Girl” doesn’t add anything new, nor do their covers of REM’s “Driver 8” or David Bowie’s “5 Years.”

Ultimately, Mimeograph is something of a disappointment. I guess had I not gone in with expectations about what this could have been, I would have enjoyed it: after all, these covers are competently done and well-played, even if the arrangements are too safe and predictable. Maybe next time, we’ll get some of the energy and rough edges of their early stuff.