Comics I bought 3/29/06

An early afternoon trip to the comic shop this week. I bought three regulars: Usagi Yojimbo 92, Savage Dragon 124, The Walking Dead 27 and one new one: Red Prophet Tales of Alvin Maker. Red Prophet looks like some historical fiction so that is up my alley.

I give a thumbs up to last weeks trade of "Deep Sleeper" by Hester and Huddleston. It is the story of a guy who discovers he can travel on the astral plane and there are some bad things hanging out there. Not great but a solid story and solid art.

Crazy Ol' Time Travel

One of the most annoying aspects of science fiction TV and movies is time travel. I've got no problem with time travel in general but when the stories get written often writers don't bother to have it make sense. Usually there are two takes on time travel. "You can't change the past" or "you can change the past". The "you can change the past" is further broken down into two categories: "there is only one timeline and changing the past changes this timeline" and "there are many alternate timelines and changing the past creates another alternate timeline".

All three of these approaches have problems but the biggest problem comes when the writers mix and match them. A recent example is the movie "The Jacket" which was pretty good except they spent the whole movie saying that you can't change time and at the end they changed time. It was a confusing movie anyway so what the hey.

The all time king of the mix and match is Star Trek. In that Joan Collins episode Kirk couldn't save her because, "that is the way things have to happen". Yet there are countless other alternate reality episodes where evil beards are worn and they mess with the time stream to their heart's delight. Alternate realities abound. Time plays by different rules in different episodes of Trek. Not to mention different series.

The "Butterfly's Wing" hypothesis says that the beating of a butterfly's wing can set off a chain of events that creates a hurricane. This is why you have to be careful what you do when you time travel because your actions can have "unforeseen consequences". But if a butterfly's wing can cause a hurricane than so can your breathing. Time travelers don't have to do anything but time travel and they will affect things. This should only matter in the "one timeline" take because in the alternate timeline ones why should anyone care. You can just create a new timeline and then go back to your own. Why be so careful? Pull a Homer Simpson and bash a few thing with a club.

All those different alternate worlds. No one ever explains how all these timelines are created. Usually a person creates one by going back in time and changing things but what about when some crazy accident knocks him into an alternate world where people wear evil beards? Where did that one come from? Did some other time traveler make it? Who knows? The writer don't usually bother to explain such things.

The answer for a lot of stories is that all of the alternate realities exist at once. They are all there just waiting to be discovered. The TV show "Sliders" is an example of this type. They slide from one reality where England still rules the U.S. to another where women run the world. Of course I have a problem with this too. If all alternate realities exist at once there must be an infinite amount of them. Not just worlds where there are huge dramatic differences; this is a literary conceit. But worlds with mundane, not even noticeable differences. For example, I used to work in Manhattan. I would get of off a bus at 40th and 8th Ave. and walk to 28th and Park Ave. That is about a 20-25 minute walk and I had no set path. I would just follow the lights and cross the streets where I could. There were lots of choices. Can I make this light? Should I dash across or just turn downtown? I bet that if I chose differently at any of those corners it would not have mattered. There are billions of butterfly wing beats and few hurricanes; most small choices don't matter. But there still would have to be an alternate world where the only difference is that I walked one block further east before turning south. Otherwise everything is the same. Multiply this by many days walking and by many millions of people. Infinite alternate worlds all essentially the same. I bet if you traveled to an alternate world you wouldn't even notice the difference. Except there would be two of you. Unless the other you traveled to an alternate world too. Wait this is too confusing. Anyway, the odds of finding an alternate world dramatically different would be slim. That would be a real exciting show. Traveling from world to world where everything is the same.

I have always found Robert Heinlein's "you can't change time" take the neatest. There are no such thing as time paradoxes. If you go back in time to try and kill your mother before you were born something will stop you. It never happened so you won't be able to do it. But that doesn't let a writer "threaten the whole time space continuum". So most stay away from it. It's must easier to not sweat the details of time travel. Lazy Bums.

Comics I bought 3/23/06

Back to you with my report from the comic shop. This week I got Rex Mundi #17, Red Sonja #8 and another on sale trade paperback "Deep Sleeper" by Hester and Huddleston. It is published by Image and is categorized as horror. I'll let you know how it is.

An Archer's Best Friend

I was reading my Teen Titan's Archive again and I came across another of my favorite comic book devises. The boxing glove arrow. It was in every comic book archer's quiver for decades. Most people make fun of the boxing glove arrow because not only would it never fit in an archer's quiver but aerodynamics say it would never fly. This are both true and worthy of a good laugh. But what I find most amazing is that it is a boxing glove.

These are super-heros. Even the ones with no super powers spend all of their time punching one and other. With bare fists. Batman doesn't wear boxing gloves when he goes up against the Joker. Why would an archer put one on the end of an arrow? Because it's sporting? To be nice to the bad guy? To make it non-lethal couldn't he just put a rubber ball or some such to blunt it? Nope. A boxing glove is chosen.

I've never seen it but I can picture an archer pulling the boxing glove arrow out of his quiver and saying, "Time to get serious" or "Time to take the gloves off". Then he would pull the boxing glove off of the arrow revealing a bare fisted arrow. No more Mr. Nice guy. That would show 'em. But nobody ever has a bare fisted arrow. Just a gloved one.

Please, no fisting jokes John. This is serious business.

On the Ponderation of Language

As I was painting the other day I had the TV on. I had my own little film noir festival: "The Maltese Falcon", "Double Indemnity", and "The Wrong Man". As is my habit I mostly listened to them. After all I can't paint and watch a movie at the same time. I have seen all of these movies before so there are no real surprises but my ear caught something this time that I had not noticed before. It was a phrase used in "The Maltese Falcon" and then repeated in "Double Indemnity". One character looks at another who is quite disheveled and says, "You look all in". Having seen both movies before I certainly heard the phrase but never noticed it.

With Texas Hold 'Em poker being played on TV all of the time I've heard the phrase "all in" a million times in the last year or two. It is when a player bets all the chips he has left on a single hand. The phrase pops up all the time in pop culture now to signify that a person is committed one hundred percent. That is probably why I payed attention when I heard something similar in these two movies. Yet the meaning was quite different.

A quick internet search of the phrase "You look all in" brings up a bunch of books in which the phrase is used. Some are period pieces and some are contemporary. Is it really that common? Are people saying it all the time but just not around me? Is it regional and I'm not in that region? Was it common in the 40s and 50s but not now? Where does the phrase come from? You look all in. All in what?

One of my favorite regional phrases I heard when I was a freshman in college back in the fall of 1984. I was going to school in Sullivan County NY and a lot of the students were from the Binghamton area. I began to notice a strange phrase popping up. It was in any normal situation where you agree with some one. The first person says, "I like chocolate" and the second replies, "So do I". That is unless you come from ol' Bingy. Then instead of saying "So do I" you say "So don't I".

This is how the conversation went:
Me: "I like chocolate".
Him: "So don't I"
Me not understanding: "You don't like chocolate"?
Him not understanding: "What do you mean? I like chocolate".
Me: "But you just said 'So don't I'".
Him: "Yeah, so don't I".

It was like the old "Who's on first routine". To his ear "So do I" and "So don't I" were they exact same thing. I even repeated both phrases and to him there was no distinction between them. I also heard several other people from the Binghamton area say the same thing. But not all of them. The English language is a funny thing.

Thanks to the joys of the internet search (I refuse to use Google as a verb I don't want my speech to be branded) I looked up that funny phrase and found it is native to around Boston and Central NY. No one seems to know exactly why.

Comics I Bought This Week 3/15/06

I took an early trip to the comic shop this week and I got three comics: Walking Dead #26, Conan #26 and Conan: Book of Thoth #1.

It seems like every other book I've been buying lately has been Conan or Red Sonja. The Conan: BOT #1 is by Busiek, Wein and Kelley Jones so it should be good. I passed on the first issue of the new Red Sonja mini series where she teams with Claw the Unconquered. Who green lighted that one? If you don't know who Claw is keep it that way. There is no reason too know.

Walking Dead has been consistently good.

Tid Bits and the Small Things of Life

I was reading my copy of The Teen Titans Archive #1 when I can across that lovely panel. Let me give you the story. The Titans want to get on the good side of a gang of teenage dropouts so they disguise themselves and befriend the gang so they can kick the asses of another rival gang and then reveal themselves to the original gang and get some info. Pretty complicated but it is the disguises that kill me.

On the right is Aqualad. He costume has no mask so he didn't bother to wear one to disguise himself? Huh? His disguise is no disguise? They either ran out of masks or said, "Eh, no one knows who you are anyway."

Second from the right is Wondergirl. Her costume also has no mask so she doesn't disguise her face but she does wear a blond wig. I guess she expects people to say, "Wow, is that Wondergirl? No Wondergirl in not blonde. It must be some one else kicking our buts with her super strength."

The two on the right are the real geniuses. Kid Flash and Robin. Both of their costumes have masks. No one would recognize their actual faces and they could just wear no mask at all and be incognito but that might blow their secret identities. So what to they do? They wear full face masks over their masks that they already have on. That way they can have a reveal and still be masked. Briliiant. The Sixties could really give us some absurd comics.

I am a fan of cereal. Not so much the sugar cereals but they make good desserts. Cheerios and Wheaties are my favorites. Shredded wheat is good too and I like the sugar version, Frosted Mini Wheats, as a snack. But this week I ran into the single worst cereal ever: Strawberry Frosted Mini Wheats. They have been putting out some flavored FMW for a little while now. I tried the Vanilla Creme ones and they were okay. So the strawberry ones were on sale so I gave them a try. The flavor wasn't too bad: that artificial strawberry taste we all know. But then I noticed something odd. Whatever chemical flavoring they used was filling up my sinuses. It was like chemical warfare from my cereal. It was mildly painful and made it tough to breath through my nose. Absolutely crazy but stay away from the strawberry FMW. You've been warned.

I just watched the much praised movie "Crash" that came out last year. It was okay. Parts of it were really good but the lesson I learned from it was that everyone in L.A. is a bigoted, selfish, asshole, jerk, son of a bitch. And they weren't all that interesting being that they were all the same. Not one person in the movie would I want to hang out with.

I also just discovered ACEO or Art Card Editions and Originals. That's where artists make baseball card size paintings and trade them or sell them for a tenner or so. Pass art out to the masses. I've always liked to make small paintings as well as large. Now I need someone to trade with.

Apples, I need some more apples. That is my last thought for the day.

Comics I Bought This Week 3/10/06

I'm just back from the comic shop again this week. Another slow week for me as I got no comic books at all. But my shop was having a 40% off sale on their trade paperbacks so I picked up a couple of $15 trades for $9.

The first is "The Gray Area: All Of This Can Be Yours" By Glen Brunswick and John Romita Jr. and Klaus Janson. I've never heard of the writer but the art team is good and I remember looking at the issues on the stands and being interested but the cover price was too high. I'll let you know if it is any good.

The second is "Hawaiian Dick" by B. Clay Moore and Steven Griffin. I picked the first issue of this up when it came out and never a second. I remember kinda liking it but the name seemed so stupid and smug to me that it put me off. I'm giving it a second try because I do like the artwork.

That is the report from the comic shop.

X-Files: A Retro Review

I was an X-Files fan. But the X-Files was one of those shows that ended so badly that I forgot it used to be a good show. For the first time in a decade I am watching season one. It is entertaining me as I ride the boring stationary bike (a real bike ride is so much more fun).

Not only had I forgotten how good a show it was but I think it is a better show the second time around. That is because the I never liked the big over all alien conspiracy part of the show. I found it impossible to pay attention to. The problem with big conspiracy shows is that they can't actually leave enough clues so for the viewer to figure out what is going on. They want the show to keep going on and on because it is their job to make TV shows. So in the X-Files there were layer upon layer of clues and false clues and whatever they felt like writing in. My brain just turned off during the conspiracy stuff and turned back on for the monster of the week adventure part.

Producers of shows like this going back to Kolchak The Night Stalker have always said, "Well we didn't want to turn it into a 'Monster of the Week" show. To which I have always asked (since the interviewer never does), "Why not?". If you are going to do a show about monsters, aliens and things that go bump in the night it seems logical to me to have a monster every week. What is the point of a monster hunting show with no monsters? I don't give a crap about a monster hunter's personal life. I don't care if they feel good or bad about hunting monsters. I just want a good story told well. But anyway, back to the X-files.

A funny thing happened around season six or so; (my memory is fuzzy but it was after that bad movie they made) they revealed the conspiracy. It was anti-climatic at that point being that I hadn't cared about the conspiracy in years but now in watching season one over again I don't have to ignore those parts. Knowing the answer I can now appreciate that part of the story line and enjoy trying to figure out which clues were real and which weren't. And trying to tell if the writers even knew. Knowing the answer actually helps the show. It doesn't detract from it. So check out the X-Files again and you will be pleasantly surprised that it holds up well.

P.S. "Lost" is a show that is currently like the X-Files was. It is a good show but they will never give anyone enough clues to figure out what is really going on (if the writers even know) because then people will stop watching it. As Josh Whedon said, "TV is about questions; Movies are about answers." And "Supernatural" is a good monster of the week show.

Comics I Bought This Week

Just back from the shop and this week I got: Strangers in Paradise #80, Local #4, Red Sonja #7, Jonah Hex #5, Ex Machina #18, and XIII #2. That last one is based on some old video game and looks like it was published in a different format originally. The first issue stared a guy who was modeled after Lee Marvin (I just checked the Lee Marvin comic was a different one not XIII but I can't remember its name).
The disappointments from last weeks books were the two first issues I picked up. Warlord was typical of modern origin issues because nothing happened. And The Portent was pretty but nothing happened and it was not well written.