Comic I Bought: November 29, 2007

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 3 new comic plus a hard cover collection:

Usagi Yojimbo - 107

Savage dragon - 134

The Authority Prime - 2

The Three Paradoxes by Paul Hornschemeier

And now for a review of something I've read this week.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill

I read the first two "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" books when they first came out and I'm ambivalent about them. They are pretty well done adventure stories but I also found them a little gimmicky. Kind of like "Let's see what public domain characters we can squeeze into the book this chapter" gimmicky. But Moore and O'Neil are top talents so I'm on board for the third.

The concept of this third book also intrigued me more than the first two. Part of the book is a straight forward narrative and part of it is made up of facsimiles of different types of publications and pamphlets that purport to document the historical record of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. So we get a lost Shakespeare folio about some league members, a comic strip version of one of the Leaguers life, a randy 19th Century illustrated sex story, political cartoons, post card correspondence, a Tijuana Bible, a beat novel story, and a few other things I can't categorize.

The narrative is about two members of the League coming back to 1950's England (all the Leagues various stories have taken place in the past) to find the rumored black dossier. They want to steal it to see how much is really known about them (they haven't been active for a decade at least) and leave the country.

The England they're trying to leave has just thrown out the "Big Brother" government (straight out of Orwell's "1984") that took over after WW2. The secret police of the new government is run by Harry Lime from the movie "The Third Man" and he is trying to track down the Leaguers. This book is filled with pop culture characters (I probably didn't recognize half of them) which explains why it's having copyright trouble.

With it's historical angle this book is right up my alley. A lot of the facsimiles are text and not comic so if you're looking for a straight up comic stay away from this one. No decompressed storytelling here. With the abundant text parts this takes a bit of time to get through.

I did have a problem with the ending (which was in 3D). I won't give anything away but I thought the ending made our two main characters, who I thought were supposed to be heroes, look like selfish jerks. It has a lot to do with Alan Moore's revealed magic making people enlightened crap and it just rubbed me the wrong way. I've noticed in a lot of Moore's work recently there are enlightened people and the rest of us. And it seems that part of being one of Moore's enlightened ones is to not give a damn about the rest of us. That bothered me at the end of this book.

But overall I like the ambition of this project. I liked all the facsimile stuff (except the beat novel one which I found unreadable). I found "Black Dossier" to be the most interesting of the three League books. Give it a try. Maybe the ending won't bug you as much as it did me. I'm a sensitive boy.

The Day After

Whew, busy day getting mundane things done. Maybe not so much mundane as ordinary. First I had to clean up the leaves from around the yard. There are many ways to clean up leaves and the most popular one around here seems to be to pay a service to come and pick up all your leaves. I still do it the old fashioned way. I do it myself.

All the leaves still haven't fallen from the trees, as they usually have by now, so I may have to do a little more of this. But what the hell, I wanted to get most of it done. With no leaf blower I use a rake. It's much quieter and I listen to music on my headphones as I rake. The key to cleaning up so many leaves is not moving them too far. Or at least finding an easy method of moving them far.

There are also various methods of disposing of leaves. You can't burn them in my populated suburb so nowadays most towns around here have leaf pickup. In my particular town you can bag your leaves in big old paper bags and then the town sends people around in a truck to pick them up and dispose of them. A couple of towns away they have a big vacuum truck that drives around and sucks up all the leaves that people have made into a big pile near the road in their front yards. They're a rich town.

The tried and true method that I use, having learned it from my father, is to spread the leaves thinly all over the lawn and mow them into mulch. Since the leaves gather, or rather are blown by the wind, up against all the edges of the yard the chore is to get them all into the middle. That's where the raking comes in. And the plastic tarp.

The best method for moving all those leaves is also one I learned from my dad when I was a kid. Place a piece of plastic, about ten foot by ten foot, on the ground and rake the nearby leaves onto the tarp. When it's full just drag the leaves where ever you want them to go and dump them off. It's so much easier than trying to move leaves across the yard by just rake power alone. The joy of tools. Even if just a piece of plastic sheeting.

So I raked, moved the leaves to the middle of the yard, and mowed and mowed and mowed. I was on the riding mower so that part wasn't too bad but it's a bit tricky mowing leaves. They pile up and clog the mower if you're not careful. You have to be cautious and try to keep them as spread out as possible. There is not set pattern for this as there is with mowing grass. When I was done there were just tiny chopped up pieces left that will break down easier to feed the lawn. All in all it was a three hour process that left me really tired at the end. Where has my youth gone?

The second thing that I got done was a bookshelf. I've gotten a lot of books over the past year and I need a place to put them. They're piling up all over the place and that's not good. I decided to build a bookshelf to go on top of my dresser. Last weekend I went and got the lumber for it but hadn't yet done anything with it. So I measured twice and cut once, stained the wood, and put together the pieces with screws. It's still drying right now so it doesn't have any books on it.

Bookshelves are actually fairly easy to build. They're basic. I'm pretty handy and I have no trouble figuring out how to build them but no one is going to mistake me for a real craftsman. I just don't have the patience for that. I want it up and holding books as quickly as possible so that I can go back to drawing, painting, or some such. It's there that I'm a craftsman. I have boundless patience for that. Funny how life works.

So that's how I spent my day after Thanksgiving. Getting a couple of chores done. I can't wait to get those books up on the shelf because I want to go work out some ideas for a drawing or two. And the rest of you leaves: stay out of my yard!

Comics I Bought This Week: November 22, 2007

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 3 new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Ex Machina 32

Walking Dead 44

Grendel Behold The Devil 1 (of 8)

The Goon Chinatown and the Mystery of Mr. Wicker (The Goon is a favorite series of a couple of friends so I figured I'd try it)

And now for a review of something I've read this week.

Shortcomings - By Adrian Tomine

I bought this story when it was serialized in "Optic Nerve" but since I've been on such a hard cover collection kick I decided to get this again. It's a little smaller in size than the comic which is a bit of a disappointment to me but it's not much smaller. I like oversized comics not undersized ones. Those Japanese style small paperbacks leave me cold.

The first thing that strikes me about this story is that it is about Asian Americans. That's not so unusual in and of itself but since this is a "real life" story I have to say that I think this is the first story about Asian Americans that was not about the martial arts. I've read "real life" comics about people of other ethnicities and backgrounds but never Asian Americans. I hadn't realized that before I read this.

The story is basically about the break up of a couple. We're told it from the point of view of the guy and that's who we're supposed to be sympathetic with. He's a bit whiney and annoying so sometimes it's hard to be sympathetic with him but that seems to be on purpose.

The beginning of the book is the hardest part to get through. The storytelling and dialogue are a little clunky and everything seem a bit forced to me. It doesn't flow smoothly. I'm not sure if this is a criticism or an observation though because things are supposed to be awkward between the couple at this point in the book. Maybe Tomine succeeded too well. Either way if someone picks up the story and starts reading they may not be too impressed and it would be a shame if they didn't stick around to finish.

The last two thirds of the book are where things rang true to me. The dialogue and storytelling come together as we join Ben Tanaka on his journey through changes in his life that he doesn't like. All sorts of topics including, love, sex, race, betrayal, friendship, and movies are explored and resolution is hard to come by. I like books and movies that are about dialogue and ideas and this falls into that category. I wouldn't have purchased it twice if I didn't like it. Recommended.

Good Luck Bad Luck and No Luck

Somedays it doesn't pay to get out of bed. That's the cliché and we all know what it means. But some days I'm not even looking for pay when I get out of bed. I'm just looking for things to go right. Break my way if you will. That's what I want. A day when everything comes up roses. Wouldn't that be nice? Sweet chocolate mountain I'd pay money for that! Except I fear that type of day can be wasted if I've got nothing going on. Think about it. It could go by without me even noticing.

What happens if I finally get that elusive day when everything goes right and I got zero to do that day. Or worse, nothing to do but work. I wouldn't even notice that everything went right because there was nothing but banality to the day. Another of the dangers of the banal. I've never been a fan of boredom. It's an enemy like no other.

Now, a day when things go bad just sucks. No way around that. You don't need to be doing anything on that kind of day. You can be minding your own business sitting in a chair doing nothing but napping and if things go bad you'll know it. Hell, you can fall out of the chair and break your arm. Bad luck makes itself known in a way that good luck can't match. Sneaky bastage.

Bad luck doesn't need anything but itself. It's self sufficient. Meanwhile good luck needs something to act on. If you're sitting in a chair all day what's good luck going to do for you? Make sure the chair doesn't fly into space? Nope. That's not luck that's gravity. Good luck needs you to be walking down the street so a dollar can blow against your shoe or some such. It tends to be more subtle than bad luck. So subtle it's easy to miss if you have nothing going on.

Good luck needs opportunity and bad luck doesn't. That's what's annoying me today. I'm mourning opportunities lost and the loss of opportunity. All the while that bugaboo called bad luck keeps right on truckin'. Filth flarn, filth flarn. As you can probably tell I'm feeling a little hostile towards the world today. But on to better things.

There, there, wait a moment I'm trying to think of better things.

Nope. Got nothing for you today.

I had some bad luck with buying some blank DVDs. I bought a bunch of Memorex DVDs that are supposed to be "up to 16x speed" but for some reason they only burn at about 5x on my burner. That means instead of taking five minutes it takes fifteen to burn a disk. And I bought a hundred pack of them. Oy! All the other "up to 16x speed" DVDs I've ever had have burned at 16x speed. I don't know what's up with Memorex. Just a bit of bad luck.

Sometimes things, objects I mean, can briefly make one forget about bad luck. That's what our whole consumer society is based on. For example: I got a new iPod case. That's kinda cool. It's leather and it flips open to reveal the screen. It's a nicely crafted little thing and makes me smile. Bad luck be damned; a good craftsman can outwit 'cha!

Getting tasks done can fly in the face of bad luck. I just finished labeling and editing a bunch of my photos that I loaded onto said iPod. I'm glad that's done but it offered me little opportunity for luck.

Hmmm... maybe inspiration is what I need today. Can luck bring inspiration or does inspiration bring luck? I don't know. But these are the questions that run through my mind. Later gator.

Comics I Bought This Week: November 15, 2007

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got no new comic (zip, zero, zed, nothing!) but I did get two new hard cover collections:

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

Captain America: Omnibus (The Ed Brubaker written issues. I've been meaning to check this out but it's fairly expensive.)

And now for a review of something I've read this week.

"Amazing Fantasy" Omnibus by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Jack Kirby

Wow, did this book blow me away. I was originally undecided about whether to get it or not. It collects the whole fifteen issue series from the early Sixties in which Spider-Man debuted in the fifteenth and last issue. I, of course, have read that Spidey issue as has almost every other comic book fan an Earth but I knew almost nothing about the other fourteen issues. All I knew was that they were some monster and fantasy stories by Lee, Ditko, and Kirby.

I had recently bought and read the Atlas Era Marvel Masterworks "Tales To Astonish". This is another collection of what I thought to be similar stories by the Marvel crew. I enjoyed them but there is really not a lot to eight page monster stories besides good craftsmanship. I was unsure if I really wanted to spend more money on similar comics. But there was something about being able to read the first Spider-Man story in the context of the whole "Amazing Fantasy" series (which has never been reprinted before) that intrigued me. I'm a history fan in general and history is all about context. That and knowing that once these Marvel Omnibuses go out of print I would no longer be able to find them for as cheap as I can now. I waffled on the Jack Kirby "Eternals" Omnibus for so long that I can only find it for a couple of hundred dollars or so on the secondary market. So I pulled the trigger on getting the "Amazing Fantasy" Omnibus. I'm glad I did.

These stories are a cut or two above the Atlas era collections. The first six issues were a mix of Kirby and Ditko drawn stories with a long lead story and then a couple of shorter ones. The long lead stories allowed for more complex tales to be told than the Atlas Era stuff. The stories were also fresher and more sophisticated. There was one continuing character Dr. Droom who was resurrected as Dr. Druid in the 1970's. It all made for a nice mix of stories.

From issue seven to issue fourteen we get just Lee and Ditko. Each issue has five short stories that they were purposely written for an older audience. Each issue has a well designed table of contents and each story has a Ditko drawn splash page that acts like a cover. These are among the best splash pages I have ever seen and each tells a story in and of itself. I lot of work and talent went into these issues.

A couple of the stories get redundant and aliens are always secretly planning to invade Earth but it's hard to write five short stories an issue. They succeed more than they fail. Over all I was really blown away by the quality of these "Amazing Fantasy" issues and the stories were all so much more engaging than others of this type that I have read. A lot of imagination and skill went into the making of these comics and it shows. Oh yeah, and Spider-Man appears in the last issue. Give it a read. Recommended.

Migratory Patterns

Let's here it for Apple's "Migration Assistant". It isn't needed very often but when it is it really does the job. Y'see I decided to upgrade to Apple's new "Leopard" operating system (OS 10.5). It wasn't an easy decision because it involved some hardware changes for me. Well, that and money. I'm not made of the stuff.

I'm running a 2002 Dual 1 Ghz Quicksilver model. I've already upgraded it many times over the years and it has two internal hard drives. The original stock 80 gig drive and a second 250 gig drive. I run the operating system off of the 80 gig drive and the other is set up with a clean and basic back up operating system in case I have problems and have to trouble shoot. The problem is that the 80 gig drive is just about full. As an artist who scans in a lot of my stuff and also dabbles in photography I can really fill up a drive. I'm not sure if there was even room to install OS 10.5. I'd be pushing the envelope.

Buying a new internal hard drive was part of my decision making process. Had to be done as part of the OS upgrade. It drove the price of upgrading up but in the end I decided I needed a new internal hard drive anyway so away I went. I ordered a 250 gig internal hard drive, a USB enclosure for the old internal drive, and Leopard. Then I waited until the end of the week after all my work was done to do an install.

The first thing I had to do was open my machine up and pull out the hard drives. The top hard drive (250 gig) came out easy enough. After all I put it in so I knew how to take it out. The primary hard drive (80 gig) was a little trickier. It took me a few minutes to find the screw that held it in. It was under the cable that connected to the drive. I only found it by looking underneath the computer's tower case and seeing a bottom bolt. Once found it came out easy. So I made the old 250 gig drive the primary drive and the new one the secondary drive. Then it was a reboot and I had to format the drive. Piece of cake.

I had one bad run at installing OS 10.5. It was my own fault because you're not supposed to install an operating system with peripherals attached to it and I tried to install from a peripheral. Yeah, Yeah, I know, but I always use my external 16x DVD drive because it's so my faster the the original 2x internal drive. And as I figured the install went faster. Until it failed. Then I unplugged everything and tried again from the internal DVD drive. Everything went fine but slower. Install was successful.

This is where Migration Assistant comes in. Since I was installing on a totally new hard drive none of my previous information was there. But I had purchased a USB enclosure and put the old 80 gig drive into it and now I plugged that into my tower (as an external hard drive). I fired up the migration program and it spotted the external drive and asked if I wanted to copy over my user information. I said yes and it copied all of my documents, applications, passwords, settings, and you name its. This took about two hours as there was about 70 gigs worth of stuff. But, wow, does it save time. I had to set up next to nothing. It was all there just as I left it and ready to go.

When I fired up the old beast all I had to do was update a couple of things. The Wacom tablet seems to be the one thing that always needs a driver update with each new system. Luckily there was one so I downloaded it and things were good. I checked my scanner and printer. Those are the two big things I had to get working and they're doing fine (big ups to VueScan software). The whole upgrade took me from about 4 PM until 8:30 PM. I ate dinner in there too so it wasn't too long.

One strange thing was that even though I had administer privileges I had to type a password to write to my primary 250 gig drive (the old one). I hit "command I" to get info on the drive and though I could give myself write privileges to individual folders I couldn't give myself write privileges for the whole drive. I had to tell the computer to "ignore ownership" of the drive in order to give myself unfettered access to it. I didn't have to do this with my external drives though. Weird.

I can't give any kind of review of Leopard yet since I've barely used it but my review of the Migration Assistant program is ten out of ten stars. Man does it take the pain out of upgrading. You can even use it if you are buying a new computer. As long as the old and new computers have Firewire (though my external hard drive was USB 2 and that worked fine) you can connect them together and copy everything from the old one onto the new one. It make things painless. I like painless.

Comics I Bought: November 8, 2007

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 1 new comic plus a hard cover collection:

Buffy Season Eight - 8

Frank Miller The Complete Spider-Man Hardcover (I couldn't leave the shop with just one comic so I looked around and this is what I found)

And now for some reviews of things I've read this week.

Batman: Strange Apparitions

I'm not really a Batman fan. Never have been. Even as a kid but especially now. To me he's become half a crazy person and half a Wolverine knockoff. Kind of ironic being that he was around long before Wolverine. Sure there are some good Batman stories (I like "Long Halloween" and "Year One") but overall I'm really tired of everybody's post "Dark Knight Returns" take on the character. "Dark Avenging Creature of the Night"... yawn... somebody wake me when it's over.

So here is a pre "Dark Knight Returns" story that is generally considered one of the better Batman runs from the 1970's. This book reprints the Marshall Rogers, Terry Austin, Steve Englehart run on "Detective Comics" from 1978-1979. Plus there is some Steve Englehart, Walt Simonson, Al Milgrom early in the book and some Lein Wein written stuff in the end. Not being a Batman reader as a kid in the 1970's I haven't read anything but a single issue of the Wein written stuff. It was all new to me.

Y'know what? These are some of the stronger Batman stories. I like when things live up to their reputations. I can see why these issues are fondly remembered. There's nothing I can point to that's great but there is a certain type of magic going on in these stories. It's the Marshall Rogers, Terry Austin, Steve Englehart ones that I'm talking about. The others are okay but there is not as much magic going on.

It's one of those comics where it looks like everyone was trying to do their best, had some talent, and were learning and getting better all the time. They cared in a way beyond it just being job and things clicked. I got into these comics. The stories and characters seem fresh and new even all these years later. That's not easy to do.

I won't even bother to go into the specifics of the plot because they're almost not that important. It's really just another super hero tale. It's that elusive magic that matters. And Batman in an actual human being in these stories too. A nice change of pace from him being an "icon" (that's what it's called when a cliché is heavily marketed).

In a Cold Cycle

Crap. It's the end of my bike riding season. For outdoor bike riding that is. Time to move things inside to the stationary bike. Blech! I hate the stationary bike. What rider doesn't? It's too boring. I'd much rather be outside riding the real thing with the air and scenery going by. But now it's getting too cold. I hate riding a bike in the cold. Besides being real cold it saps my strength like you wouldn't believe. My last ride was earlier this week and it was 38º F out. I had to cut it short. It was too much effort to ride. Exhausting. I was tired after that short ride. I pushed through on a cold ride a couple of days earlier and payed the price of fatigue for the rest of the day. Can't do that anymore.

Mornings are my time to exercise so I have a tough time waiting for the afternoons to roll around when the day warms up a little. I could ride for a couple of more weeks in the afternoons but I have much less energy in the afternoons. Besides it doesn't warm up that much because these autumn winds are cold. I even got myself a windbreaker this year and it works well. It's much warmer with it on but the cold still saps my strength. I wasn't actually too cold but too weak. I guess when the body's energy has to be used to keep warm there is less of it for the legs. I'd have to warm up a lot first to keep my strength up. That would take even more time.

There is also something to be said about the psychological factor of winter coming compared to spring. Cycling in the cold of the early spring is easier because I know that the mornings will be getting warmer day by day. That's something to look forward to. In the winter it's the opposite. I keep wondering, "Is this the day that will be too cold?". That's a distraction. You don't want those out on the road. Snow, ice, and wind aren't very good either. It can be tough to cycle in a warm wind and in a cold one near impossible.

So now I'll sit in one place and pedal. I'll watch some TV while I do this but that still doesn't make it very interesting. It's less exercise in the same amount of time too. When I'm out on the road I go up some pretty big hills. I can turn the resistance up on the stationary bike and pedal harder but it's not the same. It takes more effort but less concentration to go up a real hill on a real bike. After all, I have no choice. I have to keep going or I won't get home. My legs will keep on pedaling even if I'm not as focused as I could be. On the stationary bike if I get a little tired and lose concentration I can just stop pedaling or turn down the resistance. And it's easy to lose concentration when you're going no where.

I think I'll start hitting the stationary bike in the morning and taking a walk in the afternoon. After all my bike ride also serves to get me out of the house and away from the computer screen or the drawing board for a while. Otherwise I'm inside all day and that can lead to a bit of cabin fever. Especially in the winter time. And here comes the ol' papa winter to say hello.

Comics I Bought This Week: November 1, 2007

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 4 new comics plus a hard cover collection:

True Story Swear To God - 9

Supernatural Origins - 6

Savage Dragon - 133

Apocalypse Nerd - 6

Legion of Monsters - hard cover collection (I like the western one so what the hey)

And now for a review of something I've read this week.

Death By Chocolate: Redux by David Yurkovich

I bought the original "Death By Chocolate" comic back in 1996 or so on one of my forays into Manhattan to look for some comics that I might not have seen on my weekly trips to my local comic shop. It stood out of the pile of stuff because it was unusual and good. It's also tough to categorize.

"Death By Chocolate" tells the tale of a man who was turned into a being of living chocolate. By that description I'd think it was a tongue in cheek type book played for laughs but it's not. It has some super hero elements in it but I'd say it was more of a horror story. The man later named "Agent Swete" is more than a chocolate man. He can turn anything into chocolate including people. This, of course, kills them. That happened quite a bit.

That covers the first story in the book and the rest is taken up by a few more stories about Agent Swete that Yurkovich made over the years. The tales get more X-Files-ish as Swete joins the FBI's food crimes division and gets himself a partner. Plus we get to meet "The Metabolators". A trio of living weapons who were designed during WW2 to eat in vast quantities. Drop them behind enemy lines and they will eat the enemies fields of grain in mere hours. Yes, Yurkovich writes a really weird story.

The artwork belongs in a unusual comic art category that I describe thusly: flipping through the book without reading it does nothing for me. I don't stop and think, "Wow, that's a pretty drawing". But upon reading it's totally engrossing and the story telling and the world that the art creates sucks you in and keeps you there. You have to read it to appreciate it.

It's called "Redux" because Yurkovich cleaned up some of the art and laid down his grey tones on the computer this time. I don't know how much difference that made because I liked this stuff when it first came out but I haven't compared them side by side. And it is a collection of stuff too. I have to complain that the lettering is a little small on one story but the rest was okay.

So if you're in the mood for something a little different, a little out of the mainstream, and a little bizarre check out "Death By Chocolate: Redux". I'm on board with anything Yurkovich does.