John Buys Comics and Oh Man I'm so Hungry I Can't Think Up a Title

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Three things from last week, as I did not get my ass in gear in time to write much of anything:

a) The Anchor No.1 - A fine entry in the “big dude who punches the supernatural” style that I love so much. I’ll pick up numba two and go into more detail then.

b) Hector Plasm: Totentanz - Really fantastic. I shall be tracking down the earlier Hector Plasm collection. Chris Sims hit all of my major points in his review of the book, so go read that and imagine that at the end I pipe in with a muted “Yeah.”

c) Hellboy: The Wild Hunt No. 5 - Holy crap! So great. Don’t wait for the trade on this series, guys. The last issue is in a couple of weeks, so watch out for me spewing praise in this space.

Four! Four things!

d) Grandville - Okay, this came out a couple of weeks ago but I just read it. It’s amazing, on about a hundred levels. The art is marvelous and amazingly detailed, the characters are well-realized and compelling, the giant fight scenes are actually followable and not a tangle of limbs that must be worked out like a magic eye puzzle. Add in some terrific shout-outs to Hergé and the Rupert comics and such and it’s just a delight to read. Non-comics-reading Erica (and every time I use her as an example her designation as such gets a little flimsier, I realize) got at least as worked up about how good this was as she did about the resistance that some of my workmates have to vaccination (if you know a doctor and you want to take a break from talking for a while, just ask them their opinions on such things - fun!). Anyone who enjoys adventure-style comics should check this out, if only in-store.

Dang it, five things. Batman No. 691 turned me off enough that there’s going to be a six hundred and ninety-SECOND ISSUE OF JUDGEMENT.

Now, on to this week:

Cowboy, Ninja, Viking No. 1

So it’s a recognized thing (by me, at least. Maybe you weren't paying attention or something) that over the last decade or so all of the classic character archetypes of our childhoods have been fermented and distilled on the Internet until things like Talk Like a Pirate Day or Zombie Walks spill out into the non-electronic world. And of course they bleed into comics as well - Dr McNinja, say, or Scurvy Dogs - often enough nowadays that you can start to get a bit wary when something is described as “Monkeys versus Ninjas… Zombie Ninjas! On the Moon!” Is it going to be good reading or did someone get a bit lazy and just throw concepts together until it sounded marketable?

I point this out to illustrate my state of mind when I saw that there was an upcoming comic called Cowboy Ninja Viking: wary and guarded. Man, these are three of the classic stock characters - was someone just picking names out of a hat in an attempt to entrap folks like me? My brow furrowed further when I read the plot synopsis: a guy with Multiple Personality Disorder who had three personalities - the titular Cowboy, Ninja and Viking - and who had been trained as an assassin by an ill-conceived government program. This was either going to be great or terrible.

Happily, it’s looking like it’s going to be pretty great. The art has the necessary chops (and check out that cover image - very nice) and the set-up was taken care of without spilling into issue 2. There were a few too many jumps in time for my taste - the lack of a full colour palette tended to make things like changes of location a bit hard to follow and forced me to flip back and forth a fair deal to resolve exactly what was going on and who was talking and so forth. The use of iconic word balloons to differentiate the CNV’s personalities was very, very cool. There’ll be a SECOND ISSUE OF JUDGEMENT on this one, but honestly it’s just because I’d like to wait and check out the characterization a bit more before jumping in with both feet.

Oh, to hell with caution. The main character is a cowboy AND a ninja AND a Viking, after all - this is probably going to be awesome.

Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance No 6 (of 6)

So RUN! dealt with the issue of the Human Flame and his continued evasion of justice (by making him super-powerful, having him defeat himself by his own hubris and ending up with him imprisoned on an asteroid), Escape tackled the finality of Final Crisis (by reinstating the Global Peace Agency as an extradimensional/extratemporal organization dedicated to heading off Crises before they occur), Ink is dedicated to either hazing the new Tattooed Man until he becomes a villain again or proving his heroism through a super-duper baptism of fire. What about Dance?

The Super Young Team were one of the more fun elements of Final Crisis, at least for me, and I was all for this series, whose goal seemed to be establishing them as heroes rather than just super-powered club kids. And that’s basically what happened, I guess. Kind of. Not really. Actually, not at all.

According to this issue, the Super Young Team has learned to work together and have found their places in the world and yadda yadda. As far as I can tell, though… there have been no actual changes in the characters (in fact, there’s been a bit of a reversion, since Big Atomic Lantern Boy screwed up his budding relationship with Shiny Happy Aquazon and is back to pining for her). There is no visible evidence to support the fact that the team has changed in the least.

I get that this series has been an overt examination of the celebrity aspect of super-herodom and that the characters must thus be infused with shallowness and soap opera and so forth but GAWD was it unsatisfying to read six issues and end up liking the characters less at the end. Intentional of not, I say bleah to that. Bleah.

Beasts of Burden No. 2 - I have no desire to ruin one second of this comic for anyone. All I’ll say about it is that as many horror comics as I read (and I read a lot of horror comics) this is the first one in quite a while to genuinely creep me out. I won’t be awake all night or anything, mind, but I did get that creepy feeling. Just a fantastic comic on all levels. Especially Mr. Pugsley: “Devil’s Well, huh? More like Devil’s Ass. This place sucks.”

Oops, didn't get anything else read. Good night everybody!

The JLA hits the streets in style!

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Now I believe, left to right, that we are looking at Green Lantern, The Flash, Aquaman, Batman, Superman, The Atom and Hawkman.

And now, left to right, I will review what they are wearing.

Green Lantern

If you were the Green Lantern, and your super hero costume was a high-collared green top and some black pants, would you choose to wear a green turtleneck and black pants for your street clothes? Basically he is only missing the flimsy domino mask here. That's a poor disguise, Hal.

The Flash

Ah, Barry Allen. A man of no style. Or, at least, a man of very conservative style.

Actually, I say that, but if I saw a man wearing a yellow or gold three-piece suit, I would think it was pretty daring.

Aquaman

As if it even matters what anyone else is wearing because the only guy you are going to notice in this crowd is Aquaman. This daring number seems to boast "Hey, Green Arrow, THIS is how you wear a lace-up shirt." It's possible, of course, that Aquaman really has no idea what "street clothes" are. And who could blame him?

Superman

We can't see Clark Kent from the neck down here, but let's assume he's wearing an over-sized, rumpled affair that his mom bought him. Or we can pretend that he is hiding behind Bruce Wayne because he is embarrassed to be wearing the same outfit as Aquaman. Whatever you prefer.

Batman

Ladies and gentlemen, Bruce MF Wayne. Here's a man who looks like a million bucks, because he spent a million bucks on his coat. And this really works as a disguise because you wouldn't look at this guy and think "I'll bet he's Batman." You think "I'll bet Batman wants to be this guy."

The Atom

We can't really see what The Atom is wearing. In fact, I am not even sure that is The Atom. I just assume it is. It could just be some guy running for the train who got caught up in the JLA posse at this exact moment.

Hawkman

So what has caught Hawkman's attention? An attractive lady perhaps? A police siren? I would actually guess that it's his own reflection in a shop window, because he looks so damn gooooood. He's just strutting down the street, singing his private themesong in his head ("Hawkman is swinging, Hawkman is swinging, Hawkmaaaaaan... Hawkman swinging") wondering if he should maybe undo another button. The fact that he's wearing a shirt at all, and not wearing wings and a hawk mask, makes this a pretty good disguise.

Panel taken from Justice League of America v.1 #89, one of the most insane and self-indulgent comics ever written.

Smell My Feet, Indeed.

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Oh man, do I love Halloween. Not only do I get to dress up in a ridiculous costume (hopefully this year, I can pull off Hawkeye—no, not Alan Alda or Daniel Day-Lewis, but Clint Barton), but I can also use the time of year as an excuse to watch as many horror flicks as I can in my free time. Honestly, I try to do that all year round anyway, but throughout the month of October, it’s officially sanctioned, nay, encouraged! So, for my next few posts, I’ll be updating about whatever spook-a-blasts make their way into my DVD player. I’ll look for the comic book connections wherever I can find them, I promise.

TRICK R TREAT

This movie, written and directed by X2/Superman Returns screenwriter Michael Dougherty and produced by Bryan Singer, was originally supposed to be released theatrically a few years back (I first saw the trailer when I was living in my last apartment, which would most likely make it 2007 or so). Warner Brothers pulled it from their schedule at the last minute, saying it would be released the following year, then…nothing. It kept getting pushed back further and further, all the while building up fan buzz from special screenings and convention appearances by the director and stars. It finally came to DVD riding a crazy crest of hype two weeks ago. I suppose I can justify this one, since it’s made by a couple of guys with high profile comic book movies under their belts, and it pays tribute to stuff like EC Comics with its structure and comic-style opening credits (much of the action takes place on Warren Street, presumably named for the publisher of Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella). Also, DC/Wildstorm produced a graphic novel adaptation, so there you go.

The sort-of anthology style film follows four intertwined tales of terror that take place in the same neighbourhood on All Hallows’ Eve. Dylan Baker plays a murderous school principal, Anna Paquin appears in a redo of "Little Red Riding Hood", an urban legend about a school bus full of drowned troublemakers figures into a nasty prank, and a mean old man who hates the holiday is tormented by a diminutive, sack-headed spirit of Halloween (I think that’s what he’s supposed to be, anyway).

I really do feel like the filmmakers had their hearts in the right place with this one; clearly, they love the Halloween season and all the morbid traditions that surround it. Sadly, this movie, which somehow manages to feel way too long even though it only lasts 82 minutes, missed the mark for me. None of the four stories feel very developed in any satisfactory way, and their quality is uneven as all hell. The opening segment with Dylan Baker ends far too quickly on an unsatisfying twist, but then his character returns in the Anna Paquin segment in a way that doesn’t fit his earlier modus operandi at all and feels at odds with the Red Riding Hood legend. The segment about the school bus has promise, but is a bit half-baked, and the comeuppance the pranksters receive seems pretty harsh. Bryan Cox nearly saves the final installment with his raspy, wheezy, performance as mean old Mr. Kreeg, but we’re barely introduced to him before he’s being terrorized by the mischievous imp, so why should we care what happens to him? There’s also a framing sequence involving a grown-up couple who go trick-or-treating, which is confusing enough already, but then gets even more confusing when one of them meets an awful fate (at the hands of sack-headed “Sam”) for no apparent reason. The type of horror stories the film is attempting to evoke have a certain Old Testament flair to them, where bad people are punished in suitably gruesome, ironic fashion, but the evils that befall Trick R Treat’s cast seem way too arbitrary to work as an homage.

Trick R Treat is a very well made picture, with a better-than-average cast, eye-catching cinematography, and lots of spooky atmosphere. However, Dougherty and company spent too much time focusing on the style when they should have paid better attention to the substance. Not one character leaves an impression, and not one plot twist or scare is memorable. It’s like they made a movie that you could play on a big screen at a high school Halloween dance, where you don’t have to worry about following the plot but will be treated to some appropriately seasonal imagery if you turn towards it once in a while. Trick R Treat’s glossy production may go down like so much Halloween candy, but its lack of a nourishing screenplay gave me a tummy-ache.

PS: If you’ve really got a hankering for this sort of thing, do yourself a favour and check out 1982’s Creepshow, written by Stephen King and directed by George A. Romero. It pulls off the EC comics horror anthology homage much more successfully, with lots of tongue-in-cheek humour, awesome makeup effects by Tom Savini and a great cast that includes Adrienne Barbeau, Ted Danson, Ed Harris, Leslie Nielsen, Hal Holbrook, and even King himself! Bonus points if you can scare up a copy of the graphic novel adaptation, illustrated by genre legend Berni Wrightson.

 

LBW Product Watch, Hallowe'en Edition

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Parents, are you concerned for the safety of your children this Hallowe'en? Don't be afraid to admit it, it's only natural. What with all of the pretend monsters, murderers and misanthropes thronging the streets, how could event the most astute of children be expected to pick out and avoid any real ones that might come along? That's why we here at Living Between Wednesdays* are pleased to endorse what we believe to be the perfect way to keep your child safe no matter what supernatural menaces might lurk in the night (or possibly late afternoon if you live in one of those wussy communities).

SOLOMON KANE

That's right, Robert E. Howard's Puritan adventurer himself, with more than six decades of globe-trotting monster massacre under his belt and a no-nonsense commitment to justice and right that will ensure that he will not stop until your offspring are safe, or at the very least avenged.

Why, just look at a few of Kane's areas of expertise:

PIRATES

Yes, with pirate popularity showing no signs of abating completely, one can never be sure if the Johnny Depp-lookalike staggering down the street is a mere reveler or an actual pirate, drunk on the rum. Solomon Kane can tell, and he has twice the bladesmanship of any rickets-plagued buccaneer. Or of Johnny Depp himself, if it should come to that.

WEREWOLVES

 

Unlike many, Solomon Kane will not hesitate to  jump on a werewolf if the need arises. Despite the fact that most werewolves will have buried themselves in river mud to sleep out the winter months by the time November comes, wouldn't you rest easier knowing that a dour Puritan was ready to jump on any that might still be awake, before they could jump on your spawn?

GIANT SNAKES

 It is a little-known fact that giant snakes are the most easily-bored of all the reptiles and constantly crave new dining experiences. Thus, Hallowe'en is a particularly dangerous time of year, as their reptile brains are unable to grasp the concept of trick or treating and see the hordes of costumed youths thronging the streets as brand new taste sensations, rather than the same bland children that they had become so tired of preying upon by March or April of the year. Parents of especially creative children take note: if you cannot arrange Solomon Kane to escort your child then it may be wise to talk them out of that Two Headed Laurel and Hardy costume and into a more generic and safe ghost or sexy nurse outfit.

UNDEAD HORDES

Whether zombies, vampires or cone-headed African zombie/vampire weirdos, Solomon Kane and his cat-headed ju-ju staff will murderize their unholy selves, just as a matter of principle.

But don't think that Solomon Kane is only proficient in battling garden-variety menaces like those above. No, he is available to protect your young from a whole host of less-common menaces, including:

DRACULAS

BAT-MEN

GOAT-FOOTED ELIZABETHAN NAZI BARONS

 LIONS

 

 GARDEN-VARIETY GOONS

And, perhaps most impressively of all:

CONANS

 

Yes, Solomon Kane. He may call your wife a harlot and punch you out for taking the Lord's name in vain, and he definitely won't let your child engage in anything so Paganistic as trick or treating, but when you want a man who will almost certainly bring your youngsters home undevoured and not in thrall to ancient evil, this dour Puritan is the name that parents trust.

Order now! Supplies are limited!

*"We" is a proprietary term here used to refer only to Johnathan Munroe. And even then, only loosely.

Oh Man. John Bought Comics and Hates to Waste Words

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 Well! Here I am again. I’m a bit put out at myself, as I’d really wanted to keep up a regular update schedule on this blog. This weekend defeated me, however, what with the play that I was in coming to a close and the deluge of foodstuffs associated with the Thanksgiving weekend (I did get to hang my niece upside-down by the ankles for a few hours, so who am I to complain?). And with the fact that I am kind of lazy. But I had written most of this already and damn it, my opinions deserve to be fired onto the Internet, right? I still owe one post, though.

Back on track with me then: here are some extremely late reviews:

Final Crisis Aftermath: RUN! No. 6 (of 6)

And so the first of the Final Crisis Aftermath series ends. Honestly, I’m not too sure how I feel about the whole thing. I really enjoyed the self-centred asshole aspect of the Human Flame, and I had a good time with the bit where he was getting more and more powerful and screwing over everyone who got in his way, but right about the point in issue 3 or 4 where he jumped out the window and messed himself up I was kind of hoping that he’d go into some sort of horrible spiral that led him back to where he had started, only with everyone in the world hating him and he could end up a horribly-broken cyborg living under a bridge and feeling sorry for himself. The route that they did take (spoilers, I guess, though you probably saw this coming at the end of the last issue. If you read the last issue - not sure if I’m the only one reading this series or not) wherein he just gets more and more powerful and ends up defeating himself by his own hubris, well, it’s just not as emotionally satisfying to me, though that last panel was cute. Hey, at least he’s still alive at the end, so the opportunity for him to wind up under that bridge still exists.

You know, I haven’t been mentioning the covers on this series, but they’ve been fantastic, every one. Who did these things? Kako, eh? Kako, you’re magnificent. Aw, griping aside, this has been a pretty solid time. God job, folks.

Planetary No. 27

Jumpin’ Jehosephat! I know that the fact that it’s been about three years since the last issue of this came out is going to be a highly popular element of any review of it and so might be something to avoid lest I be tiresome, but I nevertheless must exclaim a little bit. That is a long-ass time, three years. That’s a tenth of my life, and one hundred thousandth of my projected lifespan, assuming my scheme to get me a fusion-powered robot body comes to fruition.

I have to admit that this is a bit of a bittersweet ending for me, as Planetary is one of the series that really initialized my transition from being a nerd who liked comics to a full-blown comics nerd. On the one hand it’s going to pretty great to sit down and read the whole series end to end, while on the other, it’s basically time to admit to myself that there just won’t be any more Planetary in my future, barring the occasional special.

As for the story itself, well, as you know (and if you don’t know, well… you had three years) last issue dealt with the schooling of the Four. Having beaten the end boss of the comic, Elijah Snow has turned his attentions toward the matter of his missing friend Ambrose Bierce, lost lo these many years after being shot up by some dudes. It’s a wrapping-up issue and it works well with the rest of the series and all, but I’ll probably enjoy it more at the end of a long evening of reading Planetary by a roaring fire than in the temporal isolation that this release was nestled in. So that’s what I’ll do next time I have a long evening free and a roaring fire, I guess. In the meantime, I shall enjoy that superfly foldout cover.

I… I foresee a purchase. It’s… it’s whatever equivalent to Absolute Planetary they eventually put out. The buyer, I can see his face *gasp* it’s me!

Irredeemable No. 7

I need an acronym or a euphemism or something like that for when I read an issue of an ongoing series and really enjoy it but have either nothing new to say or fear spoilers because all of my thoughts about the issue revolve around plot elements. HNNTS/FSTRAPE? Naw, too consonanty. How about a non sequitor? Okay, if there’s a non sequitor instead of a review then the comic has continued in a favourable direction.

*ahem* The dachshund is the noblest of dogs. His ability to fit under any standard furnishing assures that your floor will remain forever free of crumbs and edible debris.

R.E.B.E.L.S. Annual No. 1

Hey, an annual!

It’s not just my fondness for the Legion of Super-Heroes or for its child L.E.G.I.O.N. It’s not just that Vril Dox is the most entertaining total bastard in comics and not that Tony Bedard is just knocking him out of the park, writing-wise. Hell, it’s not just that this series has managed to tell its own story without a hint of getting drawn into Blackest Night or any other such malarkey (and done so while looking damn good, to boot). All of these are terrific reasons for me to love R.E.B.E.L.S. but what is primarily on my mind right now is the fact that Starro the freaking Conqueror has finally gotten an origin story, one that neither invalidates any past appearances by the giant starfish nor precludes future starfishery He worked so well as a giant starfish who just showed up without reason and rained super-hero on super-hero fight scenes down on things for so long and with such panache that if the decision had been left up to me I might have decreed that he be forever origin-less. Shows what I know, I guess.

And good call on making Starro the Conqueror a multigalactic barbarian warlord. If there’s one archetype that’s going to have staying power, it’s got to be the barbarian. I guess that theoretically they could become next year’s pirates or zombies but I reckon that a lot fewer people are comfortable running around with their shirt off than in a puffy shirt. Plus it’s harder to get the dialogue right.

I Sell the Dead

I very much picked this up because of the title, and because the EC-style cover was so nicely realized. Turns out that inside was an engaging yarn about a couple of grave robbers who have drifted from digging up corpses for anatomists to selling various undead or otherwise unusual corpses to a variety of strange customers. Why yes, I do enjoy the undead, thank you. And lovable rogues? Loveable corpse-stealing rogues? Delightful.

And then I got to the end and it turns out that this is a… comic adaptation of a movie based on the concept for the comic? Is that right? I have no idea. I do know that I could stand to watch a movie featuring 19th-century misadventures in zombie-napping. And featuring Ron Perlman, yet! Only trouble is I don’t think that my ladyfriend will go for it, being no fan of such horror-style tomfoolery. Maybe if I play up the whole anatomist angle, tell her that she should watch it in order to get a sense of the sort of things that her pathologist forebears had to go through in order to have a lot of corpses to learn from?

I’ll let you know how that goes. (Update: it worked! Now we just have to use our powerful mind-beams to compel the people responsible for distributing such things to show it here and we’ll be set!) (Second update: wait, IMDB says that this came out last year. Maybe I can rent this? I have no idea what's going on any more)

Batman Unseen No. 1 (of 5)

You know, I could get very used to this. Since Bruce Wayne is dead, the majority of his appearances are places like Superman/Batman or Batman Confidential, which work in short arcs, or else in miniseries like this. Do you know what that means? I’ll tell you what that means: a lot of stories in which Batman fights dudes without a lot of extraneous bullshit. Not that it’s not possible for extraneous bullshit to creep into these stories - Widening Gyre seems to be more bullshit than Batman - but with ties to the ongoing DCU the Batman is able to shine of fail on his own.

So: Batman Unseen. A story about Batman vs an invisible man with the not-quite-as-bad-as-some-Silver-Age-names-but-still-groan-worthy moniker of Nigel Glass. The art’s by Kelley Jones, and looks just as moody and interesting as in last year’s Gotham after Midnight (man, I should pick up that trade. I never did finish getting that series after missing two of the 700 or so issues). You got Batman worrying about not being scary enough, you got Harvey Bullock investigating a weird crime, which is always fun to watch, and you got a very crazy and very fun invisible guy, who kind of looks and talks like the Mad Mod.

Now: the question is will Batman make himself invisible in order to be more scary? Will we have an invisible, crazy and buck-naked Batman running around? Oh what fun!

Batman and Robin No. 5 - Gah! Dangit, the Red Hood is evidently Jason Todd. Again. I guess that I can get behind that as long as the whole “Batman Reborn” mandate is followed and the guy gets straightened out once and for all - no more half-assed plotlines where he comes back and tries to be a badass and nobody takes him seriously (or takes him way too seriously) and then he seems to die. Just… establish some sort of status quo for the guy that isn’t terrible and I’ll be okay.

But as long as Jason has to be around, I’m happy that Morrison managed to sneak in a joke about the phone-in that killed him in the first place.

Strange Tales No. 2 - Not only does this issue have a super-delightful, super-weird Iron Man story by Tony Millionaire and not only does it have a whole lot of great Thing moments, but I think that it might have given me my Hallowe’en costume for this year. Wait and see, I guess.

Sherlock Holmes No 5 (of 5) - Man, I’m usually decent as far as figuring out mysteries is concerned. Really, I should have read the first four issues again before cracking this one. I don’t think that I would have figured everything out but I might have gotten a bit closer than I did. Basically, I got Watsoned. Hopefully there’ll be more Holmes from Leah Moore and I’ll have a chance to regain my honour.

Man, Holmes just has the sassiest look on his face on that cover.

Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder: In the Service of Angels No. 4 (of 5) - This was a pretty good week for comics set in the Victorian period, wasn’t it? Just wanted to note that I love the electro-prods that the Heliotropic Brotherhood of Ra cart around in the Hellboy comics, even though they never quite seem to get the voltage right. Seriously, every time these guys show up they get their asses handed to them (see The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings, in which they are beaten up by a demon monkey). Some quality technology nevertheless.

Red Tornado No. 2 - How creepy was the fact that the Red Torpedo’s controls were all behind her boobs? And not, like, sticking out, either, so that a hollow space was needed. Totally flat. Why did T.O. Morrow build giant hollow boobs that flipped open and had circuits and stuff underneath? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

Doom Patrol No. 3 - You know, I’ve been wavering back and forth on this title, but I do believe that this issue has sold me on the whole thing. Something about this issue was just right for the task of selling me on the way the characters are being… characterized. It took a while to come through but these are definitely the original Doom Patrollers, although of course the passage from the 60s to today has left them kind of creepy, particularly the Chief, who is one decapitation away from being the Vertigo incarnation reborn. Dare I hope for a humbling? All this and the return of Rita Farr’s unsettling use of her power to grow just part of herself - always very weird and terrific.

As for the Metal Men, I like them, too! Especially if the whole thing where Copper is very forgettable goes away soon!

Strange Adventures No. 8 (of 8) - Was… was this whole series just to straighten out a few characters? That’s it? Nothing happened? What the hell? And why did everyone who got a new costume get a creepy thong? Argh! Boo! BOOOOO!

Sweet Tooth No. 2 - When approaching a horse from behind, it is important to speak to it, or it may kick you.

Dangit, I think I missed an issue of Jersey Gods.

Other news:

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts to make the workday fly in recent months, and I feel this extra-strong urge to plug a few. Super Future Friends I have mentioned before, but I will again because it is delightful. Also good but way more nerdy is the Legion of Substitute Podcasters, which may not be for those who cannot find a place in their hearts for at least one member of the Legion of Super-Heroes (Shrinking Violet, maybe? Quislet? Come on). But man, War Rocket Ajax. I almost want to warn you away from it. Not that it’s not good - to the contrary, it’s consistently entertaining - but with every single episode I listen to I find out about something that I had no idea about and feel an immediate need to own. It’s like Chris Sims and our own Dave have hatched a plot in order to bleed my wallet dry. Well, I'm on to you. And now, I'll... plug your show. Damn it, I'm bad at revenge.

Also noteworthy: I got a Dear Dr Capitalism email pointing me toward this video that has been created for the song 'Aquaman's Lament' by the Motion Sick. Say what you will about the man (for instance, say that he is a horrible zombie) but he has some pretty decent moves, I reckon.

5 or 6 days late, I remain,

Johnathan