Paris, 1980. Uploaded by rajrvijarmyers27.
corporate-sellout.com
If You Can Read This, You Can Read This
corporate-sellout.com
If You Can Read This, You Can Read This
Hi, I'm Thad. I build websites.
This blog's been up in one form or another since 1999. In that time I've written about topics ranging from comic books to video games to copyright law to creators' rights to Frank Zappa.
I also write eBooks and narrate audiobooks. Here's where you can find them:
When it's on the damn cover.
"Spoilers" follow. If, you know, you looked at that cover and found yourself scratching your head wondering what could possibly happen in this comic.
As I may have mentioned once or twice last week, I've been laid-up with a cold. I wasn't up to leaving the house for comics last Wednesday. I knew there was some big "One of these characters will die!" thing going on in Batman Inc #8, that comics sites like Bleeding Cool were filling their headlines full of spoiler warnings, and that non-comics media outlets like the New York Post were blithely covering it with no such concern for spoiler warnings.
And then, on Thursday, one day after the issue hit, I ran across a headline on Robot 6 that spelled it out. I was pretty pissed-off at the breach of etiquette.
Up until I finally made it into the comic shop yesterday and actually saw the issue in question.
At which point I realized that yes, all this spoiler-warning nonsense really was nonsense. It's not a spoiler if it's on the damn cover.
The issue itself wasn't bad. Had some good moments; I particularly like Damian telling Dick he was his favorite partner.
The ending -- well, there are some fantastic reaction shots of both Batman and Talia, but ultimately the whole thing actually felt a little anticlimactic considering how much it'd been built up.
Plus, it's comics. Odds he'll actually stay dead? There is a comic book called Batman and Robin. To the best of my knowledge, it is not being cancelled. I suppose they could make Tim Robin again, or there could be some other Robin, but...well, I'm pretty sure Damian's going to get better. Lazarus Pits may be involved.
(There's also the point that the cover is based on one from the Batman: RIP arc a few years back. Batman, of course, also did not actually die. And "RIP" turned out to stand for "Rot in Purgatory". Which, I guess to be fair, is an apt way to describe all the benched DC characters.)
A favorite from Joe's Garage; it taught me all the German I know.
Geneva, 1980; uploaded by Jimmie B. Extra-NSFW, even by Zappa standards.
Another piece of unused footage intended to be used in Uncle Meat, courtesy of Ed Seeman. Via Ed:
It shows Cal Schenkel creating the Zappa likeness statue to be used for the cover of "WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY"
Cover by DBRK, Paris, 2008. Uploaded by padawanbro.
Let's see -- what-all meds did I take when I got out of bed this morning?
Cough syrup, two inhalers, nose spray, Mucinex, and a multivitamin. Plus a cup of coffee and, once I had a breakfast of oatmeal in me, ibuprofen too. Seems like I'm forgetting something; there was a lot there.
My fiancée appears to have caught what I have. She went to urgent care and they told her it was allergies, which I'm pretty sure it isn't seeing as she's got the same symptoms I've had all week.
She's not coughing yet, though. I just started coughing really badly a day or two ago. Barely slept last night. Going to take an inhaler at bedtime tonight; probably won't be able to sleep that way, either, but better to lose sleep because I'm amped up on albuterol than because I can't stop coughing.
Still improving, and hopefully we'll both be fine by next weekend. But man there's so much to do and I've lost a whole week to this mess.
Offenburg, Germany, 1976. Uploaded by tomtiddler1.
Better every day. Throat's still sore, but I'm starting to get my energy and balance back.
Cough's worse, though, and neither cough syrup nor inhaler are doing much good. As such I still don't want to engage in any kind of physical exertion -- hell, it's so bad I don't even want to drive right now, for fear of having a coughing fit and running off the damn road.
Haven't even made it downtown for comics. I've managed to get this far without finding out who dies in Batman Inc #8 and am hoping my luck holds.
At least I'm feeling good enough to contact people about the party before the wedding next week. Just not quite good enough to actually clean my house up so I can have people in it.
NYC, 1977; uploaded by YourArf.
Still pretty out of it with a head cold, so here's another old Who review. Originally posted Brontoforumus, 2009-09-07.
Kinda (the first syllable is pronounced like "kin") is a Fifth Doctor serial. I checked it out because I read on Tardis Wikia that it's one of Moffat's two favorite serials. After watching it, I don't quite share his enthusiasm, but I understand why he likes it.
The high concept is Dr. Strangelove set in the Garden of Eden. The Doctor lands on an unspoiled planet with apparently-primitive natives, and finds a military expedition sent to survey it. The second-in-command of the crew goes crazy, takes over, and decides he's going to blow up the world, while an evil entity enters the world through Teagan's dreams and launches an attack to force his hand.
The highlight is that dreaming sequence. It's some Lewis Carroll fever-dream shit, and precisely the kind of thing you'd expect from a Moffat episode. The other Moffat-y bits are the sense of confinement, of an oncoming and implacable enemy, and of a crew going crazy, as well as characters who speak in riddles. And lots of iconic imagery.
In the end, my main problem with Kinda is that I just don't like the Fifth Doctor very much. He's got this air of helplessness and incompetence about him. During several of the sequences where he's at Hindle's mercy, I found myself thinking, "#3 would have just judo-chopped the motherfucker."
The last episode of the serial has the most straightforward story, and suffers from it. The final confrontations with the antagonists are somewhat anticlimactic. The ending does redeem itself a bit by being one of those nice oldschool short-and-sweet Who goodbye scenes that is utterly unheard of in the RTD era.
Ultimately, there are some great damn ideas in Kinda, and it's a perfectly solid serial, but I certainly wouldn't call it one of the best. Worth a rental if you're still getting discs from Netflix, but it's not available for streaming and I wouldn't pay the $20 Amazon is charging for it.