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| Monday, June 4, 2007 01:48 PM |
| Good Times |
 by Fëanor |
It was great to have a bunch of folks over for dinner on Saturday. Good to see everybody, and always good to stuff the face with food. Plus, there was gaming.
Sunday, miraculously, we had nothing planned, so we were able to pretty much just sit around (after some shopping at the amazing BJs, where they have a 50-pack of at least one brand of every product you can imagine), which was truly excellent. Well, of course, I couldn't just sit around, so I started working on some comic book organizing and storage (which I find ridiculously pleasant and soothing), and did some Phillyist stuff. We also watched most of the second Harry Potter movie, which was much better and a lot more fun than I remembered. Yay, Harry Potter! Poppy and I are going to preorder that last book after all now, we think.
I also read some comic books. Most recently I've finished Batman: Year 100, Criminal: Coward, and Hellboy: Darkness Calls #2, along with various single issues of various other books. Batman: Year 100 introduced me to Paul Pope. I already thought he was awesome when I thought he just wrote the thing, but when I realized he had also contributed the incredible art, I knew I had no choice but to worship him like a God. (Big props to Jose Villarrubia for the awesome coloring, too.) B:Y100 is easily one of the best Batman books I've ever read. It imagines what it would be like if Batman reappeared after a long hiatus in the dystopian future society of 2039, where everything is monitored at all times, everyone is registered and recorded and filed away, and superheroes and villains are a thing of the past. It was particularly interesting to read in the light of Marvel Civil War, which deals with similar issues. It leaves Batman mostly a mystery, and fails to answer the question of how he can possibly still be alive, which I rather liked. After all, in this story, Batman is put forward as the last mystery, the final unknown, and he should remain that way. You should go and read it yourself immediately, so I won't say much more about it. Except, holy crap, the Batmobile is awesome.
Criminal: Coward tells a classic heist-gone-awry story in which (and I don't feel like I'm giving away too much here, if you know anything about heist-gone-awry stories, but... spoiler alert) everyone dies. That's really almost literally true in this book. I think there's maybe one or two minor, tertiary characters that you meet who survive. Everybody else, dead. And thus, it's really quite a depressing book, and I kind of wish I hadn't read it right before I went to bed. I even had a nightmare that had clearly been influenced by it. Still, really excellent book, really well written, very moving.
Hellboy: Darkness Calls #2 has restored my faith in Mignola and the Hellboy series. Hellboy: Darkness Calls #1 really didn't wow me at all; in fact, I could barely remember it at all after I'd read it. But this one brings in more of the classic Hellboy attitude, action, and dialogue. It's beautifully drawn and colored, and it's exciting, funny, and suspenseful all at once. Can't wait to see where this series goes next.
UPDATE: I forgot, I read something else really depressing right before going to bed - Silver Surfer: Requiem #1, which is the first part in a four part series by JMS about the fact that the Silver Surfer is dying. JMS steals/borrows a bit from Roy's final monologue in Blade Runner, but it works; this book is moving in the right places, funny in the right places. I plan to keep reading it and see where it goes, especially since SS is apparently going to go visit Spider-Man next issue.
SS's death obviously won't be real or binding, however, as this book is clearly occuring outside of the main Marvel timeline; the Fantastic Four are shown still together, and not split up by the Civil War, and Silver Surfer isn't back working as Galactus' herald again, like he is in the current issues of Fantastic Four. Which is too bad, because I was thinking if he were still friends with Galactus, the World Devourer would probably be able to fix his shell pretty easily. |
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