The other day, Clark came home from school with this...
It took me a second to recognize it. Although it looks vaguely Cyrillic, that is an impressive rendering of Clark's Korean name.
Here's the genuine article so you have some reference.
He writes his Korean name at home while doodling, with a photo reference, that I guess this should not be too surprising. But still, to come up with that, in the middle of a school day... cool.
I think his birth country would be quite proud.
Here's how it begins.
It ends up as a story about our cats being super heroes.
Because I'm going to need to populate my new Facebook Timeline with something.
Here's something my uncle faxed to me circa Summer 1996. It's a clipping from the Boston Globe, an editorial by columnist Alex Beam titled "Will Macs become cute, smart dinosaurs?" What a difference fifteen years makes...
Tom Cruise uses one. So does Jerry Seinfeld. So do I. And yet owning an Apple Computer these days is like being a smoker in reverse. We did the right thing and they're trying to exterminate us.The Macintosh computer ranks alongside the greatest consumer product innovations of the 20th century - the Model T Ford, the safety razor, the transistor radio. Call me sentimental, but it's a fact: Steve Jobs and his pals gave technology a human face. Now, just 12 years after its invention, despite its well-received reputation for technical excellence, the Macintosh has become obsolete.
Has this happened to you? You read about a great piece of software, and you beetle down to the computer store. The software you want is compatible only with Microsoft's MS-DOS operating system. The droopy-head clerk relays the manufacturer's assurances that a Mac version will be available shortly. But he's lying. It won't be.
Here's another True Mac Adventure. Throughout June, I had been checking the Internet preview page for Microsoft's new on-line magazine, Slate. Everything was cool, until June 24 at 3 p.m., when the full magazine went on line. Then I learned that my Macintosh Performa couldn't support the necessary America Online software to read Slate.
I fired off complaints to Slate editor Michael Kinsley and AOL president Steve Case. Kinsley shrugged electronically: Sorry. No one from AOL responded, which may be why their company is failing.
One could argue that in buying my first Mac six years ago, I committed the classic (no pun intended) investment error. I bought the story, not the product. That is not entirely true. Yes, the boxy little Classic including some fetching ideological peripherals. The whiff of the counterculture, the contempt for Big Brother, as represented by IBM and Microsoft.
But when you plug in your first Macintosh, and it greets you with a smile, and point-and-click start-up instructions - a far cry from the standard MS-DOS salutation, "Abort, Ignore, Retry?" - well, let's just say that Steve Jobs & Co. made about 40 million friends for life.
So what went wrong? A lot of things, all of them well documented. Apple never licensed out its operating system, preventing the growth of the off-price "clone" market that has buoyed MS-DOS sales. Suing Microsoft for stealing the "look and feel" of software that Apple itself stole from Xerox PARC wasn't too smart. Microsoft quickly became the world's most successful software company and - surprise, surprise - they never seem in any hurry to release Macintosh versions of their products.
The latest news from Apple couldn't be worse. The company reported a $740 million loss in its most recent quarter. One of the innovators of the original Mac just defected to Microsoft. When asked what was going on at Apple, he told the Wall Street Journal, "They're re-inventing the airplane."
Striking a note of unintended irony, Apple recently trumpeted the hiring of Ellen Hancock, a successful IBM executive. To move to Apple, she asked to be released from the IBM contract that forbade her to work for competing firms. No problem for IBM. At Apple, Hancock won't be competing with anyone.
There are still plenty of Macs around. Microsoft's designers use them. They're where Wang word processors were in the mid-1980s. There are millions out there, but no one's buying any new ones.
The Classic I bought several years ago for $1,000 is now worth $50. When I asked a friend what to do with my far-from-cheap Performa, he cheerfully suggested "You could use it as a doorstop." It would be the smartest, user-friendliest doorstop in America - but a doorstop all the same.
This article captures that hopelessness we felt in the mid-90s, when the best we could hope for was that Apple would somehow keep making Macs for the small audience that continued to work on them and crave them.
Steve Jobs returned to Apple in late 1996, just after this article was published. The bondi blue iMac, the all-in-one Mac credited with being the company's first steps toward turning things around, debuted in 1998. OSX and the first iPod appeared in 2001. And we all know the rest.
Feels like I haven't talked about games in ages 'round here, but I have a very good reason.
No, not the damn flooding.
The thing is, I've been fortunate to receive games for reviewing purposes. That makes me feel weird when I talk about them here, all casual-like, when I have a super-formal official review out there somewhere on the internet. As if somebody is going to find that review and try to uncover inconsistencies and bias when compared to the offhand junk I put on fourhman.com. But I'll try to control those feelings. Not all of these were review product anyway.
Kirby Mass Attack is really, really good. In some ways, it feels like a throwback to the early years of the DS, when Nintendo was proving out the stylus as a viable gaming input device. But unlike a lot of that initial DS chaff, this is a massive, fully-realized adventure with plenty of bonus features. It has achievements. Just, you know, not publicly viewable achievements.
But as I'm playing, I'm wondering about that stylus. One of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes is from last year when he said "If you see a stylus, they blew it." Jobs was talking about tablet interfaces, and while the DS predates the success of the iPad, that stylus maxim still applies. There's probably a precision issue with your finger compared to a stylus, at least on current technology.
Anyway, Mass Attack is great. The Kirby mob is hilarious to watch climbing over each other as they amble to where you want them to go, and when you tell them to kill something, they damn well kill it. Kirby kills the cutest enemies.
BloodRayne: Betrayal is one of those super-hard games that enjoys being super-hard. Which is fine, but that's not for me. I feel like there's a very specific demographic of gamers who enjoy blistering, frustrating challenges, and it's very, very small. But, the game looks fantastic. It is a pleasure to watch in motion, and if I were better at it, it would look even cooler. I wish they would patch in a difficulty slider.
DC Universe Online. Got the new "Fight for the Light" pack, all excited for Green Lantern-themed content, and wouldn't you know, every single mission is multiplayer-only. WTF. At least the pack was free. Clark made a new hero with light powers, but he's stuck doing the same old low-level missions. There's no Lantern-based entry-level stuff. Lame.
On the upside, the game is going free-to-play next month, so it's possible I might pick up some new friends to play with, since it will cost them nothing. I hope so, because I really want to see the new Lantern stuff.
Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 is sort of like an alternate universe Pokemon where we finally got the 3D graphics we always wanted. You can see fightable, capturable monsters cavorting around the level, which is a definite plus over the Pokemon series.
Although I think the game is deadset to grind you into oblivion. And the way monsters upgrade is just plain weird. Rather than, say, Slimes turning into Superslimes turning into Megaslimes, you have to pick two monsters and "synthesize" them into one. The new one will take on some stats and abilities, but could be of an entirely different breed.
LittleBigPlanet 2: Move Pack. The levels are great, as expected. I have not tried the build tools with the Move motion enhancements. The thing about LBP is that it has become so intimidating. I'm physically scared of trying to build anything more complicated than the basic platform-and-winch stuff I could rip through in the early days of LittleBigPlanet. The great thing about LBP, though, is that the provided gameplay is worth the price of admission. Level creation is almost a bonus extra.
No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle. Once I gave up on the motion controls, I fell in love all over again. It's not that the Move controls are bad - they are just as good as in the Wii version - it's that I'm tired of motion controls period. Great game.
Mystery Case Files: The Malgrave Incident. Here's an overlooked one. This Wii cheapie deserves some attention. It's a hidden object game wrapped with a Myst-like adventure. I read reviews that complained about the hidden object stuff repeating itself, but I did not find that to be the case. The biggest issue I had with it was that some puzzles (non-hidden object puzzles) drop in out of nowhere with no explanation.
God of War 3. Picked it up on a GameStop $15 sale. Exactly as I expected, more of the same bloody, mindless brawling. It drives me crazy when it drops you in some non-linear environment with no hint as to how to proceed.
Star Fox 64 3D. Fantastic stuff. It feels good to play it again, and the 3D is actually entirely appropriate. I wish I had some pals for the multiplayer. I played a couple of multiplayer dogfights at E3 and it was great.
It's one thing when "America's Funniest Videos" would do a show from Walt Disney World, because that was obviously a PR tourism stunt between Disney and Disney-owned ABC and ABC-produced or -broadcast programming. On ABC.
But in a syndicated show, produced by ABC, distributed by Disney, with this kind of thing slipped in as a trivia question right alongside junk about presidential pets and astrogeological science... and then to be a Disney product so incredibly specific, modern and money-making like the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique (which, in its defense, I've never heard of a girl walk away from in disappointment)... ugh.
Tomorrow on "Millionaire," the contestant will have to name the Disney Resort with the best travel packages and amenities. Answer: all of them!
The editorial organizational award of the week goes to "Supergirl" #1. There's a bit where her super-hearing goes crazy and she briefly picks up snippets of other conversations, presumably from very far away. ...The dialogue she hears is from other DC books shipping this week! Very, very nice.
I liked this one, even if it is essentially only one long scene: Supergirl falls to Earth from who knows where who knows why. I like the new costume, with the small exception of the mysterious knee-holes.
"Blue Beetle" #1. Looks like some serious changes to the Beetle origin. Although, not having read Jaime's first series, I don't know how much they had already tied into space and the Reach and all that. Some great work with the villains here... first, we see those hilariously stupid foot soldiers for Monsieur Mallah and the Brain, so it's good to know those feebs are still around. Second, I love seeing the Latino villains. We do not get to see much about them, but this fits nicely with my appreciation for a new DCU that ropes in heroes and villains from all over the world, from many different cultures. This is another no-baggage book, great for new readers.
"DC Universe Presents: Deadman" #1. Loved the art, loved the story. I don't think this is the first time we've seen Deadman presented as if he's the DCU's "Quantum Leap," but it plays out great. Nice talky book too, which makes it last longer. I wonder if DC will renumber this anthology series with each new star? I hope so.
"Captain Atom" #1. Now he's Doc Manhattan, with Firestorm's powers. I'm surprised DC made room for this guy. He's another mega-powerhouse, one of the pieces they have to continually remove from the table whenever major events roll around. His name is partially in use by another, unrelated hero (although we have yet to see the new DCnU Atom.) And - here comes my opinion on the guy - he works better when he's on a team instead of the solo lead. I wonder if the fiery mohawk is a subtle ref to Nuklon/Atom-Smasher, whom I hope never shows his face in comics again.
"Birds of Prey" #1. Not having followed Gail Simone's version, I don't have that hanging over my head for this book. I liked it. I've always liked Black Canary, and the art is gorgeous. I'll note that nobody is out there bitching that this team book lacks the full team, but everybody's hate for "Justice League" #1 is so impossibly qualified by now that there's no reconciling it.
"Green Lantern Corps" #1. It's odd jumping into a book that isn't a reboot. All the same, this issue does a nice job of re-introducing Guy Gardner and John Stewart as they briefly try to establish civilian jobs. This is another book with great art, which feels like a nice upgrade from last week where we had a bunch of books that didn't. Nice to see GLC back to form with super-grisly murders and nameless alien genocides. The universe is a big place.
"Wonder Woman" #1. I love Cliff Chiang's art. I love when an artist can present a unique, cartoony style but still produce believable poses and anatomy. He did some "Zatanna" issues that were just fantastic. There's a lot of talk about this book taking a turn towards horror, and this is definitely a dark story, but I have my doubts that Wonder Woman can hold that line. Particularly when they get around to showing her with the League. I like that Chiang is drawing her two heads taller than anybody else in the book. Amazon, duh.
"Nightwing" #1. Nice seeing Dick back in the Nightwing guise. Right off, we're reminded that he spent a year in the Batman role. I guess the new compressed timeline has his time as Robin down to about six weeks. Might be an ongoing typo here, the book keeps calling it Haly's Circus. Pretty sure that was usually known as Haley's Circus. Maybe this is one of those Daily Planet/Daily Star universal change things.
"Catwoman" #1. Liked it. Selina has some fun expressions, there's plenty of cheesecake, and I'm always happy to see her going to ridiculous measures to keep her pet cats safe. The, ahem, ending has the internet in an uproar, since there's about three pages of Batman and Catwoman making whoopee. Or, starting to. The dialogue is left open enough that it's possible one or both put a stop to it halfway through.
"Red Hood and the Outlaws" #1. I guess if we're keeping all recent Batman stories in continuity, we've got to find something to do with Jason Todd. So he's paired up with two other characters nobody seems to want at the moment, Roy Harper and Starfire. Hopefully, the DCnU has erased all that nastiness with Roy's daughter. Starfire, even more naked than usual, has been turned into a sex machine with a tragically short attention span. This book claims her history still includes the New Teen Titans and the famous relationship with Dick Grayson... yet her alien mentality means she remembers very little of it. And she wants to have sex with anything, which is about as fan-ficcy as you can get with Starfire. This is certainly one case where the Popular Media version of the character (from the Teen Titans cartoon) has not influenced the comics version.
Has anybody noticed that Jason's disguise in the beginning of the story is pretty much DC editor Mike Carlin in a fatsuit?
"Legion of Super-Heroes" #1. Another Legion reboot aimed squarely at existing Legion fans. Which is fine, since we now have "Legion Lost" for new readers. Still, that leaves this issue to wield a mess of characters, most with stupid code names, operating in a future that we know little about. Great art, though.
"Batman" #1. Great all around. Fun to see Bruce, Dick, Tom and Damien all in one place in formal wear.
I'm sticking with GLC, of course, and I'm picking up DCU Presents because I like anthology titles. I may stick around to see the stories resolve in Batman, Birds, Nightwing and Red Hood. And I'll peek at Catwoman #2 just to see if they really did have five minutes of between-panel sex. I'd actually like to get ALL of this week's books (except Captain Atom) because the mix of good stories and good art was much, much better than last week's releases.
There's still plenty of Green Lantern merchandise that was put in the pipeline, counting on the movie being a BOFFO success. Here's a new Hot Wheels set that recreates (sort of) a magical movie moment.
I had read that the GL action figure line was supposed to expand and include toys for characters outside of the movie, like Mad Guardian Krona, but those have yet to appear. Heck, I still haven't seen the back half of the six exclusive Walmart two-packs. Could be that the toy company is running, not walking, away from this line. Or maybe they're waiting for the mid-October blu-ray release to get the last film-based toys on shelves.
But there's still an animated series on the way, and toys that look less like the movie might have more of a chance at survival. A Green Lantern figure already showed up in the primarily Batman-centric HeroWorld line, but newer GL HeroWorld figures now carry a promise of a full Lantern range.
Tomar Re and his cool jet! Kilowog and a badass bike! Sinestro and... a chipmunk!
Keep count: this will be the FOURTH Atrocitus figure, and the third in recent lines aimed at kids (HeroWorld, Action League, TRIO). Seems safe to conclude that Mr. Red Lantern will figure heavily in the animated series.
We'll be watching this line, although we have avoided HeroWorld to date in favor of the Imaginext toys. But, jesus, Dex-Starr.
A lot of pleasant surprises in this week's books! The New 52 is doing its job.
For example, "Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E." #1. I enjoyed the Flashpoint miniseries that preceded this, and this new book brings some of that Flashpoint alterna-verse into the new DCU. I like the Creature Commandos, I like Father Time, I like Ray Palmer showing up here as a non-hero scientist (which I hope leaves the Atom role open for Ryan Choi to re-inherit!)
And "Demon Knights" #1. I had no expectation that this would be any good, and it turns out it's a good old-fashioned "let's become a super-hero team" story set in the Middle Ages. Which, like with last week's similarly fast-paced "Justice League International," points more fingers at the decompressed "Justice League"... but I'm not going to complain, I think the stature of the main League can handle a slower reveal.
Anyway, both of those books feel like fun new "Shadowpact" books, and I imagine the upcoming "Justice League Dark" will fall right in line. Just with a far stupider title.
This one will shame me. I liked "Deathstroke" #1. It was, more or less, a one-and-done book, which makes it unlike every other New 52 #1. A great surprise ending, considering you spend the entire issue thinking the mission statement of this series will be "Watch Deathstroke be forced to work with a team of inexperienced junior assassins."
"Suicide Squad" #1. I liked this one as well. I have loved "Secret Six," which is sort of this series' predecessor. Deadshot's lines are recognizably Deadshot. I like the new El Diablo. I wonder how Harley will survive being removed from the Bat-books. The big change to Amanda Waller is... interesting. There's been so much negative response to this new svelte version that I don't half wonder if DC is playing us somehow.
"Green Lantern" #1. One of the few #1s that continues an existing storyline, since the Lantern books are not quite as rebooty as the rest. It's still Geoff Johns, it's still Doug Mahnke, it's still great.
"Red Lanterns" #1. I was curious about how Atrocitus could man his own series... turns out its by turning him into an anti-hero. I love that the book kicks off with a two-page spread of Dex-Starr.
"Mr. Terrific" #1. Been looking forward to this one. I'm glad he's still atheist in the DCnU. I like that Karen Starr is a supporting cast member (is she Power Girl? will she be Power Girl?) Looks like his one actual super-power (aside from being really freaking smart) might have been removed. Which is probably fine, since it was exceptionally goofy: he was invisible to technology. I don't know that the DCoU ever bothered to explain that one.
"Resurrection Man" #1 was another good read. Seems like a lot of dark horror in the DCU this time around. Also an inordinate amount of characters being captured and tortured.
"Superboy" #1. I loved the VR sequence, with the hints of how the environment was trying to replicate Superman's memories! The use of Rose Wilson is cool. I wonder if, when combined with "Teen Titans," these two books will end up being an extended version of the first episode of the "Young Justice" animated series.
"Legion Lost" #1. Another decent surprise! I like time travel stuff, and it's cool to see an assortment of under-used Legion characters.
"Grifter" #1. With so many of the New 52 showing the characters already in motion, it is unusual to realize that "Grifter" is a straight-up origin story. I had a tough time getting a handle on what was happening in this book.
"Batwoman" #1. Great stuff, although I doubt I'll continue on. The panel layout tricks are fun to absorb, but I wonder if I'd get tired of seeing them every three pages. I have not read Batwoman's previous appearances that folks are gaga for, so I'm not pre-amped for her new series.
"Batman and Robin" #1. Loved it. Some very surprising Batman dialogue here, and I'm shocked at the potential loss of Crime Alley. The continued presence of Damien Wayne indicates to me that DC was very dedicated to keeping the best stuff of the past decades, and wasn't just rebooting for the sake of being able to retell the same old stories except now with cell phones and American Idol references.
What shall I keep... well, the two Lantern books are obvious keepers. I've been wanting to see Mr. T's solo book for a while, so that's on my pull list. Demon Knights, Suicide Squad and Frankenstein seem like excellent opportunities to test out the digital plan... save a couple bucks and get them on the iPad.
All in all, this was a great set of books!
The localization teams must just amuse themselves some days.
I was planning on talking about "Justice League" #1 last week, but other priorities emerged, so I'll lump it in with the week one books. Which I am late on anyway.
The new "Justice League" book takes us back to the original formation of the team, five years ago. I love this concept, but I wonder how long it will last. DC surely can't have "Justice League" always five years behind, right? I'm guessing we get this one major "getting the team together" story arc, and then DC hits us with a big event that flash-forwards the book up to present day.
But whatever, I loved it. This first issue is almost entirely Batman and Green Lantern, a pairing that might be more impactful had the GL movie performed better at the box office (but still, dude's got an animated series coming up... and Batman hasn't been absent from the public eye for decades. Maybe ever.) It's a buddy action comedy, with these two guys running into each other for the first time and disliking each other's methods. Like a lot of Geoff Johns books, it's a screenplay with storyboards. And I love that.
I've seen a lot of detractors, but it seems to me that many of them wouldn't have been happy with the book no matter what was between the covers. People who hate DC, who hate Green Lantern, who hate Geoff Johns... they've all been standing in line to piss on this book before they read it. Several commenters take the book to task for not including the entire Justice League, with the rationale being that if DC expects to bring in new readers, DC ought to provide what's in the book's title.
This is bunk, and it underestimates the average person's appetite for serialized media. If a television network wants people to watch a new dramatic series, they don't spill the entire thing in the first episode. You meet main characters, you learn key basic relationships, and future episodes then reveal more people, more issues, more challenges. That's what's going on here - and has been going on in comics for some time - so to assume that these mythical "new readers" will be put off by the first issue of a "Let's Create a Justice League" story that does not finish the job is insulting to everyone's attention spans. How many Muppets did Kermit meet in the first twenty minutes of "The Muppet Movie"?
No, what keeps new readers away is the same thing that has always kept new readers away: the price and the delivery method. Too expensive, and too much time between installments. And the New 52 isn't doing much to address those concerns.
Anyway, let's move on to Week 1, in no particular order.
"Stormwatch" #1. Couple interesting DCnU tidbits in this issue. Seems like Stormwatch is the new Checkmate, the secret fringe organization of organized super-heroes that have quietly protected Earth for centuries. I like the team's assertion that these new super-heroes are amateurs while Stormwatch consists of "professional" heroes. Also, Martian Manhunter is pegged as having been in the Justice League... which is cool because, thus far, he has not been included in any of DC's official new League stuff. I don't like the lame Silver Surfer / Galactus riff for the bad guys here, because we've seen that a dozen times.
"Static Shock" #1. Static is a fun character, and his book has a Flash / young Spider-Man kind of vibe. He's a science nerd, with science powers, who has a science job. He has been relocated to New York City, which is interesting for a DC book, and the enemies in this issue seem to be the Power Rangers on hover bikes. This one does a good job of letting readers learn about Static; might feel less "baggage-y" for new readers than, say, Stormwatch.
"Hawk & Dove" #1. I've already tried out all of the following jokes on Josh, and they are all gold. I want to scan in every panel of this book and make fun of them. Rob Liefeld is a horrible artist. He has a child's understanding of anatomy and the sketching ability of a high school student who was just told by someone that he's good. I get that he was a kid twenty years ago when he sucked on X-Men books, but you'd think he would have improved somewhat since then. He's still fielding the same poses, the same faces, the same awful everything. Writer Sterling Gates probably has the characters smash up the Washington Monument in this issue because it's the only Washington DC landmark he could expect Liefeld to draw. An Asian character shows up halfway through, wearing sunglasses because Liefeld is incapable of drafting a recognizably Asian face. I should have somebody read this one to me, so I can see if it's possible to enjoy the script without the ghastly distraction of one of the worst artists in the industry.
"Batgirl" #1. The shocker here is how it deftly deals with "The Killing Joke," the famous story that put Barbara Gordon in a wheelchair for the next two decades of comics. She got better. Which makes sense, in comic book terms. Plenty of other characters have been crippled or mutated or outright killed... and got better. So why not her? She was still shot, she still spent time in a chair (was she still Oracle?) but now she's back in the uniform. Plus, an Asian character in this book appears in sunglasses and shortly lifts them up... which I would swear is a direct attack on Rob Liefeld if these books had not been published simultaneously.
"Green Arrow" #1. I like that Oliver Queen seems to be the super-heroic Steve Jobs of the DCnU. His company makes Q-Pods and Q-Phones, and this book makes them sound as ubiquitous as our Apple products. I like the modern take that Ollie works with trick tech arrows because he wants weapons that won't kill people (although he clearly has no problem with weapons that mangle people.)
"Men of War" #1. I was surprised that this "war" book still dabbles in super-heroes. The first story carries on the legacy of Sgt. Rock, and I guess is supposed to appeal to the Modern Warfare / Call of Duty crowd. The backup story was a little too "Full Metal Jacket" for me.
"Action Comics" #1. Easily the standout. Like "Justice League," this takes place in the past (maybe six years ago?) when Superman first appeared and the world first learned of the existence of super-heroes. This is what I like about both Action and JL: what if super-heroes debuted in the year 2005? Superman is young, almost drunk on his powers. I get the feeling that one of the things Grant Morrison is taking away from Superman is his perfection. One of the longstanding components of the character is that his Kansas upbringing ended up creating the perfectly moral figure who arrived in Metropolis one day to do good. Morrison is letting us see the character earn that morality, instead of just assuming Clark Kent has been awesomely pure since day one. I think he'll end up being the guidepost he has always been, and his Bible Belt America will be a part of that, but he's going to burn through some crazy post-teen years before he gets there. In this issue, Superman makes a big deal of working outside the law, because the law is not helping the common man. He's almost like Batman, except that he's a showman, he's public, he's making sure the police know what he's doing. Because, after all, nobody can do a damn thing to stop him. This is a motivated twenty something doing what he knows is right, with all the naive confidence that comes with being a motivated twenty something. It's a great read.
"Batwing" #1. Another really good one. I've said before that I like when we're allowed to see heroes from other countries, in other countries, instead of everything being so Americentric. I'm not entirely familiar with what went down in "Batman, Incorporated," but I get that Batman has deputized a Congo policeman to become a Bat-based hero in a part of the world that really needs heroic figures.
"O.M.A.C." #1. Better than expected. Keith Giffen's art is obviously in homage to Jack Kirby, and that's fun. It's nice to see Cadmus and Dubbilex and Brother Eye again, although O.M.A.C. himself is one unappealing-looking character.
"Animal Man" #1. Nice, creepy story. A lot of characters have had their families and marriages erased in the new DC, but Animal Man has kept his. The book even seems to reference his recent (dumb) adventures in space. The art is unsettling, which should be cool on a book that's going to be dark like this one, but lots of the panels look like traced photographs and that's never a good thing.
"Swamp Thing" #1. Also creepy, but with way better art. I'm still excited to see Swamp Thing back alongside the DC heroes.
"Detective Comics" #1. Great book. Sounds like this is the first time Batman catches the Joker, but naturally Joker lets him do it (if it's really him, which I'm not convinced it is.)
"Justice League International" #1. I'm walking in knowing I have a soft spot for this book. Not yet knowing what's going on in the present-day Justice League puts this book at a disadvantage, but I like the team, particularly August General in Iron. I'm not sure why Batman is involved, and I don't see why every Russian character in the book has to talk like a cheap cartoon stereotype... but it is funny how different this one is compared to "Justice League" #1. I wonder if the people who hated the decompressed, cinematic story in that book liked this one... the team is assembled, there's word balloons in every panel, there's in-fighting and action and setup. Almost the polar opposite of the terse Johns book.
So what will I stick with? I was down for both League books before they printed. Action is a must. I really liked Detective, but I'm afraid of stepping into the Bat-books for fear of having to get ALL the Bat-books. Even Batgirl, which already has a taste of what I liked about Gail Simone's "Secret Six." But I really want to see what happens next in Batwing. Also Swamp Thing and Animal Man. Those last three are characters I have never really followed (hell, Batwing is, what, not even a year old?), but these first issues did the job of making me curious. Stormwatch, Static Shock, Hawk & Dove, O.M.A.C, Men of War, Green Arrow? Not so much. I like some parts of Stormwatch and Green Arrow, but I don't think I can commit; I have to draw the lines somewhere.
When you have ten inches of water in your basement, you know not everything is going to make it out. But most of it will. However, I have committed myself to throwing out (or recycling, or donating) items above and beyond the obvious so-water-damaged-it's-officially-papier-mache items. Why do I have to enjoy so many things that are made of paper?
We were not entirely stupid in how we stored stuff in the basement. There were shelves. There were Rubbermaid and other varieties of plastic containers. But clearly mistakes were made. And in the three hours of rising water, that was not enough time to yank absolutely every endangered item. When you're in the middle of that, you have to make choices. New iMac and related computer gear? Removed right away. Stacks of recent comics that remain as yet unbagged? Upstairs. Boxes of Pokemon cards on shelves only two inches from the floor? Saved.
But here's the tragedy: some of the worst stuff survived because I put it on upper shelves, and some of the best stuff has to be dumped because it was heavy and therefore was on lower shelves. The lesson: buy stronger shelves and put your favorite stuff up high.
Example. My giant box filled with the complete collection of Marvel Famous Covers figures. (Okay, they're dolls. Rooted hair.) You see, thirty-plus 12" figures inside display boxes is a heavy ol' thing. So that was on the floor. And every single one is ruined. Last night I embarked on a campaign to Save the Dolls by trashing the boxes and putting the soaked figures in a towel. They are all currently drying out in one of the upstairs bathtubs.
Oh what the hell, here's a stupid picture:
Bonus points if you can find the one doll that doesn't belong.
One thing I've learned - and you probably already know this - is that action figures out of boxes take up about 90% less space than action figures inside boxes. We found some toys that I knew I owned but sort of forgot I owned, and they've been in the basement stuffed in a box. Boxed in a box. Although remember, gang, that I have never been a speculator. I did not buy these toys with the idea that I would someday flip them for mad cash. I bought them because I wanted them, but saw little reason to get them out of the box.
So today we opened a couple of them up for Clark to play with. This is part of my trade with him since I have rendered his playroom unusable with tons of junk carted up from the basement. We opened up three action figure two-packs - Superman vs Metallo, Superboy vs King Shark, Green Lantern vs Dr Polaris. They look like evolutional transitions between the Total Justice line and that little-seen Superman line. Inside the boxes, these six toys took up space larger than a foot square cube. Freed from the cardboard prison, they're two handfuls of toys.
Comics. Longboxes for letters R through Z were on the bottom level of shelves (heavy!), four inches from the floor. Four is, as ever, less than ten. The long boxes are chum, but the comics themselves are scattered losses. They are all bagged, but some bags must be relatively waterproof because some books may come out more or less fine. Others, however, are obviously a glued-shut pasty mess. Oh no, my X-Cutioner's Song!
The dampness and humidity will be an issue for the surviving books, but I may yet be able to salvage some remnants of the last third of the alphabet.
Rhonda said I can buy as many digital comics as I want.
My complete collection of "Who's Who in the DC Universe (Binder Edition)" and "Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (Binder Edition)" did not survive. Again, heavy.
Some stacks of last-gen video games took a hit. Which means the manuals and sleeves are a disaster, and there will be water damage to the disks. You know me, I have no intention of playing these old games again, but it's yet another near and dear collection gutted.
Similarly, I had a box filled with boxes (I know, it's a sickness) from every old Game Boy game I ever owned. Yeah, that didn't make it.
Books: Another victim of the too-heavy-to-sit-high club. Now, my "best" books, like my Tolkien stuff and Red Dwarf stuff and Pogo stuff and Harry Potter stuff and works by favorite authors... they're fine. But my oddball sale finds and hand-me-down sci-fi, particularly hardcovers... they're gone.
Card games. I have about six 5000-count boxes of various card game cards. They are all safe (this was a choice moment: save the cards, which would be a total fucking mess if 30,000+ cards spilled out into the water, or save the comics, which are polybagged and might be able to last out longer.)
American Idol beanbag chair. Gone. It was floating around the room for hours.
Old RCA Victor wooden television frame (missing tube and dials) that I pulled out of somebody's street trash circa 1992. Gone. Although, jesus, I got another two decades out of that as a neat shelving piece, so that's pretty cool. I watched the trash guy mercilessly swing it into the truck and pull the crush switch. One of its boards fell out of the back.
The two-cushion couch I borrowed from the college dorm will finally see its end. So this is my last chance to discuss the pact we all made when we tossed it into the rental van: "That? We bought that at a yard sale. No receipt."
The mini-fridge I was so proud of, because it meant I could grab a soda without having to go upstairs. Gone. Clark and I had a game going where we would put some of Rhonda's favorite sodas in there as a surprise backup for when she ran out upstairs. We called it "The Secret Stash." Well, the Stash is no more.
Oh, and I can't forget: we had just finished a very nice room down there. More than likely, that will all have to come down. We'll get to keep the ceiling.
A final note: I know a lot of people who lost a lot more, and we're lucky things did not go worse for us. You do not have to drive too awful far away to find communities that were pressed into forced evacuation. I'm not trying to demean others' hardships, just working through ours. And as part of that, as I said, I've made a deal with myself that I am going to purge stuff. I have now lived long enough that I have the perspective of just how useless it is to hold on to stuff that is stuck in boxes and never seen for decades. These are big words for me, to be sure. I hope I can stick to them.
One day, we'll all be living in giant Jetsons terrariums, and I'll still be wishing I could have saved my complete run on "Adam Warlock and the Infinity Watch."
We're in this obnoxious holding pattern where the two big pumps clear out the water until the top pump shuts off, then the water fills in again until the top pump turns back on. Not really raining at the moment, but clearly we live on an underground river.
I don't know if we're out of this thing yet, as there is still rain in the forecast, but everything has been calm for the last few hours. The sun put in a brief appearance.
But the last two days? Our basement flooded.
Clark made origami boats to sail on our basement lake. You're looking at seven inches there, but that was not the high mark.
Tuesday night, the rain started and the sump pump kicked on. I knew it was trouble, because it was doing the thing where it runs for 30 seconds, is off for about five, and then kicks back on again. As with Irene, I entered my paranoid state where I worry about the power going out and the sump pump going quiet. I should really get a battery backup pump... but just before Irene we did that, you know, three hour road trip to buy a generator. So I was up and down all Tuesday night checking to make sure the power was on and the pump was running. Because the water level was pretty high.
Wednesday morning, when Rhonda checked the pump around 6am, things were okay. High level in the sump pit, but holding steady. I checked around 7am, and as soon as I stepped into view, water started pouring in from the high window above the sump pump. Now, we've had this happen before. It means there's so much ground water curving around the house, it's filling up the window well.
I ran outside to do some trench digging. The idea is to lure the water away, but it usually doesn't do much, honesty. And with as much water as we had, it wasn't making much difference. Then I looked into the window and saw the reflection of light bulbs on the floor. The concrete floor.
By 10am, we had about 9 inches of water in the basement.
The sump pump was obviously not able to keep up. This was not a case of wall cracks or window leaks; this was water coming up out of the pit. So right away I called a local emergency plumber and had a guy on the way with a new, heavy duty sump pump. It took him about two hours to show because, guess what, the entire damn region was flooded and the highway was full of mudslides and traffic was backed up everywhere. During that time we hit the 9 inch mark, and during the install we hit 10 inches.
The plumber figured the water level would drop down to an inch in about four hours... but that's if it would stop raining, which it didn't. Rhonda ran out and bought a second pump (the non-submersible kind, where the engine is on a three foot stick above the pump.) Then she picked up some PVC pipe so we could rig up the original pump (which wasn't broken; merely tired.) We had three pumps operating, and got the water down to concrete by 10pm.
Then the rain really picked up. We had just (more or less) eliminated all the water, but it was coming out of the pit again. The old pump and the non-submersible pump couldn't help here, not until the water level rose back above two inches of so. And even then, that's effectively dry running for the old pump, as that guy is supposed to be entirely submerged. So the water was too much for our new pump (!) and not enough to put the other two into service. I tried holding the non-submersible in the pit by hand, but even that was not enough to keep the water at bay.
Rhonda figured it out. We re-engineered the PVC pipe and set the old pump on top of the new pump. Two pumps, one pit.
That was still not enough to keep the water out entirely, but it kept the overall basement water level steady at about an inch. An inch worse than we were a few hours previously, but better than waiting it out for it to grow back to five inches so all three pumps could reasonably start over.
It was still a hairy night. Rhonda and I took shifts waking to an iPhone alarm, checking the water level and making sure both pumps were okay. Our two-pump pit has been expelling water for about 20 hours straight, at this posting. It still looks like we have two fire hoses out the side of the house. There is just so much underground water to move, even when it is no longer raining.
As long as the rain stays light, or goes away entirely, like it is now, we can stay ahead of it. Right now, the water level is about two inches away form the top of the pit.
Not that things are rosy. Water is now coming into the basement from the very foundation. You can hear bubbling and gurgling at certain spots where the wall meets the floor. And out comes water through these cracks as if somebody is pouring it into the room. So we're still in some serious soup, and this water no doubt has led to structural problems we'll have to address.
Tonight may not be as sweaty as last night, as the predicted precipitation does not look nearly as dire. I imagine we'll still be up and around all night making sure power's on, pumps ok. Cross your fingers.
Next time: the damages!
Fun flood stories to come.
From today's Penny Arcade:
That's some standard DC-fan-baiting, disguised, as usual, as if the creators are the first to stumble upon the gag. I've heard this one too many times to count, usually from Marvel fans. Of course, you could easily rewrite the strip to be about Wolverine.
"What's the plan, Logan?"
"The plan is that I will solve everything, by myself, because I'm an invincible, immortal Canadian with a healing factor and near-limitless reserves of energy and gritty willpower."
But Superman has to take the lump, because, hey, he's a nice guy. He shaves.
Sort of like that Magic Players Are Icky dating story from last week, this PA post has a tinge of nerd feifdomery about it. You know: OUR hobbies are better and far more socially acceptable than THESE OTHER hobbies. I mean, can you imagine the kind of people who profess to be into THAT.
I was surprised to read Tycho claim ignorance about comics, given his obsessions for highly similar material... fantasy/sci-fi novels, RPG backstories, etc etc. But you can't be into everything, I suppose. Nor does it make sense for every hobbyist the world over to swear allegiance to every other quasi-related hobby out there. For me, gaming and comics go hand in hand... but I know I have surprised people on more than one occasion by admitting that I've never seen the Matrix movies nor have I ever cared to watch Babylon 5 or any Dr. Who at all ever.
It's a phoned-in strip, an easy jab. Superman has faced those complaints for decades and endured. I should probably just be happy that DC's New 52 perforated the Penny Arcade consciousness and got a nod.
Please keep me in your thoughts.
That's what I like to see. All wingmen surviving through all missions.
I should get a custom license plate that reads P7S7F7. That would land me on the Kotaku front page, for sure.
I should fire up my old N64 and Virtual Console save files, because I absolutely no recollection of the alternate ending I just received in Starfox 64 3D. It involved family members. I suppose it's possible that I suck(ed) and never before completed the specific path and/or victory conditions that led to it.
And I love that every run through Starfox 64 ends with Team Starfox serving a bill to the Galactic Can't-Fight-For-Ourselves Federation. The amount due is noted in Space Bucks.
I believe General Pepper said something like "This was one expensive mission, Starfox!" What, is this cutting into your Cornerian billboard budget, General?
Nearly five years later, I have found a previously unknown (to me) Speed Racer Hot Wheels car. The race car for Kellie "Gearbox" Kalinkov, a car and driver probably visible for under three seconds in the movie's climactic Grand Prix race. That entire scene is the Mos Eisley for Speed Racer drivers.
Back when these cars dropped out of toy stores and into dollar stores, I snapped up every car I could find. The first wave of cars were always easy to find, but the second wave (which included the Togokhan street car, Thor-Axine race car, and Flying Foxes car) seemed to go directly to Dollar Trees nationwide. I never saw a Gearbox. And in fact, Gearbox is not mentioned on the card back, nor is she on the Collect 'Em All poster that was packed with each car. She's not even included on the poster that comes with her.
So, I must decree, unlike 90% of the Speed Racer Hot Wheels auctions on eBay: Gearbox is rare.
What is extra cool about Gearbox is that she is a completely unique model. Not just a Grey Ghost repaint, like the Masurai "exclusive" that came in a Target six-pack.
And yeah, I got 'er for a good, sub-$10 price on eBay. If the seller was lucky enough to find Gearbox at a dollar store, that's not a bad profit.
There's a few other cars we do not have. We're missing the 3 Roses car that came in a stupid three-pack that we never saw, plus I never picked up the Phantom Mach 4 on general principle since Toys R Us was still trying to sell that two-pack for $6 as late as last year.
Twenty Pirates packs for $10. That's fifty cents a pack. These things were originally $4 apiece!
Spotted at Target. Bought one, naturally, and the very first pack Clark opened was the ultra-rare glitter foil-treated ship pack from the "Rise of the Fiends." We were ecstatic.
The box front only reveals two different sets, "Fiends" and "Fire & Steel." You'll also get some "Ocean's Edge" packs, which was easily the most common of the three, if I recall correctly. The spread was fair. At the least, those are all new sets (comparatively, since the game has been dead for years), so you might not have to worry about opening the box and finding sixteen packs of "American Revolution," the set they drastically overprinted and kept sneaking into tins to blow out the stock.
Although by now, EVERY set is considered surplus, unsellable stock.
Still, that's a lot of Pirates for $10.
Because no application ever, anywhere, should ask the user to make system-level tweaks to the UI. Come on.
