Comics for Crazies

I want the day that I die to be a good day.
I want my children to be extraordinary.
I want to know my job is done.
When the future opens itself to them,
And it shines bright just like the sun.

I want the day that I die to be a good day.
I want people to sit and drink to me,
But save the good scotch for my friends.
Let it be a day of celebration
That has nothing to do with my end.

I want the day that I die to be a good day.
I want my doodles to be worth millions.
I want my writings to be considered wise.
The ramblings and rantings of my mad self
Will be philosophy is the future's eyes.

I want the day that I die to be a good day.
My stories will all become legends.
Students will learn of them in school.
And when they go to make the movie
The fanboys wills scream like fools.

I want the day that I die to be a good day.
It'll be in spectacular fashion.
I'll go with tyrants at my feet.
One last hurrah, or sharp final words
To make my victory complete.

I want the day that I die to be a good day.
The start of something new so the bad can drift away.

It's Sunday, September 5, 2010 and we're back to business. Despite the fact that a butterflies wing beats in Africa can somehow knock out my internet connection, Hurricane Earl did absolutely nothing but water my lawn. So I do feel a little stupid for not posting up on Friday. But if I'm not doing something stupid then I'm probably asleep. Most likely drooling stupidly.

COMIX!!

R.E.B.E.L.S. #20 was my read of the week. "Sons of Brainiac" has been a lot of fun and this issue doesn't disappoint. Vril Dox calls on one for his former teammates to help stop his 'father', Brainiac, from taking over the planet Colu. Lobo is front and center doing what he does best: smarting off and taking on impossible opponents. While Lobo takes on an insanely powerful artificial intelligence created out of a neutron star, Vril and his estranged son take the fight to Brainiac in hopes to capturing him or at least getting him away from Colu.

This issue will probably get a little sales spike from Lobo's appearance. The character has a pretty rabid fanbase, even though his popularity since the 90s has waned a bit. Bedard again makes this story very continuity friendly. This storyline spins directly out the "War for New Krypton" story over in the Superman titles. Lobo has a red power ring which he received somewhere in all the "Blackest Night" chaos. At the same time this book stands perfectly on its own not requiring the reader to dig through a ton of back issues of other books just to keep up with what's going on. In fact a person could really jump into this issue without reading any of the previous ones. It tips its hat to continuity, but remains perfectly accessible to new readers.

On over to SECRET SIX #25 where we're getting the set up to a battle between two Secret Sixes. The team got split in over recent events in the story and while a good chunk of the team has left remaining members, Bane and Jeanette, reformed the team. Gail Simone pulls from the bad guys from her run on THE ALL-NEW ATOM as well as a couple of other notables to round out the team. The break away members from the original line-up seem to have gotten a sixth member and it looks like the two groups will be going head-to-head soon. This is a fun book despite all the horrible stuff that goes on in it. I love Giganta when Simone writes her, and am wondering if she still has her tongue piercing. I'm also wondering what is going to become of the team once the smoke clears on this on. The cast on this book has changed a bit since days of VILLAINS UNITED so I'm wondering who is going to be on the team after all this is over.

HELLBOY: THE STORM #3 brought that story to close, however it looks like its going to lead us directly into a new story "The Fury". The way this ended, I'm a bit surprised that they split the stories up like this since its obviously meant to go together. Mignola is tying together a lot of different myths in this one, but it works. The thing with Hellboy is that it reads better when its collected. While this issue was perfectly fine there's a lot of little things that are touched upon from earlier issues that make me wish i had those in front of me when I'm reading the book.

Finishing off with BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: SEASON EIGHT #36 which has me wondering why I'm still reading this book. While characters in the Buffy-verse are known to change and evolve over time there was a constant theme to show, and that was adventure horror. The book seems to venture off into weird science fiction and this issue is smack in the face example. Buffy and can fly now and has super powers. Angel is in the book and can fly and has similar powers. There's talk of them being chosen ones. They had sex and instead of Angel turning evil again they created a universe, which is probably the best advert for condoms I've ever seen. Spike shows up in his airship crewed by weird bug creatures. Yeesh. I like weird. Sometimes I like weird for the weird's sake. But all these things have been building up through the entire run of the comic and it doesn't feel like a payoff, but more of a whiskey tango foxtrot.

THE CRAZIES!!!

Well, it's certainly been an interesting week for crazy people. We've got one nutty woman making a tape in which she threatens conservative radio talk show hosts. And in an even more spectacular display of lunacy a guy stormed the Discovery Channel building and took hostages. My world is completely topsy-turvy right now. Its supposed to be the Right Wing that are a bunch of militant nutters. The Left are supposed to be a bunch of tree-hugging pussies. What the hell is going on here?

As much as I love making fun of hardcore liberals, I can't use these two examples as ammunition. These are both cases in which the people involved are clearly off their nuts. We have two people, clearly kooks, that just glommed onto movements on the left. One got way too caught up in the media sparring between conservatives and liberals, which has gotten pretty passionate and ridiculous over the last decade, chose a side and got vicious over it. The other kook watched Al Gore's propaganda piece and made a one person crusade to save the planet and targeted the Discovery Channel in his quest. So yeah, both are loons which probably had a lot of people on the left facepalming.

There's a cult of politics in the air. People follow causes and political ideas with the same zeal as religions. And as we see insane religious zealotry from people who really shouldn't go off their medication, we're seeing this same kooky behavior for those following political or environmental causes. This is the sort of stuff that morons think the Tea Party do, but they really don't. People practically expect this sort of insane behavior now. There's been a few rumors floating about that the BP oil spill, that pipe line busting and the fire this week could possibly be the work of eco-terrorists. Now, this sound like conspiracy theory nonsense, but in a world were an guy straps a homemade bomb to himself and storms the Discovery Channel building because he's ticked off at Kate Plus 8 it almost sounds plausible.

Some people are hard line to the point of stupidity. A commentor on Yahoo about the Discovery Channel situation wrote it off as being "yet another right-wing, teabagger idiot". This person was so blind in his hatred of conservatives that he did not realize that the person involved was a lunatic environmentalist.

Really both sides need to work together to get things working again. The liberals need to realize that their economic ideas don't work at all, and the conservatives need to listen to the liberals about social and environmental issues just to keep things in perspective. Right now, one side has too much power and is trying to force an agenda on the population whether they like it or not. That's leading to a lot of anger. People are angry at policies being inflicted on them. Others are angry that people are angry at the policies.

We need balance. Until then. Keep an eye out for the Crazies.

WHAT A WOMAN WANTS

Driving home from the park it seems Missus Nozz had had enough.

"Have you seen the previews for that new Resident Evil movie? What is up with every other movie being 3D?" She snapped much to my surprise. "It used to be that every once in while there would be a movie in 3D, now its all the time. Why don't they just skip it?"

I wanted to chime in, but she didn't give me the chance.

"I want the stuff to just jump out of the TV! I want to swordfight something! Its been years since Star Trek: The Next Generation!"

"Not to mention Star Wars."

"EXACTLY!! And that was a long time ago! I want to fight a hologram!" She uttered in grim determination. "You want your flying car. I want holograms!"

Gotta say, didn't see that one comin'.

MUSIC!!

OK, no more music to torment people, but we'll still with some They Might Be Giants.



Alright, things are back on track. Off in the side links you'll find one to my Buzz which will let you check out a little super villain tourney that kicks off today. If you have Gmail you can get in on it as well.

See y'all Wednesday. Don't forget to build that little birdhouse in your soul.