Straczynski's Swipey Thing

Its Friday, November 12, 2010, I'm ready to swipe something, and this is The Side. Recently, I helped change a bunch of glass in windows in another town. The client was a friend of friends we got the job done pretty quickly and everything looked great. However the client seems to be having trouble with his penmanship when it comes to writing the check to pay for replacing the glass.

This led to him showing up at my buddy's door asking his wife about a "swipey thing".

Now call me old fashioned, but I always thought it was bad form to show up unannounced at a fella's house and make inquiries to his wife about a swipey thing.

Seems the guy want to pay with a credit card as he's "moving and packed up his checkbook". Oh, well, that explains everything, because whenever I've moved, the checkbook was the first thing I shoved in a box. Shame on my buddy for not having a swipey thing.

SWIPEY COMIX!!

Seems someone swiped my copy of THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #6 before I could get to the shop this week, so my thoughts on that will have to wait until I can secure an issue. In the meantime...

KNIGHT AND SQUIRE #2 hit the shelves and was pleasantly weird and charming. BATGIRL #15 welcomed aboard Dustin Nguyen to the creative line up and is completely worth it for the three page history to the Bat-verse according to Steph. The rest of the issue is fun too. TINY TITANS/LITTLE ARCHIE AND HIS PALS #2 had all the fun and humor I've come to expect from Baltazar and Franco. When you have the bat-tusi and Josie and the Pussycats in the same comic its really hard to go wrong. Speaking of team-ups, HELLBOY/BEASTS OF BURDEN found its way into my bag and it was a lot of fun. Talking animals being cute and fighting supernatural stuff is a totally untapped market. I was previous unaware of these here Beasts of Burden, but I shall investigate further.

BIRDS OF PREY #6 wraps up the inaugural storyline for the relaunched title. There was seriously a Birds of Prey shaped hole in things after this book was swiped away from us poor nerds. Huntress takes on Shiva in a battle to the death. That alone is plenty. What I didn't expect was Shiva actually acting just a little bit like a human being here and there. Huntress doesn't get a whole lot of respect in the DCU, which I suspect has a bit to do with the outfit she's constantly drawn in, but she's center stage and being completely awesome in this book. Great stuff from Gail Simone, but great stuff from her business as usual.

R.E.B.E.L.S. #22 brings Starfire to center stage as her and a Psion Green Lantern get a hard look at what it means to be a female on the planet Psion. It was pretty harsh stuff as we see a culture in which the only reason they keep females around at all is for breeding purposes. Starfire is an excellent fit into this book which is all about the space characters of the DCU. I'm still burnt out quite a bit on Green Lanterns what with all the GL themed events recently that just served to annoy me, but Bedard has to use them. This book is about space heroes, and they are space heroes. It makes sense that they're there. The bokk continues to be incredibly solid and a great read.

SWIPEY BUH-BYE! sorta...

Previously I bailed completely from reading the comics SUPERMAN and WONDER WOMAN despite being a big fan of both characters because writer J Michael Straczynski took over both titles and made them both awful. The WW story was like a cliché of a cliché featuring super strong girl with no memories fighting an eeeeeeevil government agency hoping to get revenge for killing all of her people. I read one issue, vomited and promptly dropped the book, praying that this was all a dream and that somehow Gail Simone would magically return to save me. The Superman story fetured the big guy walking around looking for answers to life and yet somehow being condescending to everyone questioning his actions and seeming to have all the answers. It also featured Superman and current Batman, Dick Grayson, being utterly douchey to each other in what seemed to be a throwback to the first part of INFINITE CRISIS and showing that JMS seems to have no concept of what makes Dick Grayson tick, which seems to complete the trinity since he doesn't seem to know what it is that makes Superman and Wonder Woman awesome.



Then I rejoiced to learn that JMS was quitting both book early. I was gleeful last evening, blissful in thoughts that prayer does indeed work and then got down on my knees to get to work on the smiting of Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and whoever it was at YouTube that put that James Cameron ad together which makes it a pain to watch the videos I want to watch. Makes the videos skip. I don't like it. Then I later learned that Chris Robinson and Phil Hester will be taking over the writing of SUPERMAN and WONDER WOMAN respectively, which is cool because I had forgotten that Phil Hester writes stuff. And finally, unfortunately, I learned that both writers would be working from Straczynski's notes. So, I suppose Bieber, Gaga, and the YouTube putz will continue to live, although they may all get boils.

JMS is going to go off to write a sequel to that EARTH ONE book I completely ignored, which is fine because the more projects like this he goes off to do the less he can infect the continuity of the characters I love with bad stories. So, it looks like I'll be staying away from SUPERMAN and WONDER WOMAN for a while yet, and hopefully the writers will be able to get out from under the JMS notes soon.

SWIPEY MUSIC!!

The Missus made a discovery! Guy and girl with pretty eyes and a Batman T-shirt make music! YOU LISTEN NOW!! And no you don't get to see her swipey thing.



Alright, its time to go do stuff. I need to go find my swipey thing so that I can get paid this week. Its like the world is trying to go all BATMAN BEYOND on me.