Stay warm, Linda!
COMIX!!
BIRDS OF PREY #7 should come with a warning on the cover: "CAUTION: contents contain male strippers". I'm cruising on through this issue which kicks off the "Death of Oracle" storyline, there's a really cool scene with Babs and Bruce, I turn the page and WHAMMO! Great big men wearing banana hammocks and little else! Startled the hell out of me. Thanks a bunch, Gail Simone. That aside (which wasn't really a problem, but it did catch me off guard) this issue was great. Raises a question as to whether or not there's a double agent in the Birds as The Calculator is looking to yet again take on Oracle. The gals are all out having a good time for Dove's birthday, who is utterly mortified by the entire thing. Oracle and Batman have a bunch of really good stuff going on as this storyline looks to be one where things really change for the characters in a really great way. Its one of those issues where I can say if you haven't been reading this comic here's a good place to jump on board. My favorite bit in there actually addresses something that bugged me previously. In James Robinson's really awful CRY OF JUSTICE series, it was alluded to that Hal Jordan had a threesome with Huntress and Lady Blackhawk. It was a macho high five moment that I would expect from some meathead teenagers. Some friends of mind online joked that Huntress and Lady Blackhawk probably drank him under the table and he doesn't remember a thing. This issue made me wonder it Simone saw that exchange. Loved it!Moving it on over to SUPERGIRL #59 which wraps up Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle's definitive run on the book. Much like Greg Rucka's run on WONDER WOMAN, all other runs by creative teams on this book will be judged against Gates and Igle's work here. Its been that good, and their final issue is no exception. The story involving Cat Grant finally comes to a close and brings things full circle, in a really awesome way. We also get a nice Christmas scene at the end on the Kent farm with the rest of the family. I found this part to be interesting in that early runs on this title pretty much showed Kara off as jailbait. Seeing her in this issue, particularly at the end shows us a Kara who is a mature, respectful young lady. She's become the kind of character I would like my daughters to look up to. And of course there's plenty of cool action in the story as Kara spends much of it trying to track down who's been kidnapping children. Great book from top to bottom. The next creative team is very good and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do, but they've seriously got some big shoes to fill.
EXTRA EXTRA!!
I have trust issues with the media, particularly news media. There's bias there obviously, so we tend to tune into whichever news source shares our biases, unless we want to piss ourselves off them we tune into the other side. But my trust issues aren't really about bias. They mainly stem from my observation that most of the people who report news are trying to interpret life without much knowledge of how life actually is. And then there's a fact that many of the ratings-crazed doghumpers would report on their grandmothers being utterly destroyed by insane, genetically altered ferrets if they could just get the story out ahead of their competition.When did I come to distrust the media? It was probably about ten years ago. My father was part of an Air Force reserve unit. They're an engineering unit, meaning when something needs built somewhere they deploy to do it. There was a mission in Florida in which part of the unit, not including my father, went to Florida. The mission went completely fine and they were on the way back when there was a problem and the plain crashed killing (if memory serves me) seventeen members of the unit. Terrible tragedy and a really tough time for everyone.
My father was placed in charge of building a memorial on the base which turned out incredible. Also, he was assigned a family of one of the fallen to help through this time. There was a lot of paperwork to get through which he helped with and he also served as a liaison to keep the family updated about everything going on including the investigation as to what caused the crash.
A month later the investigation about the crash concluded. In real life that's how long these things take. Its not like the movies when they rush in their team of experts and have results in a day or two. These things take time and a lot of it. So my father and the rest of the family liaisons were called to a meeting. The findings were gone over and all the questions were asked and answered. The following day, the liaisons were going to go to the families and go over everything and report the findings, hopefully to give a little closure to the grieving families.
That night, I'm at the bar, checking IDs and making sure all the drunks behaved themselves. There were about seven TV in the place and the one right in front of me had on the local 11 o'clock news.
Guess what the lead story was.
There had been a leak. The findings were not to be released to the media until all the families affected were briefed on everything. But there it was for everyone to see. A story about a plane crash over a month ago, in which the only people who really gave a damn about it were supposed to find out personally the following day. In the local news's defense it had been a slow day and they needed something concerning somebody dying to lead off with.
This lead to the next day when my father goes to the family, who are understandably upset to say the least. Why should they even talk to my father when the results were on the news? Why wouldn't they be the first to know what had really happened to their son?
I utterly seethed about that for a long time. There was once some stuff called integrity and ethics attached to news and journalism. They call that censorship now. An asshole with a website gets a hold of classified documents that he shouldn't? Well, he's got a right to publish them. That doesn't mean that he should, but it'll drive up his page views. Canadian news station shows an athlete suffering a fatal accident at the Olympics over and over again? No problem! It wasn't a close up, so that means it wasn't sensationalized enough for it so be exploiting a some poor guy getting killed.
Just because this is the "information age" does not mean that we should be able to get every last bit of information in front of us at our whim. There are things like discretion and ethics that should be drilled into anyone who wants to be a journalist or reporter. They need to know what needs to be made public and what really should be sat on. Julian Assange isn't a journalist. He's a douchebag with a website who gets his mitts on stuff he shouldn't and waves it in front of everybody because he has the law to hide behind. That Canadian station that ran that footage from the Olympics over and over and over again? That was a complete jag-off move and if they don't know it, they're complete morons. And that local news show that decided to lead with a story without considering the people it would affect or hurt? They're just assholes.
MUSIC!!
Since this week's comic reviews were all about the ladies (not including the male strippers) here's a song about more ladies.
Alright, time for me to probably go explore Ice Station Norfork. If I die horribly and freeze into a giant Nozzsicle, I'll let you know.
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