Having Faith in an Angel

Brick not hit back. Its Sunday, October 2. 2011, my hand is a little sore, and this is The Side. Our annual karate demo went very well. I possibly may be getting some new students out of it which is kind of the point. Well, mostly we do the show to have fun and show off, but its pretty much the only real advertising we do all year aside from word of mouth. That and it livens up the annual church bazaar a bit.

This year we added in a bit a brick breaking. One of my students had some patio pavers that he wanted to get rid off. Seems about one in about every six of them are pretty damn stubborn, and sure enough it was the one I got on my stack. I blasted the thing twice and it wouldn't go. It does kind of work out though as that was the only unsuccessful break. It shows that it is a difficult thing to do, which it is. Fortunately I smashed the other brick fairly convincingly, and we've got that on tape.

Words of wisdom for martial artists: if you're going to break bricks, make sure you get some form of photographic evidence. That way, you never have to do it again.

COMIX!!

Let's start off with ANGEL ND FAITH #2. Angel's on a mission to resurrect Rupert Giles and Faith is hoping to keep him from going off the the rails. Resurrection in the "Buffy-verse" nearly never goes well. Typically you end up with a zombie. So, bringing Giles back, especially in a world without magic is a pretty talk order. It does look like our favorite vampire with a massive forehead has a plan to pull it off, and its actually got a shot. Lurking in the wings however are Nash and Pearl who worked with Angel during his "Twilight" possession. This issue works very well. Issue one let us know who the players are and bridged us over from BUFFY SEASON 8. Here we see exactly where everyone is on the chessboard and get a good glimpse at what the plan is. It plays off a very good episode from ANGEL season 1, so we have good link back to the old TV show. Where the book shines is how well it handles Faith. There's been two people that have really looked out for her on her road to redemption and one of them is trying to bring the other back to life. She knows its nuts and probably a really bad idea, but she's in it because she's got Angel's back and what if there's an off chance he can pull it off. Very good stuff.

RED KNIGHT #2 hit this week. I'm torn on it. Justin Cristelli has set up an interesting story. We have a vigilante operating in Norfolk. Norfolk is a bit of an underworld hub city here in that its where to go for super villains to lay low or to get their ducks in a row before moving on. It pretty well written. My gripe is the art, and I hate griping about art. JC Grande isn't afraid to go after tough shots, interesting page layouts, and varying camera angles. In fact, he handles it like a boss. The big problem is lack of grays. He doesn't vary his line weight and and there's no grayscale at all. It makes everything sit on the page and the only time something really jumps out is when there's something black on it. It makes me have to work at what i need to be looking it as opposed to having my eye naturally drawn there. He's obviously not afraid to detail out a page, which is impressive, so I fully believe that once he gets his grey on the pages will be really eye-popping. So, pretty good stuff and worth checking out, but still has room for improvement.

MUSIC!!

Yes, its true I hardly ever put a hip-hop song in my music section. This is because I can't get behind what the majority of hip-hop songs are talking about. Note I said "majority" and not "totality".



That's it for me today. I think its time for some Advil, coffee, and SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS on Netflix. See y'all Wednesday.