Drawing to a close

Its Sunday, November 27, 2011, the end is drawing near, for my beard anyways, and this is The Side. Yes indeed, I did the whole "No Shave November" bit, and while I've gotten quite a few compliments about my chin whiskers I'm ready for it to go. Indeed, I am looking manlier than ever, but it feels like I'm wearing a mask, and while masks are great, its nice to take them off too.

That and the amount of grey in there is making me look and feel a bit old.

ENDINGS!

There are somethings that we wish would go on forever. Four of these I kind of wish could. One of them could go away and never ever come back and I'd be a happy camper. Still, its tough giving some things a proper send off. So, for any of those producers out there who might need a little ghost writing done, I've got your back!

In the finale of THE BIG BANG THEORY it is discovered that Penny is really a Russian spy and the entirety of the time she'd been involved in Leonard and Sheldon's lives she had been reporting back to her superiors and subverting the scientists' efforts. Sheldon puts the pieces into place noting that Penny has always had an amazingly sharp memory. Paranoia sets in as Sheldon tries desperately to reveal Penny's real motives without tipping his hand. Its spy versus nerd until Sheldon finally confronts Penny, only to discover that the entire thing was ruse to lure Sheldon to his surprise birthday party. Leonard finally proposes to Penny. The episode ends with Penny reporting to the Russians that everything is going according to plan.

THE WALKING DEAD concludes with Rick waking up from his coma only to discover that the entire zombie apocalypse had been a dream. This is immediately followed by every fan around the world simultaneously wailing and gnashing their teeth.

SUPERNATURAL comes to an end in their final season when the Winchester boys find themselves up against C'Thulu. Its pretty much a descent into madness, which isn't anything new to the show, but the in an unexpected twist, Sam and Dean actually get along for the entire season. This is completely groundbreaking for the show. The series ends with Dean reciting a spell from the Necronomicon, but he messes the words up and sends himself and Sam to another dimension where both of them have chainsaws for hands.

In the new final installment of the TWILIGHT series, it vampire guy (played by that weird looking dude in the movie) and the werewolf guy (played by the former Shark Boy in the movie) reveal that they were sitting around watching IN THE COMPANY OF MEN and thought Aaron Eckhart was a complete boss in that film. They went to find a really stupid girl to do the same thing to, and everything just got really, really out of hand from there. Both guys get the heck out of dodge. The stupid girl then spends the rest of the movie trying to figure out what she's going to do with her half vampire kid and thinking community college would have been a much better idea than trying to live out her gothic fantasy.

And finally, CASTLE wraps up when Castle and Beckett begin to penetrate the whole conspiracy behind who tried to take out Beckett with the sniper rifle. The person responsible hired the serial strangler that got away from Castle and Ryan to lead Castle through a series of challenges testing his deductive powers to save people. Meanwhile, this is all a ruse while the figurative noose tightens around Beckett. She's in the cross-hairs and knows it, but the team can't stop those behind that and keep up with supporting Castle against the killer. Castle breaks ranks and ditches the others for a lone confrontation with the killer, freeing Ryan and Espesito up to aid Beckett in taking down the people who tried to kill her. Castle has a whole Holmes/Moriarty battle thing and if he survives finally get together with Beckett. He also gets made an honorary police captain, because its Nathan Fillion and he'll always be a captain to us.

MUSIC!

Let's keep it simple today.



That's all from me for today. I'll see y'all Wednesday.

Dreaming in four color process.

Where's the coffee? Its Friday, February 4, 2011, I am freaking exhausted, and this is The Side. The exhaustion in question comes from a lack of decent sleep. Its not that I've been staying up to all hours of the night. I do still get up at six every morning. The thing that has me so exhausted is really weirdo nightmares.

So I'm at this big old house which seems really out of place because its in the middle of the suburbs. There's markings on the floor and salt on the window sills, and I know that there's a demon that's going to come and get me at midnight. OK, so obviously I'm in a SUPERNATURAL setting, which is weird because I haven't seen the show in weeks. But do I have Sam and Dean Winchester to back me up? Of course not. I have J.D. and Turk from SCRUBS. Not the most reliable help when you're being hunted by a demon.

And for some reason Felicia Day showed up, and was being hunted by the same demon. Now, I've got no problems with Felicia Day showing up anywhere, much less my dreams. Still, if she's gonna show up, why does it have to be a life threatening event that doesn't involve shoulder rubs? Stoopid dream.

So after some panic and running around trying to figure out how not to be killed by a demon we actually spot the thing and it turns out to be The Demon. That's right, Etrigan was just waiting to roast my sorry ass. And as more running about and panicking ensued, midnight struck and i was trying desparately to figure out how not to get roasted, but really it wasn't midnight, it was six in the morning and the alarm went off.

That's not the way you want to start your day. I have to wonder what those dumbass hippy dream interpreters would glean from that one. Probably that I watch too much TV and read too many comic books.

Nah. That couldn't be it.

COMIX!!

Getting the ball rolling we've got SECRET SIX #30. Fresh off a crossover with ACTION COMICS we've got a crossover with DOOM PATROL. Them there Secret Six. They do get around. The WTFery of this issue was enough to keep me reading. A slack ass kid gets an inheritance from his grandfather and decides to reform a Ratpack style super villain team. And he gets his buddies to go along with it because there's girls involved. We also learn that getting your leg bitten off is sometimes not that big a deal. Sure its annoying, but if the eventually grow back then there's really not much need to panic. Speaking of education, we learn this month about strippers. Strippers are like 90s fanboys in that they think Bane is awesome. And Bane is pretty awesome, but not on the drooling level expressed by 90s fanboys and strippers. And finally this issue has inspired me get some smut mags, get a hold of my buddy (now known as Lord Thunderclap the Magnificent), and then go to the pier to see if I can catch anything while fishing with smut mags.

Oh yeah, and there was this thing with a volcano.

Let's move it on over to HELLBOY: THE SLEEPING AND THE DEAD #2. This wraps up a nasty little yarn in which Hellboy takes on vampires. Scott Hampton handles the artwork, and its really stellar stuff. Too often we see these portrayals of vampires as these sympathetic (and often sparkly) characters. Its nice that Mignola is reminding us here that they're really a bunch of nasty undead bastards. With all the action going on we see some really creepy stuff. Vampires preying on little girls. Spirits out for gruesome revenge. This book is a lot of fun, and that's good, because there's some messed up stuff going on in here. Great read.

I set up camp in Mignola land this week and rounding out my reads was SIR EDWARD GREY: WITCHFINDER #1. This is a well paced opener to the series. Sir Edward finds himself on the job in the Old West. On the surface this story seems like just a tale of an Englishman in a lawless western town. It was more like a JONAH HEX story. But there's these little details letting us now that there's a lot more to that nasty little town than it seems. A lot of it is explained late in the issue. This is the first time I've really taken a good look at the character. I'm definitely on board for this series.

MUSIC!!

Damnedest thing. I heard this tune on the radio for the first time in ages, then i come to find out last night that they've officially broken up.



That's the whole shebang for today. UFC night it tomorrow, followed by Super Bowl Sunday. There goes my diet.

The format is DEAD!

Heads up! Its Wednesday, October 13, 2010, I'm ready to chew nails, and this is the Side. There's nothing really exciting me in the news right now, although the rally in Philly looks like it was a good time. Between the streaking and books getting chucked at the Pop Star-in-Chief it looked like a hell of a party. Of course I had nothing to do with either of these.

The book did miss after all.

DEAD MEN WALKING!!

Death of major fictional characters is always a sticky thing. There's got to be purpose to it. You've got to be ready for the hate mail from the people who love the character. It can be a major undertaking. Nowadays there's a new question facing writers/creators:

"When are they coming back?"

Its different with villains. Villains get to return for the grave pretty much whenever they like. Its an accepted literary double-standard going back to old school gothic literature and the concept of the undying evil. Their return makes them more powerful and mysterious having conquered death and this in turn makes the hero greater since heroes are often defined by their villains. Heroes don't get the luxury of coming back all willy-nilly, or at least they shouldn't. Death is supposed to be the ultimate sacrifice for the hero. And there are occasions where heroes can come back, but it seems like in comics those occasions are getting to be about as rare as Bill Maher being a douchebag.

Sure there's different levels of 'dead'. There's the mysterious death in which a character is presumed dead by their absence. Typically this is after something like an explosion or something folks don't typically live through. There's the recoverable death when the character has something bad happen to them that should kill them, but they receive some sort of care or treatment that the audience doesn't get let in on until later. For example, the hero gets shot, everybody thinks he's dead, because he wasn't moving or maybe even wasn't even breathing, but he was taken to some super medical type place where they saved him. And then there's dead dead. That's the type of dead where there's no question that this character is done in.



Death has become a bit of joke in comics. They used to say Marvel had a revolving door in heaven for as many characters have come back from the dead. Jean Grey of the X-Men is the poster girl for this. Its not really an X-event until she dies. Twice. But not DC has absolutely eclipsed Marvel with "Blackest Night" and "Brightest Day" shenanigans. These two events pretty much confirmed what DC readers have been thinking for a bit. If they think there's some money to be made they'll bring back any character they want despite the significance of their demise. We kind of went along with things when they resurrected Oliver Queen. We rolled our eyes a bit when they brought back Hal Jordan. We knew it was getting flat out stupid when they brought back Barry Allen. Now we have the message that death is pretty much meaningless. This makes me wonder about the next issue of ACTION COMICS in which Lex Luthor will be meeting Death. Sure, she seems chipper enough, but I have to wonder it being made meaningless by Geoff Johns has left her a bit bitter.

There are types of stories in which death is viewed much differently. In some stories the afterlife is a very real place which characters travel to and from. Death gets weird here. They've recently started showing old episodes of DRAGON BALL Z on Saturday mornings and they've gone back to the first time the hero, Goku, died. At this point he went off to train in the afterlife which was cool because it involved a monkey. But he had to get is training done in a year because that's when his friends were supposed to bring him back so he could fight the next big threat. Odd stuff, but that story has its established rules about life and death. Yes, you can get resurrected, but certain criteria have to be met and it can only happen once.

Then there's other stories like the TV series SUPERNATURAL in which both the main characters have been killed and have come back. In this story Heaven and Hell are both very real places and folks from both come to Earth. Stories like this already have an open door to the afterlife. However, heroes traveling there and back is treated very significantly. Its also important as to what goes on while that character is in the afterlife. Typically the characters could not return from the afterlife under their own power and required a "higher power" to bring them back, the exception to this was John Winchester climbing out of Hell. Still, the criteria is fairly well established.

With all these rules and nuances of death of characters, there's nothing wrong with letting a character stay dead. There'll be some folks in the audience upset, but that's only if the character has a following. In fact if there's an outcry about a character dying, that's probably a good thing because that means the writer made people give a damn about the character. And there's still plenty to do with characters that die if done properly. By 'done properly' I mean the dead has to have some significance. Going back to comics now.

*Hal Jordan, great dead guy. Served as great lesson and cautionary tale about power and morality. Even popped up here and there as a spirit.

*Barry Allen, great dead guy. Was the 'saint' of the DCU having sacrificed himself to save the universe. Popped up here and there thanks to time travelly goodness.

*Ted Kord, awesome dead guy! This character left a really incredible legacy that was picked up on and run with fabulously in titles like BIRDS OF PREY and of course BLUE BEETLE.

Death in literature has meaning. It has to have meaning. If it doesn't then life has a bit less meaning. If you don't care about a character dying, then you didn't care about that character living, and that's a sign of bad writing. So the whole resurrection shell game going on in comics really needs to come to an end, because it cheapens things. It cheapens something that's really very important. Death is supposed to be final for a hero. The ultimate sacrifice. The hero risking death to do what's right isn't risking too much with the resurrection safety net under him.

MUSIC!!

Alrighty, that's all for today. You are free to go on about your daily lives and pine away until Friday when I post again.

Disregard: I've gone mad.

It's Sunday, September 26, 2010. I'm in a mood.

Or five.

Maybe six.

PLOTTING...

I'm plotting against my fellow man in what could be an attack of art and writing to shift the social paradigm to a slightly madder and much more acceptable level.

I've had it with the e-zombies tweeting and Facebook updating their boring mundane little lives into my pop culture peripheral.

If you want your life to be worthy content, then do something content worthy.

Have an adventure.

Have an original, interesting thought for Christssakes!

You are the star of your life story, so go be a star.

There is a conspiracy against you.

I'm the bastard behind it.

I will do things to screw with you for the sheer sake of making the world weird and less boring.

I'll spin utter nonsense into the plausible for expressed purpose of jarring your brain in different directions.

I am a memetic concussion.

You are riding the shockwaves of the mad thoughts that generate in my reptilian brain, filter through the alternate dimension that I created through my will, and ping off everything you see and hear.

The mountain of self importance I possess can crush politicians.

I am the Biochemical Nightmare Revolver.

Dodge my bullets.

I dare you.

HOPING...

I'm just about fed up with the radio. Mike and Bobby are entertaining, but I only get to hear about a half hour of them. The Political Battle Royale with Ham and Cheese has become a bit tiresome on talk radio. That's even with Stephen Colbert holding court in front of Congress.

I need a new album to come out, and I need it to be good. Yes, I know I'm an e-troglodyte and albums are nearly an outmoded thing being replaced by songs cherry-picked online and downloaded into easily lost devices.

I keep going back to that My Chemical Romance video with Grant Morrison in it and hope like hell its an insane concept album of the quality of "Welcome to the Black Parade", but trading in the the exploration of impending death for a mad musical battle in the spirit of SIX STRING SAMURAI. My mind has already filled in the pieces to the story of the Fabulous Killjoys.

I want this album to live up to the story I've created for it.

Screw "hope and change" promised by a pop star who would be king.

Gimme hope for some damn good rock-n-roll. The kind that begs you to find open roads with no speed limits and a car with a fuel tank of gas.

I hope for art.

MOCKING...

Nothing like celebrities to make me feel better about myself. It used to be the big names invoked envy among us poor folks who got work bust our butts to set our tables. Now look at them.

Paris Hilton isn't being allowed into countries, deemed as an "undesirable". That's hot!

Lindsey Lohan didn't pass GO! or collect $200. Apparently, she didn't need the 200 smackers or needed to roll doubles.

Debates rage over who is a bigger scumbag: Mel Gibson or Charlie Sheen. The winner? Sheen publicist.

Idolatry is dead.

WORKING...

"Why did you stop drawing?" was the question that got posed to me this week. Might have something to do with 40 hours or labor and topping it off with hours of Karate are getting to me. My hands are sore and occasionally shake a bit depending on what I've been doing. No that shaking bit is not a warning sign of some horrible neurological problem which should prompt you people to comment and tell me to go see someone about it. Its the result of working with power tools for hours at a time. You grind cement off a couple hundred tiles or sand a wood floor that's older than indoor plumbing into an acceptable appearance and your hands would shake too.

But I haven't been drawing, which should be obvious by know as this post makes it sound like I've gone off the deep end. That's what happens when I'm not drawing. I go nuts. So I might have to do a bit of sketching just to keep the boys in the white coats away. Then its back to the salt mines.

Although if this blog takes weird turns you now know what's up. That or I'm screwing with all of you. I'm in one of those moods which makes me want to start Facebook accounts and just torment any poor soul would tries to friend me there with impossible updates.

I'll drive them mad and call it "art". I wonder if that excuse still works on the authorities? "Yes officers I did make those updates. Why no, I never intended to start a riot with them. No, I didn't really run through downtown Norfolk naked and whack random people with lawn furnature."

Fun fact: Facebook can be used to obtain warrants for arrest. E-art is dangerous.

WATCHING...

The season premier of SUPERNATURAL was last night. This is the first season without the shows creator at the helm. I love this show, I truly do, but I just wasn't feeling it last night. Everyone played their parts. Parker Lewis joined the cast, and is looking good. Last I saw him, he had put on some weight. There's other new cast members.

The whole things just felt a bit too contrived. I completely bought into Dean in retirement. I was eager to find out how Sam, if it was Sam, returned. I'm OK with not having all my questions answered, but the new questions posed don't make me want to walk through the door to find out what's up. It felt like fan fiction. Eric Kripke left the show because he had told his five season long story. The Winchester Brothers stopped the apocalypse. Not a lot of places to go from there.

While the people who took the reigns are very capable, the premier left a lot to be desired. Foremost, what happened to Adam? He didn't even get mentioned. Ug. I really want this season to be good. It still could be, but its not off to a good start.

LISTENING...

Because if Batman played a musical instrument it would be a banjo!



That's it for today. I need to either drink a lot more or a lot less.

I'll let you know when I figure out.

Super-Final-Natural-Crisis

For anyone paying just the slightest bit of attention to this blog, you already know that I absolutely adore the TV show SUPERNATURAL. For anyone paying just the slightest attention to network television, you already know that SUPERNATURAL finished their fifth and most likely final season last night. Over the last five years the Winchester Brothers have taken on just about every monster one could think of and were doing their best to take on the Apocalypse. No, not one of the one-of-many, hey-its-Tuesday-the-world-is-ending, Buffy Apocalypses. I mean Lucifer walking the Earth ready for a showdown with Michael; the Four Horseman have come; full blown Revelations Apocalypse. The whole fifth season was the Brothers and their allies doing damage control and trying to survive. There was also the small wrinkle that they were the chosen vessels for Michael and Lucifer and if they say "Yes" to them entering their bodies then the fight would be on and more than half the planet would be torched.

So, how do you wrap up five years and the fight to end all fights in one hour? How do you end something like this? How can you satisfy all your fans?

Endings are a bitch. This show told us that.

Really. It told us that. You see the Winchester boys happen to have met a prophet in their adventures that had been chronicling there deeds in the form of novels. While he wasn't in the fight he wrote about it. He knew it was the end, but how do you write it? Obviously the prophet, Chuck, was playing the role of show creator Eric Kripke a bit. "Any monkey with a typewriter and write a beginning, but an ending?" Very true. So Chuck wrote about a car.

A '67 Chevy Impala to be specific. Because in the story, in that whole world, its important and it had its own story.

So yeah. The fight went down. It was brutal and bloody. I cringed a bit as characters I had grown to love fell. I tried to wrap my head and heart around the sense of finality was the hour drew to a close. Chuck said there would always be fans complaining because there was no way to answer all the questions. And I sat there last night knowing that if I wracked my brain I was sure to think of some plot thread that was left to be explored.

Unfortunately I won't have that chance. Damn you Eric Kripke. I hope somehow you get to read this. I didn't sleep worth a damn last night, AND ITS ALL YOUR DAMN FAULT!!! Yes, I'd ponder your show for days, reveling in the intricate little twists and turns you put on it. Thursday night is the only night that makes me truly excited to watch television. You took the questions that were burning in my head for weeks (Can Sam beat the Devil? Can Dean save his brother?), and replaced them! I'm asking more questions now! I'm at peace with my thoughts on who Chuck really was, but dammit who was that under that streetlight. One scene at the end that last maybe two seconds had my jaw on the floor and I nearly fell out of my seat.

You bastard Kripke. I hate you. I love you. I want to be you went I grow up.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!

He pinged brilliantly off of Grant Morrison's FINAL CRISIS whether he meant to or not.

Screw "the end".

TV rumblings

Caught episodes of SUPERNATURAL and GLEE that I had missed the first time round. What I love about SUPERNATURAL is that even with episodes like this one (Where Sam and Dean get stuck at a nerd prom) and the TV episode where its totally hysterical and silly the situation they're in the overall season plot still gets advanced in an intelligent manner. GLEE, which is the most glorious of intentional train wrecks, actually took some time to make me legitimately give a damn about the characters, including the amazingly eeeeevil Sue Sylvester.

DOLLHOUSE is wrapping things up, and like with Joss Whedon's previous series ANGEL the end is getting build as a fevered pitch. There's a ton of twists and turns and betrayals that I completely did not see coming. If you haven't been keeping up with the show, don't just jump in. You'll be completely confused. Get the DVDs or watch it on Hulu.

I'm seriously considering watching the premier of LIFE UNEXPECTED for the same reason that I bought issue #1 of FLASH: REBIRTH. Yes it's bad reviewing to go into something with a heavy agenda or bias, but I'm wanting to gut it like a fish.