COMBAT SPOOOOOOON!

Its Friday, October 1, 2010 and welcome to it. The rain has stopped, the flood waters are going down. I spent yesterday at the house pretty much watching the sky fall and being glad that my yard has excellent drainage. About ten inches of rain came down here.

Guess I don't wave to wash the car now right?

SIZE MATTERS!!

Comics as a medium has a lot of options in storytelling. One of the biggest decisions to make as a writer is the scale of your story. This is a tricky situation because if you go to small your story gets cramped. You go too long and it can get slow. You don't want to leave cool, important stuff out, but at the same time you don't want to beat your reader's head in with every last detail.

Quick overview of what we have to play with.

*One shot. This is a story that takes one issue to tell. Very accessible to readers. (ex: GLOBAL FREQUENCY, EMIKO SUPERSTAR)

*Short arc. Story that takes about two to four issues to tell. Either inside an existing ongoing title or as a stand along mini-series. (ex: THE SKYROCKET, "Days of Future's Past" for UNCANNY X-MEN)

*Longer arc. Takes about six issues. Often done in the Geoff Johns write-to-the-trade model. (ex: BLACKEST NIGHT, "Terminal Velocity" from THE FLASH)

*Mega-arc. Number of issues approaches or hits double digits. (ex: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS)

*Long form. This story takes place over years of issues, typically a 'run' by a particular writer. Often contains arcs of various lengths. (ex: Grant Morrison's BATMAN storyline, TRANSMETROPOLITAN)

Problems arise when forces aside from the writer attempt to monkey with things. This brings us to editing. Editing, done properly, means identifying areas of the story that need a bit of reworking. Sometimes that means cutting a scene that's kind filler and not important. Sometimes it means having the writer go back to add something to the story. A good editor streamlines things to make sure that the story is the best it can be and told well.

And then there's the bad editing. This is things like butchering a story because of their personal vision, or making demands of the a writer to do something that's just wrong for the story. Let's take the aforementioned Morrison Batman story. Morrison is busy telling this grand story and a major chapter in the story catches the eye of a particular editor. The chapter is R.I.P. which gets the editor all excited because he wants to know how Batman dies. After repeated explanations that Batman does not die in the story the editor tells Morrison to end the story with a helicopter crash creating the illusion that Batman dies.

Why do this?

To turn this into an 'event'. The type of event that means the editor can go to writers of other books and tell them to include stories reflecting the events of the event. The results are a bunch of books about the apparent death of Batman reflected from the story in which nothing of the like happened. It becomes stupid in that you have all these different books which don't add to the narrative they're being forcibly tied to, AND what they are referencing is false. The tie-ins gave the impression that Batman was gone for a significant amount of time when in fact he got home the next morning.

There's also storylines that get stretched out to try to sell books, but really need to just run their course. A writer gets an idea for something that would be cool for a couple of issues, but that gets stretched into much longer arcs in an attempt to cash in. This forces the writer to try to make his idea interesting to the point that is can sustain running longer. Unfortunately this typically leads to just jumping the shark and turning off readers.

Editing is not a simple job. You've got to stay objective and in touch with both the storytellers and the readership. Most important, you've got to put aside a lot of your personal biases and do what's right for the project. Let the story come out properly instead of making demands for crap that just won't work. That's how we got COUNTDOWN.

COMIX!!

I would like to personally thank Paul Cornell for making my week in comic book reading awesome.

COMBAT SPOON!!! GIANT COMBAT SPOON WIELDED BY A GIANT MONKEY!!!

THIS IS BY FAR MY BESTEST NERDY WEEK EVER!!

Yes, ACTION COMICS #893 hit the shelves this week, and Paul Cornell rules this book so hard that I never want Superman to star in it ever again, I just want Lex Luthor and his sidekick Robo-Lois to stomp around all over the DCU and awesome forever and ever. This time Lex is up against Super Gorilla Grodd... and his Combat Spoon. The Missus is curious if Luthor expected this as he expected the Cowboy Caterpillar Crisis.

I want a Combat Spoon so freaking bad I might explode.

And yes I know gorillas are not monkeys and are an entirely different species, but I don't really care because monkeys are inherently funny.

Lex continues his quest for a Power Ring, and gets some results, as well as gets shot.

On a side note: I'm pretty sure I prefer Robo-Lois to real Lois at this point.

Yes, this has been my most disjointed review of anything to date, but I'm having trouble forming coherent sentences in the face of the awesome.

Pulling it together for a moment this issue is getting a bit of extra notice from folks due to the new back up feature starring Jimmy Olson. Its not Jimmy drawing folks in so much as its the official induction of SMALLVILLE character Chloe Sullivan in the DCU continuity. Fortunately, the story isn't just a fluff piece hoping to get by on the Chloe inclusion, its a pretty cool bit. What does Superman's pal do when Superman is off being lame? He gets up off the couch and starts being interesting. I'm very interested to see where this is going.

On over to DETECTIVE COMICS #869 and the fake Joker story continues. Honestly, this story his pretty much run its course. There's another issue to go after this and if the Fake Joker and the Fake Batman are not the same person I don't know anymore. That's the only way this story can not be a random mess. Sure, Fake Batman might be one of the cops, but that just makes the whole thing too random. This story is full of continuity holes to the point of I've shoved it off to the Hine-verse where it can't touch anything else to confuse me. I like Scott McDaniel's art. I know there's a lot of people who don't, but I loved his NIGHTWING run and I like his Bat-stuff. Its definitely not for everyone, but I was the best thing about the book for me.

Last up is FIRST WAVE #4 and I don't know why I'm not into this book more. Brian Azzarello is a great writer, and is doing this book well. I love Rags Morales's art. I dig the characters. I'm looking past batman using guns as best I can. For some reason this series isn't coming together for me, which sucks because it's not a bad book at all. I think this book will read beter once I have all the issues and can read them in one sitting. Some stories are just better read that way. Still, The Spirit is fun, Doc Savage is pretty damned tough, there's plenty of action, and a good mystery going. I'm still on board.

21st CENTURY DISCRETION

Privacy is an important thing. Its something that is to be protected. People routinely give up their privacy online in the popularity contest that is social media. Still, its their choice and they bear the brunt of the responsibility for what they put online. So when two assholes used a webcam to out a student online its serious. Its even more serious in that the outed student jumped off a bridge.

What the two students did was illegal. They videoed the guy without consent having sex. That charge carries jail time and I hope the judge throws the book at them. There's a lot being made of this by the gay community saying its bullying and making a big out cry over it. They're justified. This deserves attention.

I don't care about this guy getting outed so much as I care about his privacy being violated. If he wanted to be discrete with his sexuality, that's his prerogative. But we live in a world where cameras are everywhere. Its not even security cameras anymore. Cameras are on computers. The cheapest cell phones have cameras. Anything you say and do can be recorded. You can see my front yard on Google maps complete with my car. Discretion in these times is important. I'm not saying the poor guy who was the victim of this incident is at fault in any way, but there's an important lesson to be learned here.

Keep your eyes open for the eyes that may be on you.

TECHNOLOGY!!

I see stories like this pop up every few years. Exo-skeleton, often created by military R&D, which get compared to the Ironman armor despite not being as shiny. Still, its pretty neat.

MUSIC!!

In a world where "artists" can have so much style that it can be mistaken for actual substance its good to have some artists that can recognize important things. Like three words being the watermark for the human experience.



That's all for today. Have a good weekend. I'm going to make my Christmas list, and ask Santa for a Combat Spoon.

Missus Nozz Weighs In

Mama Mia! Its Wednesday, September 15, 2010. Yes, the ides of September are upon us. The Missus had been quite vocal lately as I believe she's been exposed to a little bit too much pop culture now that she doesn't work night shifts anymore. Pop culture tends to do that to people.

THE ATTACK OF LADY REDUNDANT WOMAN!!

Missus Nozz was engaged in a lively debate with a former co-worker who was informing her that at the time you could get a blu-ray/DVD combo pack for a pretty good price. That's getting the same movie on DVD and on blu-ray in the same package. So the Missus asked the mighty question, "If you have a Blu-ray player, why would you want the DVD version?" Of course there was an attempt to justify such a purchase, but if blu-ray is the way things are going to gravitate to then there's no reason purchase the same movie in two different formats. They certainly didn't offer DVD/VHS combo packs now did they?

I'm in the DVD camp and firmly entrenched there. I like DVDs. Well, most DVDs. The ones that make you fast forward through the opening shillings for stuff instead of skipping them outright and going straight to the menu tick me off. That was what I really liked better than VHS. Still, the picture is nice a crisp and the sound quality is just fine. I don't need blu-ray, and won't be getting blu-ray until the machines are cheap as all get out.

However there is one really great thing about blu-rays: the people who bought into them and turned around and got the movies they already own on blu-ray even though those goofy machine will play the DVDs are selling their used DVDs back to stores because they have blu-ray disks now. And I love these people. I love them so. Its because of them that the used box at FYE is stacked an packed with great flicks for only a couple of bucks a pop. Watched BASIC with Travolta and Sam Jackson on DVD the other night. Awesome movie. How much did I pay for it? Four bucks.

THE MISSUS VERSUS VAMPIRES!!

"I'm done with vampires." She said to me as she got ready to for bed. We had just seen a preview for some movie about little kid vampires on TV which looked pretty gory.

"Oh yeah?" I replied. "Any exceptions to this?"

"Nope. Done with all of them." She replied after a moment which I presume was to run through a mental Rolodex of the thirsty undead. This is quite a statment coming from someone who wrote a report on Vlad Tepes in college. I guess its a good thing that we got through our viewing of ANGEL: Season 5 already. The vampire fad has really gotten out of hand. I used to really dig vampire stories and movies. Now the whole thing is so cliché.

The TV show THE GATES was on and since we don't have cable we figured we'd check it out. It all seemed weird enough for my liking. I spotted the guy who played Johnny Cage in the old MORTAL KOMBAT flick and that was cool. And sure enough about 12 minutes in: vampires. Again. That's right, we as a society have moved from "OH GOD! VAMPIRES!" to "Oh GAWD. Vampires. Again."

It would be so easy to blame TWILIGHT for all this. Actually, you know what? I'm calling an audible on the blog. I AM going to blame TWILIGHT for this! Those stupid books and those stupid movies with those weird looking people and that guy from THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK BOY AND LAVA GIRL who really needs to put on a damn shirt have completely ruined vampires. The market is saturated with vampire stuff. And most of it is stupid "oh its so tragic that they live forever but can't find true love" garbage that I want to drive a stake through the heart of those behind it. Last time I picked something up from Barnes and Nobles there was a table featuring "Teen Reading" and 95% of the book on it were vampire books. People in the store were no doubt wondering why I facepalmed right in the middle of the store.

Remember: if you love vampires, you're a necrophiliac.

If you're going to have stupid vampires in something at least put them on a Segway fleeing from Batgirl and Supergirl.

MUSIC!!

Today featuring one of the Missus's favorite songs to play on Rock Band!



That's the ball game for today. The WTF portion of the week is now in full swing. See y'al on the backside.

Rip Hunter, party of one?

Its Friday, July 9, 2010 and with Bruce Wayne bouncing around time a bit I figured on doing the same.

COMIX!!

This week was small but solid, and highlighted by BATMAN AND ROBIN #13 which should come as no surprise by those who have suffered through me gushing like a loon about how damn good Grant Morrison's run on Batman has been. There's been a bit of a gap between #12 and #13 to get the current storyline set up with THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE. This is fine because now we have two storylines in two comics both heading to the same station.

Frazer Irving takes on the art chores on this stint of the run and its a joy. His style is so very clean and clear, and it delivers. There's so much going on in this story that it takes this straight forward approach to hit us with it. There's no ambiguity to what we are presented. The history of the Black Glove in what seems like an Elseworlds story, but this character is right in the face of the readers. Then there's the seemingly sane Joker, and this really shone through in Irving's artwork because he made the Joker seem almost normal in a normal setting. There was no exaggeration to him in how he was drawn, but his later mannerisms showed more than all the "dynamic" artwork would properly convey. Even the seeming execution scene at the beginning of the story is presented in a very matter of fact manner.

Note my use of seeming.

The Black Glove seems to be Thomas Wayne. The Joker seems to want to help Batman against the Black Glove. One of the key prophecies of BATMAN #666 seems to come to pass.

But what do we know?

We know there's an eclipse coming and those mark Bruce Wayne's pinballing through time. We know if Bruce Wayne reaches the present then bad things will happen. We know this was set in motion by Darkseid. We also know that the Joker knows something he isn't letting onto quite yet.

Which leads us to our suspicions. We suspect that the Black Glove may be the devil himself, but if this is a the case, and it is the result of the Omega Sanction that has Bruce Wayne bouncing through time, what exactly is the relationship between the two. Everything is wrapped very tightly into a narrative ball, and in the next couple of months we'll see which way it bounces.

HOME ARCHEOLOGY!!

The Missus discovered some books behind a drawer in the kitchen. Many of them contained recipes and quite a few of those were hand written. Beautiful handwriting too. Among the books was IN TIME OF EMERGENCY: A CITIZEN'S HANDBOOK ON ... NUCLEAR ATTACK ... NATURAL DIASTERS which was published by the Department of Defense and the Office of Civil Defense in march of 1968. The following is an excerpt on Improvising an outdoor fallout shelter.

If your home has no basement, no storm cellar and no protected crawl space, here are two ways of improvising fallout protection in you yard:

*Dig an L-shaped trench, about 4 feet deep and 3 feet wide. One side of the L, which will be the shelter area, should be long enough to accommodate all family members. The other side of the L can be shorter, since its purpose is to serve as an entrance-way and to reduce the amount of radiation getting into the shelter area.

Cover the entire shelter with lumber (or with house doors that have been taken off their hinges), except for about 2 feet on the short side of the L, to provide access and ventilation.

On top of the lumber or doors, pile earth 1 to 2 feet high, or cover them with other shielding material.

If necessary, support or "shore up" the wall of the trench, as well ad the lumber or doors, so they will not collapse.

*Dig a shallow ditch, 6 inches deep and 6 inches wide, parallel to and 4 feet from the outside wall of your house.

Remove the heaviest doors from the house. Place the bottoms of the doors in the ditch (so they won't slip), and lean the doors against the wall of the house.

On the doors, pile 12 to 18 inches of earth or sand. Stack or pile other shielding material at the sides of the doors, and also on the other side of the house wall (to protect you against radiation coming from that direction).

If possible, make the shelter area deeper by digging out more earth inside it. Also dig some other shallow ditches, to allow rain water to drain away.

Yeah. Pretty sure I'd be very much dead.

FUTURE TECH!!

And now we move onto the future, where the movies come to life.



I find this interesting from a writer's standpoint. I have no use for it, but I sit and wonder while reading BIRDS OF PREY why is Oracle still using a keyboard? Its like a reverse of when GLOBAL FREQUENCY had that TV pilot that unfortunately did not get picked up and Warren Ellis had described the phones used by GF agents to a Nokia representative and their response was "We've got those." Communication tech is keeping pace with sci-fi, but in terms of how people interact with computers truth seems to outpace a lot of fiction.

But then tech doesn't make people smarter. Take phone solicitors for instance...

Joey: Hello?

Phone solicitor: Hello sir, we're calling to see if you're interested in upgrading your telephone service.

Joey: We don't have a phone.

Phone solicitor: Oh. Alright. Thank you.

Click.

MUSIC!!

And in keeping with our themes of comics and time travel here's the theme song to the movie TIMECOP based off a comic from Dark Horse.

POP QUIZ!!

1: If you could time travel, when and where would you go?

2: What do you think about the true identity of The Black Glove?

3: What's the coolest old thing you've discovered?

That's it for Friday. Leave a comment and if you have G-Mail head over to my Buzz to vote in this month's Tourney to determine the best action movie star.

Overtech

We've reached a point where its starting to just go too far. Technology is a wonderful thing. It enriches lives daily in both useful and entertaining ways. However there is a tipping point when technology becomes more of a pain in the ass than it's worth. The point of technology is to make things easier. Like a calculator, instead of having to write out complex problems and break out a slide rule and possibly an abacus, a person can punch in numbers, hit a few buttons and do complex mathematics. That doesn't excuse them from not being able to math themselves without a calculator. If your life comes to a screeching halt because of a power outage then you may have a problem.

I chatted about this briefly the other night and smart phones came up. Smart phones are on the verge of overtech. The reason why they are not is that there are people who make good use of the devices and it allows them to conduct business more efficiently more genuinely make life easier. I had one briefly and was able to get directions on it for someplace I needed to get to. It still maintains a technological tool status, but to many they are just a cool toy.

I've gone off about Blu-Ray Players at length. This is pure overtech. It gives more visual output than your eyes can that in properly. That and that degree of visual output is not necessary to watch a movie. Add in the need for downloads for it to function properly and it just gets stupid. If your movie playing machine cannot play the disks its supposed to be able to play without having to go online to "figure out" how to do it, then it's bad tech. The disks have too much information on them. It's just a movie. We used to watch them one clunky plastic cassettes. This should a be a simple process. DVDs are about as far as this technology needed to get for the purpose of watching stuff on television.

This brings us to the ultimate in overtech: augmented reality. This is just stupid. Its a toy and nothing more. The only practical application is to victims of memory problems who need help remembering things. Way too much clutter in the visual field. The really scary thing is that one of the pictures used as an example of augmented reality is on a car windshield. Someone driving with a info dump in their face distracting them cluttering their field of vision. That is a carwreck in the waiting. I can guarantee that if this tech goes into people's vehicles that people will die. This is far beyond kids not being able to do math because they depend on machines, this is a straight up safety concern.

Look, I know there are engineers out there who will not rest until life resembles Star Trek and instead of watching TV, we watch 3D holograms standing in the living room. And I'm sure after that they'll try to figure out contact lenses that can give you pertinent information about everything you look at. But hold the smart phone before you get drooly thinking how cool that would be. We don't need these things. If as much intellectual candlepower went into figuring out alternative energy sources as they do figuring out the next gadget that improves things that really don't need improving, then I would have to hear environmentalist hippie losers bitch and moan at length about oil and carbon emissions.

Toys are fine. Expensive hi-tech toys are fine. Still there is a point where tech needs to leave well enough alone and go do something useful.

Tangled up in Blu

Its so very nice to be right. People have been going bonkers over AVATAR and now that the hysteria has died down the realization has set in: the movie isn't really very good. But in keeping with the theme of blue things sucking, we move onto blu-ray players. Seems some people are fairly pissed off that they can't watch blue people on blu-ray. Just another reason why I sit confident in my assertion that blu-ray as a whole is a complete waste. You need an internet connection to download programs or your blu-ray player might not play disks? Are you freaking kidding me?

How hilarious is this? Seriously. Technology is supposed to be this create thing that makes our lives better and more convenient. Now if you want to watch a movie, having to wait on lagging load time isn't your only problem. I bet there's some people that spent hundreds of dollars on their players that are just ready to chew drywall right now. Now, I see you can get a blu-ray player from Wal-Mart for under $100. Nice. In fact that's such a sweet deal that I even thought for a fleeting moment about maybe getting one. Then I remembered they suck. They don't make a lick of different if you don't have a high definition television and my TV is skating on a proper ten years of age. Still works too. The rabbit ears get much better reception than that ridiculous digital antenna they sold me at Best Buy. Even has an anti-theft feature: the thing is heavy as hell. Good luck taking it.

I think we hit the tipping point of entertainment technology. Blu-rays give more detail than your eyes were meant to take in, making things look funny. Oh and now we need an internet connection our we're screwed with the stuff we buy? The hell with that. I'm sticking to DVDs and a Nintendo Wii. Not gonna be getting a new TV anytime soon either because the one I have works and fits nicely in the entertainment center. And I'm sticking to CDs too. Yeah, I sound old and cranky but new tech isn't cool if its a pain in the ass.

More tech stuff

Ellis had this clip up over on his site.



More wearable tech. This is a bit slicker than that rig I posted about a few months ago which had a projector hanging around your neck and used an IPhone for it's processing. Sure you could do cool things with neat hand gestures, but you were stuck with having to find surfaces to project on. This uses your body for input and doesn't require multicolored fingertips.

Is it practical? The jury is still out. Not sure if the tech will function if the user is wearing long sleeves or if they're in the rain and water drops are impacting their skin giving false signals. I'm also looking at the points on the arm that are being targeted. They're pretty near certain pressure points. I wonder what prolonged tapping of these points would do.

So the future is here, it'll be taking your picture and be worn on you.

Oh damn it all anyways.

I list quite near the top of my feeling crappy top ten that people who have Iphones just because they're 'cool' piss me off. Sure enough in the the little ad space on this blog there's an ad for downloading comics directly to your Iphone. Google Adsense is making fun of me, I just know it.

This is not the future I bloody well ordered. MY future was supposed to have robots and flying cars and people colonizing Mars. Instead I got slapped by the information age where it seems all the innovative stuff is happening to people's cell phones. Those things have more processing power than the computers that got man to the moon.

Look, I get it. There are people out there that run their lives and businesses on the move. They need gadgets like the Iphone to make themselves productive and competitive in their fields. They don't need it to makes noises like a lightsabre or the tons of other useless crap those things do.

It's all about information now. Hell, now we've got Twitter which you can let people know what you are doing at any time. Well, if I'm updating my Twitter account then I must be at my computer, so that would make for a bunch of really boring posts. And yes, I'm aware that with some of the Fancy-Dan doo-hickeys I was just talking about you can update your Twitter from anywhere. Here's my problem with Twitter and it's nothing against anyone who actually has it, and in this world of networking I'll probably end up getting it myself just to attempt to keep up: if I'm doing something, I probably don't have time to stop and let the intarwub know about it. Trust me, if it's interesting I'll let the intarwub know all about later, in detail.

I am sorely tempted to start a twitter account and have it be entirely fictitious. In fact: expect that to happen in June.

I know now what I must do. I must conquer the future. Than we shall colonize Mars.

Find me an 'app' for Mars colonization, I freakin' dare ya!