Comics for Crazies

I want the day that I die to be a good day.
I want my children to be extraordinary.
I want to know my job is done.
When the future opens itself to them,
And it shines bright just like the sun.

I want the day that I die to be a good day.
I want people to sit and drink to me,
But save the good scotch for my friends.
Let it be a day of celebration
That has nothing to do with my end.

I want the day that I die to be a good day.
I want my doodles to be worth millions.
I want my writings to be considered wise.
The ramblings and rantings of my mad self
Will be philosophy is the future's eyes.

I want the day that I die to be a good day.
My stories will all become legends.
Students will learn of them in school.
And when they go to make the movie
The fanboys wills scream like fools.

I want the day that I die to be a good day.
It'll be in spectacular fashion.
I'll go with tyrants at my feet.
One last hurrah, or sharp final words
To make my victory complete.

I want the day that I die to be a good day.
The start of something new so the bad can drift away.

It's Sunday, September 5, 2010 and we're back to business. Despite the fact that a butterflies wing beats in Africa can somehow knock out my internet connection, Hurricane Earl did absolutely nothing but water my lawn. So I do feel a little stupid for not posting up on Friday. But if I'm not doing something stupid then I'm probably asleep. Most likely drooling stupidly.

COMIX!!

R.E.B.E.L.S. #20 was my read of the week. "Sons of Brainiac" has been a lot of fun and this issue doesn't disappoint. Vril Dox calls on one for his former teammates to help stop his 'father', Brainiac, from taking over the planet Colu. Lobo is front and center doing what he does best: smarting off and taking on impossible opponents. While Lobo takes on an insanely powerful artificial intelligence created out of a neutron star, Vril and his estranged son take the fight to Brainiac in hopes to capturing him or at least getting him away from Colu.

This issue will probably get a little sales spike from Lobo's appearance. The character has a pretty rabid fanbase, even though his popularity since the 90s has waned a bit. Bedard again makes this story very continuity friendly. This storyline spins directly out the "War for New Krypton" story over in the Superman titles. Lobo has a red power ring which he received somewhere in all the "Blackest Night" chaos. At the same time this book stands perfectly on its own not requiring the reader to dig through a ton of back issues of other books just to keep up with what's going on. In fact a person could really jump into this issue without reading any of the previous ones. It tips its hat to continuity, but remains perfectly accessible to new readers.

On over to SECRET SIX #25 where we're getting the set up to a battle between two Secret Sixes. The team got split in over recent events in the story and while a good chunk of the team has left remaining members, Bane and Jeanette, reformed the team. Gail Simone pulls from the bad guys from her run on THE ALL-NEW ATOM as well as a couple of other notables to round out the team. The break away members from the original line-up seem to have gotten a sixth member and it looks like the two groups will be going head-to-head soon. This is a fun book despite all the horrible stuff that goes on in it. I love Giganta when Simone writes her, and am wondering if she still has her tongue piercing. I'm also wondering what is going to become of the team once the smoke clears on this on. The cast on this book has changed a bit since days of VILLAINS UNITED so I'm wondering who is going to be on the team after all this is over.

HELLBOY: THE STORM #3 brought that story to close, however it looks like its going to lead us directly into a new story "The Fury". The way this ended, I'm a bit surprised that they split the stories up like this since its obviously meant to go together. Mignola is tying together a lot of different myths in this one, but it works. The thing with Hellboy is that it reads better when its collected. While this issue was perfectly fine there's a lot of little things that are touched upon from earlier issues that make me wish i had those in front of me when I'm reading the book.

Finishing off with BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: SEASON EIGHT #36 which has me wondering why I'm still reading this book. While characters in the Buffy-verse are known to change and evolve over time there was a constant theme to show, and that was adventure horror. The book seems to venture off into weird science fiction and this issue is smack in the face example. Buffy and can fly now and has super powers. Angel is in the book and can fly and has similar powers. There's talk of them being chosen ones. They had sex and instead of Angel turning evil again they created a universe, which is probably the best advert for condoms I've ever seen. Spike shows up in his airship crewed by weird bug creatures. Yeesh. I like weird. Sometimes I like weird for the weird's sake. But all these things have been building up through the entire run of the comic and it doesn't feel like a payoff, but more of a whiskey tango foxtrot.

THE CRAZIES!!!

Well, it's certainly been an interesting week for crazy people. We've got one nutty woman making a tape in which she threatens conservative radio talk show hosts. And in an even more spectacular display of lunacy a guy stormed the Discovery Channel building and took hostages. My world is completely topsy-turvy right now. Its supposed to be the Right Wing that are a bunch of militant nutters. The Left are supposed to be a bunch of tree-hugging pussies. What the hell is going on here?

As much as I love making fun of hardcore liberals, I can't use these two examples as ammunition. These are both cases in which the people involved are clearly off their nuts. We have two people, clearly kooks, that just glommed onto movements on the left. One got way too caught up in the media sparring between conservatives and liberals, which has gotten pretty passionate and ridiculous over the last decade, chose a side and got vicious over it. The other kook watched Al Gore's propaganda piece and made a one person crusade to save the planet and targeted the Discovery Channel in his quest. So yeah, both are loons which probably had a lot of people on the left facepalming.

There's a cult of politics in the air. People follow causes and political ideas with the same zeal as religions. And as we see insane religious zealotry from people who really shouldn't go off their medication, we're seeing this same kooky behavior for those following political or environmental causes. This is the sort of stuff that morons think the Tea Party do, but they really don't. People practically expect this sort of insane behavior now. There's been a few rumors floating about that the BP oil spill, that pipe line busting and the fire this week could possibly be the work of eco-terrorists. Now, this sound like conspiracy theory nonsense, but in a world were an guy straps a homemade bomb to himself and storms the Discovery Channel building because he's ticked off at Kate Plus 8 it almost sounds plausible.

Some people are hard line to the point of stupidity. A commentor on Yahoo about the Discovery Channel situation wrote it off as being "yet another right-wing, teabagger idiot". This person was so blind in his hatred of conservatives that he did not realize that the person involved was a lunatic environmentalist.

Really both sides need to work together to get things working again. The liberals need to realize that their economic ideas don't work at all, and the conservatives need to listen to the liberals about social and environmental issues just to keep things in perspective. Right now, one side has too much power and is trying to force an agenda on the population whether they like it or not. That's leading to a lot of anger. People are angry at policies being inflicted on them. Others are angry that people are angry at the policies.

We need balance. Until then. Keep an eye out for the Crazies.

WHAT A WOMAN WANTS

Driving home from the park it seems Missus Nozz had had enough.

"Have you seen the previews for that new Resident Evil movie? What is up with every other movie being 3D?" She snapped much to my surprise. "It used to be that every once in while there would be a movie in 3D, now its all the time. Why don't they just skip it?"

I wanted to chime in, but she didn't give me the chance.

"I want the stuff to just jump out of the TV! I want to swordfight something! Its been years since Star Trek: The Next Generation!"

"Not to mention Star Wars."

"EXACTLY!! And that was a long time ago! I want to fight a hologram!" She uttered in grim determination. "You want your flying car. I want holograms!"

Gotta say, didn't see that one comin'.

MUSIC!!

OK, no more music to torment people, but we'll still with some They Might Be Giants.



Alright, things are back on track. Off in the side links you'll find one to my Buzz which will let you check out a little super villain tourney that kicks off today. If you have Gmail you can get in on it as well.

See y'all Wednesday. Don't forget to build that little birdhouse in your soul.

In Space You Could Hear Black Canary Scream

Criminitly, it's Sunday, August 8, 2010, and I dreamed I lost three followers last night. That's the sort of dream that can spur you to action. that's the sort of dream that makes a blogger bound out of bed ready to attack a keyboard ready to prove his e-worth to the e-world!

However, I had just washed the bedsheets last night and sleeping in nice, freshly cleaned sheets kept me in about an hours longer than usual.

Blame the Snuggle Bear.

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!!

When you're a kid and a sci-fi nerd you look to future and think about what its going to be like with people living out in space. The possibility of people colonizing other planets in your lifetime is a dream you hope to see realized. It certainly was for me. When I was a kid we had movies and about the future and that future was now. We were supposed to be making alien contact this year if we're to believe Hollywood's timetable. Of course there are people who think they've already been making contact with us and the truth is out there. Somewhere.

Last Thursday, The Mike and Bob Show spoke with Buzz Aldrin. The interview was alright, and it was obvious that Aldrin had his agenda to get out there, and that's fine. While the interview isn't the most fun one the guys have done (due to no fault of theirs) one very interesting thing was brought up.

Aldrin said one of the moons of Mars should be colonized by 2035. That's plenty to get my nerdy attention. One of the guys who landed on the moon said we should be heading to other planets and relatively soon. He spoke a bit of the new space race with China and India. He, of course, wants the United States to be at the forefront of space exploration and colonization. Now, I don't know if this is going to happen or not, especially with a Government that currently hasn't got a clue as to fixing the countries economy and making America as great as it once was, and worse, seems not to want to. But that's the great thing about the future: it allows us to dream. It gives us hope. Not bullshit hope from campaign speeches. Real hope, from real people who want to work to make their tomorrows and the tomorrows of world something really special.

Heading to Mars inside of 25 years. Plausible or not, it makes me excited.

NEW FIRST LADY OF THE DCU!!!

With Wonder Woman currently being occupied with having a writer on board who is busy crapping all over everything that makes the character great in an effort which seems to be to make fan realize how good they used to have it, someone has to step up and be the interim first lady of DC Comics. And that person is The Black Canary. Those of you doubting her qualifications clearly need to be educated, and that's why you've got guys like me around around. So why is Black Canary the new first lady of DC?

Black Canary could take down Captain America without breaking a nail.

Black Canary could make Superman stop walking around being a douche and make him go home to cook his wife dinner and give her a foot rub.

Black Canary could retcon herself to be either her mother or her daughter. Its her choice.

Black Canary could use 141 characters on Twitter.

Black Canary could restore Pluto's status as a planet while proving Triceratops did exist.

Black Canary could make Green Arrow cos-play as Hawkman.

Black Canary could roundhouse kick a hundred ninjas without getting a tear in her fishnets.

Black Canary could defrost all the women in the refrigerator and make Batman cook dinner.

Black Canary could out-Chuck Chuck Norris.

Black Canary could out-scream every opera singer and porn star put together.

Black Canary could win Survivor, So You Think you Can Dance, and Master Chef simultaneously.

Black Canary could get away with being neither black nor an actual canary without worry of fraud litigation.

Black canary could have her own movie if there as an actress awesome enough to play her properly.

Black Canary could crush her enemies, see them driven before her, and hear the lamentation of their fanboys.

Moral of the story: don't cross Black Canary because Black Canary could do a lot of things to you that you wouldn't like.

Any questions?

MUSIC!!

Wrapping up our week of Elvis Costello. Here's one of his big ones.



That's it for Sunday. Over in my link list I've got a link to my Google Buzz account to hit that up. I started another Tourney this morning and its got Giant Robots.

Who doesn't love Giant Robots?

Commies. That's who.

Don't be a Commie.

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!

Fighting over the future

If science fiction has taught me anything it's that sometime in the future a battle will be fought over who's going to run this here planet. No, I'm not talking about assaults from alien life forms, extra-dimensional overlords or sparkly vampires. I'm talking about humanity seeing who's is going to be in charge around here. See, in every sci-fi story I've ever been exposed to in any medium it's always one of two groups running the show: the government or the corporations.

So on one hand you have the business minded, profit driven groups in control of everything, or it's the a government that taken control of nearly every aspect of the population's lives. It's pretty much conservatism versus liberalism. Do the free markets when out with the winners of the game being whoever has the better product and therefore garners the loyalty of the masses, or is it the government whom we elect because we put them there to serve out best interests? What's really nifty is that the authors of the works no matter which side they come down on in this debate always write about the other side winning. It's always that little undertone of "you see! This is what'll happen if we let them win!"

Will we all work for the faceless corporation heads, whom invariable be hiding some secret that could bring the corporation to ruin?

Will we all be government drones in a totalitarian regime where a small but plucky cabal of freedom fighters will uncover the underhanded methods at which the masses were fooled into bringing them to power?

Is this starting to sound like a cable news network and not science fiction?

And the conservatives are thinking right now, "yeah it sounds like those left wing pussies at CNN!" while the liberals are thinking "hey that sounds like those right wing fascist nuts at Fox News."

And then there's the people rolling their eyes and laughing at both sides.

It filters down to even the most innocent science fiction. Look at poor George Jetson. Toiling away pushing buttons for ol' man Spacely just so he could sell his precious Sprockets. The mortal terror George felt regularly at the thought of his corporate master catching him taking a breath to relax from the frantic button pushing and firing him. How would he be able to confront Jane, Judy and Elroy once deemed inferior and useless by the the Kaisers of the Free Market. Would he be forever ruined and forced to sell Rosey the Robot for scrap parts? Would Cosmo Cogs perhaps look past his years of loyalty to Spacely and hire him?

Then we go over to the more bitter sides of science fiction like the movie Equilibrium in which we see a government run society that's gone so far as to outlaw emotions. They determined that human emotion was the cause of crime, violence and wars so they got rid of such untidy things like art, literature and anything pretty. They also doped the population so they would feel anything.

On paper, Communism works. It should, Marx had enough time to work the bugs out of his manifesto as he was crashing with his friends and being a lazy do-nothing. Hell, this clown was so lazy he didn't even finish writing his manifesto. Here we had a guy who just wanted the government to take care of him. He'd be on welfare today and probably quite content. He probably didn't bank on politicians being... well... politicians.

On paper, Capitalism works. You work hard and earn your living. If you have a trade, a craft or even just a really good idea that is valuable you are rewarded monetarily for it and can sustain yourself. But then greed comes into play, and people start getting the urge to break the rules to get ahead.

So, when will this future battle come to head? Well, it's been said that Democracies come to an end when the population figures out that they can vote for free stuff. I think of the idiot in Florida gushing over the President and asking him what he's going to do about getting him better benefits at McDonalds. I think of London and the fools in streets who lack the ability and knowledge to make a lasting and beneficial change in their own lives and throw tantrums making fools of themselves and doing nothing to help their cause. I think of an acquaintance of main debating the merits of Socialist healthcare and when I pointed out that the government does have healthcare plans for those who need it. She informed me they don't work. The government run healthcare plans don't work, so the solution is the turn the whole system over to the same government. I think I know who is winning.

The battle will not be decided by a giant catastrophic event. It will be determined by the laziness and lack of education of the masses. They don't show that in the sci-fi stories. It's not interesting.