Marcellas Wallace:
I think you are gonna find, when this shit is over … I think you're gonna find yourself one smiling motherfucker. The thing is, Bicks, right now, you've got flavour. But painful as it may be, flavour don't last. And your days are just about over. Now, that's a hard motherfucking fact of life. But it's a fact of life your ass is gonna have to get realistic about. See, this business is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers. Motherfuckers who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does. If you mean it gets better with age, it don't. Besides, Bicks, how many bites you think you got left in you anyway? Two? Pickles don't have an "old timer's league". You came close, but you never tasted it, and if you were gonna taste it, you would have tasted it before now.
Bicks:
There's a lotta mothaf*cking salt, in a mothaf*cking pickle.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Six sentence comic book reviews
It’s a well known fact that the Internet produces 67 pounds of unadulterated crap daily.
Which, when you think about it, is actually a lot less than you’d expect.
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls of all ages….I bring you, six sentence comic book reviews.
Let’s do this.
Trinity #5
Walking Dead #50
Batman #678
Rann\Thanagar: Holy War #3
Astonishing X-Men #25
Dark Tower: The Long Road Home #5
Rann\Thanagar: Holy War #3
Droppity, drop, drop-drop, drop-drop-drop. Sorry but this title just isn’t doing it for me anymore. I only started reading it because it combined many of the more interesting spaced-based series and miniseries (Adam Strange, Mystery in Space, 52) from the past few years. But after realizing it was a chore to have to sit down and actually read this issue I knew it was time to cut the cord. Jim Starlin’s story is so-so and Ron Lim’s art is…passable. But reading the space adventures of DC’s C-list heroes just shouldn’t be this dull.
Batman #678
I’m loving Morrison’s Batman because it’s so against formula. I generally wouldn’t touch a solo Bat-title for love or money. He’s grim, gritty and solves crime, I get it already. But Morrison’s Silver Age labyrinthine mind games and disjointed storytelling techniques are so different from standard spandex superhero stories that they force me to raise my game as a reader and I dig that. In this issue the Club of Villains continue their assault on Bats and company by shooting him up with weapons grade crystal meth and dumping him on the streets. It’s an interesting little story that is regrettably hamstrung by the lack of a big name artist.
Astonishing X-Men #25
Where Morrison tends to enslave characters to the needs of his ‘big story idea’ Ellis takes a different tack, placing the ‘big story idea’ firmly in the background and focusing on how the threat impacts a story’s characters and their relationships. That’s what this issue of CSI: San Francisco is all about. The X-Men are asked to consult on the death of a suspected mutant. But all that really happens is that Ellis spends the entire issue introducing his version of the X-men lineup and (re)establishing their relationships with each other. Simone Bianchi’s art isn’t really my thing. I think he makes an interesting cover artist but his interior work is flat and generally unappealing to me.
Walking Dead #50
A fantastically well written epic character piece set in the background of a zombie apocalypse, what’s not to like? This issue was a fantastic coda, dealing with Carl’s repressed emotions and inner turmoil stemming from recent WD events. For a young boy living in a world where death is an everyday fact of life we’re shown that almost anything can become commonplace, even zombies. Robert Kirkman has done an excellent job giving readers a chance to adjust to the new status quo and allow his characters a similar opportunity to mature and grow. I strongly suspect that with the next issue we’ll see the titles remaining disparate characters, and possibly some new faces, begin to reappear. I can’t wait.
Now go away and leave an old man in peace. You’ve got what you wanted from me you dirty bastards.
Which, when you think about it, is actually a lot less than you’d expect.
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls of all ages….I bring you, six sentence comic book reviews.
Let’s do this.
Trinity #5
Walking Dead #50
Batman #678
Rann\Thanagar: Holy War #3
Astonishing X-Men #25
Dark Tower: The Long Road Home #5
Rann\Thanagar: Holy War #3
Droppity, drop, drop-drop, drop-drop-drop. Sorry but this title just isn’t doing it for me anymore. I only started reading it because it combined many of the more interesting spaced-based series and miniseries (Adam Strange, Mystery in Space, 52) from the past few years. But after realizing it was a chore to have to sit down and actually read this issue I knew it was time to cut the cord. Jim Starlin’s story is so-so and Ron Lim’s art is…passable. But reading the space adventures of DC’s C-list heroes just shouldn’t be this dull.
Batman #678
I’m loving Morrison’s Batman because it’s so against formula. I generally wouldn’t touch a solo Bat-title for love or money. He’s grim, gritty and solves crime, I get it already. But Morrison’s Silver Age labyrinthine mind games and disjointed storytelling techniques are so different from standard spandex superhero stories that they force me to raise my game as a reader and I dig that. In this issue the Club of Villains continue their assault on Bats and company by shooting him up with weapons grade crystal meth and dumping him on the streets. It’s an interesting little story that is regrettably hamstrung by the lack of a big name artist.
Astonishing X-Men #25
Where Morrison tends to enslave characters to the needs of his ‘big story idea’ Ellis takes a different tack, placing the ‘big story idea’ firmly in the background and focusing on how the threat impacts a story’s characters and their relationships. That’s what this issue of CSI: San Francisco is all about. The X-Men are asked to consult on the death of a suspected mutant. But all that really happens is that Ellis spends the entire issue introducing his version of the X-men lineup and (re)establishing their relationships with each other. Simone Bianchi’s art isn’t really my thing. I think he makes an interesting cover artist but his interior work is flat and generally unappealing to me.
Walking Dead #50
A fantastically well written epic character piece set in the background of a zombie apocalypse, what’s not to like? This issue was a fantastic coda, dealing with Carl’s repressed emotions and inner turmoil stemming from recent WD events. For a young boy living in a world where death is an everyday fact of life we’re shown that almost anything can become commonplace, even zombies. Robert Kirkman has done an excellent job giving readers a chance to adjust to the new status quo and allow his characters a similar opportunity to mature and grow. I strongly suspect that with the next issue we’ll see the titles remaining disparate characters, and possibly some new faces, begin to reappear. I can’t wait.
Now go away and leave an old man in peace. You’ve got what you wanted from me you dirty bastards.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Michael Turner 1971 - 2008
I always used to rip on Scott for liking Turner's work.
Now I'm just waiting to see how long it takes before the internet makes an extremely inapproriate remark about his passing.
Yes.
The internet.
Now I'm just waiting to see how long it takes before the internet makes an extremely inapproriate remark about his passing.
Yes.
The internet.
Consumer guilt
When I was nine we moved to Port.
We left the bustling metropolis of Whitby to hang out in the armpt of southern Ontario. My sisters were too young for the move to have much of an impact on their life. But I was just old enough that it meant turning my entire world upside down. It meant giving up the street where I, and all my friends, lived for a place where the nearest person my age was fifteen minutes away by car. Suddenly I was being bussed two towns over just to get to school.
Since then, one of my better defined life goals has been leaving that small town for something more developed But after four years of school at York and living in some of the shittier neighbourhoods that T.O. had to offer I found myself changing my mind.
I was wishing for the solitude and the wide open spaces of the town that I had left behind.
On the weekend I went back to Port for my brother-in-law's birthday party. I'm unhappy to see how much the small town of my youth is becoming just another part of the urban landscape of my adulthood.
Things are changing.
They're plowing under all the farmer's fields in Port for new houses, new strip malls and new Tim Horton's franchises. In the world of 130$ a barrel oil, increasing food prices and provincial economic uncertainty this unrestrained development just seems like lunacy.
Its just more evidence that despite the changing nature of the world around us some people continue to try and live as if their choices don't have any consequences.
Part of the reason I've having this crisis of conscience is that I really feel like I am one of these greedy capitalists. Thanks to a pair of wedding showers we've ended up replacing a lot of perfectly serviceable household items for higher-end versions of the same (dishes, appliances etc). S and I have been living together a long time so we're not like some couples who need all these things to start a new life together. But people want to have showers for us nonetheless and they expect us to have a gift registry so they know what to get us.
It just feels so wasteful. We don't really need any of these things, we're running out of room to store it all properly and suddenly I feel like I'm part of the problem, not the solution.
All of a sudden my comic book collection looks more like an unessecary extravagance than an amusing hobby.
I really don't fit in with city life anymore. But in order to make a decent living I can't afford to be to far away from it either.
S and I have talked about where we'd go in a couple years time when we move. We both would like to get as far away from the city as we can, but with our jobs, I think the best we can realistically hope for is Ajax/Pickering.
Which hardly fills me with hope.
I miss green space. I miss peace and quiet. And I'm jealous that my sisters, who've chosen to stay close to Port, have seen the value in all of the above and are clearly smarter than me.
We left the bustling metropolis of Whitby to hang out in the armpt of southern Ontario. My sisters were too young for the move to have much of an impact on their life. But I was just old enough that it meant turning my entire world upside down. It meant giving up the street where I, and all my friends, lived for a place where the nearest person my age was fifteen minutes away by car. Suddenly I was being bussed two towns over just to get to school.
Since then, one of my better defined life goals has been leaving that small town for something more developed But after four years of school at York and living in some of the shittier neighbourhoods that T.O. had to offer I found myself changing my mind.
I was wishing for the solitude and the wide open spaces of the town that I had left behind.
On the weekend I went back to Port for my brother-in-law's birthday party. I'm unhappy to see how much the small town of my youth is becoming just another part of the urban landscape of my adulthood.
Things are changing.
They're plowing under all the farmer's fields in Port for new houses, new strip malls and new Tim Horton's franchises. In the world of 130$ a barrel oil, increasing food prices and provincial economic uncertainty this unrestrained development just seems like lunacy.
Its just more evidence that despite the changing nature of the world around us some people continue to try and live as if their choices don't have any consequences.
Part of the reason I've having this crisis of conscience is that I really feel like I am one of these greedy capitalists. Thanks to a pair of wedding showers we've ended up replacing a lot of perfectly serviceable household items for higher-end versions of the same (dishes, appliances etc). S and I have been living together a long time so we're not like some couples who need all these things to start a new life together. But people want to have showers for us nonetheless and they expect us to have a gift registry so they know what to get us.
It just feels so wasteful. We don't really need any of these things, we're running out of room to store it all properly and suddenly I feel like I'm part of the problem, not the solution.
All of a sudden my comic book collection looks more like an unessecary extravagance than an amusing hobby.
I really don't fit in with city life anymore. But in order to make a decent living I can't afford to be to far away from it either.
S and I have talked about where we'd go in a couple years time when we move. We both would like to get as far away from the city as we can, but with our jobs, I think the best we can realistically hope for is Ajax/Pickering.
Which hardly fills me with hope.
I miss green space. I miss peace and quiet. And I'm jealous that my sisters, who've chosen to stay close to Port, have seen the value in all of the above and are clearly smarter than me.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Feel free to submit your own.
Romeo:
But soft, what light through yonder pickle breaks?
It is the east, and Bicks is the sun.
Arise, fair Bicks, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with blandness.
That thou, her maid, art far more tasty than she.
Juliet:
It hath been said that there art a lot of salt in yon pickle
But soft, what light through yonder pickle breaks?
It is the east, and Bicks is the sun.
Arise, fair Bicks, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with blandness.
That thou, her maid, art far more tasty than she.
Juliet:
It hath been said that there art a lot of salt in yon pickle
Six sentence comic book reviews
Figures.
On my first day without my school time-suck I get sick and have to spend the whole thing sacked out on the downstairs couch. Thank God for the Chronicles of Riddick and a girlfriend unafraid to brave the halls of the Silver Snail, where the only female presence is behind the cash register. Seriously, she went in there once in a Wonder Woman T-shirt and that just gave men an excuse to stare at her chest.
But I digress.
This week, the DayQuil infused ramblings of a diseased germ bag, where I promise to limit my reviews of your favourite titles to exactly six sentences.
No more.
No less.
Because that’s just how we role……in short six sentence increments.
Final Crisis #2
It’s impossible to credibly summarize the plot of any Grant Morrison work in just six sentences, much less review the entire issue. But I’ve never been one to let quality stand in the way of meaningless promise. Reading FC is like jumping into your time machine and reading the first forty odd issues of JLA all over again, there’s always hints at a larger evil just off page. This time it’s the Machiavellian machinations of an Earth bound Dark Side and co. I like the idea of making Kirby’s biggest DC creations more accessible to the DC Universe at large. It takes a wonderfully constructed epic mythology, which was previously accessible to only the most powerful of off-world traveling heroes, and transplants it into an urban here-and-now environment which will allow it to interact with just about any hero DC has on the books.
No Hero #0
The creative team behind Black Summer (Warren Ellis, Juan Jose Ryp) return for another look at the personal, political and social repercussions of self made super hero teams let loose in the real world. The series will follow a chemically enhanced 60’s era super-team as they metamorphasize from a bunch of young street-wise idealists, known as the Levellers, into the institutionalized government style group, The Front Line. The driving question behind this title is “How badly do you want to be a superhero?” The idea being that regular people are willing to engage in all sorts of ethically suspect activities and behaviour if it means having an opportunity to grab that brass ring. Parallels can quickly and easily be drawn between these heroes and high paid sports celebrity-types. With issue 0 Ellis has done an admirable job of laying the foundation for an interesting Legacy-hero style story and I look forward to seeing where he takes it.
Green Lantern #32
Finally, a secret origins issue that doesn’t concern itself with re-telling information the reader likely already knows verbatim. In this issue Hector Hammond’s supervillian back-story gets ret-conned. No longer does he gain his enormous intellect and misshapen head from deliberately exposing himself to a mysterious meteor. Instead Hammond is now the victim of an explosion from within Abin Sur’s downed ship. This explosion exposes him to some sort of gas\radiation and he begins to develop the telepathy and the over-sized cranium we come to associate with the character. Coupled with some additional ‘Origin of the Red Lanterns material,’ this is the first time this particular plot-arc has gotten interesting.
Thunderbolts #121
So long Warren, we hardly knew ye. And with Ellis’ swan song on this title I can officially move Thunderbolts into my drop pile. The ‘bolts continue to fight each other, under the influence of some powerful psychics who’s motives are never really explained. After the team manages to neutralize each other into unconsciousness, Bullseye pulls a Deux Ex Machina and shows up to finish off the offending telepaths. An anti-climatic end to a title that was consistently a step or two above average. Rather than impose any lasting change or growth upon the team Ellis returns everything to status quo by writing off the recent throw down as the fault of the powerful psychics.
Ultimate Spider-man #123
I’ve noticed recently that the Ultimate titles have taken a step backwards in terms of the physical quality of the comic book. Gone is the heavy card stock covers and in its place is the familiar glossy pages that I see on every other title I buy. I guess with the news that the Ultimate line is being folded\canceled means Marvel no longer has to splash out on fancy paper. Which is unfortunate. Ultimate Spider-man is the only Spider-title I’ve bothered to keep reading. Bendis, Bagley and now Immonen have managed to take a hero I’d gotten slightly bored with and made him new and interesting again, without having to resort to magically dissolving his marriage.
That’s it for me. Now get off my lawn.
On my first day without my school time-suck I get sick and have to spend the whole thing sacked out on the downstairs couch. Thank God for the Chronicles of Riddick and a girlfriend unafraid to brave the halls of the Silver Snail, where the only female presence is behind the cash register. Seriously, she went in there once in a Wonder Woman T-shirt and that just gave men an excuse to stare at her chest.
But I digress.
This week, the DayQuil infused ramblings of a diseased germ bag, where I promise to limit my reviews of your favourite titles to exactly six sentences.
No more.
No less.
Because that’s just how we role……in short six sentence increments.
Final Crisis #2
It’s impossible to credibly summarize the plot of any Grant Morrison work in just six sentences, much less review the entire issue. But I’ve never been one to let quality stand in the way of meaningless promise. Reading FC is like jumping into your time machine and reading the first forty odd issues of JLA all over again, there’s always hints at a larger evil just off page. This time it’s the Machiavellian machinations of an Earth bound Dark Side and co. I like the idea of making Kirby’s biggest DC creations more accessible to the DC Universe at large. It takes a wonderfully constructed epic mythology, which was previously accessible to only the most powerful of off-world traveling heroes, and transplants it into an urban here-and-now environment which will allow it to interact with just about any hero DC has on the books.
No Hero #0
The creative team behind Black Summer (Warren Ellis, Juan Jose Ryp) return for another look at the personal, political and social repercussions of self made super hero teams let loose in the real world. The series will follow a chemically enhanced 60’s era super-team as they metamorphasize from a bunch of young street-wise idealists, known as the Levellers, into the institutionalized government style group, The Front Line. The driving question behind this title is “How badly do you want to be a superhero?” The idea being that regular people are willing to engage in all sorts of ethically suspect activities and behaviour if it means having an opportunity to grab that brass ring. Parallels can quickly and easily be drawn between these heroes and high paid sports celebrity-types. With issue 0 Ellis has done an admirable job of laying the foundation for an interesting Legacy-hero style story and I look forward to seeing where he takes it.
Green Lantern #32
Finally, a secret origins issue that doesn’t concern itself with re-telling information the reader likely already knows verbatim. In this issue Hector Hammond’s supervillian back-story gets ret-conned. No longer does he gain his enormous intellect and misshapen head from deliberately exposing himself to a mysterious meteor. Instead Hammond is now the victim of an explosion from within Abin Sur’s downed ship. This explosion exposes him to some sort of gas\radiation and he begins to develop the telepathy and the over-sized cranium we come to associate with the character. Coupled with some additional ‘Origin of the Red Lanterns material,’ this is the first time this particular plot-arc has gotten interesting.
Thunderbolts #121
So long Warren, we hardly knew ye. And with Ellis’ swan song on this title I can officially move Thunderbolts into my drop pile. The ‘bolts continue to fight each other, under the influence of some powerful psychics who’s motives are never really explained. After the team manages to neutralize each other into unconsciousness, Bullseye pulls a Deux Ex Machina and shows up to finish off the offending telepaths. An anti-climatic end to a title that was consistently a step or two above average. Rather than impose any lasting change or growth upon the team Ellis returns everything to status quo by writing off the recent throw down as the fault of the powerful psychics.
Ultimate Spider-man #123
I’ve noticed recently that the Ultimate titles have taken a step backwards in terms of the physical quality of the comic book. Gone is the heavy card stock covers and in its place is the familiar glossy pages that I see on every other title I buy. I guess with the news that the Ultimate line is being folded\canceled means Marvel no longer has to splash out on fancy paper. Which is unfortunate. Ultimate Spider-man is the only Spider-title I’ve bothered to keep reading. Bendis, Bagley and now Immonen have managed to take a hero I’d gotten slightly bored with and made him new and interesting again, without having to resort to magically dissolving his marriage.
That’s it for me. Now get off my lawn.
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