Chimu doesn’t seem appropriately thankful.

 Bat-Santa aside, Bats has been an expert gift-giver for many years.   From Batman 531, part 2 of “The Deadman Connection” (Moench/Jones):

From the Submitted Without Comment Dept., no. 2

No comment.

It’s Shecky’s fault. I’m sure of it!

Sometimes I come across something that feels like I could have written it.  To wit, take this blog, which basically nails exactly how I feel about one of the most popular webcomics out there and actually provides some solid criticism of the problem with Kurtz’s recent work.  Notice that I’m emphasizing “recent,” because I feel that PvP’s slide into mediocrity has been a recent development.  It was good enough to get me hooked on it, but I’m staying on and reading out of inertia (and because I like Kurtz’s art well enough — it’s got a nice, solid line and is a lot of fun when he stretches himself), not because I’m actually enjoying myself day in and day out.

Something to think about.

This came over Warren Ellis’s badsignal mailing list this morning:

We’re way, way past  the point where the internet can be considered “not the real world.”  If  I’m carrying it around in my pocket, it’s pretty real.  It’s becoming,  and become, so tightly tied into our lives that it can no longer really be  dismissed as either “virtual” or “without consequences.”  Treating  the net as some spooky fog separate from the real world is just going to  exacerbate the difficulties in any attempt to reach out to  anyone.

I’d say that the moment the internet started to be used as a medium for the replacement of real-world business and services (amazon.com, e-Bay, etc.), it became real.  Or can we tell the mom-and-pop bookstores that can’t compete with the deep discounts at amazon or even Barnes and Noble and Borders, which have both had to adjust their business models to some degree to compete with amazon, that the internet is not a real place and that there aren’t any consequences? 

Yes, it becomes slightly murkier in terms of how we interact with people and how we frame those interactions, but sometimes I think the whole “the internet isn’t the real world” bit is almost a luddite-like reaction to something that’s fundamentally changed the way we interact with people in the world and the friction that creates with how we interact with people in our neighborhoods and offices and schools, etc.

From the Submitted Without Comment Dept.

No comment. (via Blog@Newsarama)

Not everyone deserves a pet, and the rich are very different from you and me.

Case in point:

Salem’s Animal Control Officer Kelly Demers took custody of the dogs. There were 22 dogs in the vehicle, and three of them were deceased. Officials said that there were no signs of abuse to the animals. Moolic will be allowed to retrieve four of the dogs immediately.

Taking twenty-two dogs to Maine in a van doesn’t qualify as abuse?  Then again, had she put the dogs in a carrier on the roof of her van, she could run for president.  (I was going to make a joke about four dogs and a Tata Nano, but I really don’t have the heart.)

Fell #9 — validation.

And, lo and behold, what’s in the backmatter of Fell #9? This script excerpt —

And let’s try something. Knock two panels together.

Draw the door, as normal, yes? Now sketch in, over it, a really simple stick figure, which is Fell’s estimation of the guy behind the door…

There’s more in the book, but it was just nice to get at what Ellis and Templesmith were doing all at once. It’s a great issue, by the way.

Pull List Inventory, January 2008

It’s Wednesday, so that means it’s new comic day.  And it’s mid-January, which means it’s time to inventory my pull list — both to think about what I’m reading and to think about what I won’t be reading soon.

Avatar — Black Summer (mini), Doktor Sleepless

Dark Horse — Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (mini)

DC — Batman, Batman and the Outsiders, Booster Gold, Brave and the Bold, Checkmate, Countdown, Countdown to Adventure (mini), Countdown to Mystery (mini), Death of the New Gods (mini), Detective Comics, Gotham Underground (mini), Green Arrow/Black Canary, Justice League of America, Justice Society of America, Legion of Super-Heroes, Nightwing, Robin, Salvation Run (mini), Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters (mini)

Image — Casanova, Fell

Marvel — Captain America, Immortal Iron Fist, Mighty Avengers, New Avengers, Punisher War Journal

My first thought is that this is far too many comics.  My second thought is “thank God most of them are mini-series that are ending soon.”  Still, there must be a culling.

Titles that I won’t remove are pretty easy to peg — the Bat family titles, the four big team books (Legion is new, so that’s kind of a trial), and the two Image books.  I’m not pulling out of the minis, as most all of the minis are just about done.  That said, save Final Crisis and its two side series and the main books for Secret Invasion, I think I’m done with the minis for a while.  They’re exhausting.  Countdown will stay, but that’s it for weekly titles.

So let’s look at the titles that are left.  Here’s a list, and then I’m going to take them individually — Doktor Sleepless (Avatar), Booster Gold, Brave and the Bold, Checkmate, Green Arrow/Black Canary, Legion of Super-Heroes (DC), Captain America, Immortal Iron Fist, and Punisher War Journal (Marvel).  That’s a good handful of books, and I want to cut at least two.

• Doktor Sleepless (Avatar) — I picked this one up mostly because it was a chance to be at ground level for a Warren Ellis ongoing, and the ideas seemed fresh and interesting.  (I have not read Transmetropolitan, and the scuttlebutt in the comic community is that Ellis did this before with that book, but I haven’t read it, so it’s fresh and interesting to me.)  That said, issue #4 left me kind of disappointed, as I’m still trying to figure out what the story is and where it’s going.  Stylistically, it’s fantastic, and the world Ellis has put together sings, but the actual meat of the book, the actual story, seems to be lacking so far, and the time lapse between issues isn’t helping any.  I think I’m going to keep this one for now, pending a re-read of the first four and what happens in the next issue, but I can’t help but think that I could drop this and not miss it at all.
• Booster Gold — Geoff Johns really does great work here, and I’ve enjoyed every single issue immensely.  It’s not really a serious candidate for cutting at all.  The same is true for Captain America, which outclasses both of the solo Marvel books I’m reading by a great, vast distance, and Checkmate, which does the super/spy cross wonderfully (plus, I need to get my Great Ten fix somewhere, and August-General-in-Iron’s the only game in town right now).  So keep and keep and keep.
• Brave and the Bold — It’s pretty and the stories are fun, and I like how it encompasses the entire DCU while still being self-contained.  That said, I forgot I was reading it when I wrote this list, and the last issue with Dial H for Hero, the Blackhawks, and the rest was pretty bizarre (and, now that I think of it, incomprehensible).  If I’m going to keep Booster, which does a lot of the same things well, then I’m going to drop this one.
• Green Arrow/Black Canary — It’s surprisingly well written for Winick, and Chiang’s art is stunning.  I won’t hesitate to drop this later, if it falters and/or Chiang stops drawing it, but for now, it’s a keeper.
• Legion of Super-Heroes — I’ve read one issue and liked it, so I’ll keep on through the first arc and re-evaluate then.  Manapaul’s art is brilliant, and Shooter’s scripts read like the old Claremont/Byrne Uncanny X-Men.  This is a good thing.
• This leaves me with the two Fractions, Immortal Iron Fist and Punisher War Journal, which are inextricably linked for me.  I started reading them at the same time solely because of Fraction’s Casanova, which continues to astound me with it’s craziness, but I’ve found over the last year that my affection for both titles is dropping.  Iron Fist feels like it’s going in circles, and I’ve found the latest storyline completely confusing.  Punisher War Journal features a character that I loathe (Punisher) and has lost the quirky humor of the first few issues and their charming details, such as the attack on Punisher by a group of little Iron Man robots, which was visually fun (and far more compelling than the similar event in Mighty Avengers involving Ultron).  I haven’t looked forward to either book in a few months, and I can’t say that I’m looking forward to them now, either.  Drop and drop.

To recap, that brings us to the following (shaky titles in italics):

Avatar — Black Summer (mini), Doktor Sleepless

Dark Horse — Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (mini)

DC — Batman, Batman and the Outsiders, Booster Gold, Brave and the Bold, Checkmate, Countdown, Countdown to Adventure (mini), Countdown to Mystery (mini), Death of the New Gods (mini), Detective Comics, Gotham Underground (mini), Green Arrow/Black Canary, Justice League of America, Justice Society of America, Legion of Super-Heroes, Nightwing, Robin, Salvation Run (mini), Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters (mini)

Image — Casanova, Fell

Marvel — Captain America, Immortal Iron Fist, Mighty Avengers, New Avengers, Punisher War Journal

Well, it’s a start at least.

Sports fans are like a school in July.

Maybe I’m a bit sensitive to this, as I’m not at all a Patriots fan, but it seems to me that Bob Kraft is both missing the point and perhaps answering another question and rather defensively at that (boldface mine).

Patriots owner Robert Kraft said the team will honor 14-year-old Anna Grant before Sunday’s game. Grant, a high school freshman from Stratham, N.H., was the team’s representative in a Punt, Pass & Kick competition in her age group, and when she was introduced at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis before the fourth quarter Sunday, she was the only one booed. “Why should a champion be booed?” Kraft said. “She won an intensive competition. She’s supposed to be honored. We will recognize her as the winner on the field. Our fans will know.” Grant said, “It really didn’t bother me at all. People at the game came up to me afterward and said, ‘It’s not you. It’s your jersey.’ “

To hell with champions, the real issue here is that a 14-year-old girl was booed for being in the Punt, Pass & Kick competition.  That strikes me as more than a little classless (and embarrassing for the Indy fans).  That said, I have no doubt that if the situation were reversed and it was a kid wearing a Colts jersey being introduced at a Pats game that there would be the same result — it’s not that Indianapolis fans or New England fans have no class; it’s that sports fans in general have no class.

As for Mr Kraft, it seems like he might be a bit sensitive about his team’s status as the premier villains of the NFL — I know that Belichick doesn’t care, and I doubt that any of the current players care, but Kraft has always had a good public profile as an NFL owner and the Pats have always had a culture that reflected favorably on him.  He seems a little defensive in this quote, and I’m more than willing to frame it in the context of the changing perception of his team among the public at large. 

Academic Olympics

I was never any good at skiing.