An ESL expert once told me that she learned English through recipes. After the Fish Head in Brownies incident, I've decided that both Spanish and Baking are not for me. But sometimes it helps to think of things in terms of recipes.
Recipe for a Weekend of Reading Comics
Ingredients:
-free time
-free time
-no real desire to sleep
-complete sickness of playing Zelda emulator because I can't find the damn stupid ladder.
Steps:
-Make coffee 4,700 times.
-Make coffee 4,700 times.
-Get big stack of comics from the library.
So let's take a look at what I "did" this weekend:
Invincible vols. 3, 4 & 5.
This series kicks ass. It's like all the fun you expect from Superman, but without all the baggage like him working at the Daily Planet for some dumb reason, or him getting folksy wisdom from his Pa who is quick with a kind word and always has a pair of overalls handy.The best thing about these books, like most of Kirkman's stuff, is that it has momentum. When a big-name book like Batman changes its game, it's a whole big production. But things in Invincible change so fast that you won't be flipping through, deciding whether you give a shit.
Oh, and there's blood. Superman punches the shit out of people, but not much blood. Characters in Invincible seem almost full to bursting with blood that's just waiting to get punched out of their heads.
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Up next we've got Green Lantern: Blackest Night.This is probably my own fault, but whenever I get involved in a big DC crossover book, I don't know what the fuck is going on. Who are these people? Since when is Firestorm a combination between a black kid and an Asian girl who might be getting married? Not to get too far off track, but if you happen to be one part of a two-part superhero thing, where you combine with another person and occupy the same body, you should probably consider yourself a little beyond the point of marriage. I don't like sharing a twin bed, let alone lungs and shit.
I could use a little background, but the little page of info always starts with something like, "When Hal Jordan crashed an experimental jet.." but then the convoulded, confusing-as-hell last two years of his life are summed up in one sentence. Have you ever tried to write a sentence that explains that someone became a villian, saved the world when the sun almost died, died, came back as a different superhero, then turned back into himself? And that's the one dude. What about Flash? How many goddamn Flashes are there? Can't they just race and then pick the real Flash based on the winner?
The other thing about these DC crossovers is that the stakes are high, the end of the universe or not. And it's always not, but with an asterisk. Sort of like,
"We saved the world*"
*"world" meaning THIS world
or
"Batman is back from the dead*"
*but it's not really Batman, just his bones reanimated with none of his personality.
*but it's not really Batman, just his bones reanimated with none of his personality.
Anyway, if you're a hardcore DC fan, I guess maybe this would be exciting, what with all different sorts of power rings of different colors. Kind of a Captain Planet thing going on. This was also the introduction of Larfleeze, the guy who holds the orange power ring. Real fucking annoying. All this guy does is try to claim everything for himself. Why the hell would you need this guy? I get the red rings, the ones that make people violent as hell. At least they get something done. But this dude is basically Golem crossed with JarJar and throw in some of those damn seagulls from Finding Nemo that everyone loved so damn much. Fuck this guy.
Next, Blue Beetle: Shellshocked.
Didn't even finish.
Enough with the weird origin stories already. How come these dopes get powers and then refuse to accept it all the time? Have they not seen Spider-Man one two OR three?
Everyone out there do me a favor: If you get superpowers, just accept it and start doing cool shit immediately. Don't make me wait while you reconcile it in your mind. You do that on your own time, dammit.
Earth X.I picked this one up because I remember it being such a huge deal when I was younger, the next big thing from Alex Ross.
After reading one issue I remembered why I didn't read this for free while sitting in Borders years ago.
So the story is basically about x-51, who is a robot. He finds himself walking around on the moon, until he stumbles on the Watcher's house (why does this bald asshole have a house?). The Watcher explains that he is blind and that he needs X-51 to be the new watcher of this Earth, which is like ours except TOTALLY DIFFERENT! Black is white, Luke Cage is still black, and Thor is a chick, and so is Spider-Man, sort of, but Ben Grimm is the same. It's confusing.
Anyway, the damn story is so confusing to me that I don't know how anyone got into it. Worse yet, each issue ends with an "Appendix" which is dialogue between the Watcher and X-51 written in script format. What, did they get too lazy to actually draw the panels? Isn't that kind of the point of comics? As if that's not bad enough, the format of the Appendices is bizarre. The whole thing is dialogue with no tags, so it takes half a damn page to figure out who's saying what. You couldn't have made the words different colors? And within the appendices there will be sections, and the section titles will be something like "Ben Grimm" or "Captain America." But under the heading "Captain America" you might find something like, "I don't get it. Doesn't being morally right mean that you're doing the best thing for people?" They don't even mention goddamn Captain America.
Back to the library this goes. I don't want to say I quit forever. It could always happen that a nuclear bomb explodes but I'm safe in a bank vault and have all the time in the world to read comics. Even then, MAYBE.
The Helm.
The first couple pages of this are rough. It looks like it's going to be another fanboy-bashing fantasy book. But it turns out to be alright. This dude finds a magical helm (hat) that helps him fight monsters and shit. The concept works for the most part, although after finding a huge treasure house I'm not sure why the guy would cash in a bunch of the gold in order to pay rent to his mother as opposed to buying his own mansion. But maybe that's being realistic in a world with talking hats, so I'll let it go.
I don't really give a shit about Atlas, and the including of old issues at the end is something I hate. To be honest, I don't even know if the "old" issues at the end of this collection were real or new fake ones made to look old because people think that's cute. Either way, stop it.
The thing you don't expect about this one is that Superman's dog, Krypto, kicks Atlas' ass.
Okay, fine.
Superman gives this strange speech at the end where he explains to Metropolis that Krypto is Metropolis' dog, and he's a good dog.
Somehow, writing this has blown my emotions in a way that reading it didn't. Go figure.
The real question, after reading this, is whether Krpyto can kick Superman's ass. Atlas beats the hell out of Superman, Krypto beats up Atlas, so isn't there some mathematical law that says Krypto can therefore beat up Superman? I'm a failure at math almost as much as I am at sex, but I'm pretty sure about that one.
If that's true, I rest assured knowing that Batman probably has a secret garbage can with Kryptonite rib bones in it or something, just in case Krypto needs to go down because he keeps biting Lois or gets super doggie hid dysplasia.
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