I haven't had cable for years or Netflix for a while, so I can't recall if I watched all four seasons of Wynonna Earp or not; but I'd never picked up an issue of the comic until a recent quarter-box find: from 1997, Wynonna Earp #2, "The Bloody Badge of the Law" Created and written by Beau Smith, pencils by Joyce Chin, inks by Mark Irwin.

Enh, it's OK, although the art is Image-standard for the time: Wynonna's legs go on for miles, and I'm pretty sure company-wide there were more different body types portrayed for werewolves than for women. I don't think she started as a U.S. Marshall on her show, but here she's a full-fledged one, on the case of vampire druglord Bobo del Rey, who might've been the big-bad for the first season or two. After shutting down the local watering hole for pushing the vampire drug "hemo" (which appeared to kill most of its users, not a great business model) she gets Bobo's attention, and he sends two of his vampire boys to bring her to him. They get hacked to bits, but when she goes to have a look at the local trailer park, another pair get the best of her. Luckily, a pair of werewolves don't seem to be on the vampires' side...but are they on Wynonna's?

This series ran for five issues, but I don't know if it had an actual conclusion, or just petered out like some Image titles do. Meanwhile, my folks have been enjoying Resident Alien on SyFy, I don't have the heart to tell them it's probably doomed, don't get attached...I don't know if Happy! was intended to go longer than two seasons, but SyFy has burned me so many times. Ask me about their last episode of Farscape if you want to hear some epic swearing... Read more!

"Just add aliens" isn't the worst plotting advice ever, I guess...

My girlfriend and I watch Falling Skies together--in fact, it's one of the few shows we do watch together. But as of yet, we haven't watched the third season finale that aired a week or two back, for reasons that are somewhat unclear to me. "Once we watch it, it's over!" was one answer. The other being, she may be worried that Falling Skies season finales have traditionally been a little weak. The first year ends with the new alien overlords revealed, and Noah Wyle's character surrenders to them...the why of the latter I don't recall, except that they needed a cliffhanger to go out on. Year two, new aliens show up, and they turn out to be fighting the earlier alien overlords. Her money seems to be on more aliens showing up, quite possibly out of nowhere in particular. Just like in today's book!

From 1992, Excalibur #47, "Come One and All to the Ugly Bug-Eyed Monster Ball" Story and art by Alan Davis, inks by Mark Farmer. Davis is more well known as an artist, but is not too shabby a writer, either: his first eight issues writing and drawing Excalibur wrapped a ton of loose ends and red herrings (his own and other writers) from the entire run of the book to date.

More and more mysterious occurrences and alien arrivals keep piling up in the basement of the team's lighthouse, opening this issue with the newly arrived Cerise fighting Nightcrawler's N-Men. (The N-Men are the aliens formerly known as the Technet, an amusingly slapstick batch of mercenaries currently exiled on earth and trained by Nightcrawler to keep them out of trouble.) After their Marvel-misunderstanding rumble wraps up, yet another team of aliens arrive, to offer the N-Men a contract, and after some negotiation they accept. A selling point in that negotiation may have been that the aliens' psychic member has an alarming prediction:

Also this issue: on Otherworld, Captain Britain gets a recap of most of the series to date, along with the Excalibur special that didn't really add up in continuity. Love this run: just read the first eight again the other day, and wish I'd the time for the rest.

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My Ideal Saturday Morning Lineup!

Over at Poe Ghostal's Points of Articulation, Poe had an assignment for the League of Extraordinary Bloggers: create your ideal Saturday morning schedule. He also says he never watched cartoons before 8 AM, which is crazy: I would get up at five if a good cartoon was on. (I also lived in the Mountain Time Zone, which meant things were on at different times than everywhere else.) By that standard, I should add another two hours here; but my runners-up are probably other people's favorites: Super Friends, classic G.I. Joe and Transformers, and the modern ThunderCats--which didn't really have an intro!

This schedule's pretty much just for me, but here goes:

7 AM: Grandizer


7:30 AM: Battle of the Planets


Otherwise known as, gateway drugs to anime.

8 AM: Space Ghost


8:15 AM: The Herculoids
Embedding disabled everywhere, for some reason...

8:30 AM: Jonny Quest


God, I love the intros for the classic Hanna-Barbera action shows. Great music+two seasons worth of explosions in a minute.

9 AM: Thundarr the Barbarian

Possibly the bleakest set-up for a Saturday morning kid's show ever!

9:30 AM: Sam and Max: Freelance Police

My only comedy pick, although I could've been persuaded for the Tick or Tiny Toon Adventures--although I'm terrified the latter may not have aged well. Still, Sam & Max deserved a longer run and more exposure.

10 AM: Legion of Super-Heroes

Another show that deserved better--I'm not sure if it's all on DVD yet.

10:30 AM: Justice League

If you like the Justice League Unlimited opening better, you are wrong. Just so you know.

11 AM: Avengers

Wait, wait, wait: not that one. Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes


That's better.

11:30 AM: X-Men: Evolution

Wolverine and the X-Men might've been a better show, but Evolution wasn't as grim.

What can you tell by my list? I'm both old, and still watch cartoons. That, and I'd watch this lineup every Saturday now.

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This post cost me $5.50.

I was going to post pictures of these little Zombie Planet toys yesterday, while watching the Walking Dead, but I fell asleep before the new episode. That may or may not be an indicator of the last half-season of the show, I do have to get up pretty damn early. And then my pictures didn't turn out anyway, and then I bought a couple more at lunch, so here we are.

I haven't read the comic, but I usually enjoy the Walking Dead, even if there are a few things that hurt my suspension of disbelief...yes, I can totally accept zombies or walkers or whatever, but don't understand, for example, why the group doesn't move off of Hershel's farm to like the next one down the road. Can't be that hard to clear one out, relatively speaking. And how come the 'walkers' haven't dehydrated into mummies? Anyway, I usually watch it with my Oldest son, but I also usually watch it beforehand to make sure there's nothing too out of line for him to see. We usually discuss what they do wrong; for example, please wear gloves while handling corpses. Or, Shane's tirade at the end of "Pretty Much Dead Already" is correct, but he picks the worst way to go about it.


Back to these little figures, Battlegrip.com has a right fine review of 'em up, as well as links to get your own. Buy a case! Buy a vending machine! They're fifty cents a pop in my neighborhood, although you may also see them for seventy-five cents, maybe even a buck. I've done pretty well on the assortment, though: I did get an extra cheerleader, but I think that's my only duplicate out of nine tries.

The other dollar went for the girl in the picture above, Ann from the King Kong capsules of a few years back. (I took a picture of one some time ago.) The paint apps may actually be better on the Zombie Planet figures, though.
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"You Better Recognize."

I've been really enjoying Cartoon Network's Young Justice since it came back on; and last Friday's episode featured the Justice League and guest cameos from Plastic Man, Guy Gardner, Blue Devil, and from Milestone comics, Icon!

If you haven't watched the show, the JL's computer announces a team member's entrance to the Watchtower or Secret Sanctuary by reading their name and designation number. (It could be a sneaky way of introducing a character without always having to introduce them...) We don't know Blue Devil's number, but he has to be pretty far down the list...BD became a member on or around Justice League America #98 in 1995; the series would end with #113, we'll leave it at that.

If Young Justice has been pretty good, last Friday's Batman: the Brave and the Bold just crushed it: Batman and Space Ghost? That filled an empty spot in my soul I didn't even know I had. And the recent Wonder Woman cold open, with old-school theme and sound effects? Man, that series could run for a million more episodes, and I'd be A-OK with that.

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Six random line items!

Ah, I haven't done one of these since January! And I'm just as prepared now as I was last time!...yeah.

1. Story problem! The K-Mart by my house is closing next month, and is slooooowly having a clearance sale. Last I checked, there was one variant Negative Man DCUC...and four Cheetahs. The old Cheetah. So, how far can I let the clearance sale go, and still get one? I'm betting I can wait until she's under five bucks, easy. We'll see!

This year, I bought Kyle Rayner and Catman from K-Mart, so I will be sorry to see this location go. Yet another less place to buy figures locally...

2. So far this year, I have not been interested in a single new TV show. I'm looking forward to the new season of Fringe, and that's about it for TV. (OK, except for Fox's animation block, which varies wildly, sometimes episode to episode.) (And I hate Bob's Burgers, and Family Guy has not been solid lately.)

Futurama and Deadliest Warrior just wrapped their seasons, and I know there's only a few episodes of Dr. Who left...for some time. (Man, I got spoiled watching Dr. Who on PBS as a kid, since I swear they were running a ton of episodes daily...) I think Top Gear is in the same boat, where a "new season" is code for "four episodes." Lazy BBC sods...I am looking forward to the new season of The Walking Dead, and wish I had time to watch Breaking Bad from the start.

I'm making it sound like gee, I'm not going to watch any TV, which would be a goddamn lie. I will doubtless watch more and more football as the weather gets worse, and I remembered Idris Elba's Luther will be back next week. Although, that's another BBC one that is probably only like six episodes. There are pros to that, I suppose: less filler in a shorter season, and I'd be more apt to watch something like, say, Revenge if I knew she'd either get revenge or not in six episodes, not six seasons...

3. Finished Ralph Steadman's The Joke's Over this afternoon, so I needed something to read without starting a new novel yet. And, in a recent search, I found I had almost a full 18 issue run of Chris Claremont and Sean Chen's X-Men: the End. Spoiler: how much you are going to enjoy this series is really going to depend on how much you enjoyed Claremont's entire tenure on the X-Men. And not just his first run, and not just Uncanny either. There's stuff from X-Treme X-Men, among other books. (To Claremont's credit, one of the big bads is Cassandra Nova, a Morrison/Quitely creation.) Another spoiler: it's not great.

For example, and we all know I'm a Nightcrawler fan rather than an X-Men fan; in this future Kurt Wagner is a retired X-Man turned action-movie star. Apparently, successfully: we don't see this scene, but it's mentioned Kurt was transported off-world from the set of Letterman. It's an interesting notion, and one I prefer to priest Kurt; but elsewhere in the book, the grown-up Katherine Pryde is running for mayor of Chicago against a rabidly anti-mutant opposition. Maybe that's not too far off, since I suppose any minority group is going to have an easier time breaking into entertainment (but not necessarily an easy time) than into politics; but the anti-mutant sentiment seems just as kneejerk and violent as it always did. That's probably not the oddest thing in that series, but there you go.

4. I've mentioned before that my Youngest son is a big Spongebob Squarepants fan. So, when I saw Spongebob prizes in boxes of Chocolate Cheerios, I started eating those; since he's on a casein/gluten free diet and can't get them himself. Then I got some on sale...and now there's like two unopened boxes on my desk at work, and maybe four more in my kitchen. I'm stocked up for a while. Maybe. I thought about taking a day of just eating those, since I don't think that would be a lot of calories, but would probably be a quick way to get sick of eating them.

Which reminded me of a time, years ago, when I was going to leave town for a week and had about half a gallon of milk left in my fridge. I didn't want to waste it, so I tried drinking it all that evening. Have you heard of the dairy challenge? Well, I hadn't at the time...

5. Transformers 3 and Super 8 are playing at the local cheap theatre this week, and I'm debating checking them out. I'm kind of interested, but aren't they both like two and a half hours? (I'm aware I could look that up, but...eh.) I was really tired when I saw that listing, and had a hard time getting excited for either. We'll see.

6. And I haven't been the comic shop this week, either: the new B.P.R.D. was all I planned on getting. Although, I hear Batman #1 is pretty good and Catwoman #1 is a crime against god and man. Well, maybe. (I was going to put in a link to Bleeding Cool there, but apparently was asleep at the wheel. Find it yourself!) The dynamic of the Batman/Catwoman relationship, if that's the word, has always been an odd one, but lately...hmm.
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Eight random line items!

I haven't done one of these in a while. Of course I'm prepared, what makes you say that?

1. Damnit, I got home and missed UPS. And my dog was at the door looking completely pleased with himself, like he got rid of an intruder. That dog...hopefully, later today I'll have something for next week.

2. I've been watching the Cape...well, sort of: it's been on, while I'm in the room; but I haven't been paying a ton of attention. It seems like a show with Keith David, Vinnie Jones, and a midget should be a little livelier. It's not terrible like late episodes of Heroes, and it seems more enjoyable than V, but both shows need to make some headway somewhere.

Keep in mind, you probably shouldn't listen to me about TV, since everything I've watched lately--the NFL playoffs, Wipeout, the State of the Union address--has been in one ear and out the other. Either they haven't been overly memorable, or I haven't been paying attention. Or both. I'd go with both.

3. I did watch Red, and thought it was OK. I did want to re-read the book, though; I always pictured Patrick Stewart in the Frank Moses role. In the book, Moses' calls to his handler aren't a guy looking for a date; they're an old man's only human contact, and have a certain neediness to them. But, a more straight adaptation would've been a lot grimmer and bloodier; I can't fault their decision to go for a broader audience.


4. I almost hesitate to bring this up, but Hastings has been a treasure-trove of used trades lately. Today, I picked up Michael Moorcock and Walter Simonson's Elric: the Making of a Sorceror, for $3.99. Cheaper than a single issue! (Also, per GCD, the series started in September 2004 and finished August 2006?) Really good so far, even if it again makes me wish there was an Elric figure!

5. I did pick up the new Fantastic Four, having almost made it without seeing the spoiler. My guess was way off...no spoiler, but it's an untypical comic death: no scene of everyone looking sad over the body, for one thing.

6. That last item probably should've been number four. Or number three. Well, too late now.

7. Also got the last issue of ToyFare, and it doesn't seem like they were planning on it being the last issue. More than once captions and articles mention more info coming next month, presumably not to the theoretical Wizard website coming whenever. A big, last-issue finale extravaganza recapping ToyFare's history and legacy, and maybe getting a congratulations or two, well, that would've been nice, but I guess it was not to be. And there's five bucks a month I can spend on...toys or crack or something, I guess.

8. The new DCUC figures--the Bane wave, with Jonah Hex and the Creeper--and the Green Lantern figures--well, just getting Kyle there--are nowhere to be found locally, as of yet. Disappointing. With a dearth of figures (for me, anyway) recently, eBay has been tempting as heck; especially since loose Lord of the Rings figures seem perfect as background cast for Bastards of the Universe strips. Which I need to start working on. Have a good weekend!

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It's not like V couldn't be improved, say by the addition of Michael Ironside...

Y'know, I was just trying to be snarky there, but goddamn if Mr. Ironside wouldn't improve the new V. I had half-forgotten, but he doesn't show up until midway or so through the second miniseries of the original; and then he just arrives, no backstory, no foreshadowing, Ham Tyler and his chunky hetero sidekick show up with Uzis and Teflon bullets and just level the playing field in the war against lizards. (In hindsight, I don't think his sidekick was like really fat, but he was way more overweight that is allowed for a heroic character anymore.) That would be delightful, honestly: I don't need a cutesy cameo, or Ironside playing a V, or a traitor, or a pacifist; just him gunning down some alien scum. Well, maybe they're saving him for when the series returns.

I brought V up the other day, but I might've just trailed off because I was still trying to work out how burned I felt by the Prisoner. (Answer: some, and getting more so. A couple episodes still sit in my VCR, and I haven't yet felt the inclination to watch them now.) But what I was trying to get at, was that the burn on V is a little slower than it needs to be. We know the V are lizards, we know they don't have humanity's best intentions in mind, and we know the humans are up a creek; so they don't need to tease it out. It's not friggin' Lost...

So, what are the V up to? It would be interesting if they were building up goodwill, so they could suddenly announce they were there to tell the people the good word of the prophet Xemmu or something. ABC would never have the stones for that: the V would be here to form rape gangs before they get into anything serious. But then again, like I said, I would be just fine with Michael Ironside, or even the actors already on the show, fighting a guerrilla war and blowing crap up. As long as it's not turned into an allegory for 9-11, or Obama's presidency, or even Bush's presidency. (In fact, I could really do without any allegories for anything for a while, with the possible exception of South Park, which gets a pass not merely because it's funny, but because it can do it and get out in twenty-some minutes.)

It's probably hypocritical of me to harp on V for plot holes that I would let slide in any of a number of comics; but there's little things. How many saucers are there, 20-some? And what is that, a peace armada? Is everyone really going to be caught flat-footed when the V are revealed as invading monsters? It'd be kind of nice if the army or some government actually was on the ball and had a contingency plan for when that goes south. And why do the V seemingly spend all their time in those stupid man-suits? Are they really method? Maybe they're cold? Perhaps it's an atavistic evolutionary mechanism, and they were hunters that would camouflage themselves to trick their prey? Maybe I'm having a hard time trying to think of an in-story reason for not blowing the entire show's budget on unconvincing lizard-masks or computer-generated effects.

Damn, I started this post, um, six hours or so ago, then left to do this and that. Well, maybe I'll write about some other show later, but in other news, I splurged and bought myself some gloves today. I kind of had to, my son said my old ones smelled like feet.
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Five years ago, if you had told me the V remake would be better than the Prisoner remake...

Well, I would've wondered what the hell you were talking about, but still. Some spoilers behind the break!

(Oh, and the scan's from Marvel's Greatest Comics #67, reprinting "Within This Tortured Land" from Fantastic Four #85; written by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby, inks by Joe Sinnott. This was from the second part of a Prisoner-styled storyline, so it all fits!)

Over at Bleeding Cool, Adi Tantimedh came down pretty hard on the Prisoner remake: "So the credo of the remake is, “I am not a number, but I want to be a member of a nice community that gets along with each other!”" (A little harsh, but his review is a good read, and ties in to another of my favorite utterly misguided adaptations, Judge Dredd.) From that, I was expecting to be completely hate it, but it did have its moments...even as it came up short.

Tantimedh has a valid point about the new Number Six (played by Jim Caviezel) coming across as too vulnerable and scared; although in fairness this version isn't the trained secret agent of the original. But Patrick McGoohan wouldn't have been above decking a few guys to get out of the Village...he probably could've just pushed Ian McKellen's Number Two down and just walked off. Caviezel's Six is amnesiac and confused, and didn't have the original's spy training, or rage to fall back on. Instead of seeming driven to escape, to be free, Remake-Six seems too often like he's willing to just play along and see where things go; whereas McGoohan might have sometimes played the game, he had his own rules. (I haven't watched "Schizoid" yet, so maybe Caviezel cracks some heads in that one, but I doubt it.)

And none of this probably makes sense if you haven't seen the original. Sorry. But you should.

Not unlike the reimagined Battlestar: Galactica, there are some plot holes that come with the territory of trying to update a property in a manner both twisty and surprising; which leaves the writers throwing in plot twists as needed to tweak the viewers' expectations, then trying to force them to make sense in the end. And like B:G, the last episode of the Prisoner has an ending that gets less satisfying the more you think about it. The reason for the larger than the original's supporting cast becomes clear in the end, but also underlines why the original didn't have recurring characters, or friends in the Village: even an innocent friend can be manipulated, or gotten to.

Not to spoil it, but in the end of the remake, Six is a prisoner to his own sense of responsibility, and seems stuck for good. I wanted to be glib and say McGoohan's Six would've blown up a busload of nuns and children to get out of the Village, but that's an exaggeration. At least a slight exaggeration, anyway. Actually, although it would've been considered dirty pool to threaten children back then; it would've been interesting to see McGoohan's Six in that position: he would of course save them, even at the cost of his freedom, but there would be no doubt that this would only be a temporary setback.

Perhaps the moral of the remake is that "freedom" is ultimately a meaningless ideal, since we are all Prisoners of something, more often than not figurative than literal: Prisoners of conscience, of fear, of responsibilities, of guilt. And most of us can't choose to reject every attachment in order to truly be free.


Anyway, V is off to an enjoyable start: I liked the original as a kid, and this version has done a great job of paring off all the cheese. Reckon ABC is kicking themselves now, that there's only one episode left before a long break: seems they hedged when they should've gone all in. The mystery of the aliens is a puzzle, though: it doesn't seem like they're here merely to eat people, like the old show; although I wouldn't mind if that was it.

The other new show I've been watching is Stargate: Universe, and I'm hoping it's going to the program that swings the pendulum of sci-fi TV away from imitating aspects of Battlestar: Galactica, like systematically removing anything resembling 'fun.' But maybe more on that some other time.


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Eleven random line items:

1. God, Race to Witch Mountain looks terrible. And not just in the sense that I'm not the target audience for it, it looks just...shabby. I've never been a big fan of the Rock, or Dwayne Johnson, or whatever, but his smarmy, smug act promoting it isn't helping either. (The ads for the Kids' Choice Awards are particularly painful, and my boys watch a lot of Nick.)

2. OK, I'm looking forward to Watchmen. One of the main complaints I've seen about the movie is that by focusing on the whodunit or the action-adventure aspects of the graphic novel is to completely miss the symbolism, and possibly the point, of what Alan Moore was going for. That remains to be seen, but if Watchmen was supposed to work on all those levels, can't it work on just a couple? Nobody's forcing you to get the symbolism...the weird part is, I had that same problem with Identity Crisis: I thought it was supposed to be a murder mystery, and in the last issue it becomes apparent that the murder is only the hook, and who did it is only an afterthought. So, maybe an Identity Crisis movie would be a goddamn improvement...

3. I've bought Watchmen twice over the years, but have lost it both times. I had a copy of issue #8 (I think) but haven't seen that around lately either.

4. Even though I want to like them, it's so easy to hate the Sci-Fi Channel. I only got to start watching Battlestar Galactica again when the end was in sight, and while it's great and I'm looking forward to the end; I have a hard time imagining what Sci-Fi's gonna have to replace it. I am never, ever going to watch any version of Ghost Hunters, and that video game psuedo-reality show looks like the worst kind of crap: where are the fat kids? And it's great to feature girl gamers, but there's no crying in videogames!

And the made for the channel movies get on my nerves, too. Step 1: Film it in the cheapest location you can find, i.e. Canada, regardless of where your movie's allegedly set. Step 2: Get an old copy of the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, flip it open to a random page, and voila! There's half your movie right there! Manticore, Basilisk, and Wyvern have all been used lately. I'm waiting for Gelatinous Cube, the movie. Step 3: Cast a bunch of unknowns and maybe one C-lister that needs to make a boat payment or is late on their taxes or something. Step 4: Use the same computer-generated effects that the rest of these movies do, including a blood effect that manages to look far less real than throwing a bucket of dyed Karo syrup. But it's expensive, so it must be good! I think I'm just pissed that this is the first time in years I've had Sci-Fi, and apparently running this cheapo little homemade films is more cost effective and better ratings then rerunning old, cancelled shows. (I liked Splinter, though, and I make no apologies for liking some crap and hating other crap.)

5. Apparently, the demographics for the Sci-Fi channel also suggest that if you're watching the channel, you need Lectric Shave (maybe!) and you're alone and unloved. If I never had to see an ad for Match.com again..."I'm just a goof, looking for my ball." What does that even mean!? Is that code for something?

6. I don't listen to a lot of music lately, but the one song I've heard recently that I couldn't get enough of? "Murder Train a'Comin'" by Dethklok. I stumbled into Metalocalypse pretty late, and while I'm not a huge death metal fan, it reminds me of friends who were. I need to download it, but that would involve some horrible process involving ITunes, for one song. (It was a bonus track on the deluxe version of their album.)

7. Oh, let's have a scan of this one:

Yeah, I've lost Watchmen twice, but still have this? That seems fair. But it's interesting as a historical artifact, this issue of Comics Scene from 1990, back when anime was still Japanimation, and comics coverage was still broad enough to include Grant Morrison and Bill Sienkiewicz, the live action Captain America, and Betty Boop. Also, there's two pages of listings in the back, of comic characters and properties being adapted to other media, like movies or TV. Well, allegedly adapted. Many of these would never happen, like the Sally Forth sitcom, or a Spider-Man movie scheduled for Christmas 1990. Let's just run that list, and you can check off the ones that you wanted made (or unmade!) yourself, and you can count your blessings a lot of these didn't happen in the 90's.



There were a couple there I'm not sure were even close: did Howard Chaykin have anything to do with the Judge Dredd movie? And Joel Schumaker didn't direct The Phantom, did he? Actually, neither of those may have hurt, in the long run...

8. For good measure, here's a photo from that issue, of Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, promoting the never-completed Big Numbers. I still have that floating around here somewhere.

Interestingly, I'd often wondered why Sienkiewicz still does inking work, and he answered that in this interview: "Inking is simply a motor function...(I)nking was like watching grandmother sit and crochet on a moving train. I really wanted to do something that required no thought, go on auto-pilot, to recharge my batteries." And now I know!

9. Caught the recent Dr. Strange cartoon on Cartoon Network the other day. Not bad, certainly better than the Iron Man one. Even though I would just as soon they not run things like Ace Ventura, Jr., Cartoon Network has been keeping me up on a lot of those direct-to-DVD movies: Justice League: New Frontier and Batman: Gotham Knight were both on almost immediately after I bought them...

10. This may sound like hyperbole, but I would rather you cut me, than watch, hear about, or see mentioned again, Celebrity Apprentice. Cutting me would be more memorable for everyone involved.

11. Twice daily posts here, at least until Friday this week! See you then.

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(Somewhat) Off-topic: Dubious lessons learned from recent TV.

Since I usually watch Prison Break and the Sarah Connors Chronicles, I taped the season premiere of Heroes. Yes, taped. I'm not trendy enough to download it to anything or Tivo or any of that nonsense.

A few words on Prison Break, a show that's come a long way from it's titular premise: while not a great show, it's at least entertaining, and although this isn't as prevalent as it was in prior seasons, you could probably get the general idea if you watch the first and last five minutes of each episode. Seriously, if you've ever felt swamped by a problem that looked way too big for you to ever deal with, watch this show. The brothers Scofield and Burrows, and their merry men, will show you how to break down a mountain of a task into several smaller, seemingly insurmountable tasks, that you can attack in one-hour installments. You may even have trouble with those, but persevere, and you can accomplish your goal, which will then lead to you being thrown into an even worse situation. The long, serial, formula, uphill climb of the characters on this show are a lot like a lot of comics, really. Or Super Mario Brothers: Sorry, but your princess is in another prison!

But Heroes, and I didn't think of this while I was watching it, the subject came up the other day at the Fortress of Fortitude: the heroes of Heroes seem to mess up, drop the ball, screw the pooch, shoot themselves in the foot, and so forth, a lot. A lot, a lot. Like, if anyone had any sense, or used their powers in a reasonable fashion, the show would be if not over, a lot shorter.

Mohinder: Oh no! The untested injection that I had no idea what it would do, is mutating me somehow! How did this happen? (Admittedly, scientists shooting themselves up with their discoveries is a proud comics' tradition, and Mohinder could do a lot worse than turning himself into the Hulk or the Lizard. Man-Thing maybe.)

Nicki, or whoever she is now: Oops! Accidentally froze a guy! Well, I'm sure no one will notice, or come looking for him...

Future Peter: Whoops! Changed my crappy future into something worse! Better change it some more...damnit!

Present Peter: Uh-oh! I look like an escaped prisoner! Better play along, regardless of whether I have my powers or someone else's!

The two "agents" that tried to stop Sylar: Oh noes! The taser isn't working! If only we had something, anything else to try! (Really, they looked at each other like they both thought the other had the bazooka, before Sylar did his point-and-grab power on them.)

Hiro: So bored...if only I had some noble quest, regardless of what danger it might pose for the world...hey, my inheritance! Dad's last wish is not to touch it, but I'm sure it won't get stolen seconds after I open it...hey!

So, Prison Break features characters in a series of Sisyphean tasks, where the goalposts keep moving farther away. Repetitive, but more entertaining than Heroes, where bad decisions and unforced errors seem to keep the plot moving. Moving in a downward spiral towards an inevitable disaster that can only be sped up by the characters' actions, but moving. Sort of. Read more!

If the strike goes on long enough, I'm guessing...Mondays at 8:00 PM.

While I haven't read it much in recent years, I always thought Judge Dredd was a bit ahead of its time. After all, Dredd fought a clone dinosaur in 1978 (Satanus, in the classic "The Cursed Earth") well before Jurassic Park was published in 1990. Yesterday, I found the 'spirit trap' accessory that had came with the first Judge Death, and realized Dredd had been trapping ghosts years before Ghostbusters. And the issue we're looking at today even had a reprint of "Diary of a Mad Citizen," a personal favorite that I always thought the movie Falling Down swiped a bit from. Maybe. (It reminded me of that, certainly.)

So, with the writers' strike in full effect (good luck, guys, and if you come back and 24 isn't awesome, I'll be ever so pissed) and networks resorting to psychological warfare (that lie detector show from Fox) or the much ballyhooed return of American Gladiators, I could totally see the theft of the idea of this little Dredd story: "Block-Out" Written by John Wagner, art by John Byrne.

Put simply, the game of Block-Out would be akin to the old College Bowl-style of quiz programs, except with football players that get to hit the contestants during the game, instead of on their way home afterwards. It does seem like a game that both rewards and punishes book smarts, yeah; but that just makes it more appealing for American TV.

Three teams play, with their panelists arranged high above a checkerboard style playing field. The gamemaster asks a team a question (instead of having them buzz in, although if answered incorrectly, the next team can steal it) and each correct answer, within a set time, gets a move on the board. The board pieces are either 'Pigs,' defenders; or 'Wallys,' who try to reach the center of the ring. From the ring, the Wally gets a shot at a jump at the panelists, using a variety of probably unsafe methods. If he makes it, the Wally can eliminate one panelist, by throwing them off. (Jet-packing "Netmen" are there to catch falling players, but that doesn't seem all that safe either...)

Drokk, that looks like fun. And if you thought something like Jeopardy was a lot of pressure, imagine answering questions while sweating the idea of getting bounced off a fifty-foot drop if you miss too many. Add the tactical gameplay of the board, and the excitement of the jumps, and you've got a surefire ratings smash. Once you get past, um, liability issues. Lots and lots of liability issues. Picture the stunts on Fear Factor, only with no safety handlers and the crowd booing you.

Since this is a Dredd story (even without any Dredd scans), most of it revolves around crime, in this case crowd control. Admittedly, even that's more fun than it sounds. The teams are based out of the city-sized Blocks, and the rivalry is pretty fierce, owing to a large population with nothing better to do. Imagine if New York, Dallas, and Detroit played each other at the same time; and all their fans lived close enough to come fight at the stadium.

I don't think he did a ton of Dredd stories, but Byrne is in fine form here. Nothing wrong there.

Anyway, I do prefer my scripted entertainment, but if the writers hold out long enough, the networks might as well steal this: it's not like America's come up with a game show they didn't steal from Europe in the last decade or so...From Judge Dredd's Crime File #1, Eagle Comics circa 1985. Read more!

Oh, that blows.


A lot of signs have been pointing to it, and Paul O'Brien's recap of Marvel Month-to-Month sales seems to confirm it: Cable and Deadpool appears to be slowly drifting into cancellation. To make way for a Cable solo series. How to get across the horribleness of this...the first thing that came to mind would be if NBC decided to cancel Law and Order: SVU in order to have a cop show featuring just Detective Elliot Stabler; with none of the plots, subplots or supporting cast of the previous series. That's not a great example, since I think a better percentage would follow that show, than would the Cable solo series.

Back to Cable & Deadpool: was anyone reading that book for Cable? I'm floored to think someone thinks Cable is the draw to that book. I came to it late, since I'm just not a fan of his, but I love the Deadpool-centered issues.

Fabian Nicieza did a great job creating convincing reasons for both characters to interact, even though they were enemies in their first appearances, have little in common, and don't much like each other, especially at first. Here's hoping 'Pool either manages to get a solo book, or maybe gets a replacement for Cable.

Panel from Cable & Deadpool #7, "The Burnt Offering, Part One: Headless Horsemen" Written by Fabian Nicieza, pencils by Patrick Zircher, inks by Udon's Rob Ross and M3TH.

Aside: I like Law and Order: SVU, even though it's pretty depressing. It's a good show to watch once in a while, and you can miss a bunch of episodes and it doesn't really matter. (I wish I could claim this line, but a friend once compared watching a rerun of Law & Order was like re-reading an Archie comic.) But while actor Christopher Meloni has done a great job with the character of Stabler, the guy's been working in the sex crimes unit a little too long, and is starting to get wound up and violent. Stabler needs a vacation or to be rotated over to a less stressful department, like, I don't know, homicide.

SCENE: the Dunh-dunh L&O noise. A bloody, bloody crime scene, surrounded by police officers, most of whom look like they have been or may soon be violently ill. A pale looking CSI holds up a stained-red sheet so Stabler can see the body, but we can't.

CSI: Oh, god...this is the most horrible thing I've seen in 20 years of this...there is no God.

STABLER: (Eating donut) Uh-huh. So, whaddaya got here?

CSI: (Moaning) Please...don't make me look at it again. It's too much.

STABLER: (Still eating, nonchalant) C'mon. Walk me through it.

CSI: All right. So, he was bludgeoned, horribly. Here...here....(retches a little)...here...a little over there...

STABLER: (Nodding) Sure, sure. What else?

CSI: Well, preliminary estimates are that he was shot. At least twenty times, from four different large-bore weapons, from different directions. The ballistics is going to be a nightmare, since several of the bullets appear to have ricocheted off each other, creating multiple entry and exit wounds...

STABLER: (Yawns) Yeah, yeah, pick it up a bit.

CSI: (Greenish) The burns are even more exotic. I'm still not sure if those are chemical...might even be radiation. Hopefully, there's enough left for testing...

STABLER: (Snapping fingers) High notes, buddy, just the high notes.

CSI: Uck. Then the stabbing. So far we've counted a hundred and thirty-eight stab wounds...

STABLER: (Freezes. Every muscle in his head clenches, looks deadly serious for a moment, like he is absolutely going to murder whoever did this.) And then raped the stab wounds?

CSI: WHAT?

STABLER: I said, did they rape the stab wounds? 'Cause that's SVU territory, man! I'm not going back there! I'm not!

CSI: No...nooooo. Just stab wounds.

STABLER: The wounds weren't raped? Any signs of abuse?

CSI: You mean, apart from the...

STABLER: I mean sexual! I can't deal with that anymore! The eyes of the victims, staring at me in my sleep! The criminal justice system that lets predators out again and again and again! The guilt of having a cock! I punch myself in the cock twenty times every night before I can sleep, just to show I'm not like the other men! And rape after rape after rape killing my chances with Olivia! No more rape!

CSI: No...there's none of that.

STABLER: No rape?

CSI: No. Frankly, aside from the...wounds, I'm not sure what would've been left to rape on this guy, after the beating and the stabbing...

STABLER: Awesome. (Completely unclenches, takes another bite of his donut.) Oh, man, this job is sweet.

I'm tired, but that made me laugh this afternoon. The only rewrite I did on this one was to try to get the swears out of it, which was tougher than I would've thought. Read more!

Changing that sell-by date doesn't make the milk taste any better.

Anyone remember Gilligan's Planet? Like the title might suggest, it was an animated spinoff of Gilligan's Island, where the castaways build a rocket to escape the island, only to end up marooned on another planet. Yeah, about as good as it sounds, right? Although I was a huge fan of the original (the one with the giant spider scared the living crap out of me the first time I saw it. Seriously.) I don't remember being as fond of the cartoon or even watching it more than once or twice.

There was one episode I remember pretty clearly, though: being a "seafaring man," the Skipper was missing sailing and not feeling useful, so to make him feel better the castaways build a boat--something they somehow never, ever managed before. As was typical for the series, Gilligan manages to screw things up, to the point where they wreck on an island. Gilligan tries to point out, it's kind of funny: first they were trapped on an island, then trapped on a planet, now they're trapped on an island on a planet. While the status quo would dictate they somehow at least got back to the 'mainland' of the alien planet, I don't know how the episode ends, since even as a kid I was gripped with a white-hot rage to kill Gilligan.

This episode was the first thing I thought of, when I watched the season finale of Prison Break a while back. I've mentioned it once or twice here, and for those of you who haven't watched it, it's fluff, but entertaining fluff. Still, it would seem to have it's expiration date built right into the title, wouldn't it? The first year of the show was the eponymous prison break, the next year was the characters on the run from prison, and this year starts with most of the remaining characters in a South American super-prison. I don't know about this one, but I'll give it a shot. (There's a noticeable lag, between when I write these, the time I post them, and the real time; that I'm sure you don't care about.)

That's sometimes the trouble with fictional characters in serialized fiction: occasionally and often completely by accident, the writers can hit the point that should be the logical, satisfying, and sensible ending of a particular character's arc; but because the story must go on they have to string it along some more. Who cares if it makes sense or not...

Some people felt that way about Batman finding his parents' murderer, for example: that doing so would take away his motivation, and that Bruce Wayne would just walk away from the Batcave and become that useless rich playboy he pretended to be. But, other writers pointed out that Batman wouldn't quit, either because he still had to make sure what happened to him never happened to anyone else, or because he's completely messed up in the head. And since Batman's a DC character, I've read about half a dozen variations on Batman finding, or not finding, Joe Chill; who killed the Waynes, or didn't kill them, or killed them on orders from someone else. Thanks heaps, Zero Hour! (Joe Chill not killing the Waynes is still a better idea than Metallo doing it, though.)

Another prime example: Bishop, of the X-Men.

I liked Bishop better in the cartoon, since it was a little more straight-forward: in a crappy, post-apocalyptic future, he starts off as a bounty hunter of mutants, until the mutant-killing Sentinel robots decide maybe they don't need a mutant for that job anymore. On the run, Bishop meets the aged inventor Forge, who's put together a time machine to try and change the past and prevent that future from coming to be. (Which could very well prevent Bishop from even being born, but Forge seems to neglect mentioning that.)

So, Bishop comes back to the present, and stops something-or-other, and returns to what should be a better, brighter, future; only to find it just as crappy as when he left. Forge asks him what happened, and Bishop explains he did his job, but in the changed future, Forge had sent him back to fix something else. I think that happened on multiple occasions to Bishop, giving him a certain Sisyphean flavor, and I picture him back for like the 90th time, just shooting the hell out of the place, not unlike Homer in "Time and Punishment."

But the cartoons are positively streamlined, compared to the regular, comics-continuity Bishop. Originally more of a cop-type character than he was in the cartoon, Bishop also seems to be from a slightly different crappy future than previously seen in the X-Men comics. I've lost count, but the two I usually think of are Rachel Summers' Days of Futures Past, and Cable's Apocalypse-ruled far-future; Bishop's time doesn't seem to quite match either. (There's more possible X-Men futures than that in the comics, and to a one they're all not very encouraging.) Chasing a fugitive back through time, Bishop encountered the X-Men, who were legendary heroes when he was growing up, before they were wiped out by a traitor within their ranks. Bishop joined the team to save it, suspecting Gambit of being the traitor; until it was eventually revealed to be Onslaught, the evil psychic gestalt of Professor X and Magneto. (Yes, Gambit would've made more sense.)

After proving no help with his initial mission, and I think on multiple occasions since, Bishop's been sent to yet other alternate/possible/maybe future settings. And space. And he's one of the only ones to remember the Age of Apocalypse. Currently, he's filling the crucially important role of "pro-superhero registration jerkwad/Iron Man lackey" that every Marvel comic must have. To be fair, Bishop backing registration seems to make more sense than it does for a lot of other characters; since he's from a future where it's apparently already happened, he takes it as a given.

Bishop isn't one of my favorite characters, and it seems like finding the X-Traitor (whether he was wrong or not) would have been a good place to end his storyarc. And yet, Bishop remains, like a cop who came to your house to investigate a crime, ran a lot of false leads and wasn't much help, and yet somehow stayed there to live. Since the X-offices seem unwilling to write him out or kill him off, Bishop keeps getting shoehorned into new roles, like time-travelling X-Man or space X-Man or detective X-Man. Maybe Bishop will eventually find out where he belongs, but if Gilligan and Michael Scofield are any example, that's not as easy as it sounds.

Woof. This was a helluva lot of words to justify me watching TV this evening. Read more!