Hayate X Blade volume V.

Special S-class fight!
Special maid costume cafe!
Sword-duel a go-go!


The most recent Hayate X Blade, & just as confusing & sort of addicting as the rest. The plethora of characters-- including a Sid & Nancy, now?!-- are a big hard to navigate, especially considering that family names, given names, & nicknames are all bandied about interchangably. Doesn't wreck anything though-- this is plenty of fun.

Starcraft: Frontline by Knark, Washid, Furman, Elliott, Benjamin, Sharmek, Sevilla, Eldar & Kamarga.

The Swarm, Forever!
The Protoss & Humans will
make worthy new strains.

Quick hit: the story of the first narrative in here was the best, with constant callbacks to the in-game lines ("Jacked up & good to go!" & "Honor guide me!" & the like) without it being overwhelming. The art on the Zerg sucked though. The plot on the rest was all-- pretty forgettable, erring on the side of silly. The art was sometimes good, sometimes poor. Still, I like Starcraft.

Red Snow by Susumu Katsumata.

The bamboo rattled
when the guns came to Japan.
Blood fed the snow queen.

This is a collection of comics about rural Japan on the edge of industrialization. The end of a world-- but it isn't overly nostalgic. Maybe the opposite. Domestic violence & rape are the plot of a majority of the stories. Still, there are definite moments of beauty & magic. "Echo," "Wild Geese Memorial Service," & the eponymous "Red Snow" in particular I enjoyed. Honestly though it just made me wish I was reading Yusagi Yojimbo comics.

Calamity Jack by Shannon & Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale.

Ha! Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum!
Grind your bones to make my bread!
Heist on the Iron Horse!

When I read Rapunzel's Revenge, I wasn't prepared to be wowed, & thus was bowled over. This time, I knew what I was getting into, but I can happily say it lived up to expectations. Where ...Revenge is a Weird West tale, this goes east, goes urban & becomes a good old fashioned Grimm Bros. Heist story. Jack takes front seat, which is fine-- he's not as great as Rapunzel, but she doesn't get sidelined, so that is fine. There is a pixie sidekick, which you know I'm into. A giant crimelord with a floating penthouse A steampunk gadgeteer. Giant ants! Cultural diversity-- seriously, the witchdoctor or kachina fellow, or whatever that guy was, what?! Where did that guy come from. Great. The madcap & frantic pace of the book really works; I was compelled to blitz through it. Jabberwocks & Bandersnatches, too, in the bargain. Gender positive, respectful of race, rollicking fun-- why isn't everyone writing books like this? The advance reading copy I read was black & white, & I can't wait to get a look at the finished colour art, because Nathan Hale's art participates in the Jeff Smith school of cartooning with a heavy dose of details & expression in the colour. I had no idea this was coming out but I'm pretty excited about it.

I can't say anything that will shock you! I've been sick, plus broke, plus I like Jenny more than anyone else, so I haven't been doing anything. Not even going to the gym. I've played some video games. I've used my google reader-- it does work pretty well! I still read my livejournal friends list here, since so many insist on being private. Top secret lives! Work is worktacular. I worry I won't get much of a raise at my one year review. Last night I spent reading some comic books on loan from David; unlike him I laughed again & again att he weird gag issue where Marvex the Super-Robot disrobed (as in the infamous panel above) over & over again. & again. Having sorted through all of those comics, nothing really blew the top of my head off-- Batgirl? I only care about Cassandra Cain, & certainly not about Stephanie getting scolded by Babs non-stop. Superman: Origins? Okay, alright, & I don't mind the retelling, but you've got the Morisson Four Panel to fight against; sort of the epitome right now, right? For me at least. I will say that Batwoman might be amazing if it wasn't called Batwoman. You know? Like, I'm sorry but the Bat logo has power, & you can't just slap it on anything. Still, it is awfully pretty. If I slip & think of it as an Elseworlds, it suddenly gets really good. When I finished up the comics, I played Final Fantasy while Jenny read next to me in her underwear. Then I drank some more nyQuil & went to bed. Seriously this sickness thing, blah! Hey, why does Dracula could "BLAH!" in parodies?

I kind of frequently argue with kingtycoon about Batman. He gets Superman-- I mean, we'll both agree that Superman is the best-- but he doesn't "get" Batman. Or at least so I maintain. Central among his critiques is that Batman should really kill the Joker. Well. He also doesn't agree that Batman undergoes obvious shamanic transformation from man to super-man when he dons the cape & cowl, which to me fundamentally shows that he doesn't grasp the real impetus behind The Bat...but then, he grew up reading comics in the 80s & 90s, which I missed out on, to my luck. Anyhow, I want to address the Joker issue. I'm going to say something that...well, it isn't in my real world ethos, probably. I'd be a lot more free with my executions. DC comics, though, has it written in the bedrock of the universe: thou shalt not kill. Least aways, not Batman or Superman. Wonder Woman may be showing the cracks in it, & Marvel may have killing as a moral choice as a strength (whereas in DC the answer to "Should Batman kill the Joker?" is always, always no). As an aside, too, I think the position that "Batman shouldn't kill the Joker, only the State has that right" is a wrong question, since I'm pretty sure that Joker would get the death penalty...anyhow! Ethics of corporal punishment & mental health aside:

The Joker should be redeemed. Okay, first off. I get that the Joker is too good a villain to ever be really "made good." & I get that the Joker, as an embodiment of reckless, random evil, is too good an archetype to just go away. I get all that, but hear me out. In a sort of "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" end of the line story, a redeemed Joker would be the best punctuation to the Batman's argument. I want Joker to get better. & not only that! I want to take it to the extreme. I want the Joker to get better...& then cure cancer. He's like the crazy chemistry genius, right? Instead of Smilex, I want Mister J to repent, feel remorse, & then do something that outweighs the evil he's done. I mean-- what does Batman always say? "One life. If I end his life, how many hundreds-- thousands!-- will I save?" I want the answer to that question to be that, by never caving (hahaha, Batman, "caving." Like the Batcave!), Batman saves millions-- billions!-- of lives.

My brain is my friend today! It dropped "antepenultimate" into conversation with Jenny this morning, & it wasn't contrived or awkward; it was just the right word! Of course, we were talking about what order I put on my clothes (boxers, undershirt, socks, pants, shoes, outer shirt) but that isn't the point, the point is antepenultimate. Then once I got to work it spit out the name of the red haired girl from MTV News...Tabitha Soren! Now Adam just wandered over to my desk & I made a zombie face at him...which is what he was walking over here to do...telepathy! Thanks brain, you've got my back today. Probably making up for trying to make me worry yesterday. I hate situations where no news is good news; you can't get good news, only bad news; lack of news is the best you can hope for. So you wait with a peach pit in your stomach, folds of flesh rubbing over the groves in the hard nut. Yikes. Went to bed with a bellyfull of acid; had to sleep on my back or side to keep it from scorching my throat. Otherwise, I went home a little early to mollycoddle my sick wife. Watched a few more episodes of Lost: The Ben Linus Show. I actually didn't hate Kate's episode, which is like, amazing. Jenny made some kind of almost-Vietnamese wraps; cucumber & carrot but not in a slaw, some kind of Vietnamese dressing?, & chicken.

I started scribbling some notes down about things...maybe each of the Major Affiliations, the Great Powers, is so defined for having control of a Watchtower? So now I'm thinking that it will be The Brood (Watchtower Synapse), The Mandate (Watchtower Colostrum), The Lodge (Watchtower Leviathan), Mother Church (Watchtower Cathedra), The Shining Horde (Watchtower Omphalos), & the Unity (Watchtower Gothic). I'm filling in lots of details on organization & mythology, which I still have more more more to do, & I'm trying to think of the benefits of membership. Experience cost breaks on Merits is an idea put to good use in Vampire: the Requiem, & I'm also thinking maybe a bonus Vice, a bonus Virtue? Maybe extra dots of Willpower or boxes of Health? Maybe making a thing like non-murder killing not matter on your Humanity check? I'm not sure. I don't want to get too crazy, but I want it to be worth it. Also, what kind of "reward" do you give the Unaffiliated guy? Or do you not. Do you just advantage belonging to one?

Afro Samurai Volume 2, by Takashi Okazaki.

This is my big sword.
There are many like it, dig?
But this one is mine.

Together with the first volume, this is the whole collected manga. Or dojinshi. Wait, it can be both. So it is both. Well alright, first things first-- there is a hyper-sexualized bit of dead lady right in the first issue. So, I guess we can take this as a given that as far as the treatment of ladies, we're sunk. The threat of rape later in the volume is scary & meant to be vile; I mention it here for sake of completeness. So what do I think about this comic in the end? Well, the use of negative space remains excellent. The panoramic views of the world are great. Fights against robots are always pretty cool. The "cursed drive of the man bent of vengeance" thing is exaggerated to ridiculousness; Afro doesn't seem bad-ass or haunted but rather paper-thin. So what is the verdict? I think this comic seems like a perfect candidate to make a television show off of. The search for the "Number One" slot (& headband) is a good device, & the mix of robots & samurai & gunslingers is to my liking, though the story has some offensive moments & has a hard time holding cohesion in some of the battle sequences. I'd be interesting in seeing how it was re-interpreted onto the screen; with the same skeleton & some different flesh on them bones, it could really pull together.

You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation! by Fletcher Hanks, edited by Paul Karasik.

Her face shows the skull--
jungle doom is upon you!
Flying on thought rays.

This is the companion volume to I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!, together constituting the collected works of Fletcher Hanks. Who the hell is Fletcher Hanks? He was a an author & artist in comics right at the dawn of the superhero. He also was a total piece of human crap. Don't mistake him for the heroic Fletcher Hanks Jr. No, senior died on a park bench & that was par for the course. Which adds a certain meta-spice to reading these; all these heroic guys (& gal) striding around, busting skulls (or stars) for justice? Would have been busting Hank's, you know. His prose & pictures seethe with it, too; ugliness & violence are happenstance in his comics; up to & including babies getting eaten by tigers. Then confusing Super Science Wizards "whisk" in use strange rays to set things right-- well, put things right. They don't bring back the dead & tortured. I was won over by the first volume, & when I saw this second one at BEA (in an attractive Covey designed package) I was filled with Must-Have. Here we have room for some of Hank's other, non-Stardust, writing. Lumberjacks swinging fists, space police in rocket ships, spies, even medieval knights. Myself, I prefer the total lunacy of Stardust, so I suppose the first volume still stands out as the best, but this is some wild stuff; plus, it completes the set! Oh, & it does have a story where Stardust creates a "Sixth Column," which is his...club for boys? I was sad there wasn't a Karasik strip in the back; I thought it worked as an endcap in the last one. The search for the mystery of the magic words is a really worthwhile quest, though.

Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci & Jim Rugg.

Remember that time
we Blair Witched Mark's house? With dolls
made of sticks? & blood?

Hey, remember all the kerfluffle over Minx? Well, I finally got around to reading Plain Janes after reading a couple others back last year. I had heard mixed reviews of Janes; it was a public darling, but a lot of people I knew were less impressed. What is my verdict? Well, I liked it. It was the perfect thing to slip in to a single subway ride. I think the "acts of art" are kind of half-way between graffiti & actual acts of public art (like-- who cleans up your litter, guys?) which complicated my feelings, but the adults were caricatures enough to make it work. Like, the high-strung cop-enemy, the mentally damaged overly protective mother...they were scarecrows that allowed the rest of the story to make sense. The end of the book isn't really a conclusion; it is a fine stopping point, but it lacks resolution.

Hayate X Blade volume IV.

O! My crystal ball
has gone dark! & the S-class
prepares for their duel.

(I'm using the image from volume III, since when I read that one, it's cover wasn't ready. Just lagging one behind I guess!) So these things are cute popcorn, bing-bing-bang-bing-bing, as Dan Akryod would say, if he was in Grosse Point Blank & asked about them. Manga still continues to elude me as a "thing," but I like to have at least a conversational familiarity with the occasional nook & cranny. These are adorable, weird, & idiosyncratic-- & lately they've been leaving a lot of the Japanese idioms untranslated, with a glossary in the back that explains them. I think that is a really smart choice, since the audience probably likes feeling that sort of smug cleverness when the know one (I do...) & also likes learning new ones when they don't (I do...like, the slang for bisexuality is the same as the term for two sword fighting?). The only complaint I have is that the characters are all in uniforms & don't have the usual anime distinctive characteristics; I still get the occasional character confused. I mean, there are styles, but in black & white they get lost (see this for how it would work in colour). Anyhow, crazy Japanese schoolgirls sword fighting & having platonic lesbian relationships. Pretty much sums it up. Fun.

My stomach is still upset from this weekend. My next month is basically booked back-to-back & solid with plays & parties. To which I've been told to shut up, because apparently having to go to nice social gatherings-- having that as your problem-- is a nice trouble to have. Well anyhow, my guts are in knots from living off beer & champagne & vodka only. The only vitamins or nutrients I had all week! A liquor fast. & no gym; that is right, I didn't go to the gym once. Lazy. Lazzzzy!

Freyja's day was a long day of Dungeons & Dragons. Summer hours at work seem to fit together with fordmadoxfraud's schedule & skycornerless & toughlad's day off, which means afternoon blitz of adventure! David was running-- part one was my tiefling warlock, James' human bard & Emily's changeling ranger versus some jumping spiders ("Oh I forgot to mention; they are the size of horses") & a web golem. The web golem is awesome-- awesome-- & inside of it was a phylactery. Which my warlock insisted on hanging on to. Then there was some fast-talking a bunch of kobolds ("No! Don't give him...the Cosmic Silver Piece!") which led to us avoiding the fight & getting a bunch of gryphons or hyppogryphs or one of the two. Skyhorse & Dirtybird, we named them. Lovely. Then on to the town & meeting up with elladorian's eladrin wizard & Erica's vampire shifter druid; then us talking to some stupid scribe & getting tricked by some half-elf trickster! Which should have resulted in us getting ambushed by something like thirty kobolds & goblins-- but we are sneakier than any sneak! Instead thanks to Erica & Emily's character's ability to shapeshift, the goblin leader got shived & then the goblins & kobolds tricked into fighting each other-- problem averted! There was like, evil water? Which we tried to guard, only to later find out there was a second site. Drat. Things finished up with a huge brawl against zombies, skeletons, a four-armed skeleton, & that treacherous half-elf. Once OPERA & Gren (the bard) closed the circle that was animating the dead, it was all clean-up. Loot? +2 dwarven chainmail-- I've been full of greed for new armor. & I'm totally taking mounted combat next left.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa

On Saturn's day, there was some mix-up with David maybe wanting to brunch & gym, but that didn't happen-- between that & the rain I ended up electing to blow off working out & watch cartoons. I watched the Fullmetal Alchemist movie, which was...weird. I'd say watch it if you car about the cartoon but be aware that it is...weird. Like-- the doppelganger of Fuhrer King Bradley is...Fritz Lang? & it ends with Hitler being arrested-- which I thought might be the prevention of WWII but I think is also maybe just him going to write Mein Kampf. Anyhow, other than all the Fritz Lang montages, the best parts were super-scary Gluttony & Ray Mustang blowing everything up. I kept calling James at work to give him the blow-by-blow, since nobody else cares about FMA, right? Basically, I think it worked on a lot of levels to explore the rise of the Nazis in the same sort of way that a lot of Japanese animation deals with the rise of Japanese nationalism. With alchemists blowing stuff up along the way.

Then I met up with Jenny-love at work to go to Queens! Brian (of Brian & Jocelyn) was having a birthday celebration that started out at the new beer garden in Astoria. During which, it poured rain. Everyone in Metropolis is talking non-stop about the rain with the fervor usually reserved for talking about real estate. Seriously though, this weather is effing ridiculous; it hasn't stopped raining in...it just hasn't stopped raining, okay? So we huddled under an umbrella drinking liters of beer, getting wet & drunk all at once. Here is the verdict on the beer garden: what the hell? I don't get it. It is basically...a big backyard? It wasn't all-you-can-drink; it was the opposite. It was thirteen bucks for a liter of beer & eight dollars for a hamburger. That isn't a deal! I could just go to a bar & sit on the patio. I'm not complaining-- I had fun! Rather, rendering judgment. Thumbs down! Gladiator kills beer garden! Katie & Toy were there, & now since I've met them like, enough times, I decided they have moved into acquaintance-ville. There were other folks to enjoy talking to-- J. Matthew was pretty funny, & the gentleman who writes headlines for the New York Post (who took the above picture of me & Jocelyn) had a Edgar Rice book in his bag. Also ended up going crazy about how he bought Budweiser & someone told him it was low class.

That was after we left the beer garden, which we did with no-small Keystone Coppering. We followed people to clown cars, lost people, rejoined them, stayed behind, got lost, got found, took a train, all kinds of such. Then to the liquor store where everyone bought a bottle of Prosecco. I mean, there was a lot of it! Then to Brian & Jocelyn's apartment, which is a Gene Wolfe locale; a hallway at the end of which are infinite bedrooms. Seriously, there were...lets say at least twelve, & every time you'd open or close the door, there would be a different bedroom behind it! Which is good, because there were hundreds of people in attendance. I ruined my sobriety with cunning & stick-to-it-ness, & a good time was had. Songs were sung! Jokes were laughed at! Then the hellish train ride home; from Queens! It wasn't too bad, not really. There was a chance of going to Victoria's birthday then, but I am an old fuddy duddy, man! I had to crawl into bed.

Sunday was Jenny & me trying to hang out with each other. Played some MarioKart (I'm now gold on everything except the last two levels of 150cc Mirror) & then watched a lot of Angel. Ate diner food (Eggs, spinach, potatos, sauce) & some of the Tony Awards, since Tony is in it & NPH was hosting. Lunch was burritos, & then off off off to play practice. Things are pulling tighter together; having Greg tell me what things are & aren't working for my character is assuaging some of my nervousness. Then afterward, Maggie & I went to Macri Park for more drinks. The downside? the terrifying bathrooms aren't terrifying anymore; they have just boring regular sinks now. The upside? There was free barbecue! Yeah, some burgers & hot dogs & corn! So Maggie & I hung out talking about work & about roleplaying, & then we came home; my timing meeting up with Jenny's, too, coming home from Carla's. Now here I am working, waiting for the replies to my emails.

Afro Samurai Volume I by Takashi Okazaki.

Fire it up! Fire it...
Can you dig it?! Can you dig...
Well, something like that.

So apparently Sam Jackson is the voice of the cartoon. & he should be. & I bet I'll like this more after the second volume. I like mix & match settings-- katanas, matchlock guns, cyborg arms, rocketlaunchers, you know, whatever works. Plus, killer guys with teddy bear heads? This volume though-- well, PW actually sums it up pretty neatly as macho posturing. I like the art-- I like the way his 'fro can dissapear into negative space to draw his face & I like black & white & blood as a colour scheme. I like the Number 1 & Number 2 headbands. What I don't like is-- there are two instances with women in the book. One, the girls the bad guy has tied up & abused. Two, the innocent girl that Afro Samurai throws in front of bullets to give him cover. What? No thanks. Boo. What is up with the "bad bad dude" trope? I thought the trope was "good bad dude." You know, he saves the girl, at least? I mean, if you are going to be brutishly ignorant of genderpolitik? That is a pretty major concern.

Fullmetal Alchemist, the complete series, by Funimation.

It has been over a year since I read a comic version of Fullmetal Alchemist, but I finally watched the animated series. For something that took up nineteen hours of my life over the past few weeks, I'll probably give this short shrift. First, I should point out that if I watched nineteen hours of this, it must have been pretty decent. Okay, the quick story here: the manga is still coming out, & the animie is over. That means at some point around the end of the first season, it diverged from the comic storyline & went in its own direction. This hilights the best thing about the series: it is over. Seriously, that is such a big relief? You can watch the whole thing & be done with it. The comic is, no surprise, better. Still, seeing a new direction is fun, too. I liked it, for much the same reasons as I liked the comic. I will say-- the "twist" at the end of the series was...not to my liking. It hadn't been telegraphed or hinted at; it seemed shoe horned in, & wasn't needed. I'm not saying it was a betrayal-- they were well within the confines of storytelling-- but I felt let down. On the plus side, Roy ending up with an eyepatch almost made up for it.

King of the World by Wallace Wood.

All girls are naked!
Well, under their clothes, at least.
Lets draw them that way!

This is a funny book? I picked it up when a gentleman I know was cleaning out his office; I took anything with monsters or wizards on the cover. That, sir or madam, is how I roll. This is a Mad magazine artist, writing a fantasy epic. A pretty clear homage to The Lord of the Rings, with a heaping helping of Conan thrown in, & some weird sexual politics. Sort of Elf Questy, with a few Little Nemo-like sequences. The main character is a little elf in a village that amounts to a free love commune. The girls are drawn naked then get a swath of water colour over top. Sometimes chained up, too-- why not? The protagonist is a little bit cynical, a little bit clever. There is a broken sword. A sleeping wizard king. A demon god. I kind of want to read the other two volumes of this, just to see how it ends up.

Monsters by Neal Adams.

"Its alive! Its--"
suddenly, the wolfman, and
Dracula! "Oh my--"

I don't know what to tell you about this guy here. Do you want to see Neal Adams draw Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, & a werewolf? If you do, this is the comic for you. There is a frame story-- okay, frame story, whatever. Gives you an excuse to Monster Mash, which I know certain parties (toughlad) won't stop gushing about. Dracula wants Frankenstein's monster to be his slave & guard him while he daysleeps. Dracula also has a handlebar mustache. Frankenstein's monster is v2.0, & has the brain of an abused street urchin. The werewolf is the pretty girl, & has to fight some gypsies. There you have it. I think the Werewolf art is the best, when there isn't any fighting; Adams manages to make an anthropomorphic creature lope along on all fours without looking ungainly, which is a tough nut to crack. There is a pretty great burnt-up Dracula, too. In the back there is some Childhood's End art I quite liked; toeing the line between devil & alien is tough. Also, Man-Thing.

Hayate X Blade Volumes II & III by Shizuru Hayashiya. (Volume III not pictured)

My Kendo technique
Is unstoppable! Hi-ya!
Lets share a sauna?

I had enjoyed the first volume of this series, for being full on manga insanity, unapologetically. School for young teenage girls where they have dangerous swordfights? Major drama deflated by spastic humor? Check! My one complaint for a moment was that I was starting to lose track of which girl was which-- there were a string of tall girls with long dark hair-- but Hayashiya-san must have seen that coming, because she gave the girls hair cuts & in the bargain made fun of one of the characters for only being able to remember people with over the top physical quirks. There was some advancement of minor characters, but not much over-all plot drive, which is fine with me. I picked these up for some light reading (the other book I'm reading is kind of grueling) & was not disappointed. These are fun. Weird though-- weird. I should mention that it drops the term "DV" as slang for domestic violence? & that there is a lot of lesbian undertones (& practically overtones!), undermined by "ew" & punching. There is a lot of punching used as humor. The whole thing is so weird? I end up reading it as symptomatic.