the plusses of minus

http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus.html

so this might be one of the cutest, sweetest, and really most wonderful "webcomics" in existence. minus is the story of a girl with magical powers who can grant wishes and basically make whatever she wants to happen happen, though mostly she does what she does for other people - though sometimes, she does things just because, like switching the heads of everyone in a diner or turning herself invisible or into a puddle. it's a little like that twilight zone episode (remade for the movie), and she definitely has some sinister moments, especially early on.

the writer/artist, ryan armand says:

"Each minus strip is painted on a 15x20" piece of Illustration board. With this comic I am
pretending I am making a comic strip for a newspaper in the early 20th century. A special
newspaper that lets me use as much color as I want, because real papers have limitations
on that sort of thing. Or maybe they did in the past I'm not sure! "

most recently in the strip, after bringing some people back to life - which briefly created a zombie outbreak of sorts -, she has caused the entire human race to die (they asked to be reunited with everyone who died).

this is one of my favorite strips:

although there are several that are simply amazing.

sucks to your assmer

and sucks to your regular blogging!

kidding.

first, a holdover from the christmas posts that never happened.

honestly, i think everyone who has a TV and basic cable should watch the brilliant creation that is The Venture Bros. on Adult Swim (on Cartoon Network). a parody of everything from Johnny Quest to The Fantastic Four and other things like that, it's possibly one of the best cartoons on tv (what else can you call a show that has an entire portion of dialogue taken from Bowie's "Space Oddity" and "Ashes to Ashes"?)

well, apparently they recorded some christmas songs, which you can hear here.(apparently, some people can blog about christmas things more regularly than others....). according to wikipedia, there's also a "fairytale of new york" floating around, though it's not on the above linked site. the monarch/dr girlfriend take on "peace on earth/little drummer boy" is especially awesome, as it also keeps the dialogue... sort of... (best to just listen to it, as my description can't do it justice).

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secondly, comics.

i haven't talked about comics, except for superman and santa teaming up, for ages. i'll probably get back that this year soon enough, but right now i just want to talk about one thing, and that's what's happened in spiderman (because apparently everyone in the comics industry is a buzz about it).

truthfully, i think keeping spiderman married would have been a good thing. and sacrificing that to let aunt may live, well, not so much. not that i hate aunt may, or have any great love for mary jane, but really? cheers to them for making mephisto a relevant force for the first time in a while, but part of me hopes they weasel their way out of it by summer (blame the skrulls? pocket universe?) i mean, to have the marriage just not exist anymore... (and how does them not being married bring harry osborne back to life?) honestly, it all feels too convenient to just be a "change in the status quo" especially since the marriage was such a change, as was the pregnancy, the clone saga , the unmasking... now none of these happened? do we just undo every storyline - good or bad - that revolved even slightly around their being married? and since it was undone by mysticism, shouldn't characters like dr strange sense it? or is everyone who deals in any way with spidey just going to have the portion of their memory lobotomized and retconned out? this isn't like "no more mutants" after all. sigh...

they claim nobody liked the marriage (comic fans seemed to be largely ambivilent, myself it never bothered me though i never felt it made for any great storylines. i never felt it aged the character or anything. and it's not like there aren't tons of married superheroes, many of which HAVE had good stories come out of their being married...). they claimed it was a huge hinderance (which just smacks of a lack of editorial creativity). honestly, i think they just wanted to do something extreme to grab headlines like they did when they killed captain america.

maybe it will last, maybe it won't. i'm leaning towards the latter (can marriage have comic book death?) but who knows...

comic book day, one day later

so i didn't have time for this yesterday, so here goes:

comic book day! woo! not "free comic book day." just... well... wednesday,.,,

so really, in some ways, it was a miraculous one, for not one... not two... but THREE Joss Whedon books not only out on the same day, but on time! talk about miracles....

so we'll start with them....

Astonishing X-Men 21

now, i'll grant that this current arc of "Astonishing" hasn't really been my favorite, largely because... i don't know... maybe it just hasn't felt like Joss. Now, granted, the man's been busy with other things (and not with Wonder Woman... hmm... maybe that's what the books were all on time this month! though also, i think making Astonishing bi-monthly has also helped...). plot wise, we're further getting confused as to whether these aliens want to kill or honor Colossus, who, as it turns out, they are in part at least responsible for resurrecting, as they have some sort of prophecy involving him. anyway... but then, finally, the issue has it's true moments of zen. kitty pride appearing naked before collossus, after finding out that he's likely some sort of messiah; emma frost and cyclops arguing, before being attacked, with cyclops saying he loves her, and emma offering to sacrifce herself for him (a very Buffy moment, i dare say... though my guess is, our empathic friend who can also turn herself into diamond either has a plan, or some sort of backup in the form of wolverine and the new kid on the team will appear...).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 8 #3

ETHAN RAYNE!
Willow in full on witch battling action!
Zombie fight!
very odd aside between giles and a demon...
very scary image in buffy's dream of her with spike and angel all chained together....
but, then, finally... the big reveal....

see, at the end of the first issue, when amy was revealed, there was an allusion to another "person" found in the rubble of sunnydale, with a lot of question - and no clues - who it could have been... well, finally, at the end of issue 3, we get to see who, along with Amy, the government (in a sort of initiative throwback, though not really the initiative as much) has hired to bring down the slayer and her army (cos, if you all remember how the show ended... well... there's a whole lotta slayers out there....). and it is (icky drum roll please, cos, well, eeew...)
Warren! all skinless and everything! and ready for revenge (though, ok, telling Willow she "really gets under [his] skin." is sort of lame....

and finally, for the Joss Whedon portion of this post....
Runaways #26

For one, you can tell Joss loves writing Molly. The enthusiasim and exuberance he puts in her - though always a part of her character, is just all kinds of extra... fun. and she sucker punches the Punisher, right in the gut! which, frankly, is more fun than when captain america decked him back during Civil War (honestly, he thinks he can take the mantle of Captain America, but he can't even avoid getting the wind knocked out of him by a - granted a mutant one - little girl? i mean, getting clocked by Steve Rogers... makes some sense, and one even wonders if the Punisher had put up a fight in that one... But little molly hayes? awesome!)

best script moment:
runaways walk into Kingpin's office, to deliver what they "stole" for him (which likely was a product of their late evil parents)...

Nico:He said be at his office by first light. We got just enough time to hop out of state till we figure out what we're gonna... ninja. (lights come on, room full of ninjas)
Chase: That's a lot of ninjas.
Nico: It's a bunch.
Chase: More than the usual amount of ninjas.

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and now, the rest:

The Avengers: the initiative #2

bah... i'll be honest and say i'm not sure why i'm still going with this - or with the Omega Flight series, though at least that's limited... do we really need a new new warriors? granted, it's a pretty cool seeming team, for the new warriors (and we'll have to see how they deal with the stigma of being the new version of the team that destroyed an entire city, and led to the whole registration mess to begin with... i would imagine that the name alone is going cause some people to have a prejudice against them...).
though, the fact that now tony stark's shield is hiring ex-nazi scientists doesn't bode well, either...

the most intriguing character might be this new kid called "trauma" who, apparently, can read minds and shapeshift... though i'm much more interested to see who his new private tutor from the xavier institute's going to be....

52 #52

ok. the multiverse is back.... kind of anticlimactic, really. the multiverse is back and now countdown starts. ummm... i think that was really the point of the whole issue, though the ghosts of ralph and sue dibny - who apparently play a role in countdown, coming full circle, in a way, since it was sue's death that started identity crisis which led to infinite crisis which begat 52.......... but really. other than booster gold getting to see all the other earths... eh... hopefully countdown will not be a dissapointment, as some of 52 seems to have been (i'm largely been out of the loop on it. i'll have to read the trades when they come out i guess...)

Marvel Zombies vs. Heart of Darkness #3

zombie howard the duck. really all i have to say. but also, zombie power pack!? zombie hulkling? yeah... all in all, good times, with zombies!

Omega Flight #2

now, this actually brings in two interesting ideas... the best being that, well, this new canadian superhero team - in a country that has always had hero registration, but not used it as a weapon against it's own heroes - is being formed with a lot of influence by S.H.I.E.L.D. and this, understandably, has the canadians pissed. now that the US's villains - and fugitive heroes - are causing problems on the other side of the border, we're asking them - by helping them form and fund this new team - to basically, clean up our mess... and the new team:

USAgent... umm.... why? seriously, a wannabe captain america fighting for a wannabe america? (kidding... though i guess that's how he'd look at it...)
Sasquatch (the only survivor from alpha flight)
Talisman (daughter of a dead former alpha flight member, Shaman)
Arachne (Julia Carpenter, like spiderman, also now back in black...)
and Michael Pointer, who had at one point been the vessel for "the collective" (ie, all the mutant powers that were lost in M-Day as one giant energy ball), and who - in that form - was what killed the original alpha flight...

so... yeah... more to come... maybe it will get more interesting once there's a team... but wait... it's only 5 issues....

incredible hulk #106

ok. world war hulk begins now. but, oddly, no actual hulk in this issue (except in flashback)... she hulk's pissed though, and finally decided to take some action... however, it does set up a little bit whose side some characters - namely, Angel and Hercules - are going to be on when banner returns... well... probably anyway...

most importantly, they're finally going to tell a good Hulk story for the first time in forever...

anyway. that's all for now...