Super Powers

So this is flowing out of a couple of discussions I've had with people about "what super power would you have?" (shock horror that I've had that discussion) with a few people over the years.

Basically it comes down to a discussion of 5 powers for me with a pros and cons thing

I generally ignore all the super strength/fighty type powers, I wouldn't want them or use them given I'm not a very fighty type person. So none of those will really be covered, just the powers I like, starting with;

1. Invisibility- My favourite power and totally underused in comics. How can the bad/good guys stop the guy they can't see? Yeah yeah Wolverine could smell him or Spiderman has the spider sense thing... but seriously no faceless grunt could stop you and you could steal all sorts of stuff... And the potential for mischief is huge. But then you have the downside of just what can you turn invisible. Is it just you? Your clothes? Things you're holding? What if you're wearing/holding to much? Do you have to nude up each time you're going invisible? If so it's kinda losing the edge there.
2. Immortality- Think Ra's Al Ghul or the Highlander. Upside you don't die... downside everyone else does... Upside years to horde weath etc (there's a reason those guys are rich)... downside you have to "reinvent" yourself every generation which would have to be getting trickier. An extra personal downside for me was pointed out by my brother, my complete lack of an attention span would probably only get worse and I end up developing some weird international conspiracy to keep myself busy... but it would serve no purpose other than the extermination of Justin Bieber/Reality TV/whatever else I've decided I don't like that decade.
3. Super Speed- Again a favourite of mine, mainly because I like the flash. You'd be super hard to beat in combat because you're so much faster etc and the commute to work wouldn't be terrible. But the thing is, just because you have super speed people assume you have the implict super fitness. All super speed means is you run QUICKER not FURTHER. A 30km run to work is still a 30km run no matter the speed you are running... Sure you'd get fit, but you're still not going to swim the pacific (or run on top of it) not matter how fast you go...
4. Teleportation-  I do love Nightcrawler... And the ability to instantly teleport places would be awesome... However teleporting loses out massively in upside/downside. The assumption with teleporting are generally that you can't teleport into something (that would suck), you can do it to locations you can't see despite the earth turning however fast it turns blah blah blah and that you can teleport more than just yourself... Otherwise you'd arrive naked without any of your fillings... which would be awkward and ouchie... Solve all those probs and I'm all for teleporting, but I'll hold off risking it until that time...
5. Flight- I like flight, completely useless in comics but imagine being able to fly to work. And in the upside/downside discussion it has very few downsides. You don't have to nude up for it, you should be able to carry at least a backpack of stuff with you. You might not be able to go super high due to the oxygen concentrations but you could easily get a couple of hundred metres up and fly off to work... Fun... Definitely the power I'd end up choosing I think.

There you go, choose flight =P

Love, Hugs and Kisses

ANt

Comics, part 3

The "Rest" (aka smaller publisher stuff)

When I started buying/reading comics again it was finding smaller publisher stuff on the web that started pulling me in... So this topic is quite close to my heart. I was quite big on Devils Due stuff for ages there (and bought a fair bit online till their webstore and I had a "disagreement"). I can't remember how I got into Devils Due but I think it was through Tsunami Bomb (yeah that band I like). As best as I recall I found Tsunami Bomb in a random free mp3 search of the web in the early 2000s (or perhaps I was searching elsewhere and linked to them from another band?)... regardless of how I found them I think the next step was a Tsunami Bomb blog post or something like that to the fact that they'd got a reference in Josh Blaylock's new comic Misplaced (yes the same Josh Blaylock on my blogs I read list there --> )... Which I then checked out, and ended up buying and the rest they say is history...

So we will start this post with

Misplaced
Alyssa is from another dimension or something and can kick ass (very little is specified as to why). But the art is very pretty and the heroine is quite endearing in her naivety. It's a little bit of a standard "oh I come from a super obey the rules society and now I'm on Earth I can be free to punk up etc" story... but with the added bonus of crazy super powers and weird slug alien type things... and jetpacks!

The tattoo marks on her head are cool too...
One point of difference here is I actually have the comics for this not the graphic novel... I should get the graphic novel...

It also has a great line about drinking... Alyssa (bless her naive non matching socks) having gone to her first bar and having her first drink gets kinda drunk and quite enjoys it... Then a "frat boy fuck up" spikes her drink and she ends up booting after kicking everyone's ass. Lying back afterwards she says "I feel terrible, you know what I need? More Beer! That stuff made me feel great".

Dead @ 17
From Misplaced the logical segue is to Dead @ 17 (obviously due to the crossover "Misplaced @ 17" that they did about Alyssa and Nara moving in together.
Anyway once again this is a Josh Howard thing centered around a hot punk(ish) indy chick fighting bad guys with super powers (note the theme here so far)... The twist being this time said chick (Nara) has been killed and come back to life to fight demons and zombies etc... all the time struggling to pay rent and what not. Again the artwork is pretty kick ass (most of these smaller publisher stuff seem to have cooler artwork than what Marvel/DC put out).

Hack/Slash
Continuing the trend you find yet another "hot chick fighting bad guys comic" initially from Devils Due (but now Image or something). Tim Seeley this time is the dude responsible and somehow this comic was even adapted as a stage play.
Anyway this time Cassie is a hot goth chick who travels around fighting slasher killers (like the bad guys from dodgy b grade horror movies), all the time trying to pay rent and etc (damn there's that pattern again). Cassie works with Vlad (big scary guy who kicks the shit out of everyone/thing) and a few other people "backstage" who they saved... It's actually pretty cool with a bit more to it than the other two (maybe because it's been running longer) and it even comes with tender moments. Cassie isn't invincible and she gets stressed and even struggles with the fact she can't get a date... It's an interesting diversion from the standard buffy influence "hot chick kicks ass" story and definitely worth a read.

And the artwork is AMAZING...

Mercy Sparx
Josh Blaylock, Devils Due publishing, hot (demon this time) chick kicks ass... blah blah blah... Seeing the pattern?
Actually this one varies slightly from the pattern again, with Mercy being a demon hired by heaven (or is she... cliffhanger in the plot) to kick 666 types of shit out of rogue angels. Again the plot is ok, nothing amazing like Sandman or the like but the artwork is pretty sweet

Too Cool to be Forgotten
In a massive turnaround here is a comic NOT about a hot chick (as the main character) and NOT about ass kicking (especially not by the hot chick).
This story is about a dude sent back in time to his high school years and reliving things again... I guess that's nothing amazing but it's a pretty sweet story about getting closure (and quitting smoking). It's a pretty sweet story story I think most people could relate to (I'm sure we all wouldn't mind doing something different... although I did write a tentative post about "if I could do it again" and I realistically wouldn't change many things... just one thing...) and if you're still in high school maybe it'll make you think about things a bit differently.

Lost at Sea
Another comic featuring a teenage girl, however this time she's not kicking the ass of beings from hell/another dimension/undeath/etc, instead it's a sweet "coming of age" style story... about making friends and life and blah blah blah. It's by the guy who did Scott Pilgrim so the artwork isn't amazing, but the story puts me in mind of a couple of friends (whom I won't name here, but they need to read it).


Lost at Sea also segues nicely into the last comic I'll be writing about, Scott Pilgrim. But (perhaps unsurprisingly) this isn't all my comics, just all the ones I feel like writing about at the moment. Maybe one day I'll write a part 4 to this including some of the ones I skipped, but I'll just do a short list here for things you should look out for

• Johnny the Homicidal Maniac- Yes there is a lot of hype, I'm not sure it lives up to it all. The art is pretty crazy (so is the story to be honest) and if it wasn't for the fairly decent conclusion at the end I wouldn't be sold on this at all
• Ghost World- I remember loving the movie, the comic is ok but a slightly less "happy" story... pretty pics
• Madman- Insane... Lots of fun... he has a yoyo... that is all
• Invincible- Fantastic cross of superhero pisstake and superhero coming of age... read it

Scott Pilgrim
To finish up I thought I'd write about Bryan Lee O'Malley's more famous book series.
6 books (of varying quality), a kick ass (pun intended) computer game, a fairly shoddy movie and an awesome movie soundtrack mean that if you're reading this you probably should've heard of Scott Pilgrim.
The artwork is nothing special, there are some good individual lines and characters and a quite amusing central idea (the video game style escalating bosses, enemies turning to coins etc) make this something you should try and read. It's very accessible, but nowhere near as heart lifting as stories like Lost at Sea or Too Cool to be forgotten.

Anyway, rather than a blow by blow write up I'd just write about some of the things that bug me a little... some of you may know how horrifyingly emotionally involved I can get in this comic, I think mainly due to the fact it doesn't turn out how I think it should... It's taken me a while to work out why but I think it's because Ramona is a massive bitch, and Scott is a bit of a tool...
It's more obvious in the movie where Ramona and Scott can't act, and Ramona totally appears to not even like Scott making the movie about a pretty pathetic guy beating the shit out of a bunch of pretty cool guys to then go out with a chick that doesn't seem to like him...
Similar issues occur in the comic, but it's a bit more subtle. Basically Scott was a bit of a fuckhead in his past; see his relationship with Kim (beating up her bf, then moving without telling her), Knives (ditching her for a chick he didn't even know, and not even telling her) and even Envy Adams (yeah she was a bitch, but the fight she dumped him in he started).

Ramona is a bitch, but she at least appears to like Scott (at least some of the time) but she's pretty flakey any hypocritical... Getting angry at Scott for staying at Lisa's after she kicked him out, is a bit rough, especially given that she then had her ex stay over and they were making out.
ANYWAY, Avoiding those two main characters and you will find that the secondary characters are a lot nicer and you generally feel like it would be nice something good happened to them. Look at Kim or Steven Stills (although he does end up with that dude at the end)... Even Knives... Young Neil or Stacey... All those characters seem so much nicer than Scott and Ramona (admittedly Kim does keep telling Scott he's a dickhead... turns out she's right).
I think the thing that bugs me most is how Scott treats Lisa Miller. The artwork isn't amazing so it's hard to tell but she seems to be no more or less attractive than Ramona (maybe not as "hipster cool") but she was his best friend for years and they obviously like each other (more than can be said about Ramona) and when Lisa finally confesses to Scott he runs away to Ramona (who at the time DOESN'T EVEN LIKE HIM).

I dunno... frustrating... I guess it would've been a hard series to finish keeping it unexpected which is why the first few books are better than the later ones, but once again something you should read

That's enough about comics for now...

Love, Hugs and Kisses
ANt

Comics, part 2

The "mainstream"

So continuing from last time I figured I'd write about other comics, only this time just focus on the main marvel and DC lines. Of course rather than talking about individual comics like last time I'll be talking about characters in these "universes" on top of specific story arcs...

Starting with Marvel and their more commonly recognised stuff that I like... The Xmen... Who I like particular individuals in but tend to avoid the whole group just because it's confusing and to much happens. I never liked Spiderman, Ironman is a douche, Captain America is a SUPER douche and the Hulk just sucks (so I won't talk about them). I do like Mister Fantastic from the Fantastic Four, mainly because his advantage is being smart and not his power of being stretchy (on that note did we all notice the Incredibles basically just had the Fantastic Four's powers with speed instead of fire?). Another cool thing from the F4 is they introduced Galactus and the Silver Surfer. The surfer rocks, even if his comic is a bit "woe is me I'm marooned on a planet of savages etc"

So Xmen I like are Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde and Archangel (interestingly 2 of those 3 where in Xcaliber). Nightcrawler is just a good character, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't like him (a blue skinned swashbuckler who can teleport was never going to fail), similar to Kitty Pryde (but with WAY cooler powers). Archangel however is up there with the coolest powers around, true he's kinda rubbish in a fight compared to most of them, but he's super fit (without any effort) and can FLY... Everyone would like that power. There are other Xmen I don't mind (Beast, Iceman, Psylocke etc) also but more important are the ones that are annoying... I won't go Wolverine bashing (it's not his fault he's over exposed), he was a good idea when he started, it's just the fact that every second character SINCE has been just a copy of him. Cyclops is a douche, 'nuff said there. Jean Gray is/was also annoying. Storm shits me to tears and wtf is the point of Jubilee?

Stretching from Xmen you get Exiles, I picked up a whole collection of their books from a mate when he moved back to the states. I probably wouldn't have bought them myself but they were a decent price and turned out to be none to shabby. Somewhat standard "traveling through alternate dimensions and trying to get home" plot that included Nightcrawler's daughter from another dimension, the good Sabertooth from Age of Apocalypse and Blink.
Funnily enough it was supposed to be a story removed from the main Marvel universe, but of course when any character begins to gain popularity they need to find themselves relocated to the main universe (as happened with Nocturne). It did provide Marvel another outlet for "alternate universe" versions of popular characters too, like the evil Daredevil and whatnot on the Weapon X team. All without having to go to that "what if" comic they used to do... plus if they proved popular *zip* over to the main universe...

Another "alternate universe" marvel story that's worth looking at is Marvel 1602, basically it's the base marvel universe in the 1600s, weird idea but works pretty well. But I think the main reason it works is NEIL GAIMAN wrote it (more on that later).

The Earth/Universe/Paradise X series is also more of the same "alternate timeline/universe" stuff that Marvel do so often (you think the terminator timeline is complicated, you should look at the marvel universe). Anyway in this one everyone has superpower (cool!) but noone can have kids (???) and there's captain marvel and the avengers are dead and the xmen have scattered and Peter Parker is exposed as Spiderman and blah blah blah... Interesting idea, just draws out for to long and gets way to complicated. Killing death and Galactus and all these other key godlike characters gets tricky but Fat Wolverine (how?), Deadpool/Daredevil, Female Thor and Loki being the only Asgardian who understands what is happening are all amusing though.

Finally we have my favourite character from Marvel... Deadpool... Now I hate to say it but I totally liked Deadpool before it was cool (I've even got one of his standalone comics from the 90s still... It was in a showbag). Essentially he started as a copy of Deathstroke from DC (costume, skills even weapons) but he slowly warped into a pisstake of the 90s "violent antihero" schtick (think Wolverine, Punisher and even more Wolverine). Basically he was in the same Weapon X program that Wolverine was in where he got given the stock  standard super healing power, but he had cancer and something went funny and etc etc... Basically he's covered in horrible scars and it's fucked his brain so he's batshit insane. The most obvious part of this is he knows he's in a comic and noone else does (he even answers his own letters page), so all the other characters think he's an idiot and don't understand him. He doesn't know what he's going to do next, so noone else can predict him and in the last few years (powered by the interweb) he's shot up in popularity to the point where he's basically in every comic Marvel do and his refreshing differences are now annoyingly everywhere... He's still funny, just over exposed (much like Family Guy).

Connected to Deadpool comes a comic character I've never actually read a comic of, but have read about and seriously wish I could get copies of their stuff... Squirrel Girl and the rest of the Great Lakes Avengers... I hate the Avengers, and the spin off West Coast Avengers just seem even more pathetic... But the spin off spin off Great Lakes Avengers seem quite amusing, someone dies in every issue and at one stage they met Deadpool and he moved into their HQ and wouldn't leave. He killed one of them for the remote. Google them for the full story.
Squirrel Girl is probably their most famous member, however she's a little bit all over the shop, her power is she can talk to/control squirrels and she has claws a tail and climbing skills and most importantly hazelnut flavoured lips. She also has an entire collection of "Iron Man Vs" collector cards, giving her background info on bad guys... using these abilities she's managed to bring down some of the biggest bad guys in the marvel universe... Apparently some writers hate her and keep trying to "but no" her accomplishments and others love her and keep making her beat bigger and badder people... Much more amusing than Spiderman or the Captain America.

Providing a lovely segue is the Marvel Vs DC collection I have, average kinda comic but interesting in that they used reader votes to determine the winners. Batman vs Captain America, Superman vs Hulk, Spiderman vs Superboy, Flash vs Thor, Silver Surfer vs Green Lantern etc... The coolest part of this clearly being the weird amalgam universe, a Batman/Wolverine Hybrid chasing a Sabertooth/Joker Hybrid with an incredibly annoying Captain America/Superman hybrid etc...
Comics being comics and Marvel/DC being Marvel/DC nothing that is even remotely popular is let go, so that means Amalgam Comics was setup to do 24 comic run of stories about the heroes/villains from the merged universe (never let storyline get in the way of potential profit). A list of comics to think from this would include

• Legends of the Dark Claw (Wolverine/Batman)
• Bruce Wayne, Agent of Shield (Bruce Wayne/Nick Fury)
• Iron Lantern (Iron Man/Green Lantern)
• Lobo the Duck (Lobo/Howard the Duck... WTF is right)

Now we move into DC land... As mention previously I was never into DC as much as Marvel (although Watchmen is officially DC, and V for Vendetta is Vertigo which is a DC imprint)... Basically I HATE Superman and Batman, I really really hate the pair of them. The Joker is an awesome villain, but Batman sucks, so unsurprisingly the coolest DC comic I own is a Batman story with no Batman in it till the last couple of pages. It's just the Joker leaving Arkham and going on a bit of a rampage, then finishes with Batman coming from nowhere and kicking the fuck out of him.

But that does mean we can segue straight to Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic, initially DC and later Vertigo this is one of the most awesome comics you can ever read. Neil Gaiman would have to be one of my favourite writers (of anything... yes there is man crush there) so his most kick ass of kick ass comics is pretty freaking awesome. I've read his short stories, kids stories, comics, novels and watched the damn movies and they're all awesome. I won't bother trying to summarise the series, just read it... read it all.

So that's the two big publishing houses covered, next up is the smaller stuff...

Love, Hugs and Kisses
ANt

Comics, part 1

So looking over my previous posts I've found very little reference to comics on here. Now I'm not quite a "comic book" person like you imagine when you hear the term... There's no collection of air tight plastic bags holding issue 1 of anything, in fact there's very few actual comics in my collection, it's almost exclusively "graphic novels" (big comics for those who don't know what that means).
Anyway I guess when I first started paying any attention to comics it was in the 90s and mainly Marvel stuff... But that was mainly due to the toys and the tv shows and not actual comics... Although I do have one (somewhere) where Magneto rips out Wolverines adamantium and then Prof X vegetables him... So in the Marvel vs DC debate I'm pretty heavily on the Marvel side (on that note I did have a couple of the Marvel vs DC comics they did... and years later picked up the collection). When I started looking at them again a few years back (coinciding strongly with the appearance of a disposable income) I drifted away from the Marvel/DC "mainstream" and started looking at other publishers like Devils Due and the more obvious Image, Dark Horse etc...
So I was shifting around my collection to new shelves and I thought I'd write something about it... but I couldn't quite come up with anything that worthwhile... So I thought I'd just write about comics/characters I like or own and why...

Starting with the "classics" (most are movies now too)


Watchmen
THE comic that everyone tells you to read. Alan Moore (a name you need to know to understand comics today... but a bit of a douche... more on that later). Award winning (and not just in comic categories, but actual "real" books too) and quite worthy of said awards. Complex story with lots of morally grey areas and a quite good movie too. Read it more than once... Although the artwork is nothing special (Alan Moore is pretty boring in his layouts...) Committing comic book heresy here, but I actually like the movie conclusion a lot more than the book, (spoiler time) but Dr Manhatten going rogue and threatening earth seems much more realistic (within the bounds of the story) than other dimensional aliens... Although it sucked they took out the pirate story. Also interestingly was meant to be set in a "universe" of another publisher that DC "acquired" and then be killing off established characters with history, rather than newly developed ones.

V for Vendetta
Again with Alan Moore, this time indulging in his pen chant for anarchism and revolution (rather than sex and conspiracy that Watchmen covered). Interesting enough story with boring as art (although no thought bubbles is new). A semi decent movie adaption that Alan Moore seems to hate (basically he's a douche and hates anyone doing anything with his work). He can blather on about trying to make his work unfilmable and wanting comics to be special... but that's not ever going to happen dude... get over it...
V is harder to read than Watchmen mainly due to all the hoo hah about anarchy and the completely unrealistic end game of V... People ruling themselves nicely? Dream on... I quite like the anti authoritarian stance, getting upset because the words "anarchism" and "fascism" aren't used is pretty silly IMHO

Sin City
Another classic turned into a reasonably popular film, this time however it's NOT an Alan Moore work but Frank Miller. A series of very awesome looking comics held together by a very tight (if somewhat over the top) story. And because Frank Miller had a bullshit time making Robocop 3 (basically he got fucked by a studio) the movie is pretty close to the comics too.

300
What? Frank Miller again? Yes much like Stan Lee invented 90% of the Marvel universes characters a surprisingly large proportion of really kick ass (more on Kick Ass later) comics come from a surprisingly small portion of writers. Funnily (yet unsurprisingly) enough Alan Moore had a whinge about this comic (and probably the movie too)... Apparently there wasn't enough homo in it for him... I get the feeling Alan Moore is kinda a epic douche as a person.
The art is once again quite awesome (and different to the "norm" or Alan Moore's "extra boring" style) and again the movie (the "this is Sparta" one) turned out to be quite popular (at least on the interweb) and quite close to the original comic.

Moving on from "classics/must haves", but continuing the "recently filmed" trend and you have

Kick Ass
Not Frank Miller or Alan Moore, but once again comic bigwigs (kinda) and you get a relatively new comic being developed almost alongside its movie. Substantial differences exist between the comic and movie (not the least being the reaction by the chick when she finds out he's not gay) and whilst you might think the movie is a little fucked up, it's got nothing compared to the comic. And most amazingly the comic writer is quite ok with the differences between the movie and the comic, with the reasoning being comic audiences and film audiences are different and film audiences wouldn't be able to deal with the less than happy things that happen (because they're pussies essentially). Think of Kick Ass the movie as the "chick flick" of the comic.
Bright colours, over the top storyline and gore make this comic most amusing to read... and I can't wait for the next two installments (comic AND movie)

The Mask
Yes it was a comic first, no the movie has nothing at all to do with the comic... Well they both have green faces, that's about it... I do like the Jim Carey vehicle, however comparing it to the comic is possibly even less reliable that comparing the Starship Troopers book to the movie.
Crazy over the top stories and violence makes the looney tunes copy cat mask from the movie appear like a total pussy... Plus the mask is actually a BAD guy in the comic...

I dearly dearly dearly want to read the Lobo/Big Head crossover and the Big Head/Joker crossover.

That's about all I can be bothered writing for the moment, but I do have more to write about (Scott Pilgrim, Hack/Slash, Dead @ 17, Marvel stuff, not to mention Neil Gaiman) so I'll do that whenever I get around to doing it

Love, Hugs and Kisses
ANt