I don't think Wolverine and the Hulk have had a good scrap in a while. I was the perfect age for the classic issue written by Peter David and pencilled by Todd McFarlane where Wolvie and Hulk (in his grey smart incarnation) fightfightfight. Pretty much a perfect comic book fight. Anyways.

Pallas got her ears pierced yesterday. When she was born my mom wanted to take her out of her little NICU incubator to pierce her ears but I thought it would be better if we waited until she was old enough to ask for it. Just kidding about the incubator. Sort of.
She's definitely expressed an interest before, she loves jewellery and fancy stuff. So I told her when she first asked that she definitely could if she wanted, just that she needed to be aware it hurt a little bit for a little while. Not that much and not for very long, but I wanted to be honest. So upon further reflection, she decided to wait. NOw that she's 4 1/2, and a big girl, she decided that short term pain was worth the long term gain.
So we gathered up her PoohBear blankie and her Pink Guy and went to Atomic Zombie downtown since they were recommended to us as a place where they take care of children, since not very many places do (outside of Mexico, where my Mom is from). They were great. I went in with Pallas and held her hand, and she was amazing. She kicked ass. She did the gasp of pain, and I could tell the tears were coming but she was determined to not let them win. It was so cute and so awesome to watch. We were half-convinced that she would bail after one, but she soldiered on and did the second right away. Same thing, initial gasp of pain, some half-sobs and then.... SHE DID IT! The pride on her face and the "ascitement" of finally having real ear-rings, well, these are the memories a dad treasures for all time. Afterwards she kind of did a dance with Michelle and announced to the heavens and anyone else in earshot "I got my ears pierced!!! I'm a big girl!!!"
Poor little Naia said, "My turn!" only it was not her turn.  Soon enough, Peanut! Don't grow up too soon.

Remember the halcyon days of the Woodsy Crypt? It was a simpler era of mostly we just watched movies and tv shows chosen by the VampireNomad. There were a few simple criteria for these programs. They needed to star either Gina Gershon, Craig Parker or Tom Hardy. Back in those days Tom Hardy was mostly known for playing the Romulan clone of Jean-Luc Picard or something, Shinzon, in Star Trek Nemesis. I'm hazy on the details and my PS2 from those days had a lot of trouble playing Nemesis, no matter how many copies I brought home from the video store where I worked. (Which is now a dollar store in the shopping centre closest to my house, weird.)
I'm losing my point in the nostalgic musings. My point is simple: back then I didn't really get why Tom Hardy should be singled out for such adulation. I gamely went along with her, but I didn't see it myself. HIs other claim to fame back then was he briefly appeared, naked and scrambling for his clothes, in a late episode of Band of Brothers. Like, episode 9 of 10. Again, didn't really see the appeal.
When the first pictures of Bane showed up I was like, "Hey that huge-ass dude has the same name as the guy my old room-mate was into way back when. That skinny naked guy from Band of Brothers. Whatever happened to that guy anyways?"
The answer is he got awesome. He got so awesome that he defined new realms of awesome such that the word awesome itself is obsolete.
Michelle and I watched Warrior last week. What a great movie. You should watch it. Oh you've seen it already? Watch it again! After it was over I told Michelle that I had a lot of work to do the next day. She was like, why, it's Canada Day it's a holiday. And I was like, the tomhardification of Nathan must begin anew!
You know, because I work out. Inspirational and all that.
Tweeted that and the VampireNomad was like, squeeee! A new term was coined. She even came up with units with which to measure tomhardification. Banes! And since I am but a wee mere mortal, I quickly realized that I could only measure myself in milliBanes.
We can only strive to reach one Bane.

Two and a half months, my longest hiatus from this blog in the nearly 11 years of its existence. This is merely a post to explain that I haven't died, just gone into hibernation. Heh. Little bear joke like in the good old days.
Mostly doing Twitter.

So I'm taking an online course through Ball State University, which on Twitter we are affectionately calling the #superMOOC. It's about Gender Through Comic Books. Lots of fun. One assignment was to draw our own comic based on experience we had that had something to do with gender. This is my (terrrible) comic based on my hitch-hiking adventures back in the day. A few caveats:
I can't draw. Yes, and water is wet.
This is a true experience, though the dialogue is only as best as I can recall after more than fifteen years.
I don't look like that, nor did I have a magic baseball cap. I just had a really smelly one.
I don't offer any answers, really. This is just a thing that happened.
And my scanner doesn't work so these are photos.
Anyways. Here you go:

Naia had a febrile seizure last night. Febrile seizures are a fairly common thing that happens to about 1 in 25 infants and isn't really a problem. Usually caused by a fever combined with a developing brain just causing a mild brain short circuit.  This is the kind of thing they need to make PSAs about, you know? Because I never heard of febrile seizures prior to last night, and it took a house full of firemen and paramedics to educate me.
We heard her start doing this very strange noise, kind of a stuttery moaning which was plainly not normal. In fact my first thought was seizure since I have some experience with that (not myself. Long story.) Michelle was the first to grab her and she was shaking for a few seconds, and her eyes were rolling in her head. She threw up a bit later. We called 911 and the excellent first responders of Edmonton came very quickly. They packed her up and took her in the ambulance to the Stollery. I followed a bit later when our neighbour came over to keep an eye on Pallas for us.
We were there till almost 4AM, and by the time the doctors saw her she was running and jumping and her usual cheery self. A nurse had given her a popsicle earlier so she tried scamming another one from the doctor. Anyways they weren't too concerned about it, all very common to them. And today Naia seems fine. I was supposed to be working nightshift starting tonight but I stayed home an extra night to keep an eye on everyone. Some serious lack of sleep going around the house today.
But it's all good.

The funny thing is, I didn't even coach her to do this. She just thinks it's really really really funny all on her own. Final proof of nature vs nurture, I guess.

  

Perhaps you heard that The Clone Wars is ending after five seasons. Originally I seem to recall it was slated for three with a slim shot of making it to five, so I guess we can't really complain. Still, a little sad. I'm still working my way through the Season 4 blu-rays, and Pallas and I have lots of watching ahead of us- she loves the feature film (technically it was 3 episodes strung together and released in theatres) and I haven't even really showed her that there are like a hundred other episodes! I've said it many times, The Clone Wars is the best animated show on television, and is the best thing about the whole prequel era.
Here's a really sweet farewell letter from the voice of Obi-wan Kenobi, James Arnold Taylor.

A week ago or so Marvel started teasing this image, which caused quite a bit of speculation as to what it was, exactly. The Marvel Now line has been rolling out for a few months and has been pretty much hugely successful. So what was this #1? A new series? Unlikely given the huge number of creators listed. An omnibus collection of all the Now #1s? Maybe, yeah, but that's not anything new and all us diehard fans would have all that material anyway. And so on.
Yesterday was the big announcement, and it turned out to be a huge, really huge, digital giveaway of 700 Marvel comics, all first issues of series from the original Marvel comic, Fantastic Four right up to quite a few of the Now titles. 700. Anyone with an account with either the Marvel store or the linked Comixology store could get them. Within minutes pretty much everyone jumped on to redeem, causing the servers to crash.
Comixology spent all day working on the situation, and had their Twitter account suspended for too many tweets as they assured fans and customers personally that they would fix the issues. A few people were disgruntled but mostly everyone was like, "Hey, they're trying to give us free comics for no reason other than that they're cool, so we're good." As of now the giveaway has been suspended while they fix it up. Originally it was only supposed to be until tomorrow but sounds like they'll extend it to serve everyone. Glitches happen, but ultimately I think this will be a win for Marvel, for Comixology and comic book readers in general.
One guy definitely lost, though, and I feel bad for him. I don't know any details so I won't speculate, but I do know that Ruwan Jayatilleke, who was the Marvel VP of digital publishing or somesuch, was let go by Marvel last week. As far as I know, this whole thing was his baby. Again, I know no details but I do know Ruwan was an amazing guy on Twitter, interacting with fans as a fan, and not as some corporate suit who had to stay on message. He gave away digital codes for comics all the time and built up a pretty large following. He wiped his Twitter account but didn't delete his account so hopefully he'll pop up sometime with new opportunities for himself. If you're out there, Ruwan, thank you for all you did.

There's this cool exhibit in Edmonton right now. It closes April 1st so I finally got around to taking Pallas to it today. Star Wars Identities. It's an interactive thing where you create your Star Wars identity, persona, alter-ego, what have you. Plus tons of models and concept art and costumes from the movies. So it was pretty sweet. They project your characters on a screen at the end, and then email you the high-res image along with a character bio based on the things you answered and entered. From Pallas' bio:

I remember this one time when I was attacked by a wampa and badly injured. This had a pretty big influence on me, I guess, because after that I founded a support group for victims of wampa attacks.

I remember what I was going to say now! Sometimes you flag something in your head for a blog post and then forget all about it. But I read this:

I love concept art and this was packaged really nicely- kind of a fake leathery tome look. It even has Thorin's map inside complete with glow-in-the-dark moon runes! And the contract Bilbo signs in the back. And lots and lots of pictures of dwarves! Dwarfs. However Tolkien spelled a plurality of dwarven people.
Best part- there's a couple of pages devoted to something called the High Fells, a tomb where men of old had buried the corpses of the Nazgûl when their mortal bodies died. An inaccessible and forbidding place, and Gandalf and Radagast go there in search of, well, answers. Everyone's searching for answers, right? Though if I was Gandalf I would've brought Bilbo and Smaug with me rather than Radagast. Little Sherlock humour there, never mind me.
A little hint at something to look forward to in The Desolation of Smaug, anyway. The High Fells, I mean, not Sherlock humour.

Took Pallas to the Symphony today. It wasn't her first, actually. Long time ago Michelle and I took her to a free lunch concert. I think she was a little over a year? Anyways. This is the first she'll (hopefully) remember. It was a good one to pick as they projected scenes from BBC's Blue Planet while the orchestra played the soundtrack. Senator Tommy Banks narrated!
Pallas did pretty good- she was definitely engaged for the first half. She asked tons of questions about the animals, and said "Wow" under her breath a few times. Because the screen was so prominent, I'm not sure she really got that it was the music that was the main attraction. Oh well. We had to duck out a bit early to go to the washroom (false alarm, actually) and then she didn't quite make it to the end of the second half, and she wanted to leave early. Still, glad we went.

Two oaths, three Bibles. As a Canadian I think I understand the hows and the whys. Martin Luther King, Jr., yeah? And Abraham Lincoln. Very cool. And a family Bible for a private oath. Perhaps in the far future, some President-Elect will want to use the Obama family Bible for her oath. Eventually, maybe, a Yertle the Turtle-like stack of Bibles will be the norm, and the reason this won’t be silly is because these Bibles, mere books in and of themselves, take on talismanic significance when used in oaths of office.

A culture needs its talismans.

Clay goddess figurines in the Paleolithic. The aquila of Rome. The Star of David. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Bible.

I’m Canadian. So I have . . . the easy answer would be the Stanley Cup and Tim Horton’s donuts, but honestly, there’s so much more to being Canadian than that. Just don’t ask me to define what, exactly. We’re not very good at that. And anyway, it’s probably more accurate to say the culture to which I most strongly adhere is pop culture.

Pop culture is rife with talismans. Rife. People wear replica One Rings and Mockingjay pins and Boba Fett hoodies. Not to mention tattoos. I once went to New Zealand with a friend and in our little fellowship there may have been a plastic One Ring. And it’s possible we got matching Nazgûl tattoos while we were there. Maybe.

These types of talismans are identifiers. By wearing them we are signaling to others in our tribe that we are one of them. Like a secret handshake. There’s another type of talisman that I call Totems of Power. Hah, no I’m messing with you. I don’t really call them anything. But for lack of anything else to call them...

I’m talking about mental constructs that can be used to empower. Strengthen. Encourage. They make you better. The ones that serve me best in life are those that help me face fear. I’m a grown man with kids and I’m certainly not afraid of the dark, but there is fear and anxiety in my life, and I’m sure you can relate. I’m a little scared just typing those words, to be honest.

There’s that scene in Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King where King Théoden is giving the obligatory rousing speech to his troops before sending them madly into battle. He says something about a red dawn. The part that always get me is when Éowyn and the hobbit Merry, though they are visibly terrified, thrust their blades into the air, loose a howling battle-cry and charge. They’re scared but they do it anyway.

In the Green Lantern story arc The Sinestro Corps War, Geoff Johns has arch-enemy Sinestro, whose Corps exist to spread fear throughout the universe, taunting Hal Jordan. “You’ll never be without fear, Jordan.” Hal responds by saying that Green Lanterns aren’t without fear- a Green Lantern overcomes fear. Every time they face it. And then he punches Sinestro in the face. Pow. I think of that and it becomes easier to venture out to get groceries in a crazy snowstorm. 

Angry? I silently scream “Serenity now!” along with Jerry Stiller. And remind myself where all of the Hulk’s incredible rage got him in Greg Pak’s opus Planet Hulk (spoiler alert- nothing good). Or I sing Metallica’s St. Anger to myself. It helps.  

There are so many more. Mine skew heavily towards comics and early 90’s death metal. Yours might draw more from romantic comedies or Star Trek. Maybe Buffy. 

I’d be glad to hear what yours are. I wonder if one of the President’s talismans is Yertle the Turtle. It certainly has life lessons any head of state would do well to heed.

Today was the ten year anniversary of the loss of the space shuttle Columbia with all hands. Already a decade, wow. Hmm.
I was 12 when the Challenger was lost. I remember it vividly. I was telling Michelle today that a joke made the rounds shortly after that disaster. I thought it was so funny. "What does NASA stand for?"
"Need Another Seven Astronauts."
I went running up to my dad when I got home to share this super-clever joke with him. I was so sure he would laugh and congratulate me on my wit, even though it was merely wit-by-association.
He did not laugh.
He tore right into me, and though I can't now transcribe his exact words, they were to the effect of: what the hell is the matter with you? Seven people died and you make a joke about it? Are you sure you're my son?
Coming from my dad it was so jarring, so embarrassing and so true. He was right. And I never forgot it.  It's too bad such a valuable life lesson came out of such a horrific tragedy.
You always think everyone else gets the same lessons you do, but they don't. Some people have dads who told them that joke, or ones like it. No wonder there's still so much assholery out there.
Don't be insensitive. Be nice. So simple. Easy, too, with enough practice.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger, which disentegrated mid-flight on January 26, 1986:

Francis R. (Dick) Scobee
Michael J. Smith
Judith A. Resnik
Ronald E. McNair
Ellison S. Onizuka
Gregory B. Jarvis
Sharon Christa McAuliffe

The crew of the space shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated mid-flight on February 1, 2003:

Rick D. Husband
William C. McCool
Michael P. Anderson
Ilan Ramon
Kalpana Chawla
David M. Brown
Laurel Blair Salton Clark

There are a few power couples in comics, and they are all my favourites. But today my supafave is definitely Kelly Sue DeConnick and her husband Matt Fraction. Kelly Sue writes the new Captain Marvel series which I love. Rumour is that it might be on the chopping block, which would be a real shame. Don't let it happen, Marvel! She also writes Avengers Assemble and has a creator-owned book called Pretty Deadly coming out later this year which is being drawn by Emma Rios which looks pretty great, judging by this teaser image posted by Emma on her Flickr:



Matt Fraction writes a bunch of stuff, all of which I like, but his best current book is definitely Hawkeye. You know, from the Avengers. This series is about what Clint Barton does when he's not Avenging. So he's rarely, if ever, in uniform. He shoots some arrows now and then but he also has barbecues with his neighbours who think his name is Hawkguy. It's consistently hilarious and innovative. The art is pretty great too.

Hawkeye #7 came out yesterday, and it was the issue that Matt Fraction promised to donate some of the proceeds from to the Red Cross for Hurricane Sandy relief. One thing led to another and pretty soon this was happening. It turned into this whole thing and over a hundred people donated to the Red Cross in the name of Hawkguy. Homie Bear might have, as well, under his secret identity. He had to make up an American address to get the form to work which is why Nathanliesaboutlivingonboats. It's a whole thing.
Anyways. Love them. Love their work. You should support it! Here's some free digital codes for Marvel comics written by them to get you started, go to https://marvel.com/redeem/ to redeem. Neither Captain Marvel nor Hawkeye come with digital codes, unfortunately. Only works once so first come first served:

Avengers Assemble #9 by Kelly Sue: TMM54NTRX288
Avenging Spider-man #9 (featuring Captain Marvel): MTML18TYTYVA
The MIghty Thor #15 by Matt: ATMC1NB5A9PB
The Mighty Thor #19: MTML4XF9HYK2
The MIghty Thor #20: MTML141USR2V

I think the biggest problem with The Dark Knight Rises is it was a comic book movie. "Of course it was a comic book movie, it's Batman!" The thing is, neither Batman Begins nor the Dark Knight were comic book movies. Not really. As a comic book movie, DKR isn't so bad. "There's a guy who wears a mask because, you know, it hurts if he doesn't, and he beats up Batman and takes over Gotham City." There's at least 300 Batman comic books with that exact same premise, add or subtract a mask or two.  Batman then has to overcome great odds to take back Gotham, with or without the aid of Catwoman. Done and done!
But yeah, it was kind of a mess. A breathtaking mess in parts. But a mess.

A few Free Comic Book Days ago I was at Happy Harbor Comics and for the price of a donation to the food bank I got a very cool Star Wars drawing by Calgarian artist Fiona Staples:



Right now Fiona is arguably the biggest artist in comics, with her and Brian K. Vaughan's series Saga making pretty much every single best-of list in the comics world. With the Oscar nominations coming out right away I expect they'll get a nod for Best Pictures. Because the pictures (and the story) in Saga are the best! Seriously I love this comic. It's gorgeous, funny, warm and so so bizarre. The hard part is thinking of something new to say about it that hasn't already been said by everyone from NPR to the New York Times.

It's your basic tale narrated by the baby of a pair of star-crossed lovers, who are chased by tv-screen-headed robots and freelance bounty hunters such as The Stalk, a sexy arachnoid creature. I'm pretty sure I have never before written the words sexy and arachnoid and creature together in a sentence. Oh yeah and their babysitter is the ghost of a dead teenager. The upper half of her, anyway. The first trade paperback is available now, and as a bonus, Comixology is giving away the digital issue #1 for free today only! So go! Go now! Hurry! (For mature readers, yo.)










Special bonus Fiona Star Wars pic, I got this one from her at Calgary Comics and Entertainment Expo:

I've been stuck in a Hobbit reverie for days now. At supper Michelle and Pallas were apparently counting to ten in spanish and they asked me how they did and I was like, "Uh, sorry, I wasn't really paying attention. I was in Middle-earth." But uno dos tres they did it perfectly the second time around.

A Twitter discussion led me to go get my copy of Unfinished Tales, a book I've had nearly as long as The Hobbit. I got it from my Grandpa's store, which was (it's still around, actually, my Grandma still runs it) a health food/ insurance agency/ Christian bookstore. When I saw this book I was so excited, expecting another tome of high adventure, though little ten-year-old me was sorely disappointed as it was nearly impenetrable. It's kind of got the same vibe as The Silmarillion (which I finally did read while tramping around New Zealand) though it is more just scraps and stuff covering all three ages of Middle-earth.
One of the briefer sections is an account by Gandalf of how he came to be part of the Dwarven company and why he convinced Thorin to recruit Bilbo Baggins. I thought there might be a little back-story for Thorin regarding the name Oakenshield. If you haven't seen the movie yet I won't say anything more, but I just wanted to see if there was a Tolkien provenance for what was shown onscreen. Well, it wasn't here but there was a brief mention of the orc Azog so that was cool.
Yeah, all this info is freely available on the internet but sometimes it's fun to pull a book off your bookshelf and look it up yourself. I knew I saved that book for a reason!

It was 29 years ago this Christmas that my Grandma gave me that copy of The Hobbit, with hundreds of stills and sketches from the Rankin/Bass animated feature that came out in the late 70s or early 80s. It pretty much changed my life forever. Not to put too fine a point on it. I was already a Star Wars nerd but the thing about my generation is that we didn't have the ability to watch our favourite movies whenever we felt like. The VCR was still a couple years away, at least in my house. So the only thing a nerdling could do was read books. (And comics, of course.) I even memorized the poem Sam tells Strider and the other hobbits when they're camping out by the stone trolls- the one that starts "Troll sat alone on his seat of stone/ and munched and mumbled a bare old bone/ for many a year he had gnawed it near..."
After the Lord of the Rings movies came out I could pretty much die happy. Though I had the better idea of going to New Zealand and visiting some of the sites where scenes were shot. Like Hobbiton:



So all I really wanted was for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey to be at least as awesome as this:



It was! And so much more. Especially since Sherlock and Watson are such key elements (though Benedict Cumberbatch doesn't have anything to do with this first movie).
We saw the 3D but not IMAX. As far as Frames Per Second goes, I don't really know what we had. Michelle asked me if it was the 48 FPS and I told her I only counted 36.

Merry X-Men!

Kiss was never really my kind of band, I was a little too young. Death was more my style. The band Death that gave us the whole genre of death metal. RIP Chuck Schuldiner. Death did a cover of a Kiss song, back in the day. It was called God of Thunder and it's a pretty kickass song. Chuck does this amazing deathy growl of the chorus where he goes "God of thunder! . . . and rock and ro-o-oll."
Oh man when that song first came out did I wish that rock and roll part wasn't in it. It just cheesed up the whole song. Well, actually the song is so awesome that it was able to withstand the cheesy onslaught. But come on, as if Thor needs more in his portfolio than just thunder. Because what's more awesome than a thunder god?
The Marvel Now series Thor: God of Thunder says the answer to that question is nothing! Well, maybe one thing. We'll get to that in a second.

As someone who happily professes a love for death metal, maybe it comes as no surprise that I've been a fan of Thor all my life. That most Frazetta-ish of Marvel superheroes was also one of the most versatile, since he could be hanging out in Asgard with his fellow immortal Norse gods battling trolls and frost giants, and then he could hop over the Rainbow Bridge to Midgard* to fight Kang the Conqueror alongside Iron Man and Captain America. Then the next issue he would gladly take to space to aid Beta Ray Bill in stopping Galactus from devouring the planet Poppup.
Jason Aaron prefers to play a more god-like, heroic fantasy take on Thor, and Esad Ribic is the perfect artist for his interpretation. We are treated to no less than three different Thorian eras, or Ages of Thunder if you will. We get a young, brash Thor who relishes leading vikings into bloody battle. Current Marvel Universe Thor off gallivanting in space, and a far-future Thor who looks an awful lot like his dear old dad Odin. Not necessarily a good thing.
In each of these timelines Thor faces the menace of something known as the god butcher. A monster that goes around butchering gods of various pantheons. Thor, being a god from some pantheon or other, is square in the god butcher's sights. Not that Thor has any intention of being butchered, but he might not have much say in the matter. Because this guy butchers gods. That's what he does.
Having established that in the first two issues, I'm now curious to know why. I can dig it, and accept him as a worthy foe for Thor, I just hope there's an intriguing origin or motive for ole GB. We get a hint of the anger and contempt he feels for gods in this sequence:

SO bring it home for us, Mr. Aaron! What's more awesome than a thunder god? A god butcher, apparently. But I say thee nay! Thor shall prevail. What's a god without someone to have faith in him?

*Midgard means Earth, as if I needed to tell you that, true believer!

Another Owie Badguy commission! This one by Zimeta, who is MistyTang's sister. Surely one of the hardest working artists around- she's accomplished the pretty much unheard of feat of updating her (current) webcomic , May The Rain Come, once a day for well over a year. And she even found a few minutes to squeeze in some quick commissions so I hit her up for her take on ole Owie.



Badguys Beware! by *Zimeta on deviantART

So I was all set to talk about Deadpool tonight but then I get home and jump on Twitter and discover that Gail Simone has been email-fired from Batgirl. Which pretty much sucks. I got the first New 52 Batgirl Hardcover that just came out and loved it. A lot, actually. Since I'm in Hinton right now my copy is 300 kms away, and kind of stuck in storage anyway since we are getting our basement finished at the moment. So I can't really flip through it again for purposes of review. But trust me, it's great.
Gail Simone will be fine, I'm sure. Thanks to Twitter and other online arenas, she has much more of a devoted following than many other creators. Arguably she may be the biggest name in comics. She's up there anyways. Frankly it's hard to see why DC would treat someone who is truly an ambassador for comics this way. DC loses. Gail loses. And we the readers lose. Again, Gail will land on her feet just fine, but poor old Batgirl is probably going to suffer.
I've never met Gail or even tweeted with her but I've definitely been Gail-adjacent. She was out to Happy Harbor, our local comic shop for FCBD a few years back, and she was on a panel at  SDCC when we went- about writing LGBT characters. And just the other day I swear to god she tumbld this photo of mine so if that doesn't make us bffs I dunno what would. Here is another photo I took of a cosplayer from Calgary bringingthe Barbara Gordon love, a fitting tribute:

Comics being the visual medium that it is, it's easy to be drawn in by a particularly striking image, such as the cover to Thunderbolts #1. I lobe the reds and the white background, and other than the Punisher, I am a fan of each of the characters. The actual comic didn't do much for me, but again, being the first issue, it was mostly just setup. General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross has in recent years found himself as the thing he hated most in all the world- a hulk. But red! Anyways he decides to gather a team of other red guys and gals to be the Thunderbolts. I guess we're lucky his name wasn't Stormin' Norman otherwise this comic might be called the Stormins.
Actually the Thunderbolts name has been used in various guises for a long time in the Marvel Universe, usually as a team of super-villains being rehabilitated by working as a team on the side of the good guys. This incarnation is actually a little different in the sense that all of these characters occupy the shadowy in-between state of being neither villain nor hero, exactly. Shades of grey, more. Or red, in this case. Red Hulk, or Rulk as his buddies call him, has actually lately been an Avenger so he's solidly good. Which is why he's leading the team I guess. Elektra is an assassin  but she's not a bad assassin. Venom, (Flash Thompson, not Eddie Brock) is actually an army operative and Deadpool and Punisher are basically psychos with guns but for the most part they prefer to shoot bad guys. So really, not super-villains. I might pick up issue #2 to see how they actually work together as a team. Deadpool is always good for a laugh, and the Punisher is famous for his sense of humor too. Oh sorry, that sentence should have "utter lack of a" in front of "sense of humor".
The parallel on the DC side would be Suicide Squad, the first trade paperback collection of which I read and enjoyed. Any team with Harley Quinn on it is one I want to be on, though the explosives implanted in your brain part would kind of suck.But how else do you insure that such a collection of super-criminals toes the line? Plus, they have a bipedal shark! So I might give DC the edge in a head-to-head tussle of the bad-guys-working-for-good-guys genre.

Marvel decided to do something similar to DC's New 52. Rather than rebooting their whole universe, though, they just sort of established a new status quo within the regular continuity.  Marvel Now they're calling it.   Lots of new series launches, though the primary focus seems to be on new creative teams taking on characters they haven't really been associated with before. So, Brian Michael Bendis who wrote like a thousand issues of all the different Avengers titles, is now writing All New X-Men.
Marvel Now has been rolling out since September but we are definitely right in the midst of it. I've been trying out a lot of the titles and mostly digging it.
Appropriately enough, the first Marvel Now title to launch was Fantastic Four (the original FF was the first true Marvel Comic back in 1961 yo. As if I needed to tell you that.) Matt Fraction is writing both Fantastic Four and FF. Wait, what? FF stands for Freedom Force. No, that's not right. I just read it too, what was it? Oh yeah- Future Foundation. The Fantastic Four, of course, is Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards, his wife Sue Storm-Richards the Invisible Woman, her brother Johnny Storm aka the Human Torch (back from the dead) and Ben Grimm the ever-loving Thing. As Fantastic Four #1 opens, Reed has discovered that the unstable molecules that form his stretchtastic elastic body are decaying. And there is no cure in the entire known universe. Luckily he knows where there are all sorts of unknown universes so he decides it would be cool to grab the other Three of the Four, as well as his kids, and go on a year-long educational trip through the Negative Zone and whatever other alternate dimensions they feel like exploring. Which is a great setup for Lost In Space-type misadventures, which I love. I like Fraction's writing so I know he'll have some good stuff in store. Issue 1 was all setup but you can bet the fantastic fun will begin in earnest next issue.
Reed sets up his little time machine dimension hopper gizmo to return them precisely four minutes after they leave, in subjective time. No big deal, right? But in case something catastrophic happens in those four minutes (and catastrophes happen about every three minutes in the Marvel Universe) he asks four friends to step in for those four minutes just in case. He recruits Ant-man, Medusa, She-Hulk (yay!) and um, Ms. Thing who is apparently Johnny's girlfriend in a Thing-like exoskeleton suit. FF #1 is also all setup, though a lot of fun while at it. I'm guessing issue 2 will go something like this:
Reed Richards: Thanks for covering for us while we're gone, Ant-man.
Ant-man: Yeah no problem. See you in four minutes.
Reed waves
Ant-man waves
Four minutes passes
Reed: Hi!  That was so much fun!
Ant-man: Cool! Alright I'll catch ya later.

I was hoping, but failed, to snag the Arthur Adams' (one of my favourite artists from waay back) variant cover for FF#1, a fantastic homage to Fantastic Four #1:

Pallas will regularly announce to complete strangers that she has changed her name to Wonder Woman. This makes me happy. I never read much Wonder Woman, though. Nothing against her- I always loved her. Loved. You know, I was the exact right age when the Wonder Woman tv show was on. In fact, I think I'll go watch the opening credits on YouTube right now. Excuse me...
Nah, the main reason I didn't read her was she was DC, and I was Marvel. Even more recently I've tried a few WW collections just because the great Gail Simone was getting rave reviews. But there was just too much backstory baggage, even for a guy like me who thrives on backstory. But I picked up the New 52 Wonder Woman hardcover collection at the library and I loved it. Now I wish I had bought it. If only there were some annual day devoted to giving loved ones gifts to brighten our dark Decembers.
Azzarello and Chiang present a Wonder Woman with close ties to both her fellow Amazons, especially her mother Hippolyta, and the various Greek gods that like to muck about in the affairs of women. The art is wonderful, with kind of a Samurai Jack vibe to it, nice and clean but with plenty of moody silhouettes:

There's a part I won't spoil where Queen Hippolyta meets Hera that I love love loved. Good writing.
My only caveat- the gore level, while perfectly acceptable to me, makes it a bit inappropriate for me to read it to Pallas. Which is fine, there are plenty of good Wonder Woman story books targeted to her age level. Those centaurs in the page above? They get created in a fantastically gruesome way. I can't wait until she's 9 or 10, though, I think she'll love it, as I do.
Here is a classic fight scene featuring Wonder Woman.

It's tooken a couple of years, but I've finally caught up on all the comics. Man, you will never believe what happened to Batman. And Captain America? He died. Twice. Or something like that. I'm not actually caught up on every single comic but I have a pretty good foundation of what's going on with most of the major heroes, or at least the ones I'm a fan of.
This is a pretty good time for comics fans, old and new. DC rebooted their entire line last year so new fans could jump on (rebooting is kind of a fact of life for characters whose history goes back 40, 50, even 70 years or so) and though I was never much of a DC kid growing up, I've been glad of the opportunity to get acquainted with a few new characters, sans tons of back issue baggage.
And even better, they didn't reboot Green Lantern. Because Geoff Johns has been writing the definitive GL saga for the last five years or so and it would be a shame to wipe all that away. His run has become one of my all-time favorite comics runs of all time. There's a part in the Sinestro Corps War that I love so much. Sinestro is all like "I'ma make you feel fear Hal Jordan!" And Hal responds by pointing out something kind of profound and even inspiring- Green Lanterns aren't fearless, they just overcome fear. Every. Single. Time. And then he punches Sinestro in the face.
Also there was Rage of the Red Lanterns and Blackest Night and Brightest Day and so on. For the New 52 initiative or whatever you want to call it, Johns did something kind of clever- Green Lantern now features the debut of the brand new Green Lantern of Earth, one Thaal Sinestro. So yeah, Green Lantern kicks ass. I like the Red Lanterns series, too.

I remember this one time the blogger buzz thing you see when you log onto Blogger was going on about how one of the guys who started Blogger or whatever was leaving to start a micro-blogging company called Twitter, and the cool thing about Twitter was that it would limit you to 140 characters and obviously it was gonna be the biggest thing in the world. I was like, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard and there's no way that'll ever catch on. Which is why I was not an early adopter of Twitter. Obviously I'm eating some crow since I pretty much just only hang out on Twitter nowadays, which is why I hardly ever blog here anymore. Oh well. I was an early adopter of Flickr- I signed up for that in beta mode before I even had a digital camera, or even really an idea of what Flickr was, exactly. And it turned out that came in pretty handy when I went to New Zealand lo those many years ago now.
Anyways, that was all a ramble to take advantage of the no-limit characters you can type on old-fashioned blogs. You can just say whatever you want for as long as you want. No going back and getting rd of unecsry lttrs to make a msg fit in 140 chars. You can even type letters that serve no purpose at all! X ^ æ ü and suchlike.
Anyways, this article from the New York Times is making a bit of a splash on Twitter right now, it is also longer than 140 characters so I haven't quite read the whole thing yet but the gist seems to be, there are these jellyfish that can live forever so why haven't we figured out how to do their neat little reverse-aging trick yet?
And everyone was eagerly waiting for Curiosity to announce that she had discovered life, but then she said she didn't after all and everyone was sad. Which was the perfect time for the Mercury spaceship that no one even knew was out there to say, "Wait guys, look what I found- organic matter on Mercury! Suck it, Curiosity!" Turns out that spaceship is named Messenger. Makes sense, since Mercury was the messenger of the gods. Or the god who messaged. Which would make him the patron god of blogging and tweeting, come to think of it.

More Owie Badguy!

One of these days I'll write an Owie Badguy graphic novel. And then it will get made into a movie and I'll win the Original Screenplay Oscar (finally) but I will only accept it on behalf of Pallas, the original creator after all. But until then:


Sketch Request--Owie Badguy by ~em-scribbles on deviantART

If there was a book with this dialogue in it, I would read it:
"Do you notice anything different about me?"
"Uh... new glasses?"
"Nope."
"Haircut?"
"Nope."
"You shaved?"
"No! I learned how to do differential equations!"

I assured Michelle this is a very funny shirt. She was skeptical. But trust me.

Owie Badguy is real.

I came downstairs to go trick or treating with the girls. Pallas' eyes got all wide and she said "Owie Badguy!"
"Hello Spider-White, are you ready to go fight crime?"
"Who's crime?"
"Crime is a badguy."

When you have little ones, you don't get to go out to see many movies. So you gotta be choosy when the opportunities arises. Big movies with lots of explosions and spaceships and hulks and stuff. Even when I had all the time in the world to go see movies, I hardly ever went to see "small" movies- comedies, for example, since what do you lose in the translation to dvd? It's not like you need to see Adam Sandler in full 3D IMAX experience.

Last night we chose to see Argo. Loved it. Kind of a small movie- I have no idea what the budget was but there are hardly any Wookiees or droids in it. Hardly any ;) Just full of tension that keeps building and building. Well, I don't really do reviews, just go see it if you want, or don't. But I recommend it.

It's been ten years of Pooing in the Woods. An insignificant anniversary to all but me, I know, but that's okay. Still not sure what the future has in store for this blog, it's all obsolescent and senescent using ten year old technology. But for now let me have a moment of satisfaction.

Behold, a much better drawing of Owie Badguy. My deviantArt friend MistyTang (who drew the Halloween Bear to your left and a few  others as well )was having a super sale on commissions so i thought I would get her to do up a quick portrait of Owie there. If you're just tuning in, Owie badguy was created by my daughter, who is 3.

On the way to the Mac's today Pallas and I discussed our usual philosophies.
"Dad, can you beat Darth Maul?"
"Uh, well, he's pretty tough. But, it's ok because he's only pretend and even if he wasn't he lived a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." Because there's no way I could beat Darth Maul, ever.
"That's right, he lives in Star Wars."
"Yeah."
Little later. "But what if we scare Darth Maul and he comes and captures us or just, just lightsabers us?"
"He won't. And if he was scared wouldn't he run away?"
"Oh yeah."

It goes on like that every day, and I love every minute of it.

Spent the last work week getting trained on drills. When I was an oiler I spent a lot of time on and around drills and they always looked really complicated- all these knobs and buttons and levers and stuff. Turns out, not so much. Pretty simple. To be fair, though, the newish drills we have now are all computerized and GPSatized and pretty much fool-proof.  I will say that it takes a special kind of person to be a good drill operator- a person who is comfortable with doing not very much for prolonged periods of time. A person who prefers quiet contemplation to constant motion and action. A lazy person, in other words. I tell you now, I am that person.

Pallas and I went on a daddy/daughter date to "Trapters". it was so much fun. She's growing up so fast (she recently wrote her name for the first time!) Even going there was fun- stopped at the LRT tracks, we saw two trains go by and an ambulance!  Such lucky ducks we are. Anyways when we were there we spent most of our time in the kids section ,where she was allowed to choose one item to get, but of course we had a tea party and stuff for a while first.
Later we went over to my section, ie the trade paperback comics section which is also handily right by the fantasy/scifi books. "Do you like comics dad?"
"You know I do, Pallas!"
"I was just being silly."
"I know."
Then she saw one of Charlaine Harris' books (the ones True Blood are based on) and she recognized the covers because Michelle has some and gets the others from the library. She got all excited and wanted me to buy it for her.
"But sweetie, this isn't really a book for little girls. See? It's just all words, no pictures or anything." I didn't mention all the vampire werewolf faery human sex.
"Dad! You silly!  I'm a big girl. And I can SO read! I can read I Spy books."
The book I wound up getting was neiter comic nor scifi. It was Jian Ghomeshi's 1982 which I basically read in a day. I enjoyed it- I really only bought it since as a CBC nerd I consider Jian a personal friend (anti-restraining order disclaimer: Jian is not my personal friend). And even then, 1982 and Bowie are not really subjects I had much interest in. I was 8 in 1982, so a little young to have been tuned into the zeitgeist. 1986 and I'm all in. Especially if it's all about Gowan (who Jian mentions in passing, sweet!) Like I said, though, I read it in a day so obviously I enjoyed it a lot. It's very funny and also has that awkwardness that characterized the entire 80s decade, at least for me, so I could identify even though it wasn't quite about my exact generation.
Sidenote- I also just received my copy of Stephen Tobolowsky's The Dangerous Animals Club. I haven't read it yet, but as a huge fan of his podcast, I have a pretty good idea of what's in it. You should get it. Seriously. Jian Ghomeshi should get it too. And have Tobo on Q. I'm really serious. Here's why. The Talking Heads song, Radio Head? You know the one. That the band Radiohead was named after. Yeah. That song is about Stephen Tobolowsky. I am totally not lying. I am sure that story is in the book, but if not, check out episode, uh, well I forget but just listen to them all.
Well, to bring this back to Pallas, I'll also say I introduced her today to one of my favorite movies- The Iron Giant. I got a shirt from Teefury that mashed up Iron Man and Iron Giant so of course hse wanted to know what that was all about. So we watched it together. Damn. That movie gets me every time. Poor little Pallas was just inconsolable. Actually a Dragonette dance party consoled her up pretty good, but she was crying for a long time before we thought of it. Then tonight when I was putting her to bed, she was like, "I don't want Iron Giant to come and get me."
But he won't, he's only imaginary and anyways he's a good guy.
"But but but I don't want him to step on me, I'm just little."
He's very careful not to step on people, sweetie. And anyways, he's imaginary remember?
"I don't want any mosters to come either."
"Monsters know better than to mess with me, sweetie. And imaginary!  Very imaginary."

Every great superhero needs a good Rogue's Gallery of villains and nemeses. So today at work i was brainstorming ideas from Pallas' large little world and I came up with a few. So here are Owie Badguy's bad guys.

1. Stinknut the No. Low level mob thug, probably an enforcer, utterly without mercy. Even when victims plead for their lives, his answer is always no. This is inspired by Naia whose nickname is The Peanut. Sometimes though we call her stinknut. And her favorite word is no. She even says it in varying tones of voice while sleeping. Stinknut the No, yo!

2. Terrible Two. Surely this has been done? I'm writing this out on my iPad in Evernote so I'll google it later. Super powered twins, with some sort of superpowers. You know.

3.Snot Dragon. As parents we learned that children quickly become snot dragons when they're sick. Anyways Snot Dragon would be a mystical martial artist who summons dragons who spew snot rather than fire.

4. Pallmall. Pallas was calling herself that for a while, though it evolved to Powmom or some thing later on. Anyways Pallmall would be your Joker-like psycho who just likes chaos for its own sake.

5. Trum. Your basic rampaging monster with rage issues and utterly without the ability to be reasoned with. Owie Badguy's very own hulkish analogue. Derived from tantrum, of course.

6. Night Knight. His goal in life is for the whole world to say good night. Permanently! And his favorite book is Goodnight Moon. Owie Badguy fights N.K well past the point of exhaustion,
seemingly every. single . night.

7. Gomer Pile O' Bones. We decided our Halloween skeleton hanging outside is named Gomer and my subconscious knew there was a joke in there somewhere. Finally got it to surface. An animate skeleton! Probably kind of clumsy too though I have to admit i really have no idea who Gomer Pyle is.

8. Hohoho. Pallas used to think Santa's name was Hohoho so I thought an evil santaish character with that name would be kind of cool.

9. Bastroyer. Marvel has Galactus. DC has the Anti-Monitor. But even they must bow to . . . Bastroyer! Your basic giant planet-killer. Owie Badguy would still punch him in the face though.

10. Owie Goodguy. Obviously, Owie Badguy's evil clone.

Introducing . . . Owie Badguy! Pallas told me she had a new name for a good guy.
"Yeah? What is it?"
"Owie Badguy."
"Oh, so, he's a bad guy?"
"No, he's a good guy. He makes bad guys say owie."
"Oh, I see. By punching them in the face?"
"Yeah!"
"Well that's the best superhero I ever heard of."

 She tells me his costume is supposed to be blue, with a brown mask, and pink wings. I took some artistic licence and decided to omit the wings. When you're as awesome as Owie Badguy is, being able to fly is just getting greedy.