The Edge of the Internet

As the title says here we are again with my blog. The question is what to do with it? Where to go with it.

Pondering, thinking.

I seriously wanted to like this comic book.

I really really did.

As most of you know I rather enjoy reading comic books, my employment down turn has kept me from purchasing as many as I would like, I’ve had to be very stingy with myself. This means I buy very few books and borrow the rest from friends. I want good value for my dollars, I want decent scripts, characters, plots and actions. If I’m going to plunk 2.99 down on the table, that’s coffee with a friend, or food for a day if you don’t mind over processed canned food, then it had better damn well be worth my time.

So the thought of DC relaunching their entire line was intriguing to me.  I’m not going to wade into the debate over if they should have done it. Personally I don’t care. What I want is entertainment, not issue numbers and convoluted continuity I know DC will just change with a crisis when they want to. DC has trained me well to not expect long term universe building with them.

So I opened the first issue of the new world and was disappointed. This is suppose to be a from the ground up rebuild of the whole show. A start from zero, and it felt like an Elseworlds. The whole thing from beginning to end read like at any moment a big leaver could be pulled and the whole new 52 could be reverted to the old DCU with a shrug of its shoulders.  Which mind you it could. There are 52 universe in the DC cosmology, the one we are reading about now need not necessarily be the one that we were reading about before. This need not be Earth One. This could be Earth 13 for all we know.

As always we the consumer have Didio and crew by the short hairs, if we don’t buy their books, they will change the world again, maybe not back to as it was, but it will change. That’s our power we approve their work with our dollars.

Anyways. If I was a kid that had not been a comic but purchaser before would I have been impressed with this book? Batman was Batman, smug and capable of doing the impossible. The Green Lantern was an ass. Is that what kids want to read about after seeing the Green Lantern movie Hal being an ass?

Did this book set up the new world? Nope. It gave some snippets about the world. Told me a bunch of my favorite heroes might no longer exist.  Told me Batman is still Batman… um… yea that’s about it. That’s all it really told me about the world. I’ve read that all the old continuity is going to be shoe horned into the new world some how. I look forward to them explaining away all the crisis books, Zero Hour, and the part where Vandal Savage took over the Third Reich? (Although that might not happen now as Marvel just redid that story for the Captain America movie)

Oh and one more thing. What the fuck is up with the collars? I take it they all shop for their costumes at the same store?

So life is still happening. Not that I was feeling like living these last few days. I have no idea what virus I picked up but it was a dozy.  It stole all my energy, inflamed every joint and made it impossible to sleep. I was running such a temperature you could have heated a winter locked house off of me.  Yet at the same time i constantly felt cold. The only way I could get any sleep was filling the tub with scolding water and sleeping in there. Not the safest thing to do, but it got me cat naps of twenty minutes or so. Just enough to maintain some sort of sanity. Three days i lived like that. three days of not eating as anything I put in me eventually was re-experienced volatility.

But enough about all that. I have walked in the shadow of death and lived to see the sun, and Thundercats.

Normally I am pretty good about knowing if there is some facet of my childhood being updated, and by updated I mean being subjected to corporate necrophilia, that oh so unloving buggering for dollars. I’m looking at you Mike Bay.

So when my friends Red Button and Dubiosity informed me over Twitter that there was an Thundercats cartoon, all I could think was “oh noes! the corps are going to have furry sex with the kittens now” So naturally I had to watch.

I like amine, always have since the Star Blazers, G-Force, Macros days, so seeing the art imitating it was no problem for me. The new character designs work well, and are skilled updatings of the characters of old. The action was well drawn, the movements fluid and the colouring superb.

But since Avatar: The Last Air Bender has spoiled me for cartoon story telling, raising the bar to heights not normally seen in the North American market, I looked at Thundercats with a critical eye for what it was telling me.

The characterization was a delight. Take what you remember from the old series and run it forward through the maturing of storytelling to today. What worked in the 80′s will not fly on the screen for the kids that are raised on the internet. I may have my problems with a lot of their ethics and manners, but the kids do know crap storytelling when they see it and will flame to let a producer know. Cartoons characters are archetypes. The hero will be noble, will be filled with doubt, (as are teen aged boys, trust me you might not have been one or have vagued over the fact but when you were a teen you were full of doubt.), and looking for approval of his father. Classic story elements. The other characters hold true to form. The arrogant older brother that makes everything look easy and is a sibling bully. The cool girl that will be your first love. Precocious comedy relief characters, and on and on. Hell the villain was spot on the same from the first show, not just in look but in dialogue and failures.

Will this be a great show? Couldn’t say as I’ve only watched the first episode, but I can say its not an abuse of the property as other remakes have been. I’ll keep watching.

Oh and about Red Buttons charge that the show is dull, so was the first one. You just glossed over the fact. Check it out on retrotoons, its lethal in its plodding slow story telling.

Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.

Since my brain would not shut down last night I had a lot of time to stroll around the internet. Most of what I found had nothing to do with porn just so you know. I found this on someones tumblr and thought to share with a friend who knows who he is and what he doesn’t like.

Hello the few people that read this,

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other hasn’t it? I suppose its more my fault then yours as I’m the one that’s suppose to be filling this blog with the brain dump of my head meat. The thing is I find more off then not that I don’t have anything to say. Oh I know bitch, bitch, groan, groan whine, life is hard, I’ve said the same same thing all before. But it is the truth. I live a quiet life where I have fallen onto a quiet path away from drama queens and emotionally abusive jerks. Means I’m a lot happier most days, but it does cause a lac of things to talk about.

I am still hunting for a job, and it is a grind, but one does have to have one.

I am still trying to be creative, but I do so for myself not others. It’s like when I mention to people that I’m writing a novel and the reaction of my friends is shock and then curiosity. They want to read it and then I tell them no. The book is for me not them. Selfish of me isn’t it.

So what have I been up to? The dejunking of my life continues at a slower pace. It’s down to the dread moments where I run up against my pack rat mentality. There are things that need to go. I know they do, but I kick and scream at myself that I don’t want to get rid of them. It’s all so immature.

My friends have have been delightful to me and invited me into an array of RP games. I have a Thief, Knight, Superhero, and the usual smattering of vampires and mages to work with now. It means juggling a few dates and meetings but it does so wonderfully fill the time.

I’ve become enamored with reading James Rollins. Not sure why, really I’m all at sea as to why. His imagery is crap, his characters are Mary Sues, and writing style is stilted, and yet, and yet he jumbles the most outrageous ideas of the real world together and smears them across his books. It’s like the long secret history of the world where all the conspiracies are real. He;s obliterated the desire to read anyone else till I’ve read all his works.

There you go. We’ve had our little chat. Hopefully I’ll see you here soon.

Here’s you clue…

… cherish it.

The thing is, I know I have friends who would build and use this:

I can’t believe I forgot about the existence of this:

Nuit Blanche from these lovely peopleSpy Films on Vimeo.

I really need to spend more time cleaning up my bookmarks