Red light! Green light! Go! Go! GO!

After the heady heights of Thor hurling Loki back to Asgard, Daisy Duke posing and Wildcat punching a Nazi we're back to the usual level of ham-fisted content that you can only find on This Sentence No Verb.

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever wished that you could perform archaic forms of surgery with rusty tools as blood and pus flies everywhere? If the answer is 'Yes' then you're in luck! Yes, thanks to the fine people at ArmorGames now you too can lose yourself in a world of grimy pain thanks to Dark Cut, the internet's primary Horrific Surgery Simulator™!

If the answer was no, then I suggest you go somewhere else instead.

I've said before that these little games that you can find on tHeINtErnEt.com can be a fantastic way to spend a little time. Then they become a fantastic way to spend a lot of time. Then they become a time-consuming behemoth that will not rest until they've sucked the life out of you. I'd managed to kick the Curve Ball habit, and deal with my Nuclear Eagle addiction and was feeling pretty confident about not getting sucked in again. The thing is, this game is different to all the others and therein lies its allure.

The premise is simple - you are a doctor in the dark ages and must perform medical procedures without killing your patient. The controls of the game are very simple, at each stage of the level an appropriate tool appears and the mouse is used to control that tool to perform the required action - be that slicing the flights from an arrow, sawing an arrow shaft in half or hammering it all the way through the patient's leg.

Hammering wood through a leg. Yesterday.

Fairly straightforward and easy. The only problem is that if you make any mistakes then you end up hurting the patient. So, say you're sawing the shaft of the arrow, if you're too vigorous with the saw you end up wounding your patient, but if not vigorous enough you'll never cut through. You have to find the right balance. This is made all the more difficult by the near constant blood splatters and twitches and by the very nature of the tasks you have to perform. Here's what your plague patient ends up looking like.

Pus and leeches and slit veins to relieve pressure. Lovely. And yet it still
manages to seem cleaner than an NHS hospital. Ah-ha ha ha.[/satire]

Biting political commentary aside, I love this game. It may not be overly complicated or have that many levels but there's a definite atmosphere to the game that I find particularly absorbing. The crepy music and basic graphics only add to that sense of griminess. The ideal way to play this game is in the dark whilst slightly drunk. Sure, you can play it stone cold sober in the middle of the day but you're not getting the best out of it if you do.

Worryingly for any future plans of other activity I may have had, there's also a Dark Cut 2 that takes place in the American Civil War and requires you to remove shrapnel wounds and perform rudimentary brain surgery as cannonballs explode all around you. The patients react more vigorously with twitches and screams of agony which really throw your aim off. Also there's a level where you have to saw your own leg off.

I love me some of that Will-To-Live-Meter!

Whoever knew that surgeons were so badass?

This Sentence No Verb: Now Interactive!

Because anonymous demanded it!

After easily taking care of Loki and a Nazi, I don't think Boss Hogg's
latest scheme will pose much of a problem for these Good Ol' Boys.
Probably have to get better suspension on the General Lee though.

Thor! Daisy Duke! Take That, Ratzi! And the good thing about this level of interactivity is that I still have content to add later in the week! Back of the net! I think that that alone is worthy for another outing of This Sentence No Verb's entirely uninteractive regular feature!


Anonymous strikes me as a Heineken drinker.

Coming soon on This Sentence No Verb: Uninspired Game Review!

Visual Entertainment

This family walks into a talent agency - a mother, father, son, daughter and baby. The father says to the talent agent that they have an act. [A self-satisfied comedian says something controversial involving fecal matter and incest.] They call it The Aristocrats. No-one laughs.

Well that was a big pile of not funny. I fully understand the idea that comedy shouldn't have taboo, and that humour often arises from crossing any of our self-imposed social barriers, but I'd also like it to be, y'know, funny. Otherwise it's not comedy. It's just...talking.

90 minutes of my life I'm not getting back. Bastards.

Anyway, before I get too hung up on the waste of time that was The Aristocrats I just want to say that genuine content is atually coming on Tuesday. As ever my intention was to get it finished today and stick it up here but all I ended up doing was watching things and continually promising myself that I'd post just after the next episode. Too late to get it done now though. And what have I been watching that's kept me from excercising my brain by trying to write something entertaining? Well, I've been watching Numbthreers which is a programme of my favourite genre - x fights crime in their spare time. In this case the x is a mathematician. Whilst not as good as Players or Renegade it does feature one of the coolest visual devices of televisual history - Maths Vision.



Predator can bugger off, Maths Vision is way cooler than heat vision. Formulae appearing in chalk writing over what you are looking at beats the hell out of indistinct red and orange blurs. In my mind, that is how the inimitable Luke McKinney always sees the world. He's like the Predator of Science. (That's my subtle way of sending you to go read his stuff. Possibly the funniest writing on the Internet. Apart from AP2, natch.)

And speaking of science, I've also been watching The Big Bang Theory. An alrightish sitcom about geeks which features David from Roseanne and That Funny One Out Of 8 Simple Rules Who Isn't Katey Sagal. It's nothing special but there are a couple of good performances so I think I'll stick with it and see what happens.

Another day, another failed attempt at content. Nevermind. I'll just have to throw something up here that will hopefully leave everyone with a feeling of satisfaction and not the same feeling of wasted time I got from watching The Aristocrats.

Take that, Ratzi!

That'll do nicely.

Token Content

Good thing about The Dukes Of Hazzard inspiring me to watch Smallville: It's actually pretty good. Michael Rosenbaum makes one hell of a cool Luthor.

Bad thing about The Dukes Of Hazzard inspiring me to watch Smallville: Spending the whole course of an episode where Jonathan Kent languishes in prison wondering when Luke is going to break him out whilst Daisy distracts Enos.



Roughly 300 times cooler than Knight Rider.

The latest gripping installment of...

Thor: Property Developer!

JMS continues his unique blend of action planning permission and mythology market prices in Thor Vol 3 #6!

I shit you not. - Captioning John

Even when he's in the guise of Donald Blake, the Odinson just can't stop with the real estate:

Is that deep and philosophical or simply advice on how to choose the right land for the project?

By the bristling beard of Odin, JMS just isn't letting this one go, is he? You'd never've caught Simonson doing any of this building nonsense would you?

Thor Vol1 #344

Touché Captioning John. Touché

CBB #4: Showcase #10 (1993)

I told you I'd be back.

Even though I fully intend to make the most of this blog and cover all manner of topics (well, pop culture ones anyway) I'm going to be easing my way back into the habit with something simple. Something pure. Something badass.

The setup:

Some young hoodlums are holding up some kind of corner shop (or convenience store if you'd prefer) but the stereotypical ethnic shopkeeper refuses to hand over any money. These thugs don't care though, they're probably whacked out on PCP or something and just totally lose it. Prepare to witness awesome depiction of superpowers.

Remember kids, stay in school or you could
end up doing drugs and shooting stereotypes!

There's just no way that could get any cooler, right? Dude just totally
caught some bullets whilst invisible. This cannot be out badassed.

It, I believe, is on!

That right there is some Comic Book Badassery. Not only that, but later in the same issue J'onn uses his shape-changing and telepathy to grant an old woman's dying wish and let her speak with her son one more time. That is pure class, and that's also the reason why Martian Manhunter is the first person to appear on This Sentence No Verb's all new and totally uninteractive feature: People I'd Quite Like To Go For A Pint With.


That's how we do things round here.

Guess who's back? Back again. JYD's Back. Tell a friend.

Hello.

Hopefully that comes across as sheepish as I intend to sound. Read. Does it? Argh, clumsy. Damn.

Rewind.

Hello.

Better.

Yes, hello there. I'm back. Once again I return to try again at this whole "regular writing" thing. Y'know, I have been pretty busy since I last wrote on here, I've been working on this thing, for that stuff that I needed to.....OK, OK, I've been playing FFVII and watching the Dukes of Hazzard. Lame, I know. I mean, it's not like it was this huge thing that I wasn't writing. Sure, one or two of my friends were all like "Dude, what's wth the no writing thing?" but I didn't worry about it because as far as I was concerned, I didn't have an audience or anything so nobody would even notice that the writing stopped. Shockingly, I was wrong.

In fact, part of the whole reason for the no writing (apart from FFVII and the Dukes of Hazzard, natch) was another bout of my crippling internet shyness. All it took was a mention in the comments of a Those Wednesdays post and an appearance on the Facedown In The Gutters blogroll and then all of a sudden, I had a couple of comments from people I don't even know. That's a lot of pressure and I panicked. Someone agreed with my thoughts on Captain America. Where the hell am I supposed to go from there?

Annoyingly, whilst I've been discovering that I had the courage all along* Namor has moved into Latveria, Bucky is officially the new Cap, Countdown still sucks and Spider-Man totally made a deal with Joe Quesada the Devil to change all of the spider-man continuity since I've been alive save his Aunt. Even I could have done something amusing with that. Or, as that last sentence proves, not.

I'm not going to be world shakingly amazing like those daily poster types, I just don't have that in me but hopefully I can get some kind of weekly thing going on at least. But where to start? What could I possibly throw up here to provide visual fanfare to my return?



Yeeeeeeehaaa!!!!

I'll be back with actual content either Tomorrow or Tuesday. Feel free to drop on by.

Y'all come back now, y-hear? (Hang on, that was the Beverley Hillbillies - Ghostly Hypothetical Ed)




*Or something.

JYD Still <3 Hela (Despite what I talked about yesterday)

It's not all doom and gloom costume wise. Yesterday a picture was painted that suggested newer reinterpretations of costumes were all about the sexualisation of the character. Not true. Have a look at this picture from Yoshida and Tocchini's pretty interesting Thor: Son of Asgard.

Nice. The skirt thing is intersting and
there may only be the one set of hat antlers
but I think that works. The leather is also suitable
for both battling other Aesir and working on Naglfar.

See? This shows that a costume can be redesigned without being pointlessly sexified and still remain not only sensible for the character, but also awesome. We all win.

(Of course, the issue in which this appears is a retelling of one of Hela's earliest appearances that completely reverses what is awesome about Sif, another female character from the Thor cast, so we can't celebrate it too much. - Captioning John)

*sigh*

Nice costume though.

Hey there Captioning John, can you help us out with something that shows us the awesome of Hela without being tainted by anything negative at all?

Sure, I think I've got something in the bag here. Hmm, would sir like to see something in Simonson?

Oh, lay it on me!

Allow me to present the Queen of the Dead ripping Thor's face off.

And that's why she rules 2 of the 9 realms. You know the only other person who gets 2? Odin. If we had someone like Hela as head of state instead of Liz, I'd be a staunch monarchist.

Thought Provoking Stuff

I read several comic blogs. I enjoy it almost as much as reading comics. I do. And on rare occassions I enjoy it more. Today is one of those times. Before I get to what I want to talk about I just want to give you all a link to something that Kalinara wrote about the Greatest Green Lantern of all. Pretty, Fizzy Paradise is a fantastic blog that features on my Rolodex of Awesome over to the right there so take some time and go read. Even you non-comic chaps should go look if only for the fact that it's very well written. Now I place comic blogs into one four categories. These aren't entirely definitive and all of the blogs I read do stray into other categories but this is my loose classification system.

1) Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin. A category of it's own. Reading comic blogs without reading MSPR would be like studying Maths but without algebra. I don't know if he was the first or not but as far as I'm concerned, he's been retconned into being the first.

2) The Big Monkey Crew. Straight forwardly enough this category includes the guys who do the Big Monkey Podcast: Scip, Devon, Jon, Jon and Ben. They're like an Avengers or Justice League type blogging team.

3) The Awesome. These are the ones that that don't really fit into any of the other categories and as I said previosuly, all the blogs I read stray into awesome many times but I generally fit blogs like The ISB, Polite Dissent and Dave's Long Box.

4) Feminism. And this is where we find Pretty, Fizzy Paradise, Written World and Ami Angelwings' Super Cute Rants Of DOOOM XD for example. People who know me are no doubt familiar with my love/hate relationship with feminism (love the subject, hated my lecturers*) so it's not particularly surprising that I read and enjoy them.

Y'see, the category 4 blogs are just as entertaining as 1 through 3 but they also raise serious points that need addressing. It's good to excercise your mind once in a while and these blogs and bloggers seem to have taken to heart the lessons that all comics teach us every issue. (Well, most comics. OK, some comics.) Fighting the good fight. Righting wrongs. Standing up for principles. They inspire and educate.

Which neatly brings me on to what I really want to talk about tonight. Ami recently wrote an interesting guest column about the hypersexualisation of superheroines, making specific reference to the unbalanced sexiness of costumes. Something we can't deny happens at all. Now, this got me thinking and actually inspired me to see if I can contribute anything equally thought-provoking to the interweb.

It turns out I can't.

But what I can do is say that yeah, superheroines are annoyingly hypersexualised and what sucks the most about that is that it's got worse over time. You'd think that as society has progressed things would have become much better in this respect. Wrong. And I'll show you this in the only way that we can here at This Sentence No Verb: with everyone's favourite minor Thor villain.

JYD Loves Hela (But not always her costume choices)

First off we'll start with a base. Now I'm not going to go all Kirby on you and throw out some Journey Into Mystery panel because that'd be too obvious and we've already seen enough of the Kirby style with the usual Hela posts. Here's Hela as she appeared during Simonson's Thor run.

Simonson and Buscema's The Mighty Thor Vol 1 #374

Clearly Kirby inspired we've got the classic death Goddess look with the cool hat, mad cape and black and green armour/bodysuit. This costume looks cool but I wouldn't say that it's sexualised. That's the costume of someone who's going kick your head in. Straight forward armour type stuff for the torso, leggings and boots with greaves. This is both practical and fashionable and is in fact what Hela should always look like. Some people have different ideas though. Let's jump forward to more recent comics.

Jurgens and JRjr's Thor Vol 2 #2

Right. Here the costume is in fact closer to the original Kirby look but there are one or two things that suggest things are changing. The costume itself isn't that bad but there seems to be more emphasis on the skintight spandex and less on the mad cape. I can live with that though, that's just an aesthetic choice. After all, it's not mandated that the main focus of her costume should be her freaking magical cape that makes her so phenomenally powerful. Ahem. I love JRjr's stuff, really I do but here Hela is starting to look a little...off. It can get worse though. Ready for a jump?

Rodi and Ribic's Loki #1

Whoa! This miniseries was great and the art is top quality but...dude! That's quite a departure! Good news is that we have the big cape back along with a Simonson style cowl but is a bustier and thigh length boot combination really a good choice for someone who spends 50% of her time in the frozen, snowy wasteland of Niffelheim? I don't care that her cloak grants her near immortality and immunity to poisons, diseases and conventional injury - she's going to get a chiil. Also, is that much bare skin sensible when you've got a hectic shipbuilding schedule to keep? Sure, it's made out of fingernails but there's got to be buckets of tar involved in any maritime construction. What we have here is utterly pointless sexualisation of a character. How has putting Hela in that get up added to the story? Would the narrative have suffered if she was in the Kirby costume? Showing us Hela's cleavage is just pandering to this notion that all women in comics have to look sexy for the fanboys. Thing is though, there has been worse. Steel yourselves for this one.

Oeming, Berman and Divito's Thor Vol 2 #84

Dude, not cool. DNC. Land now people. Land now. This is so shockingly upsetting that I don't know where to begin. Cape and Hat are there which is what we want to see but don't think you can fool us by going for a "Hey, it's nearly the same as the Kirby look with the black on top of the green!" vibe. We can see through the ploy (And I'm surprised that we can't see through the costume. Only one step away.) and we're not impressed. Again we have a bustier type affair so emphasis is focussed on breasts which is highlighted further by that weird strip of material that connects the torso to the...dog collar. I think that the worst thing though is that the black-on-green stuff looks like a thong, stockings and suspenders. Did Volla take the cloak down to the launderette and stop off on the way back at Ann Summers to pick up some...extras for the boss? I know that it is convention that in superhero fiction underwear is often worn on the outside but I didn't think it applied to that type of underwear. You'd expect someone to be dressed like that in Yes Mistress magazine - not in a comic. By doing things like that you're putting style over substance. Objectifying Hela does not make her "edgy" or "modernised" it just means you're not giving your female characters any kind of depth. They've just been reduced to eye candy.

Y'know, I was going to actually mention that there is something good in that panel from my point of view, and that's the clear referencing of the Hand of Glory but thinking about it, that just makes it worse. By giving us a look at one of Hela's obscure powers it shows that you know the character and just can't be bothered to use her properly.

Obviously I'm coming at this from my own fanboy entitlement perspective - if you do things like this to characters I love then I'm going to pick up on it. Thing is, you can apply this to any female character - Wonder Woman, Black Cat, Supergirl or whoever. Dial it back people. Characters in comics are there to be heroic or villainous regardless of gender and this should be the main concern. Don't sacrifice quality at the altar of the male gaze. If hypersexualisation doesn't serve the character or narrative then just don't do it.

Just don't.



*Also Vagina dentata in relation to Jaws. Jaws is not my subconscious fear of castration but my very conscious fear of massive sharks that would eat me.

God Bless Captain America

Word. Yet another entirely inadequate opening. Starting things like this is always the hardest. Let's just get right to it, as the actress said to the bishop.

Ouch. That was spectacularly weak.

Ok, so if you actually listened to me and started reading Jon Carey's Facedown In The Gutters then you'd know that we're about to come to the end of the Top Ten Marvel and DC characters as voted for by readers of FITG. It's been a long ride and the tensions has really been getting to me with this one. We only have the top two from each list to go now and I'm pretty sure that I know who these 4 people are going to be. For the Marvel side we've yet to see Spider-Man or Captain America and for DC it's Batman and Robin. And it's got me worried.

I think it's pretty cool that Batman and Robin are still to come and what would be even more awesome would be if Tim Drake got placed higher than Bruce Wayne. It won't be that surprising if he doesn't but I'm holding out for a little miracle of taste. What I'm worrying about is "What if Spider-Man beats Captain America?"

Now I'm a Spidey-Fan. Always have been and always will be no matter how many Clone Sagas or Sins Past we get. But Cap should win. Now, a lot of people who don't read comics don't "get" Captain America. They see him as a ridiculous symbol of that United States flag-saluting-we're-number-one-brash-tourist-gun-toting- insanity brand of patriotism that so many people around the world find so frightening. He's not. Captain America is all the things about America that people love, be they big or small. He's Mark Twain and Cheers, liberating Europe and BBQ sauce, big melting pot, boundless enthusiasm and a written constitution. And most importantly of all, the thing that sums up why Captain America represents all that is great about the US is very straightforward and it's amazing that more people don't pick up on it straight away - he carries a shield, not a sword. Captain America saves lives.

That makes me want to salute too.

A little bit ranty there, I know, but it gets to me sometimes. I get tired of hearing people knock Captain America purely on the basis of the name. This isn't directed at anyone who reads this, it's more about people I work with who either know nothing or just a little bit about comics and say things like "You like Captain America?! I've never liked the idea of Captain America." These people don't get the idea of Captain America and they're a little bit racist to boot with their non-stop "Yanks are stupid, the English are so much better" rants. You all know the sort.

The thing is though, if these xenophobic chumps were attacked by Nazis or supervillains then Cap would still come and save them because that's who he is. Me? I'd probably just leave them to it but I'd like to think that maybe I'd try and save them regardless of my distaste because I think that there's a little of Steve Rogers in everyone around the world. It's the part of us that always strives for us to better ourselves and stand up for what's right. That's what we should do. That's a hero.




That's Captain America.

JYD <3 Mrs Reyes

And stepping up to the plate for DC, here's their entirely awesome yet criminally undervalued character showing that comics can move us emotionally:


Don't get me wrong, Jaime is wonderful and a top notch superhero but his mum rocks not only my world but the world of anybody with, y'know, emotions.

A Hollow And Soulless Mockery Of Blogging

What up? Just dropping in to give you a heads up of what to expect from This Sentence No Verb this coming weekend. But first let's ramble on nonsensically for a while!

Anyway, today is another one of those times when I want to write about something but all I've got (apart from the one or two big posts that are still being worked on) are lots of half ideas. I watched the Superman Doomsday film last night and as much as I want to discuss the highs and lows (mainly lows) I can't because, well, there's really not that much to it. Seriously. The fights were OK I guess but in true fanboy entitlement fashion I can't get over the fact that...oh, wait -


- there we go. Yes, I can't get over the fact that Mercy gets shot in the head. Not cool. Not cool. I also watched Heroes Season 2 Episode 1 and it was pretty good but if it stays true to form and Season 1 was a Watchmen/Days Of Future Past type affair then I have the horrible feeling that Season 2 is going to be a Legacy Virus/Contagion thing. And nobody wants that.

I also kind of want to do a thing about the Black Canary and Green Arrow Wedding Special too but...I didn't like it. I didn't hate it either which leaves me very little opportunity to attempt to be entertaining about it. All I can say is what has already been said elsewhere on the interweb - Amanda Conner Draw Pretty. Look at her absolutely perfect Wonder Woman and Superman:

Man, I would love for AC to be the artist on my ill-conceived Hela mini-series.

True dat Captioning John. Y'see how cool that looks? That's what I want to see more of in my comics. Smiling. That's Wonder Woman right there. Is she on the art when Gail Simone takes over Wonder Woman? Or is it the Dodsons? It'd be both boss and mint if AC was on there. It's like everyone else has been saying - she's as good as Maguire. Although one thing that nobody else (that I'm aware of) has mentioned is her take on Deathstroke the Terminator.

He's so cute! Look at his little legs dangling! Awww!
I want a Deathstroke the Terminator plushie now!

I also found a wonderful page that I could grab an out-of-context-panel from too when I was composing my list of Top 25 Marvel and DC characters for Jon Carey's Maths and I was thinking about Batman's best ever love interest - Sasha Bordeaux/Cover.* Thing is, it's just a very poor piece of innuendo that ruins what is otherwise a 3 page sequence of serious Comic Book Badassery. I kid you not, this moment is up there with Steph's reaction when Batman said she could be Robin and I don't know if I can cheapen that. It wouldn't feel right.

I, however, have no problems with cheapening it! Let the lowbrow commence!

Yeah, that is pretty lowest common denominator, isn't it? What next,
we going to make jokes about Liefeld's inability to draw human anatomy?

Err...

Weak dude. Weak.

This Weekend On This Sentence No Verb: JLA/Hitman, JYD Loves Hela and Mirror Match!

*Seriously. I say best because she very quickly outgrew the Love Interest cliché and became one of the top characters DC have right now. Unlike others who we may think aren't "good enough" for the Batman, with Sasha it's very apparent that he isn't good enough for her. Talia, Selina and Silver can bugger right off. Especially Silver. Go on, get out of here! Scat! At least those other two had more to their character than generic love interest! *waves stick* We don't need your stereotypical ways round here you yacht riding dilettante! Go on, scram!

JYD <3 Hela #4

I had a day off today and the plan was to have a little bit of a do last night then spend the day working on a sizeable Mirror Match post. Unfortunately, last night's "one or two light ales" turned into a full on booze session during which a plan was made.

Today I have done the following:

Returned to the place that stole my shoes.
Seen a newspaper from the future.
Cursed a play.
Shot virtual deer, quail and boar.
Bought myself a new bandana.
Consumed plenty of high quality rum in a bar that had its own vault.
Watched Rovers put in a shockingly poor performance against Larissa.
Eaten a mighty fine curry.
Received a talk on fire safety.

To be honest, this is a pretty textbook example of what happens when I go to Lancaster and Morecambe. At least this time I didn't lose any footwear to quicksand. In fact, it was a great day. So good that I have absolutely nothing to post here. Nada. That was supposed to be today's task and I'm at work tomorrow so I have little time to do anything right now. I've failed in my 7 days of content pledge. This isn't content, it's merely filler. I mean, I'm going to try to make it worthwhile but in doing so I'll be, well, doing something I never wanted to do. I'm bringing next week's JYD Loves Hela forward.

This Sentence No Verb: Packed to the brim with Asgard, Asgard, Asgard!

Come on, I tried, right? This wasn't too much of a cop out. It might not be stellar work, but I think now I can say I've met my pledge, right?

Aw.

Incredibly Subtle Linkblogging

After last night's entirely valid but funny-free post I resolved to actually entertain you with this evening's post and I was planning to write one of the funniest things that has ever been uploaded to the InformationSuperM62Corridor. That was the plan.

Then I read this. Once again, Chris Sims (the Batman of the comics blogger world) just gave the world some gold plated Fabergé comedy and frankly, there's no way I can compete. I can't compete even at the best of times to be honest but this entry was so funny it made me get in trouble at work for laughing too much. Fun is obviously not something that is allowed at the Sinister Corporation I work for. Disheartened I thought I could pick up on a theme from last night for an alternative post topic - I can explain some of the joy that is Walt Simonson's Thor. "So..." I thought, "I'll work out what I'm going to talk about tonight as I go through my daily ritual of checking all the Comic Blogs I read." Of course, in doing so I came across this.

Mike Sterling had beaten me to it. Unsurprising really - if Sims is the Batman of Blogging then Sterling is the Superman. Trying to write about Simonson's Thor after he's already put something on ThE iNtErnET is like trying to follow a 3 hour Prince gig when all you have is a comb, some paper and a mentally challenged backing singer called Bubba.

Seriously, I got nothin'. Today is one of those days where everyone is on fine form. Scip's destroying sanity with his post about Jean Loring and Jon is helping him, Devon is rocking our aesthetics and funny bones with his Sketch-A-Palooza and Kalinara is (deservedly) laying into Starman. Even my livejournal friends list contains the awesome, Philippos42 made the best used of the Strikethrough tag that I've ever seen. I could just about deal with that were it not for the fact that Leigh, Richard and T-Dawg have all finished their own meme that I originally got from Ami and as I predicted they're all far funnier than mine. Not only that but their selections of characters show that they're also well rounded indivuals and choose people other than robots and vikings.

T-Dawg and Katie are on their way round tonight for a few light ales so I don't even have much time to post something that can keep up with any of that. Dammit! I wanted to amuse people tonight! So I gave up. I decided that I'd break my 7 Days of Content pledge and just read some randomly collected comics.

Fortunately, one of them was an old Superman.

Yes Superman, all the fish look like Lois. I'm sure if just some of the fish looked like
Lois then it'd all make perfect sense to you, but all of the fish? Madness!

God bless the Silver Age!

CBB #2: Punisher: War Journal #11

Now so far on This Sentence No Verb I think I've done pretty good at focussing on the positive in comics. OK, I did lay into Thor #2 before the greatness of #3 and I may have had that Ark-of-the-Covenant-ugly panel of Catwoman but generally I've kept it to a minimum. I've tried to bring to you (the hypothetical reader figure) a little slice in every post of why I love comics. Apart from the posts that aren't about comics, natch. I think that I've always endeavoured to give you a little bit of awesome. But tonight...


Is no different! Seamless introduction over with it's time to drop science on those assembled!

I honestly think that at the moment there are some very fine comics out there - Captain America, She-Hulk, Blue Beetle, All New Atom and so on. They're especially good if you keep away from all that Countdown To Final Secret Invasion War: Disassembled Messiah Crisis bobbins that's going on. One of the true highlights at the moment is Matt Fraction's Punisher: War Journal. It's the perfect book to bring the grim and gritty 90s-Cool Punisher back into the mainstream Marvel Universe.

It's a title that gives you not only gratuitous violence, pretty art and colourful supervillains, it's actually pretty smart in a subversive kind of way. Hell, the saddest moment printed in any Marvel comic about the death of Captain America came in War Journal when Frank Castle hears the news. That's a testament to Matt Fraction - I can have my face rocked and mind blown for 22 pages but I also get my heart tugged for two. Not to bring too much with the hyperbole here but when I read War Journal I get the same feeling I do when I read Walt Simonson's Thor or Gail Simone's Birds of Prey - here is someone writing comics who gets it. I've not read any of his work on Iron Fist but I've heard many good things about it and I don't know if I can keep myself from getting it for much longer but what I do know for sure is that Mr Fraction's veins run with pure unadulterated awesomosity.

Issue 11 comes at the end of an arc where the Punisher takes on the Hate-Monger - a Nazi supervillain wearing a swastika adorned version of the late Captain America's costume. Arc recap in extremely brief - Naturally, when the Hate-Monger's immigrant killing ways made the papers our Frank wasn't too happy with the fact a fascist was wearing something that evoked the memory of Cap. So Frank heads on down to take him out in his own imitable way. Oh yeah, and to do so Frank made his own version of Captain America's costume:

Liquid Awesome.

However, after a lot of blood has been shed and the Hate-Monger killed, Frank is left with the realisation that maybe there isn't much difference between him and the Hate-Monger. Of course, there's also the matter of Bucky - Captain America's former WWII Kid sidecick turned Soviet assasin cyborg turned morally grey good guy. Unsurprisingly, Bucky isn't dealing so well with Cap's death and he's not too pleased about The Punisher diserespecting the uniform. We join our two anti-heroes just after superhuman robot assassin Bucky has challenged crazed vigilante The Punisher to a fight. Things do not look good for Mr Castle.

Comic Book Badassery! Live and in your face!

Like the animal cruelty the other night, CBB isn't all about the big moments, it's the smaller things too. Expectations are confounded and in those two pages we get a brilliant summary of the Punisher and who he is. A man seeking vengeance in a world of over-the-top superheroics. A man who knows he can't live up to the ideals of another former soldier fighting the good fight. A tragically conflicted character who can never get back the life he wanted. A man who will knock you the fuck out if you call him chicken. And that's another reason why I love comics.

Matt Fraction: I salute you. I'm going to have to start reading Iron Fist now aren't I?

JYD <3 Hela #3

Well, today felt like Autumn for the first time and when my favourite season rolls around I always feel, well, a little more romantic. You all know what that means!

Question: How do you deal with 2 Gods battling in your house?



Answer: If you're Hela, just wave your hand.

Animal Cruelty

It's Sunday, I'm hungover and there's only one thing that's going to make me feel better and that's the classic joy that is the torment of animals in comic books! We've been here once before and it was my pleasure to share with you the fun of Superman throwing a whale and Batman tackling a lion. It's not always about the big and impressive though. Yeah, we all know about de-aged Batman wrestling a bear and you can't deny the awesomeness of that but what about the other end of the scale? Why not think small? I suggest that all people of a nervous disposition look away now.

What's in the bag? What could Kim have given Killer Croc to deal with Batman. A bomb? Laser guns? Jeph Loeb?

Those are the most painfully cute puppies the world has ever seen. But he isn't going to do what I think he's going to do, is he?

Badass [Bad-as] Slang: Vulgar, Adj;
1. (of a person) difficult to deal with; mean-tempered; touchy.
2. distinctively tough or powerful; so exceptional as to be intimidating.
3. Killer Croc + (Puppies x Altitude)

For all those no-good hippies sensitive types out there I can assure you that Robin successfully "broke left" and caught the puppy. However Batman just let the other one die because this issue of Gotham Adventures was written by Frank Miller. On the next page Batman punches a prostitute in the face.

I kid! I kid! Lazy bloggery I know, taking a pop at both Loeb and Miller. Sorry. I'm just messing with y'all. Both puppies survive and go on to lead fulfilling lives on a happy farm of some kind, possibly one made out of marshmallows and rainbows. I'd never show you anything that involves the messy death of cute, fluffy animals.


Apart from cats. Cats suck.