Books, Books, Books

91. Devil Dinosaur Omnibus by Jack Kirby. Not Kirby's best work, but still plenty of fun.
    
92. The Incredible Hercules: Love & War by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, Clayton Henry, & Salva Espin. I had been enjoying this series before, but it really takes off in this volume. (Checked out of the library.)
    
93. The Incredible Hercules: Dark Reign by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, et al. This series has some nice art, but it is often inconsistent, changing artists every couple of issues. (Library.)
    
94. Madame Xanadu, vol. 2: Exodus Noir by Matt Wagner & Michael William Kaluta. Good story, and some absolutely amazing art.
    
95. Dark Reign: The Hood by Jeff Parker & Kyle Hotz. Well-done story of a small-time crook who has become a major player in the Marvel Universe thanks to his discovery of a magical artifact. (Library.)
    
96. Dark Reign: Young Avengers by Paul Cornell & Mark Brooks. Not so much about the Young Avengers as it is about a group that wants to be them (but are much closer to being Young Masters of Evil). (Library.)
    
97. Showcase Presents Wonder Woman, vol. 1 by Robert Kanigher & Ross Andru. Man, the Silver Age insanity on display here is unbelievable. In one story, Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor just happen to be driving past a place where they are testing a 3-story firecracker, complete with gantry (like it was a rocket).
    
98. Emma, vol. 10 by Kaoru Mori. The final volume. (Library.)
    
99. Star Wars Legacy, vol. 7: Storms by John Ostrander, Jan Duursema, & Omar Francia. I'm a little behind on this series, but still enjoying it.

Three movies this week

• Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Beatniks. There is a new MST3K set out.
  
• Alice in Wonderland. Visually stunning, but then it's a Tim Burton movie, so that goes without saying. Not much else positive to say about it. There are several places where the story just doesn't work. There are no surprises. Several character developments are unearned. I will say that Burton does something with the Caterpillar that I've never seen done before, which is amazing because it is something that is actually very obvious.
  
• MST3K: The Crawling Eye. The very first nationally-broadcast episode of MST3K. They got better at this.

Boring Post Title Goes Here

82. Vixen: Return of the Lion by G. Willow Wilson & Cafu. Pretty good exploration of a character that hasn't gotten as much attention as she perhaps deserves. (Checked out of the library.)
    
83. Rex Mundi, Book 6: Gate of God by Arvid Nelson & Juan Ferreyra. Satisfying conclusion to this alternate-history exploration of a world where magic works & the Protestant Reformation never happened. (Library.)
    
84. Essential Super-Villain Team-Up by various. 500+ pages of Doctor Doom and the Sub-Mariner screaming at each other.
    
85. Jack Staff, vol. 4: Rocky Realities by Paul Grist. I wish this sold better, so Grist could spend more time on it, because he has a masterful command of the comics medium. Issues are few & far between, but I enjoy each one when it arrives. (Now if only the rest of his Kane series would be collected.)
    
86. High Moon by David Gallogher & Steve Ellis. Somewhat disjointed story, not helped by serviceable are rendered very muddy by a terrible coloring job. The only white space on the pages are the word balloons. Awful coloring on some terribly flimsy paper. (Library.)
    
87. Ignition City by Warren Ellis & Gianluca Pagliarani. Where do all the old space heroes go to die? Great comic examining the likes of Flash Gordon & Buck Rogers.
    
88. Emma, vol. 9 by Kaoru Mori. More stories about side characters. (Library.)
    
89. The Complete Annotated Oz Squad, vol. 2 by Steve Alhquist & Terry Loh. One of the few continuations of Baum's Oz stories that I've liked, and the only "mature" version (not that it's pornographic) that's any good at all.
    
90. Love & Rockets New Stories, no. 2 by Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez. Now that Gilbert is doing less realistic stories, I find that I prefer Jaime's work. However, Gilbert's Heartbreak Soup and Human Diastrophism (f.k.a. Blood of Palomar) will always remain some of my favorite comics.

A couple of movies this week:

• Doctor Who: The Invasion of Time. Teena is being exposed to classic Doctor Who all out of sequence, but she seems to be enjoying it. She has said that she likes Leela as a companion, so I think I'll be getting more of the stories with her from the library.
  
• Quantum of Solace. Not as good as Casino Royale, but not as bad as the reviews led me to believe. Admittedly the plot was somewhat confused, but the action sequences were great.

Back Up to Speed

After some light weeks, I finished a few more books this time around.

73. Ghost Rider: Hell Bent & Heaven Bound by Jason Aaron, Roland Boschi, & Tan Eng Huat. (Checked out of the library.)
    
74. Batman: Death Mask Yoshinori Natsume. Manga version of Batman. (Library.)
    
75. Hulk Visionaries: Peter David, vol. 7 by Peter David & Dale Keown. David's whole run on Hulk was good, but here is where it starts getting great.
    
76. The Nightly News by Jonathan Hickman. Condemnation of the news industry. The tag-line goes "Fight Club meets Network" and that's entirely fitting. (Library.)
    
77. Sam & Twitch: The Brian Michael Bendis Collection, vol. 2 by Brian Michael Bendis, et al. Cops. (Library.)
    
78. 20th Century Boys, vol. 7: Truth by Naoki Urasawa. Still blown away by this series, although I'm wondering if it can sustain the level it is at for another 17 volumes. I'm getting curious about the live action movies, but I don't know how far the adaptations go, and I want to read the manga first.
    
79. Transhuman by Jonathan Hickman & Jim Ringuet. (Library.)
    
80. Hellblazer: Scab by Peter Milligan, Giuseppe Camuncoli, et al. As I've mentioned before, Milligan is hit or miss for me. In this case, he's a hit. Nice take on the character.
    
81. Models Inc. by Paul Tobin, Vicenc Villagrasa, et al. Back before they started publishing super-heroes, Marvel had some Archie-like comics featuring "Millie the Model", her friends, & her rivals. This is an updating of those characters.

Just one movie this week:

• Star Trek. Now that we have a TV that can accept an HDMI connection from the PS3, we can watch Blu-Ray discs in full high-definition. This looked spectacular. And so much fun. They really nailed it on this reboot.

An Even Lighter Week

70. Trinity, vol. 2 by Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley, with Fabian Nicieza, et al. (Checked out of the library.)
    
71. Trinity, vol. 3 by Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley, with Fabian Nicieza, et al. I'm not sure the story was enough to support fifty-two issues, but there never was a feeling of just treading water like in large stretches of DC's previous weekly comic, Countdown, but the story holds together than in DC's first weekly comic, 52, but I think that's a function of having only one writer (assisted by one other) instead of a committee of four. (Library.)
    
72. Pluto, vol. 7 by Naoki Urasawa. Building to the climax. I think I will re-read this series before the final volume comes out.

And just one movie:

• Doctor Who: Castrovalva. Thanks to Michael for loaning us this DVD. Peter Davison's first story. Some awkward acting, and some laughable special effects. But entertaining nonetheless.