Back on Track

Still no Amazon links. I'm not convinced it was an innocent mistake. Plus, allowing Amazon to become a monopoly is not a good thing.

186. Superman: Camelot Falls, vol. 1 by Kurt Busiek & Carlos Pacheco. Read this a while ago, but it took volume 2 long enough to come out that I decided to reread this first. (Checked out of the library.)
     
187. Creepy Archives, vol. 1 by Archie Goodwin, et al. Horror comics in the EC tradition. Pretty formulaic, but well constructed stories. Plus some fantastic art. (Library.)
     
188. Necronomicon by William Messner-Loebs & Andrew Ritchie. More Lovecraftian than most comics inspired than HPL. And it's written by a comic creator who deserves to get more work.
     
189. Templar, Arizona, vol. 1: The Great Outdoors by Spike. I picked up this web comic collection at this year's Stumptown Comics Fest. I liked this, and it seems to have promise, but there's not actually a lot going on in this volume. It's scene-setting, not story. I need to read more to really form an opinion. Fortunately, you can read it online for free!
     
190. Superman: Camelot Falls, vol. 2 by Kurt Busiek, Carlos Pacheco, & Jesus Merino. And here's the second volume. I like the concept here: That civilization naturally rises & falls, and Superman, being an alien, has unnaturally forestalled the next fall. And by doing so, the force behind that fall is growing so that when the next dark age comes, it will be so dark that humanity will be destroyed. (Library.)
     
191. Showcase Presents: Ambush Bug by Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming. Silly, silly comics. Lots of goofiness.
     
192. Sandman Mystery Theatre, vol. 7: The Mist & The Phantom of the Fair by Matt Wagner, Steven T. Seagle, & Guy Davis. More great comics about the Golden Age Sandman.
     
193. Ars Magica: Realms of Power: Faerie by Eric Dahl, Timothy Ferguson, & Mark Shirley. Michael's running an Ars Magica campaign, and I'm playing a magus from House Merinita, so I'm reading up on their specialty: faerie.
     
194. Choice Comix: Sid Love by Terry Toledo. Another Stumptown purchase. Choose your own adventure. This has an interesting twist in that certain choices give you "audio endings." You can go online & listen to a song about that ending. Or something. I haven't actually done it, so I don't know for certain. I guess I should bring the book to the computer & look up the URL.
     
195. Starman Omnibus, vol. 2 by James Robinson, Tony Harris, et al. Yay! Another big collection of the best superhero comic of the 90s. And this edition includes all the issues, short stories featuring supporting characters, and the prose stories from the letters page.
     
196. Air, vol. 1: Letters from Lost Countries by G. Willow Wilson & M.K. Perker. Magical realism (sort of) & an acrophobic flight attendant.
     
197. Eyebeam: Teetering on the Blink by Sam Hurt. The high level of surrealism may be why this comic strip never really took off. I like it, though.

And a few movies:

• Doctor Who: The Stones of Blood.
  
• Doctor Who: The Androids of Tara. An awful lot of Doctor Who adventures are titled "The X of Y", and Y very often is something like "death" or "blood."
  
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Beginning of the End.
  
• MST3K: Robot Monster. Oh, this is an awful movie, even for MST3K.

Another Skipped Week

Distracted by The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass (I finally started playing it again), I didn't leave time enough for updating. I didn't get much read anyway. See you next week.

Surprise!

A day sick at home means I get to update sooner than I expected.

(No Amazon links this time, or in the future unless they fix the ranking fiasco. See here for an explanation of the situation if you are unfamiliar with the situation.)

174. Why I Killed Peter by Olivier Ka & Alfred. Autobiographical (semi?) comic about the writer's childhood, when he was molested by a priest. (Checked out of the library.)
     
175. Danger Unlimited by John Byrne. This holds up pretty well. It's a shame Byrne didn't continue it. (I assume the problem was low sales, not a lack of interest on his part.)
     
176. Wolverine: Logan by Brian K. Vaughan & Eduardo Risso. Pretty good story, but much too expensive. There's no way the collection for a three-issue series should cost $20, not even if it is a hardcover. Not when the issues were the Marvel-standard 22 pages long. (Library.)
     
177. Emma, vol. 8 by Kaoru Mori. The main character's story reached her "happily ever after" in volume 7, but the creator is obsessed with Victorian England, and she continues to write & draw stories about the supporting characters.
     
178. New Mutants Classic, vol. 4 by Chris Claremont, Bill Sienkiewicz, & Steve Leialoha. Some fantastic art, but Claremont's writing quirks are on full display here. Oh, the angst!
     
179. Countdown to Final Crisis, vol. 1 by Paul Dini, et al. I know the DC editors didn't do their job, and this story has nothing to do with Final Crisis. And I've heard that the whole thing is pretty much a train-wreck. But I had to see it for myself. (Library.)
     
180. Madame Mirage by Paul Dini & Kenneth Rocofort. Anatomically improbable cheesecake art and a fairly standard revenge story. (Library.)
     
181. Sardine in Outer Space, vol. 1 by Emmanuel Guibert & Joann Sfar. Cute kid's comic. (Library.)
     
182. The Death of Captain America, vol. 3: The Man Who Bought America by Ed Brubaker & Steve Epting. This is still great.
     
183. Narbonic, vol. 6 by Shaenon Garrity. The final volume of the fantastic web comic. It's amazing how far in advance Garrity planned out this comic and how many little details pay off months & years after they were introduced. I'm looking forward to seeing her at Stumptown this weekend and telling her how much I like her work.
     
184. Little Nothings, vol. 2: The Prisoner Syndrome by Lewis Trondheim. A collection of Trondheim's blog sketches. Little slices of life, often quite funny. If I could read French, I would read them as he posts them. (Library.)
     
185. Powers, vol. 12: The 25 Greatest Dead Superheroes of All Time by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming. Still going strong.

A couple of movies since last time:

• Mystery Science Theater 3000: Warrior of the Lost World.
  
• MST3K: Outlaw.

Chances are a lot of MST3K movies will be showing up here in the near future. Right now we've got a device that can copy from VHS tapes to DVDs, so we're making the most of it & converting the MST3K episodes Teena taped off the TV.

And the Streak Is Broken

Easter & family commitments kept me from updating today. See you next week.

This Is Getting to Be a Habit

I'm sure I'll break my streak soon enough, but here we go with my fourth on-time update in a row.

162. Myth-Taken Identity by Robert Aspirin & Judy Lynn Nye. I remember enjoying the early Myth Adventures books quite a lot. This was disappointing. Not really bad, but not nearly as funny as I remember the others being, and the plotting was pretty week.
     
163. Pluto: Urasawa X Tezuka 002 by Naoki Urasawa. The second volume holds up to the first. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series as it is released in English.
     
164. Green Lantern: Secret Origin by Geoff Johns & Ivan Reis. Expansion & retelling of Hal Jordan's secret origin & planting seeds for Johns' next big Green Lantern event. (Checked out of the library.)
     
165. Conan: The Blood-Stained Crown and Other Stories. By Kurt Busiek, et al. More Conan comics. (Library.)
     
166. She-Hulk, vol. 6: Jaded by Peter David & Shawn Moll. I wasn't sure I was going to buy the collections of Peter David's run on She-Hulk, but when I checked this out of the library a while back, I decided I would start picking them up.
     
167. She-Hulk, vol. 7: Here Today... by Peter David & Val Semeiks. And here's the second collection.
     
168. Cthulhu Tales, vol. 2: The Whisper of Madness by various. Pretty good horror stories. (Library.)
     
169. Anna Mercury, vol. 1: The Cutter by Warren Ellis & Facundo Percio. Big, over-the-top action.
     
170. Narbonic, vol. 4 by Shaenon Garrity.
     
171. Justice League International, vol. 1 by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis, & Kevin Maguire. Fun super-heroics. One of the bright spots from DC in the 80's.
     
172. Bookhunter by Jason Shiga. The adventures of the Library Police in Oakland in 1973.
     
173. Narbonic, vol. 5 by Shaenon Garrity. I got through two volumes this week. Only one to go.

Movies & DVDs

• Doctor Who: The Ribos Operation. The first adventure of the Key to Time story arc.
  
• Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet. Part two. Written by Douglas Adams, and bits of his humor made it through to the final version, despite massive cuts to the script.

Third Week Running!

151. The New Avengers, vol. 8: Secret Invasion, Bk. 1 by Brian Michael Bendis, et al. Keeping up to date (sort of) with events in the Marvel Universe. (Checked out of the library.)
     
152. The Rabbi's Cat 2 by Joann Sfar. I picked this up a while ago, but I didn't read it right away for some reason, and I am at a loss as to what that reason is. Because this is just as great as the first book. Very human. Plus, this volume has a cameo appearance by Tin Tin!
     
153. Green Lantern: In Brightest Day: Tales of the Green Lantern Corps by various. (Library.)
     
154. Light of Thy Countenance by Alan Moore, Antony Johnston, & Felipe Massafera. Television considered as a god.
     
155. Showcase Presents: Strange Adventures, vol. 1 by various. Science fiction comics from the 50's. Most of the stories involve alien invasion. And in half of the invasion stories, the aliens are trying to trick the humans because our atomic weapons pose a threat to them. In the other half, our arsenal is no match for the aliens' superior firepower, and we need to trick them. It happens so often I have to wonder if the writers were aware of the Cold War fears playing out in their stories.
     
156. Ted McKeever Library, Bk. 2: Eddy Current. Oddball stuff, but I liked it. (Library.)
     
157. Grendel: Devil's Reign by Matt Wagner & Tim Sale. Wagner used radically different styles for each Grendel storyline. This one takes the form of a history/political biography of a man who becomes emperor of the world. Well-done, but not exactly gripping storytelling.
     
158. Aces: Curse of the Red Baron by Shannon Eric Denton, G. Willow Wilson, & Curtis Square Briggs. Pretty good adventure story that could have used a proofreader. (Library.)
     
159. Little White Mouse Omnibus by Paul Sizer. Great science fiction story about a teenage girl stuck on an automated mining outpost in deep space. One of the things I especially like about it is that Loo's family gets along. Memories of her family are a source of strength for Loo, not a source of angst. And that's just refreshing.
     
160. Batman: Private Casebook by Paul Dini & Dustin Nguyen. Pretty good. (Library.)
     
161. Narbonic, vol. 3 by Shaenon Garrity. It's taking be about a week to get through each volume (each one of which collects about a year of the webcomic).

Couple of movies:

• Cinematic Titanic: Blood of the Vampires. The latest riff on a bad movie from the creator and most of the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
  
• Every Which Way But Loose. Clint Eastwood & an orangutan.

Wow. Two Updates in Two Weeks.

136. Essential Fantastic Four, vol. 3 by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby. There are some great comics here, including the introduction of the Inhumans and the Black Panther's first appearance, not to mention the Galactus & the Silver Surfer.
     
137. Fall of Cthulhu, vol. 2: The Gathering by Michael Alan Nelson, et al. All the stories in this book are creepy, but only the first one seems particularly Lovecraftian. (Checked out of the library.)
     
138. Beanworld, vol. 1: Wahoolazuma! by Larry Marder. Yay! Beanworld is back in print! This is cause for celebration. As the tagline says, it is a most peculiar comic book experience, but it's a wonderful one.
     
139. St. Trinian's: The Entire Appalling Business by Ronald Searle. Cartoons about a girl's boarding school. (Library.)
     
140. Un-Men, vol. 1: Get Your Freak On! by John Whalen & Mike Hawthorne. Meh. (Library.)
     
141. Spider-Man: The Other - Evolve or Die by various. Gee, all the changes to Spider-Man that came out of this cross-over event are all gone, some of them even disappeared before the next Spider-Man cross-over event.
     
142. The Invincible Iron Man, vol. 1: The Five Nightmares by Matt Fraction & Salvador Larroca. Does a lot to make Iron Man more sympathetic after the way he was portrayed in Civil War. (Library.)
     
143. Star Trek: Assignment Earth by John Byrne. Remember that episode in the original Star Trek series where they go back to the 1960's, and it was intended as a pilot for a spin-off series? Teri Garr was a guest star in the episode. Anyway, this comic is about the (non-existent) spin-off. (Library.)
     
144. Flight, vol. 3 by various. Another excellent volume in the anthology series. (Borrowed from Teena.)
     
145. Conan, vol. 4: The Hall of the Dead and Other Stories by various. Working my way through this series.
     
146. Fall of Cthulhu, vol. 3: The Gray Man by Michael Alan Nelson & Mateus Santolouco. Again, a good horror story, but forces of evil at work here seem entirely too comprehensible for this to be very Lovecraftian. (Library.)
     
147. Myth Adventures! by Robert Asprin & Phil Foglio. Comics adaptation of the first of Asprin's humorous fantasy novels.
     
148. Pluto: Urasawa X Texuka 001 by Naoki Urasawa. A reimagining of an Astro Boy story. I have to say I am extremely impressed by this first volume. Gorgeous artwork and a story full of depth.
     
149. Superman: Kryptonite by Darwyn Cooke & Tim Sale. A pretty good story with some fantastic artwork. (Library.)
     
150. Narbonic, vol. 2 by Shaenon Garrity. Working my way through this series again.

Just one movie this week:

• The Man Who Knew Too Much. The 1956 version with Jimmy Stewart.