Once again taken from a 1998 Major Bummer issue, this one #8, here you've got an ad for Grant Morrison and Howard Porter's JLA. I'm guessing this is from JLA #16 where the ranks swelled to include Orion et al. Man, that's just an amazing comic book run. I recently re-read the first 10 issues and it still holds up as well as anything and even includes status quo changes like Superman becoming electric. I also feel like it's timely because we just got this cool piece of Mark Bagley art for his upcoming run on Justice League of America with James Robinson (via Newsarama. Justice League is a concept I've been in love with since I started reading comics, but even I'm not reading that book anymore, so there's nowhere to go but up.
Continuing the Crank fun from the other day and to show my support for tonight's Manly Movie Night I'll be missing, here's my live blog of Crank's sequel Crank: High Voltage. I was super jealous of Sean when he got to see this flick in theaters and blogged about it. Sean had this to say earlier this year: "Like an unholy cross between Chuck Norris's Invasion U.S.A., Troma, and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, the movie was wildly and needlessly experimental, and was offensive even to me at times, and had no redeeming social value whatsoever except to punch you in the face repeatedly with a fist made of entertainment. I'd be amazed all over again if I see a movie I enjoy more than this one for the rest of the year." I would honestly count this as one of the best action movies of all time and it's ability to top its predecessor, which was already an impressively over the top movie is, well, just plain amazing.
The plot of this one is that Chev Chelios fell out of the helicopter, but they grabbed his body right away and kept him alive for 3 months before opening him up to harvest his organs. They get his heart and replace it with a robot one, but it isn't until he overhears them talking about cutting of his penis that he freaks out and kicks ass. Amy Smart and Dwight Yoakam return in their same roles and Efren Ramirez plays his character from the first movie's brother Venus. Now, instead of needing adrenaline to stay alive, Chev has to shock his robot heart to keep it charged. As you can imagine, it's amazing.
Again spoilers follow and I highly encourage you to see this movie as soon as possible. It just came out on DVD last week or the week before. It's simply amazing. Well, here we go. *Love that 8-bit credits.
*This is like watching Star Wars or Lord of the Rings back to back, but way cooler.
*News guy calls events of the first movie "implausible" - no kidding.
*Oh man, that dude puts ashes in Chev's open chest cavity. That's cold.
*He's awake during the surgery!!!
*"The famous Chelios heart" - subtitle, dude's so rad his HEART is famous.
*Where did she shove that pencil? Not cool.
*He dips the shotgun in tar and sticks it up the dude's ass--that's what you get bad guy!
*I like that he basically figures out the catch to survival on his own in both movies.
*"Jesus H. Chelios" - needs to be on a T-shirt.
*Nice film strip-like fake heart explanation from Yoakam.
*Oh man, his battery is already messed up after skidding.
*I don't think any movie star runs more than Statham.
*I love seeing the Social Club get emptied from the outside, that's a great touch. One man goes in (Chev) and everyone else flies out! *There's Corey Haim...in a strip club, did he even know this was a movie? He's wearing a Nice Jugs t-shirt with pictures of milk jugs. Classy.
*Strippers with guns, it's like Sin City with implant jokes.
*Haha, the cops tazed him, not good for them.
*They finally explained that he's been gone for three months, love the phone message explanation.
*"Is Doc Miles gonna have to choke a bitch?" - nice one Dwight!
*Nice porn star cameos in the porn strike scene.
*Free style walking ball smash!
*Dog shock collar and the dog bits the cops junk, heh, nice.
*Kaylo's brother Venus has tourettes, that should be interesting.
*He's dry humping an old lady and she's loving it!
*The soundtrack is brilliant, Tarantin-esque.
*People love watching people have sex in various positions on a race track.
*Smart's way too turned on by seeing horse penis.
*"Well, you ain't no Ralph Macchio yourself Chev" - Venus.
*Gotta love a good man vs. car chase.
*They just made the heart transplant nonsense make sense. Impressive.
*Best in-car shootout ever.
*Dude just cut off his own nipples, squirm-o-ramma.
*Love seeing Haim get the hammer dropped on him by Smart after sucking.
*The shrink totally wants to bang the orderly from the first one...heh, sucks to be him.
*What the? It's like Godzilla under the power lines!!! *Interesting talk show-style flashback to Chev as a kid with his mom complete with "he's a bad kid" clips. His mom looks an awful lot like Amy Smart.
*That's a lot of balls, but nicely followed by lots of boobs and butts.
*Floating robot head villain from the first movie AND his brother is The Ferret AND Ferret's beating Chev with a cat-o-nine-tails.
*Venus FINALLY kicks ass and with nun-chucks no less.
*Crazy awesome multi-group shoot out and fight scene!!!
*Chev's literally on fire and kicking ass, damn, even his face. GET SOME WATER!
*Watch through the credits as they actually end the story there and then do some fun out takes and whatnot.
Well, I have to say that NBC certainly brought it as the kids say today with their four big comedy season premiers. The Saturday Night Live Weekend Update on Thursday thing was fun even though I don't pay much attention to the news so I was a little lost on some things. I did happen to listen to Madonna's weird MTV Video Awards eulogy for Michael Jackson and am glad someone called her on it.
Moving right along, Park & Recreation was the surprise of the night for me. I was ROLLING. And anyone who's a regular reader of the blog knows that I've definitely had my problems with that show. But this episode with Leslie becoming a minor gay icon in her small Indiana town. Maybe I'm just more used to the characters or maybe the writers finally are, but everything seemed a lot funnier and on point as opposed to the stumbles and fumbles that plagued this mid-season replacement last season. If you fell off the P&R wagon last year, I recommend hitting the bottle again.
The Office, one of my favorite shows, also didn't disappoint. I like how Michael handled things with crazier and crazier lies. Who wouldn't watch a spin-off about Kevin and the man driving him from the inside? I sure would. There's not much else to say, but it feels like this show is still going strong and I think Jim and Pam might be my favorite TV couple.
And finally, my most anticipated show of the season, Community starring The Soup's Joel McHale and Chevy Chase was pretty rad too. I really appreciated that they didn't start the show on day one, but actually half a week in. That would have felt boring, which would not have served the comedy or story very well. Sure, we're not given all the details right away, but we get the important stuff and everything else will just come along. It's weird seeing Joel act because he seems so normal and actual on The Soup and Chase killed it. The entire cast really seemed to gel and I can't wait to see where the show goes.
Like I said, it was a great night for comedy. I will miss My Name Is Earl and even Kath & Kim, but this line-up will do until 30 Rock comes back to rock my face off as per usual.
Em and I watched Adventureland yesterday and I really dug it. It was an interesting follow up by Greg Mottola (Superbad) as it wasn't really laugh out loud funny (though I kept laughing pretty loudly, warranting "shush"-es fromo Em). It's a story about growing up from the perspective of a recent college grad who studied literature and wants to be a travel writer, but has to work at an amusement park to make money from grad school in 1987. Along the way, he meets plenty of interesting characters (including Bill from Freaks and Geeks, the lovely Ryan Reynolds, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader and Kristen Stewart). But like I said, it's not as crazy and wild as Superbad, it's a more subdued movie with a lot more emotion and I can't help but relate to James (our hero) who has no idea what to do with his life now that he's done with school and has a degree in English. There's an Avenue Q song about that right? Anyway, it definitely reminded me of working at Barry's Bagels back home, meeting weird and interesting people who introduce you to all kinds of stuff.
Anyway, like I said I dug it. A few things of note, we had to turn our subtitles on just to make out what everybody was saying. There aren't any accents, it's just that James, played by Jesse Eisenberg is very soft spoken and delivers a lot of under-the-breath lines, which I found to be the funniest. If you turn the volume up too loud, then the damn music kicks in and blows your ear drums (wow, that made me sound OLD). Also, this might be the first movie I can remember where the young stars actually didn't look old enough to be playing their characters' ages. Specifically Eisenberg doesn't look like a college grad, but a high school one. This threw me off for part of the movie because I kept thinking they might get in trouble for drinking in public. I had to keep reminding myself of that. Also, I haven't seen any of Kristen Stewarts other movies (scratch that, she was the kid in Panic Room? huh) and I definitely didn't have the strong feelings towrads her character than Ben had, but I can say that, for the most part, this is the least gross I've ever seen her. What's with the greasy hair? I get that you're pothead, but dress it up a little, you know? High points were when Bill from Freaks & Geeks shows James how all the rides work and when James punches a meathead. All in all, this is a great movie for English majors.
Oh, DO go on.
I don't think this will be too long of a post as I didn't really like Timecrimes. It's a Spanish time travel/slasher movie that seems really intricate when you're in the moment, but after thinking about it (even during the movie) it just feels dumb. You've got several versions of one guy trying to fix various mistakes the previous versions have made all the while making sure he does the things that will lead to the events that will bring about the mistakes. Does that make sense? Not to me.
My other problem with the movie comes from the first version of the main character, Hector, going back in time a few hours. Now, I would imagine that in the year 2006 pretty much anyone would have at least a rudimentary grasp of time travel. But Hector can't get over the fact that "some other guy" is in the house with his wife. But it's you, you idiot! You don't have to go try and kill yourself or whatever. It's gaps in logic like that that really threw me out of the movie.
And finally, while it is interesting to see how things eventually play out and what aspects of what Hector saw in the beginning were a result of time traveling Hectors, everything is so obviously telegraphed that it's not really that interesting. I also have a pet peeve in a movie when the director feels the need to show me something I've already seen in the movie. I've only been sitting here for like 2 hours, I'm pretty sure I can remember stuff. Well, this movie does that, a lot. And part of it is showing how the stories fit together, but it's also kind of boring watching a movie 2-3 times in the course of one movie.
All that being said, the "slasher" does look pretty cool even if I don't like how he got to that point. I guess it's worth checking out, but don't expect a revelatory movie. If you want a rad, newer time travel movie do yourself a favor and check out Primer.
As I mentioned the other day, I attempted to watch Crank followed directly by Crank: High Voltage on Sunday night after getting back from New England. Unfortunately, I poured my whiskey and coke a little heavily and fell asleep about half way through Crank 2. So, it wasn't a true movie marathon, but I tried. I did my best to take notes as I watched the movie and here you have it, my notes, transcribed as best I could from my increasingly terrible handwriting. This is absolutely not to be taken in place of seeing this amazingly kinetic and over the top action movie, but if you haven't and anything that follows made you go "Huh?" (or you're a dude), then SEE THIS MOVIE!
I guess I should explain the basic plot because it's definitely not clear below. Chev Chelios is a hitman who gets injected with a drug that's trying to block his adrenaline receptors, slow him down and kill him. As a result he's trying to find the people who killed him, while trying to spend some time with his girlfriend Amy Smart, find a cure from his underworld doctor friend Dwight Yoakam and keep his adrenaline pumping long enough to not die through various methods (fighting, drugs, sex, etc.).
Spoilers ahead, though not a ton because I got really caught up in watching this bad boy again for the second time. *Crank is the Pi of action movies.
*How does a Brit get a name like Chevy Chelios? Who cares, it's still one of the best names in movie history.
*Why do I even know who Amy Smart is?
*Jason Statham is awesome. [Definitely my favorite action star of the moment and one of the all time best.]
*It's fascinating watching a man who already assumes he's dead in action. It's like this Batman story I remember from, I think No Man's Land where this GCPD cop keeps fighting in this underground fight fest for food or something and he does it because he already assumes he's going to die and nothing can happen to him.
*I love the scenes where he messes those guys up while dealing with his girl and she doesn't notice it.
*Yup, he bangs her in the street with everyone watching.
*"You're like an adrenaline junky with no soul" - Amy Smart hahahaha *Chinatown LOVES angry sex in the streets.
*Chev "I'm alive!" while having sex. Reminds me of the song and dance number in Ferris.
*And then he leaves himself and her...unfulfilled.
*That Haitian stuff is CRAZY. [I don't even remember what this refers to.]
*Aw, I don't like seeing Kaylo, the Napoleon Dynamite kid die even though he's annoying.
*I wish I had a Puma suit like Chev's.
*"Just die" - heh, unlikely.
*Love the sweatshop and foreign subtitles.
*A lot of bad things happen to hands in this flick - cut off, sewn, ouch.
*Road head in a car chase - amazing.
*This movie's like The Wheelman but with more sex. Why is there not a Crank video game?
*He's such a man that he doesn't want to go out quietly, but wants one more hour to kick as much ass as possible.
*I love all his costume changes, it's like he's on Divas.
*Chev: "I'm the Terminator." Nice.
*I LOVE the camera work, it's nuts. *Him holding people at bay with his finger-gun is awesome.
*Using underlings as grenade cover is a nice tough.
*He gets even MORE shit injected into him? Not cool.
*He skulks through the movie like a zombie or a slasher. It's like watching a slasher movie where the killer's a good guy!
*The helicopter fight looks so freaking real!
*How can there possibly be a sequel, dude fell out of a helicopter!!! But he still blinks afterwards!!!!! Cause he's a damn man!
I was hard at work today on my first freelance assignment for Marvel.com, an interview with comic fan and Chicago Bear Lance Briggs (I'll keep you posted when it goes live), so I didn't post as much during the day today. I'm also working on an X-Men piece that turned out to be a lot longer than I expected so I'll probably break it up into pieces, but I didn't want to draw attention to a few things I saw today.
Topless Robot's got a great list of the 17 Coolest G.I. Joe and Cobra Animal Sidekicks. I have way too many of these in my collection.
/Film has a story about a robot boxing movie. I'm sure it's no Robot Jox, but I love this image they ran with it.
There's also a CGI Night of the Living dead movie called NOTLD: Origins that Romero has nothing to do with. It's also being said it'll be in 3D. I'm in! (via /Film)
Rickey's got another awesome Swayze tribute piece up, this one's from Point Break.
As I alluded to in the past few days, I was gone on a mini trip last weekend with Em to visit her parents and grandma in a Massachusetts coastal town called Ipswitch. Em's grandma used to live there and now she rents a cabin (or camp as she calls it) every year towards the end of the summer for a month and we try and make it out every year. This year's trip was pretty interesting as it rained for most of the 4 hour drive there and was generally miserable as far as the weather goes for Friday and Saturday (luckily it got really nice on Sunday and we were able to enjoy the sun while Em's aunt, uncle and cousins came to visit).
Have I mentioned that I love having a phone that takes pretty good pictures that I can easily put on my computer? If not I do. And thanks to it, I can share these pics with you. Make it through the house and beach ones and I promise you a picture of an epic T-Rex image unlike anything you've seen before! Here's a few pics of the camp itself, the surroundings and the incredible view of the ocean. It's not the most pleasant place to be when it's pouring rain and cold, but when it's nice, it's amazing. As a side note, I apparently can't sleep in a wooden cabin with the wind and rain banging against a house. Good to know.
To keep ourselves busy on Saturday we went to a little town I don't remember the name of, but they had this amazing store called Enchanted Forest.
EC had some amazingly weird stuff including Life Is Crap shirts, I like this one about whiskey.
Then, I turned to my right and saw this EPIC T-shirt featuring two T-Rexes fighting on a mountain with lightning in the background! Too bad they only had kid sizes.
Not wanting to solely focus on dinosaurs, EC also has plenty of things starring dragons, like this statue and snowglobe.
While walking through town I also saw a TON of these posters hanging around.
In case you can't read it, here's the various text boxes from top down and left to right. "I Fall For You." "Modern couples/Used to be gay...going straight?" "Time Traveling Lesbian!/Her Amazon Adventure." "Sexy parlor games/Turn tables on cheating hubby!" "Woman finds her gynecologist in a singles bar!" "Missing member turns up...in church!" "Mr. Happy's shocking leap of death!" And finally, at the bottom "A few short plays about sex and romance." Yes, that all does sound very romantical.
We also got a glimpse of these pop culture rubber duckies, gotta love that someone thought it'd be a good idea to turn one of the most revered comedians of his day who died far too young thanks to drugs and alcohol into a rubber ducky. Oh, plus a slasher.
And on the way home I saw these mints at TJ Maxx, and because I'm truly 14 at heart, took a picture and giggled like a school girl.
First off, I just wanted to thank everyone for coming to the site, as of today I've gotten 5,007 hits since the site launched in April. I hope you guys are enjoying this as much as I am. I was planning on updating the site away from the basic Blogger template, but since I'm no longer employed, that will have to wait. Do keep an eye out for a brand new logo coming your way soon and a few other original art do-dads.
A lot's been going on and I'm still playing catch up, but I wanted to link to a few things I've seen on the net lately.
First off, check out Rickey's awesome Patrick Swayze tribute. He's planning on doing a different Swayze drawing every day for the rest of this month and I can't think of a better tribute to a dude we both loved.
In lighter news, the Brickehousebunny21/Topless Robot/WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS shenanigans got kicked up a notch today as Brickehousebunny21 threatened Rob with "Everyone here is in trouble now..." Do yourself a favor and read the full post and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can get all the info you need from this post I did yesterday.
In Wires Science news, a couple of college students built a camera that took pictures of the edge of space for under $150. Kinda makes me wish I had a knack for science. Also, here's a picture of a girl in zero gravity sporting a Supergirl costume. I didn't really readthe article, but that's a rad pic.
Over on Enemy of Peanuts, Jim posted some pictures from All Points West, looks like it would have been a lot of fun and I'm super jealous of him for getting to see Jay-Z live even if he was replacing the Beastie Boys. I gotta see Hova one of these days.
Meanwhile, over at The Cool Kids Table, Ben's been posting like crazy, whether it's about the original Suicide Squad run (a great book he turned me on to), the X-Men arcade game (in the top 3 up there with TMNT and The Simpsons) or going away presents that former and formerly former ToyFare staffers got (awesome custom toys), it's all goodness.
And finally, a note to the ladies, if you're going to kiss Captain Kirk, watch out for that last step, it's a doozey:
Though his IMDb pages hasn't even been updated with the information as of this writing (8:47PM EST), I've heard the news about Patrick Swayze passing away and am definitely bummed out. These kinds of things don't usually bother me too much because it's hard to mourn for someone you don't really know. But, thanks to movies like Road House (one of my all time favorite movies, movie watching experiences and movie to turn others onto), The Outsiders, Donnie Darko, Red Dawn and Point Break (and even Dirty Dancing which I saw for the firs time a few years ago with Em because it's one of her favorite movies), I do feel like Swayze gave me so many hours of entertainment that I can legitimately mourn the man. Hell, Road House was the highlight of the very first Many Movie Night we had.
In honor of the man, here's a look at my favorite posters and images from his movies.
So, pour one out for your homey Swayze and remember. "All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it's absolutely necessary. And three, be nice." Oh, DO go on.
I had this great plan to read through all the classic literature I have sitting around in my to-read pile. I got through Gulliver's Travels, lost The House of Seven Gables and next up was Great Expectations. Since I didn't really want to jump into that I went and read Sonic Boom because I figured it was non-fiction and didn't count. I still didn't feel like reading Great Expectations, so I'm pretty much giving that up for now (though the pile will remain sitting next to my bed in chronological order) and decided to read ores An Oral History of Perry Farrell and Jane's Addiction by Brendan Mullen. I'm not a huge Jane's Addiction fan. The only real reason I picked this book up is because I absolutely loved Live From New York An Uncensored History Of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, which was the first oral history book I've ever read, I like books about music and it was $0.98, as you can see in the above scan. An oral history is a biography of someone or something that basically pieces together interviews with tons of people to tell a larger story. Sean did one for Maxim about the history of Marvel that will hopefully also become a book at some point. You can read that here.
So, I read Whores in a week or two, I tend to burn through these kinds of books because they're fast reads and usually very engrossing. And yeah, Whores was engrossing, but it also had its problems. One of the universal problems for oral histories that I've seen is piecing these interviews together into a coherent story. So much of telling a story depends on knowing the facts or steps and relaying them in a specific order, but when you're talking to so many people over so many years, I can see how details get lost in the shuffle, maybe you even remember certain elements of the story while you're going back through transcripts, but you can't get anyone else on the phone to talk about it again. There's a lot going on. The SNL book did a rad job of this, as does Sean in what I've read of his longer drafts (seriously, this thing will make an unbelievable book). And, for the most part, Mullen does a pretty good job, but there's one huge hole that's inexcusable in my book (heh, pun unintended). You see, Perry Farrell had this girlfriend named Casey Niccoli who was pretty integral to Jane's Addiction for years. There's a brief mention that they break up eventually and all that, but no one in the book actually talks about it and the next thing you know, Perry's married to someone else. Part of the problem is that the intro tells us that the Jane's dudes didn't do interviews with him. BUT, it does seem like Casey did. It'd be like doing a book on The Beatles and talking about Lennon's first wife and all of a sudden he's with Yoko and there's no mention of the break up. It's weird and annoying, especially when there's all these details about Farrell's weird DJ persona called DJ Peretz, who Mullen credits quotes from Farrell and Peretz on the SAME PAGE!
All in all, it's definitely worth checking out, especially if you can get it for $1. There were other problems I had, like why does he randomly italicize whole quotes? I dunno. But, it really made me want to grab every Jane's Addition and Porno For Pyros that I don't already have, which is really the point of this kind of a book. I was also fascinated by the accounts of their early days in the early and mid 80s in LA. It sounds like some crazy times. Plus, my first Red Hot Chili Peppers album was One Hot Minute, so reading about Dave Navarro's involvement in that record (along with tons of quotes from Flea) was a lot of fun.
One other quick comment about the book, something that you should keep in mind is that it was published in 2005, so it doesn't have anything about Carmen Electra and Navarro's break up or the reunion of all four original Jane's Addiction members a few years back. I'm not sure if there's an updated version, that would be rad. As it is, the book kind of peters out at the end, kind of like Sonic Book did. There was all this detail in the beginning and then, by the end you're getting these really quick quotes from various people, though the Carmen and Dave stuff is really interesting at the end. That's life though, right? There's never a real ending unless everyone's dead.
This might seem like jumping on the bandwagon, but I promise, I was keeping tabs on this whole WRT meme creation over the weekend while I was away from my computer and only had access via my phone. For anyone who doesn't already know, the WRT meme started up over at Topless Robot's Fan Fiction Friday, check out the full story along with tons of WRTs here on TR. Props also to Sean who picked up on things and inadvertently spurred the meme along on his blog. My buddy Chris Ward also jumped in over at World of Ward Crap and it was even mentioned on Tosh 2.0 and Know Your Meme.
Well here's a couple I came up with last night while watching Crank followed by Crank 2, but more on that later.
I guess this comic might seem as crazy as something like The War That Time Forgot, but man, what a whacky story. It looks like you've got Enemy Ace fighting ninjas, dinosaurs and Col. Sanders! I pulled this bad boy from Major Bummer #14 from 1998. Has anyone ever read Guns Of The Dragon by Timothy Truman? I don't think I've ever even seen an issue in person, but I sure as heck remember these ads.
So, the real premiere for Glee happened today, though, the episode they showed months ago that I talked about here still counts as the first episode. A lot of my previous problems with the show still stand, especially the fact that nearly every single person who's not in the glee club or associated with it is hate-able. You don't just not like them, they're actually such reprehensible human beings that you want to see terrible things happen to them. And, hey, that kind of writing works for horror movies because you KNOW those people are going to get their just deserts, but what's going to happen here? They're going to learn the error of their ways? Sorry, that's not going to cut it, especially with the main dude's crazy wife who is straight-up lying to her husband.
Another problem I had with the show is that when anyone starts singing, it automatically sounds like a soundtrack from another show or movie. I have no idea if any of the actual people in the show can sing because it turns into this weird other thing when they start. I know they can't necessarily record these people singing live on set, but some kind of compromise would be nice to my ears.
All that being said, it's still a pretty good show. There were a few moments where I laughed out loud HARD. I do this really loud HA laugh when something comes out of nowhere and really surprises me and there were definitely a few of those. The wife hates it cause I usually drown out the following line. I also really liked the musical numbers even considering me earlier complaints. It's fun to hear songs done this way, in the same way it's fun to hear Richard Cheese lounge-out pop songs.
So, for now, I'm still in, but we'll see what the competition is like once that season really gets up and running.
Oh, DO go on.
Last night I found myself in an unfortunate situation. I had discovered a big bottle of Teacher's Highland Cream Scotch Whisky, which is amazing. I tried it out with the very last of my Diet Dr. Pepper (gotta watch my figure now that I'm just sitting around all day for the foreseeable future), but then I was left with nothing to mix my next drink with. What's a boy to do?
Well, we've got this big bottle of Jagermeister and some lemonade, so I figured what the hell? (The onion is not part of the recipe).
You can also see that I like to drink my cocktails out of a McDonalds glass from 1977. I don't usually use shot glasses for measurements, so I just pour until most of the ice is covered (3 cubes), or, when you're using the Mayor McCheese cup, up to the bottom of the big bicycle wheel.
Then, just fill it up with lemonade and there you go. It takes on a root beer like color, but tastes nothing like it. I'll be honest I wasn't sure if the deer blood in the Jager would coagulate when it came into contact with the lemonade, but it mixed pretty well and tasted like, well, lemonade and Jager.
So, here you have The Man In The Yellow Hat, a drink that may already exist under another name. To be honest, the only research I did was putting the name in Google to see if it popped up anywhere else (which is why it's not called The Yellow Submarine). Next time you're in a bar and feeling adventurous (and like explaining yourself to the bartender) give The Man In The Yellow Hat a shot! Oh, DO go on.
Hey Gang, seeing as how I've got a lot of time on my hands now, I've been tearing through some movies and trades. I haven't done posts yet, but you can be on the lookout for more of those down the road. These trades are actually from last week and the week before. As usual, I'll run down the pile top to bottom.
CAPTAIN AMERICA BATTLES BARON BLOOD (Marvel Illustrated Books) Written & drawn by Roger Stern and John Byrne This little number was quite the oddity. I thought it was going to be one of those novels-based-on-comics things. I read a ton of the ones that came out in the 90s back then. I guess I should have noticed the "Illustrated" portion of the title. So, what you've got here is a strange book that collects (according to this site) collects Captain America 250, 253 and 254 which covers those issues where Captain America fights Baron Blood and meets the new Union Jack (as well as the newer Baron Blood) along with the issue where Cap says "no" to running for president. The interesting thing, which you can see in the below pic, is that they cut these comics into panels (black and white ones) and pieced them together on pages the size of the average Pocket Book. Weird right? The stories were good, though kind of slow and I would much rather read them in color. Roger Stern is the man, by the way, he's definitely one of the most unsung writers in the history of comics.
DC UNIVERSE SPECIAL: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #1 (DC) Written by Len Wein, Gerry Conway & Jack Miller, drawn by Dick Dillin & Joe Certa Though technically not a trade, there were two reasons I included this issue in this post. One, it collects Justice League of America #111 ("Balance of Power!"), 166-168 ("The League That Defeated Itself") and Detective Comics #274 ("The Human Flame"). These are all stories that hold some relevance to Final Crisis and Infinite Crisis, though they're not really hyping the IC connection. You get Human Flame and Libra's first appearances, which make sense, and then the story in which the bad guys get inside the heroes' heads and find out all about them, this leads to Zatana doing mind wipes and on and on. So, these are pretty integral issues that a lot of later stories hinge on. That being said, I found them to be boring and mostly skimmed through them. The second reason is that these reprints should have been reprinted again in the Final Crisis Companion, which I will get to shortly. That just makes sense, though, right? Might as well make that companion as much of a companion as possible and the first appearances of the two biggest new characters in the story should have their stories told. But, hey, it's a rad cover, isn't it? That Ryan Sook dude knows how to DRAW!
MOME VOL. 14 SPRING 2009 (Fantagraphics) Written and drawn by a ton of talented folks One of the many perks of working at Wizard for a dyed in the wool superhero fan like myself was getting exposed to some of the more alternative sides of comics. Between going through the library and borrowing books from friends who are way more knowledgeable about these things than I am, I feel like I've just barely started to uncover the tip of the indie iceberg. So, as you might imagine, I've heard a lot about Mome, the indie comics anthology that Fanta puts out (those guys are amazing), but I've never read one until Vol. 14 and I definitely liked it. I will be completely honest, I don't think I understood a lot of these stories, but I kind of like that. It's like watching an experimental film, but with cool art. By far my favorite strip was called Kool-Aid Comic by Jon Vermilyea. I like the simplicity of it, the subject and the art. It all comes together in a fun little comic, of which you can peep a page or two of below. Fun stuff and I'll definitely be on the lookout for future Momes.
SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE VOL. 7: THE MIST & THE PHANTOM OF THE FAIR (Vertigo) Written by Matt Wagner & Steven T. Seagle, drawn by Guy Davis I've talked about my love of SMT before, but since then I've read the volumes I was missing and have come to like this series even more. For those of you not willing to click the link, SMT follows the Golden Age Sandman as he romps through pre-WWII NYC, fighting bad guys, evading the cops, being a genius, sometimes interacting with other Golden Age heroes (or soon-to-be ones) and sharing his life--both in and out of the gas mask--with his girlfriend Dian Belmont. What I love most about this book, aside from the NYC setting and my love of Golden Age DC characters, is the relationship between Dian and Wesley (Sandman's real name). I think they're my favorite couple in all of comics, mostly because they did away with the "keeping the secret identity from the girlfriend" thing. You also get to watch Dian evolve from a spoiled socialite to someone really trying to help the world. But, aside from all that, this volume gives us glimpses of a young, pre-Starman Ted Night and "The Phantom Of The Fair" which is the story that I remember reading about as being one helluva one back in the day from Wizard (they were right). I think you'd be okay if you jumped in here to read this much beloved story, but I highly recommend going back to the beginning. Here's hoping that Vertigo continues their plans to collect this whole series.
FINAL CRISIS COMPANION (DC) Written by Grant Morrison, Len Wein, Peter Tomasi, Greg Rucka & Eric Trautmann, drawn by JG Jones, Tony Shasteen, Doug Mahnke, Ryan Sook & Marco Rudy So, this is kind of a weird book. The actual Final Crisis collection is amazing. It's got everything written by Grant Morrison in one place, while this one has the rest of the stuff that isn't a regular series tie-in and the FC Director's Cut which is the first issue without color or word balloons followed by the script. Then you've got Final Crisis Secret Files, Requiem and Resist. All these issues are cool on there own, but I do wish this volume was a big more robust. In addition to the reprints I mentioned above, I'd also like to see some of the JLoA and Teen Titan tie-ins included, just to have everything in one place. Ah well, it'll still get a place on my bookshelf.
NIGHTWING: THE GREAT LEAP (DC) Written by Peter Tomasi, drawn by Don Kramer, Rags Morales, Doug Mahnke, Shawn Moll & Joe Bennett I dug Tomasi's previous Nightwing volume, so I'm not surprised that I dug this second volume. The only problem with it is that it got awkwardly swept up in the Batman: RIP story. Now, don't get me wrong, I loved Morrison's Batman run, but the tie-ins lost me for the most part, including Nightwing. So, I hadn't actually read most of these issues when they came out, but I did like the whole story, most of which involves Nightwing's weird relationship with Two-Face, which is being carried over into todays Batman stories written by Winick. Interesting for sure.
TRINITY 1 (DC) Written by Kurt Busiek & Fabian Nicieza, drawn by Mark Bagley, Scott McDaniel, Tom Derenick & MIke Norton Trinity got a lot of flack, but I think it's because it wasn't what people were thinking it should be. 52 was an amazing look at some smaller characters, giving them new life and making them important again in the DCU, Countdown tried way too hard to be the backbone of the DCU and Trinity turned into this crazy, out-there story featuring all kinds of heroes the casual fan has never heard of. This is just the first series, collecting #1-17 and I will warn you, it's definitely for big time DC fans and not the feint of heart.
SECRET INVASION: INCREDIBLE HERCULES (Marvel) Written by Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente, drawn by Rafa Sandoval Incredible Herc was one of those books that everyone loves but I missed out on in single issues. By the time I read the first trade, the issues were already into the third or fourth arc, but this, the second (collecting 116-120) collects the Secret Invasion issues. I wasn't a big fan of SI, especially the ending, but I really liked how Pak and Van Lente flipped the script and looked at the Skrull invasion from a different angle. This time we see it from a religious viewpoint, with Herc and some other gods from regular and Marvel mythologies trying their best to kill the god of the skrulls. It's a cool story, one filled with plenty of sci-fi goodness, but also some fun nods to mythology of all kinds that make this a really fun and well rounded book.
COUNTDOWN ARENA Written by Keith Champagne, drawn by Scott McDaniel I've loved McDaniel's art since his Nightwing days. There's a short arc where NW fights Scarecrow early on that is just amazing and I highly recommend it. So, when I heard the news that DC was going to be putting out a book called Arena, drawn by McDaniel that would pit various versions of heroes against each other to see who would win, I was sold. Turns out this story didn't have a lot of bearing on the actual Countdown story (as I noted here to some extent), but it remains one of the better looks at the multiverse that's just been sitting around. I know that there's been word that they're waiting for Morrison to get in there and really dig deep on the multiverse at some point, but I'm getting tired of waiting. What's the point of having it if you're not going to do anything with it? Also, one quick thing that bothered me about many of the Earths they revealed was that they just took Elseworld books and extrapolated that into an entire universe. There's an entire universe out there based on the idea that Batman was a vampire. And, hey, I like that original story as much as the next guy, but that doens't mean it should necesarily get it's own universe. Does that mean those Elseworlds annuals they put out each have their own universe? The one where Steel was around in the Civil War, Batman was actually Two Face or Superman was straight out the jungle book? It's just a bummer because it feels like they just copied the original multiverse and added this other ones with haste, which wouldn't have been a huge deal if they hadn't limited themselves to just 52. Ah well. This book is definitely only for die-hards. Or maybe just me.
THE NEW TEEN TITANS ARCHIVES VOL. 1 Written by Marv Wolfman, drawn by George Perez This might be comic book heresy, but I couldn't even get through this book, which collects DC COmics Presents #26 and New Teen titans 1-8. I think what ruined the book for me is the fact that every Teen Titans writer since has mined this territory so, SO much. The only aspect of this story that was surprising for me was the mystical way in which the team first came together. Beyond that? I've seen the Deathstroke stuff and the Trigon stuff before. Several times. Geoff Johns did it and it seems like it's been done a thousand times since then. And that's coming from someone who loves Geoff's Titans. Like, a lot. It's an amazing book. I just think it's about time for the Titans to move beyond their 80s roots and maybe make some new villains and get some new characters into the mix. Maybe I'll put this one back in my "to read" pile and give it another shot somewhere down the line, but I'm not sure yet. For me, it's just too "been there done that" for me. But man, Perez sure knows how to draw and I stand by my claim that he's one of the few artists who's actually gotten better with age. I'll read any new stuff that guy puts out. Oh, DO go on.
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