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August 9th, 2004
 | 11:38 am - This time, really, I mean it, honestly, no kidding, for sure...
I'm quitting smoking.
I picked up a pamphlet at Albany Med's Employee Health Center the other day. Among other things, it said when you quit smoking, you should tell everyone about it.
So hey there, everyone. I'm quitting smoking.
I'm going to go all the way this time. Nicotine patches to start, and I think I might try to find a local Smoker's Anonymous group in the area. As long as they don't try to make me meditate or play with my spirit animal or anything, I think it would be helpful.
Oh, and check out my Hulk rant over at CBG, if you care about that kind of thing. ADD isnerted some great images into the piece, including a bit o' Kochalka.
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August 6th, 2004
 | 03:37 pm - Two weeks
In two weeks, the longest stretch Michileen Connor Martin has made on any full-time job comes to an end. A little bit over a week later, seven years after my departure from the University of Tampa and a few days shy of my big 3-0-oh-shit-I'm-thiry day, I resume my undergraduate college career at SUNY Albany.
It's been a tough few weeks for me and my girlfriend, and a lot of it is my fault. Outside influences haven't helped much, what with the ongoing saga of the asshole upstairs neighbors, my mother's treatments for her Hep C, the race to clear out our storage space, and the obstacle course of cardboard boxes and comic books our apartment transformed into once we DID clear it out, among other things. Regardless, the main problem has been the fact that it just won't sink into my head that I'm going back to college, that I am actually finally leaving this job, and that eventually my life is going to be better for it.
I’ve mentioned before that my girlfriend did a lot to make it possible for me to return to school, but I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned specifics. I owed UT $3,000.00 for a private loan. UT refused to send out my transcripts before I paid the loan back in full. So, my only options were to either wait until I paid UT back the full amount, or go back to UT. Actually, shortly before I met my girlfriend, I applied to return to UT, was accepted, and was offered a scholarship (somewhere between 4 and 6 grand), but financially it just wasn’t feasible. With loans and the scholarship I could’ve covered tuition, but there was no way to deal with living expenses. Yeah, I could’ve lived in the dorms and bought a meal plan, but at the time—when I was 28—the idea of bunking with 18 year-olds wasn’t real attractive. I got lucky when I first went to UT that I ended up with the best roommate I could ever have asked for; I didn’t think I could trust lightning to strike twice, especially since I didn’t have to deal with the question of age difference when I first went to school.
So, my girlfriend paid off my debt to UT. My transcript was set free. SUNY Albany agreed that I didn’t suck. Shazam, I’m in like Flynn.
You kind of have to look at things from my girlfriend’s perspective. For over a year-and-a-half, her boyfriend’s been whining that he has a crap job and that he needs to go back to school to help achieve his goal of becoming a professional writer. She does everything she can to support this, emotionally and financially, even going to the extreme of shelling out three grand to make it happen. And now, when everything’s set, everything’s in place, all the forms have been signed and the money has changed hands and it’s carved in granite that, yes, her boyfriend is going to finally get the chance to finish his education…what does he do?
He bitches non-stop about the two going-away parties his co-workers are throwing for him (one party just for moi, and one going-away breakfast which is kind of a joint going-away party because someone else in the department is leaving a week earlier), because he feels so much ire for them that the thought of being put in a position where he has to thank them makes him want to put his fist through a wall. He bitches about the all the red tape to cut through, the financial aid, the immunization records, the intimidating size of the school, the class registration process, etc.
I’ve waited for this moment for quite some time, and I’m not letting myself enjoy it.
At first, I thought it was because the idea of returning to school seemed so utterly unattainable that part of me just won’t believe it’s for real. I kept telling my girlfriend that I felt like the you’re-not-really-going-back-to-college police were going to round the corner any minute to take me away. Then I figured I put it my notice at work too soon, and so my remaining time here at the hospital was just dragging on and the clouds would lift once my last day here came and went.
I’m sure those things, and others, have something to do with it, along with all the situations with the neighbors, my mother, etc. After a talk with my girlfriend last night, I think hit upon what’s been eating away at me.
I am very afraid that there is simply no writer left in me. Other than this lj and the occasional reviews for CBG, I haven’t written much since I left Florida seven years ago (to be fair I think some of my reviews at CBG are pretty damn good). I’m afraid that with the beating my ego took during the events surrounding my leaving UT—which seem so fucking petty now, but were so goddamned earth-shattering then—that the excitement and passion I experienced in working with language and conceiving new ideas is just plain gone.
My hope is that as I’m re-inserted into an environment where creativity is, at least sometimes, rewarded, where I might have a snowball’s chance in Hell of finding a like-minded friend or two, that it will jumpstart everything that’s been dormant these past few years.
And maybe NOT. There layeth the problemo. Now the time has come, and maybe it won’t work. Maybe returning to school and being around creative people will do nothing but CONFIRM that I’ve just been a big faker all along, and should do my best to find some nice, cushy I.T. gig and play computer games and wait for the babies to start popping out (no offense to those with I.T. jobs of course, but with tendonitis in both my arms already, it just ain’t my career path of choice). I used to believe writing professionally was just a few heartbeats away. Now, I’m embarrassed to even tell people it’s something I want to do, just because of how little I’ve done to get there.
Still…two weeks.
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July 25th, 2004
 | 03:18 am - Reflection after a night of fuck-ups
I won't go too far into the technical aspects of it, suffice to say tonight's shift at WAMC marked a record for Mick-fuck-ups. For the rest of the summer, on certain nights (including my Saturday Night shift), the station is airing live concerts from Tanglewood, but there are a few stations that receive regular programming. In other words, for the first few hours of my shift, I'm engineering two radio shows at the same time.
I can't blame all the Mick-fuck-ups tonight on the more complicated format, but I can blame most of them on my failure to remember easily forgettable details. One resulted in our internet streams going silent for a few minutes, whereas the other caused me to start the all-night jazz show about a minute late. The final fuck-up actually had nothing to do with anything I did, but it did annoy the hell out of two of my bosses who didn't appreciate being called at 11 p.m. for something relatively easy to solve. I could have called them a half-hour earlier, but I was waiting for Renee Fleming to finish her THIRD. FUCKING. ENCORE.
A few months after I started working at WAMC, I established a strict ritual in regards to my return home after the shift. I always give the driver a nice tip, usually about 4 bucks, so the next time he spots me waving frantically at him from the front of the station, he might remember me as the only sober guy on Central Ave. at 5 a.m., and just maybe he'll pull over and let me in. I go in the house as quietly as I can (which is kind of dumb, considering the next part of the ritual), and give my girlfriend a kiss and maybe cuddle with her for a minute or two--just to let her know I'm home and just because it's nice to see her after 8 hours of isolation. If there are any dishes in the sink (and there are always fucking dishes in the sink), I wash them, and usually make a bit of breakfast. Usually an omelette (just onions and cheese; nothing fancy) and some toast. Sometimes I play on the internet a little. Eventually I end up on the living room futon, watching a movie (I've found that watching a movie I love, but have seen 43875432759743 times works better than sleeping pills), and fall asleep around 7-7:30.
The last part of the ritual is the only part I have no control over. Invariably, around 11-11:30, I wake up for a minute or so, and I do so convinced that I'm still at the station and I've just missed a cue. I very clearly picture the "DAD" monitor at the station and know that I've fucked up; this time for good. Then I remember the woman who works the shift after me; remember that everything's all right and Albany's white liberal elite are getting their BBC and Harry Shearer, and my work is done for the weekend. Sometimes I fall back asleep, sometimes not.
That brief, weekly sleep disturbance is indicative of my life these days. If I'm awake, it's likely I'm utterly convinced an anvil is about to fall on my head. If I'm not awake, I wake myself up so I can remind myself an anvil's about to fall on my head.
I've had some pretty serious financial issues for the past few years, and if it weren't for the gracious intervention of my girlfriend, I probably wouldn't be going back to college. Recently, I finally took some big steps towards resolving some of those issues, and this constant sense of panic was my reward. See, before I did anything to fix things, utter and complete failure was so certain, it became comfortable. I knew fuck-up was inevitable, so I just ignored it. Now, when I'm finally turning to face the lion, I'm beginning to see the motherfucker's teeth.
My arms are still killing me, and I haven't called a physical therapist yet because I just don't know how the hell to find the time to go to one. This weekend marked the second set of my mother's make-yourself-violently-ill treatments, and I held back the tears just long enough for my girlfriend to pick me up, whereupon I hurried to the passenger seat of my girlfriend's car and threw myself on her. My brother's being as unreliable as he possibly can about helping us empty our storage space, and it has to get done before the end of the month, because the shifty little bastard who runs the storage facility has a nasty habit of charging my girlfriend's credit card after I've told him to fucking stop. I've just started driving lessons, my hair is too fucking long for this heat, I don't have any money for a haircut, and my girlfriend and I are at what promises to be the very beginning of an epic struggle between us and our new upstairs neighbors. Among other things, they enjoy blasting music at 5 a.m. with their front door open, as well as taking my trash cans without asking and filling them with garbage bags that have been sitting around for so long they've attracted maggots. The closer the beginning of my first semester at SUNY comes, the more clear it becomes how motherfucking infeasible I am to think I could work a full-time job while going to school full-time.
I know I promised to keep the comic book stuff on The Daily Burn, but I just have to say that my life is proof that, yes, most comic book geeks DO need to just get out of their fucking parents' house and get a fucking job. Believe me, in light of the stuff listed above, I just can't find a way to give two shits about things that, under normal circumstances, would have me screaming for a holy crusade. I could give two shits whether they wedge the Hulk into the Avengers, nor am I willing to burn down any buildings to convince Warner Brothers to keep Jack Black out of Green Lantern. I don't give a shit. Fart Spidey clones out every weekend, I won't fucking blink. Fuck you and everyone who looks like you.
I used to thrive on stress, now I don't know how to handle it. I guess the difference is that what stresses me now has a much more concrete and immediate impact on my life. Back at UT, when I was usually busier than Michael Jackson on a school bus, yeah, a few people might have been upset if I hadn't gotten my section of the school paper finished in a timely manner, but compare that to the threats of wage-garnishing, homelessness, or long hair, it just doesn't rate. It wasn't stress, it was a fucking jog around the block. It was fun.
I need to relax.
Maybe I could get a massage. That would be nice. Sometimes I give the pretty massage ladies thirty bucks extra, and they read me Curious George stories, too.
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July 18th, 2004
| 03:52 am - Yet another bullet: consider it bitten
This past week I gave my notice at the hospital. If I'd followed my original plan, I wouldn't have told them until this coming Tuesday; exactly one month before my departure. I changed my mind mainly for convenience's sake. With the start of classes at SUNY approaching, I have to call various SUNY departments to get info, straighten financial things out, etc., and since the various offices are open only when I'm at the hospital, that's when I have to call them. While talking to my girlfriend on the phone, I've been able to use cryptic phrases like, "y'know, that thing I'm doing in September," but I don't think the overworked operators at SUNY Albany would appreciate that kind of mystery. I'd rather tell my employer a little bit early than have them find out by overhearing me say something during a phone conversation like "tuition," "financial aid," or "transferring credits." And I don't think threre's any threat of my getting fired early. The possibility they'll get someone to replace me is slim enough--not because I'm particularly irreplaceable, but because the new-hire bureaucracy of Albany Med is pretty daunting.
To top things off, my mother started an intense treatment this weekend for her Hepititis C. Every weekend, for the next 12 weeks, she'll inject a medicine into her thigh that can induce fever, severe chills, and vomiting, among other things. The treatment is apparently so intense that some people die from it, but the truth is if she doesn't do this, the chances she'll live long enough to see me graduate aren't great; and even if she did, she'd be in constant pain. If, after 12 weeks, her system checks out as virus free, she'll continue the treatment for another 32 weeks. If not, then they may have her continue treatment anyway. Or they might just give her a liver transplant.
And I quit smoking.
Yes. Again.
Fuckers.
Being constantly worried about my mother, not knowing where I'll be getting money from come September, and going to a state school whose size dwarfs my first school, has turned what should be an orgasmically joyous moment of my life into one big happy bag of fucking hell. I think once I'm actually back in school, my outlook will shift, but right now everything is a pain in the ass.
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July 13th, 2004
July 12th, 2004
 | 11:23 am - CBG updated
My review of The Watch: Casus Belli is available for mass consumption over at CBG, along with reviews and commentary from ADD, Joe Rybandt, and Marshall O'Keeffe.
The work on the other blog continues. Hopefully, it'll be ready by next week, maybe even this week.
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July 11th, 2004
 | 04:18 am - Diversify or DIE!!!!!!!!!
My awkwardly formatted previous post had some purpose to it, believe it or not.
The reason I sought out a free image hosting site and subsequently started sticking pictures here in the lj is because I'm starting another blog on blogspot.
This online journal was never meant to act as comic book commentary. It was just supposed to be my own little piece of the net to spout whatever bs was rolling around my head at the time, and more importantly to keep me writing on a regular basis.
And I don't really want it to be both. The close friends who might care about the more personal entries on the journal may or may not give a shit about whether or not I thought the last issue of Savage Dragon had too much boobage, and in the unlikely event that strangers might be drawn here to read my comic book related stuff, I don't know if I necessarily want them to know about my personal life.
So, soon the new blog will be up and ready for mass consumption. It won't be a shining example of website formatting, but it will look at least a bit more slick than this journal. That, of course, is why I've been practicing html code here, specifically in regards to adding images to posts. That's where I'll be posting any thoughts regarding comic books, and...well...some other stuff. You'll have to wait and see. I'm hoping folks will like it. Once everything's ready, I'll post the URL here.
This blog will remain for me to complain about my job, brag about my girlfriend, request penis-enhancement cream from my friends, etc.
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July 7th, 2004
| 02:39 pm - I knew this was going to show up sooner or later today
Heh.
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| 11:35 am - Thank fucking GOD
All the comic book-related news sites are reporting that Bruce Jones, current writer of The Incredible Hulk, has just signed a two-year exclusive contract to DC Comics (for the comic book-illiterate...Hulk ain't DC).
I think the success Jones garnered while writing TIH is ironclad proof that if you pound people's heads with words like "edgy, innovative, refreshing" often enough, some people believe it regardless. Never since John Byrne have I been more irked with a Hulk writer. Not only did his tenure plague the Hulk with a long, tedious, stupid conspiracy thriller that wasn't all that thrilling, but the guy has an annoying habit of making "official statements" that range from irritating (criticizing the Hulk film for not featuring the Hulk soon enough, while in the meantime almost never actually writing THE HULK into his fucking comic book) to blatant fucking lies (claiming he would never resurrect Betty Banner).
I'm not cured enough of my cynicism that I think the next writer will necessarily be any better, but at least the worst BJ I've ever had in my life has ended.
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July 5th, 2004
| 01:35 pm - CBG Update
The aforementioned Fallen Angel review is up, along with Notes from ADD including a recap of Free Comic Book Day, a review of Spider-Man 2, and ADD's review of the upcoming week in funnybooks, as well as a new column called Lifespan: Comics from Joe Rybandt.
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July 4th, 2004
| 05:22 am - Consider the bullet bitten
In a previous entry, I mentioned I had bought the Fallen Angel tpb, written by Peter David, specifically to review it for Comic Book Galaxy, and eventually was so disappointed with it that I opted to not review it.
Peter David changed my life just a little bit. Just as George Carlin was the first stand-up comic to make me realize humor could be meaningful, Peter David's run on The Incredible Hulk was what first inspired me to think that comics could be more than filler in-between fisticuffs. There were a lot of other people doing interesting things at the time, but I wasn't tuned in yet. I couldn't give you any hard proof that there's any truth to this, but from what I've heard here and there, immediately before David started writing The Incredible Hulk, the sales were so bad, there was talk of canceling the title at Marvel HQ. That seems unlikely, considering the Hulk has always been one of Marvel's marquee characters, but just the fact that the idea had been rumoured, I think, is enough to illustrate how utterly BAD the comic was. PAD diverted the destructive green-ape-punches-stuff direction my childhood hero's comic was on, and transformed the book into one of Marvel's best. So, I've always been rooting for PAD, even in the cases of comics I didn't buy or particularly like. He's had some bad luck in the comics industry lately, and I didn't want to kick the guy while he was down.
A few hours ago, I wrote the Fallen Angel review anyway, and sent it off to ADD. An abridged version of the previous paragraph was included in the first draft of the review, and I eventually cut it. Not because it wasn't true, but because whether it was relevant to the review or not, the only reason I included it was to apologize. I decided I didn't want to do that.
The review isn't completely negative. I went out of my way to say that the story has a lot of potential, and it does, but I didn't pull any punches. This was the hardest review I've ever had to write. It honestly hurt to review it, but I felt I should.
Once it's up, linkage shall be supplied.
Oh, by the way, in the review I mention a character named Asia Minor; a drug dealer who, for some reason, lives in a mausoleum. After sending off the review to ADD, and flipping through the book a bit more, I noticed the name of the family put to rest in the Mausoleum: "Martin."
Pre-emptive revenge. You've gotta love it.
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July 2nd, 2004
| 02:32 pm - Five questions
Since leaving his blog, ADD's moved his 5 Questions interviews over to Newsarama, and today he interviews Rob Vollmar.
I think I'm going to check out Bluesman. I've put my aforemention superhero tpb/gn review site plans on hold because, surprisingly, I'm really getting tired of superheroes, and my comic book tastes are gravitating towards more "real life stories." I think there's still a lot to be done with superheroes, but unfortunately few people are doing anything new. Even the best superhero comics usually operate on stale formulas.
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| 11:50 am - A Word That I Hate: Dramedy
One of the more frustrating and enduring truths about art in all its forms can be found in the words of Terry Jones during the Monty Python cast reunion a few years back. He said he felt, with Monty Python, that he and his cohorts were attempting to create something that couldn’t be defined, and the fact that the word “Pythonesque” can now be found in many dictionaries is proof of how horribly they failed.
Artists of every vocation attempt to create work that defies labels, and in the end, because of society’s perceptions, it’s an impossible endeavor. If you succeed in creating a work that defies all of the poor descriptive terms we have for art, society will just think of a new one. Even if your creation is so unique to evade every genre, the world will just make a new genre based on you. Pythonesque.
My girlfriend rented a DVD I had little hope of enjoying. Bubba Ho-Tep sounded promising only in the sense that the concept was so ridiculous that if the movie failed to entertain, you could just sit back and laugh at the idea. She likes “camp” a lot more than I do. Ban me to geek Hell if you wish, but the truth is I couldn’t tell you how I felt about Army of Darkness because I’ve never stayed awake long enough to form an opinion.
The story: An ancient mummy is preying on the souls of an elderly rest home in a small Texas town. Only two residents of the home, Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) and an old black man who believes he’s John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis), have any hope of defeating the mummy.
Bubba Ho-Tep is easily the most genre-defying film I have seen in my life, and certainly one of the best films of recent memory. Despite the absurd premise and often second-rate (if that high) talent, Bubba Ho-Tep is genuinely funny, scary, and touching. I’m not going to write an in-depth review of the film, because that really isn’t the point, but if you haven’t seen it yet, go rent it. Now.
In perusing the special features of the film, I watched a few of the “making of” specials, and one in particular featured an interview with the director Don Coscarelli who spoke about how the film evaded most conventional labels, including the hateful genre called “Dramedy.”
More than hemorrhoids, more than cavities, more than GWB and more than radioactive space debris crashing in my backyard, I hate the word “Dramedy.”
What pisses me off in a Batman-after-yet-another-sidekick-death kinda way, is that the word implies not only that comedy in its purest form cannot be dramatic, but that it shouldn’t be.
Conventional American comedy includes drama almost as an apology. A forgettable movie like Bruce Almighty succeeds mostly in getting the chuckles going, but the moviemakers attach a moral to it so the audience can fool itself into thinking they really learned something. The filmmakers don’t trust us enough to discern fantasy from reality, so they give us a side of self-righteousness. It’s like eating a whole 12-cut pizza in one sitting and washing it down with DIET Sprite. The “pure” comedies, like Me, Myself and Irene or Caddyshack are left to us evil folk who don’t mind laughing at the humiliating exploits of imaginary people.
And the dramedies are left for the intellectual snobs who keep art houses alive. If you’re a belching frat boy, you couldn’t possibly appreciate Being John Malkovitch, because that kind of stuff is reserved for the oh-so pretentious bastards who, for some silly-ass reason, might want to see something that doesn’t include Mike Myers yelling, “Yeah Baby!” 38 fucking times.
Labels like “Dramedy” help us keep humanity split into hard-edged, unnamed clans that more often than not are too in love with the idea of false individuality to even acknowledge the separation is there at all. Yeah, I know, maybe I’m attaching a lot of significance to a word that, for the most part, doesn’t even exist outside movie reviews, but as someone who aspires to one day make a living with his particular art, it’s unbelievably frustrating how hard we try to hold onto divisions that do nothing but keep each other from experiencing new things. Why the fuck can’t someone write a comic film that includes some genuine drama without being labeled “arty?” Why the fuck can’t James Hetfield cut his fucking hair and write a song that’s less than a half-hour long without being labeled a sell-out (that Napster BS notwithstanding)? Why can’t we create the one division that would actually do some good; separating ourselves from the idea that art can only be one thing or nothing?
P.S. Mick's review of Hench
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July 1st, 2004
| 04:16 pm - Origins
Last week, at the behest of the Big Bro, I attended my first gaming convention in over 10 years: Origins. Apparently, it’s one of the more popular cons in the country.
Sometime around ’89-’90, I packed up every comic book, war game, roleplaying game, and just about everything particularly “geek” I owned short of sci-fi/fantasy novels, stuffed them in garbage bags and left them out on the curb in front of my parents’ house. Comic books and gaming had become my whole world. It was a part of every action and every thought. I decided I wanted more and felt a violent purging was called for to achieve orbit.
This changed a little a few years ago, around the time the Big Bro announced his engagement to the Sis-In-Law. Big Bro experienced what I can only call a “geek revitalization.” It started with paintball. Neither he nor I had anything to do with paintball when we were younger, but looking back I can see it was the Bro’s way of easing back into nerdness. Paintball is absolutely geek, but unlike most geek activities, it’s physical. Magic cards came after that, and finally Dungeons & Dragons.
I freely admit that, with or without the Bro’s influence, I’ve felt the occasional tug back to the world of twenty-sided die and graphed battle maps over the years. Still, my rekindled interest in the stuff has more to do with the Bro than anything else. Yeah, I hear the bullshit detectors going off, too, but you have to understand something. From late grammar school until my graduation from high school, my brother and I were locked in a constant battle far uglier than most sibling rivalries. Our last fistfight was sometime around my eighteenth birthday, and it ended with me pulling myself off the living room carpet, spitting out blood, and smiling when I realized the blood wasn’t mine (A-Jedi and superheroes fight fair; I enjoy sex and I don’t wear a cape, B-in case you’re wondering about the logistics of the bite, let’s just say I love oxygen and will do most anything to see it one more time). Even though we listened to a lot of the same music, read a lot of the same things, and played the same geek stuff when we were younger, we rarely did it together. It wasn’t until after I returned from Florida that we could enjoy each other’s company. This geek stuff is the only common ground we share, so I’ll take it.
Now, as you know, I am in the habit of using pseudonyms for those who are mentioned in this blog who either A) ask me to, or B) don’t know they’re being mentioned here and therefore don’t have the choice. Four guys accompanied me to Origins. There was the Big Bro (a pseudonym that shouldn’t offer much of a challenge), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Frodo.
Frodo, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern are all friends of the Big Bro, hence their presence at the geek festivities. Or at least one of them is a friend of Big Bro, and two of them were his comrades before he made the mistake of inviting them on a trip. While all three were attached to Big Bro, Frodo should not be confused with the other two. Frodo is a good friend to my brother, and only referred to as a hobbit because A) he’s short and, B) until very recently, he worked at a local Farmer’s Market (though honestly A was all you needed to know, right?). He works for my Mom and he helped me and my girlfriend move into our current home. He’s one of the Big Bro’s only friends whose politics closely mirror my own. At the con he snagged me a free t-shirt and even bought me a miniature figure for my ongoing Dungeons & Dragons: Living Greyhawk character, Vishanti Strange (if you recognize those names, yes, that is where I stole them from), a Dwarf Wizard (which is worth noting because Dwarf Wizard minis aren’t particularly popular and therefore, hard to come by). He’s an all-around good guy, and should not be confused with those whose Mick-induced pseudonyms come from that dynamic duo who did their best to murder a fine Danish psychopath.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are a part of a weekly Friday night Magic Card game the Big Bro takes part in. Rosencrantz is actually a former professional Magic card player (yes, there are such things), and isn't really all that bad a guy. He only seems to become a bad guy when he's around Guildenstern. Guildenstern is a bigoted, whining, stupid, ignorant, insulting, pompous, tedious piece of shit. Not surprisingly, he works in computer technical support. He's probably one of the more obvious closet cases I've stumbled across, too. For the entire trip to Columbus, and back for that matter, we were treated to R & G's jokes about having sex with each other. If I had a buck for every time Guildenstern "sarcastically" used the phrase "reach-around," I could hire Robert Dinero to hang the evil fuck off a meat hook. Now, I’m not above making the occasional, “I’m not really gay but I’m going to make pretend I am ‘cause it’s so funny,” but with Guildenstern it managed to seem hateful, evasive, and just plain ugly at the same time.
R & G were the only part of the trip that just plain sucked, and most of the time we were immune to their BS. They were only interested in Magic tournaments, trading Magic cards, buying/selling Magic cards, or pretty much anything having to do with Magic. As such, once we were at the con, I didn't see much of them. Most of my ire with them came from their smoking of weed in the hotel bathroom (and I don’t care if you smoke pot, as long as you don’t do it in a manner which could get me expelled from a hotel and/or arrested), Guildenstern’s constant insults towards everyone, and the fact that they delayed our return home by 2 hours so they could trade magic cards. My only consolation was that I had the first official “burn” of the trip to Columbus. Bro asked for the Tenacious D CD to be the first album for our ride, and apparently this was Guildenstern’s first exposure to the Greatest and Best band in the world.
Guildenstern: This sounds like…Frank Zappa meets…like…a retard.
Mick: Wow. So, you’ve met Frank Zappa?
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.
Living Greyhawk: The Bro didn’t care whether or not we all were in the same events, but he did insist that he, Frodo, and I play the same Living Greyhawk games.
Basically, Living Greyhawk, and all of the RPGA’s “Living” games is the tabletop RPG answer to all the online RPG games that are so popular right now. Living Greyhawk allows tabletop RPG’ers to bring the same character to conventions all over the world, by recording their adventures online.
We played three LG events, and for the most part they were fun. I actually got a lot more enjoyment out of the second event than anyone else. Our mission was to capture a baby ice dragon kept in an arctic cavern. We fought our way through the caves, nearly dying several times. We spent 20 minutes preparing for what we assumed would be the bloodiest brawl of the evening; the battle with the dragon. We healed ourselves and cast various protective spells, swung open the gate to the baby dragon’s prison, charged in screaming, and because none of us had thought to close the fucking gate behind us, the little shit just flew right out the front door. I thought it was funny as hell. The Bro was not amused.
Our final LG event was probably the least enjoyable. It was a horribly written module, and I know that because the DM—the only female DM we had at the con—mentioned about 345,834,985,734,895 times how horrible it was, thereby rendering it much more horrible than it had to be. We got our asses kicked by a huge stone hand holding a huge stone eye, and then we went home.
Pulp Heroes: This event made me think a lot about what an annoying bastard I was when I was a teenager, and reminded me of how much healthier I am these days. See, when you play RPG’s, you just have to accept the fact that there will be times when few players will be in the mood for serious RP, and will just turn the thing into a social event. When I was a teen, I couldn’t handle it. I would scream at people, usually using every nasty word I could come up with, that they needed to pay attention and stop goofing off. Pulp Heroes would’ve really pissed me off back then, but being the more mature Mick, I had a blast.
Basically, it’s just what it sounds like; heroes from the age of Pulp comics. I was the retired boxer, I sat between the scientist-turned-world-adventurer and his daughter who always ended up tied to rail tracks. We had the goofy Scottish scientist, the snarky reporter, the wrasslin’ cowgirl, etc. We spent most of the time making fun of the game while exchanging assorted wittiness. The middle-aged diminutive Canadian who GM’d the game was getting visibly irked towards the end, but I think we kept him laughing enough to keep his more anal-retentive urgins off-balance.
Savage Worlds: Probably the least enjoyable of the RPs I played. Savage Worlds isn’t officially released yet, and the event was basically a demo to help advertise the game. As a testament to how little fun I had, at a two hour length, while this was easily the shortest event I took part in, it was also the most tiresome.
The concept was pretty boring, but sounded interesting on paper. The characters are former super-villains. The world has been taken over by aliens, who slaughtered the superheroes as soon as they landed. Not wanting other people cutting in on their action, the supervillains became resistance fighters. So, basically you’re superheroes, but you get to do stupid shit like use children as ranged weapons. The GM was a Savage Worlds employee, and he ran the game in a cold, salesperson manner. It felt more like a Ginsu knife infomercial than an RPG.
The Battle of Pelennor Fields: My anticipation for this event brought with it excitement and a bit of anxiety. Excitement because, shit, it’s Pelennor Fields, and anxiety because I’ve never been a wargamer, and wargamers can be a specifically difficult lot to deal with, even amidst the incredible personable and charming ranks of gaming fandom.
Quick story. When I gamed as a teenager, I played at a particular gaming hub called the “Studio of Bridge and Games.” Every once in a while, the Studio put on a little con. Nothing big. Fifty people, tops.
So, at one of these teeny, tiny cons, a buddy and I accepted an invitation from one of the older studio regulars to play a strange board game that turned out to be kind of a horror version of “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” Instead of Carmen, you had to find Dracula.
GM: You enter the apartment where the mysterious man was said to have stayed while in Berlin.
Player1: I look around the apartment.
GM: After a quick search, you find a pint of Guinness.
Player2: Dracula’s in Ireland!
Player1: We go to Dublin!
GM: You arrive in Dublin…
That’s basically it.
So me and my compadre are bouncing around Europe on the hunt for the bloodsucker, and one of the dumber Studio regulars, a 12-year old kid who always kinda looked like the “bad-ass” kid from the Bad News Bears, wandered up to the table and watched us play.
After a couple of minutes, bad-ass looked behind the GM’s little HM-only chart thing and said, “Why is Dracula in London?”
The GM was easily in his mid-thirties. Probably early forties.
He jumped up, sent his chair sliding across the floor, and started screaming at bad-ass. His entire head (he was bald) went dark red, and his fists shook at his sides. He screamed at the kid for what seemed like five minutes, never blinking, and always seeming one twitch away from beating the kid until his eyes popped out.
The point being, that guy was a wargamer.
More to the point, that guy was a well-liked wargamer.
The guys I played with at Pelennor Fields were much the opposite. For the most part, no one got irked at anyone else and a good time was had by all.
Well, most.
See, like Savage Worlds, the event was basically an advertisement. The designer of the minis, Duke Siegfried, used it to promote his figures. No big deal. We all deserve to make a buck.
Unfortunately, Dukey-boy took an hour and a half trying to find more people to play and explaining the rules.
He also did something that I hadn’t thought to be pissed off about until just now. He disallowed anyone under eighteen from playing, which isn’t too big a deal until you realize in the pre-registration description of the game, there was no age requirement, so these kids, who Duke condescendingly referred to as “junior players” spent their money just like everyone else. Duke told them they could stay as “assistants.” In other words., they couldn’t command units, but they could help us move the pieces. If I were one of Duke’s “junior players,” I would’ve punched him right in his junior Duke.
Already wasting an hour and a half to hear his own voice, Duke and his cronies commanded us to step back from the table every 20 minutes so they could take pictures of the board. This was complicated by the fact that non-playing spectators were allowed to wander around the board at will. So if you stepped away from the table for so much as five minutes to urinate, eat, or—God forbid—sit down, you’d return to find some jerk with a camera drooling over your cave troll.
The odds were stacked WAY too high on the good guys’ side. The Rohirrim showed up by the third round, the Dunedain on the fourth, the shadow host on the fifth (if all this is Greek to you, the short version=reinforcements). At the risk of sounding boastful, I was a round or two away from flanking the entire Gondorian defense (for some reason I was the only strategic genius to realize when you have giant trolls in your army you put them in the fucking FRONT), but the game ran too long.
Hmmm…now that I think about it, I didn’t like the game that much, did I?
Well, I liked the mechanics of the game. The more I think about it, the more I’m leaning towards the strategy side of gaming than the rp stuff.
Oh, I signed up for a superhero LARP as well, but it was after Pelennor Fields, and I was so tired after that that I skipped the LARP.
Well, that was my trip to origins, the good, the bad, and the Guildenstern.
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June 22nd, 2004
| 03:56 pm - Someone put a spider in my mail
Sorting through the office mail today, one particular piece of correspondence caught my eye. Folks don't usually send me stuff via inter-office (is that hyphenated?) mail, but this one was addressed to me, in a handwriting I didn't recognize, and it was obviously something non-standard as far inter-office mail is concerned, because it had a hard edge and one corner was poking out of the envelope.
Lo and behold, a former co-worker sent me the Book-On-Cd for the novelization of Spider-Man 2, written by Peter David and read by Matt Walton. Whoever the fuck Matt Walton is. And here I am, about to embark on a 9-plus hour journey to one of the ugliest states in America (Ohio--I've always said states with more vowels in their names than consonants have severe problems). That reminds me, I should get batteries for my CD walkman. I kind of doubt anyone else in the car will want to listen to it.
By the way, apparently this is Matt Walton.
The novelization is written by Peter David, whose series, Fallen Angel, had its first tpb released this week. I bought it, planned on reviewing it, read it, and didn't have the heart to write about it.
The problem, I guess, is that I'm so familiar with his style that the formulas are glaring. Or maybe it's not me. Maybe his comic book work has simply declined in quality. That's probably not breaking news or anything, considering recent history, but I refused to believe it had anything to do with PAD's writing. After all, lately the only work he'd gotten from the big two were for second-string spin-offs. Supergirl was a Superman spin-off, Young Justice was a Justice League spin-off (and that was cancelled primarily to make way for the new Teen Titans cartoon and comic), and Captain Marvel had it even worse. At least Supergirl and the YJ kids were spin-offs of popular characters. Captain Marvel is a spin-off of a dead guy whose original series never even made it to the 100th issue mark and whose name was stolen from a DC character.
I was re-reading Captain Marvel: Nothing To Lose last night. When I first read the issues in their original floppy form, I thought it was some of the best stuff Marvel was putting out. What struck me as I re-read it was how unimpressed I was with the story once Chriscross left the title. His stuff was good in PAD's first CM volume, but the art at the beginning of the second volume was absolutely phenomenal. I've been tempted to pick up this new Firestorm series just to check out Chriscross's art again.
That surprised me. I usually can deal with bad art (though none of the CM art was horrible), as long as the story is good. For example, I never liked Jeff Purve's work when he and PAD were doing Hulk, but I always liked the stories. Without Chriscross, though, I just couldn't find anything to like about it.
I think the main problem with Captain Marvel is that he has no history. PAD has a long tradition of pushing superheroes over the edge. The problem with Captain Marvel is that no one's really sure what the guy was all about in the first place, so it's tough to care what happens when he goes psycho. He was a minor character in Avengers Forever, he showed up once in a while in Silver Surfer, had a forgettable limited series, and when PAD took him on, the stories were more about Rick Jones dealing with sharing space with a superhero. He never focused on Captain Marvel in the beginning, and as soon as he did he made him a madman.
And I think PAD, honestly, is getting a little lazy about crazy-ifying the heroes he writes. There was an early issue of the second Captain Marvel volume where Marvel only showed up in a few panels, and when he did show up he was on an alien planet, shooting birds.
Shooting birds.
A cosmic superhero becomes Ted fucking Nugent.
Personally, I think PAD should concentrate on novels. I think prose is where his skill lies. I loved his Sir Apropos of Nothing novels, and bought a used copy of one of his Star Trek novels, Strike Zone, this weekend and plan on reading it while I'm in Ohio.
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June 21st, 2004
| 03:02 pm - CAF review
My review of Captain America and The Falcon is up at CBG. Also, a run-down of the FCBD comics from Alan Doane, and a review of Batman: Death and The Maidens by Chris Allen.
I may or may not have a review for next week. I'll be leaving for Origins Con in Ohio on Wednesday. I was planning on finding a comic book shop in Columbus (already found one, right down the street from the con in fact), and review something while I'm there, but now it seems doubtful I'll have internet access until I get back. We'll see.
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June 17th, 2004
| 11:17 am - Hellboy, Sequential Swap, and A Worthless Endeavor
Well, I finally got my hands on the first Hellboy trade; Hellboy: Seed of Destruction. I traded it at Sequential Swap for a copy of Y The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned.
Surprisingly, I didn't like it a whole lot. The art was great, but the story didn't really impress me. No doubt, John Byrne's involvement in the scripting had something to do with it. Also, I think Hellboy works better as a man-of-few-words, and it's tough to evoke that in a comic when the story's told in first-person narration. Some folks can pull it off. Frank Miller's a master at it. Byrne, not so much.
I'm actually a little happy that I didn't like it. My trade list at Sequential Swap has grown smaller and smaller. With two exceptions, all my books are CrossGen, and it seems I can't even give that stuff away. Getting a Hellboy trade on the list will beef it up just a little bit.
Which leads to something of an announcement. Sometime in the next few months, I'm hoping to have a new site up. If all goes as planned, it will be a site specifically for my reviews of superhero trade paperback collections and graphic novels.
The reviews are coming, but it's going to be a while. So far, I've got reviews of Avengers Forever, Aquaman: Time and Tide, Astro City: Confession, and (provided ADD doesn't mind me re-posting the review on my own site, I gotta remember to ask him) Empire. Mostly, I've been writing reviews during my overnight shifts at the radio station, but now with the resurrection of Comic Book Galaxy, they're coming a little slower. I don't want to necessarily review EVERY trade I own before I put up the site, but I definitely would rather have more than four. I'd like to have, at least, one trade reviewed for every ongoing series for which I have any tpb's/gn's at all.
The name of the site will be "A Worthless Endeavor." It comes from a George Carlin quote I found on a George Carlin desk calendar I bought at Borders. On one particular Friday, there was a lot of debate on the comic blogsphere about whether or not superhero stories were still worth a damn (which isn't a real rare thing). I was thinking about it, and when I tore the sheets off the calendar so that the following Monday I would know what day it was (I'm not lying, I need it), I came upon a quote that I thought was particularly meaningful to the subject of superheroes: "If it requires a uniform, it's a worthless endeavor." I actually folded it up and stuck it in my wallet--I still have it.
That's why I'm hoping to get some more trades going on Sequential Swap. It'd be a much cheaper way to do a whole bunch of reviews.
I have two plans. First, I'm going to review all the trades I don't like BEFORE the ones I do like, that way I can put the bad ones up on my trade list right away (to start this, I have begun to re-read Earth X--here's a hint as to why I don't like it--It's taken me three days, and I'm not halfway through the thing yet).
Second, I'm going to go after all the international traders at Sequential Swap. Because the shipping costs a bit more, most guys at the site won't deal with anyone outside the US.
I'm planning to do a pretty low-fi site, too. Well, I pretty much have to because I wouldn't know how to do hi-fi. I want it to look good, at least a little better than all those free geocities sites folks work on like demons for 3 months and then abandon, but the focus will be on the writing.
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June 16th, 2004
| 04:16 pm - The Uncanny X-men of Denny's
The year between my graduation from high school and the beginning of college is pretty much shrouded in a fog which, quite frankly, I hope stays nice and thick for a good long while. What little I remember was the “hot spot” of my social life: The Denny’s in Guilderland. It was open all night and it was long before the NY public smoking ban, we got to know most of the staff so snagging free food wasn’t unheard of. Without convincing fake ID’s, Denny’s was the perfect haven for me and the misanthropes I loosely referred to as “friends.” If me and my buddy Jay, who I’ve long since lost contact with unfortunately, were both there on the same night (and we usually were), the topic of who would play who in what comic book movie always came up, and our most frequent object of debate was the X-men. Everyone knew that eventually, there would be an X-men movie. The only question was how and when. I don’t remember who Jay picked for which characters, but I remember most of my picks, and for whatever reason the memory’s surfaced in the last few days.
Allow me to preface this by saying I loved both X-men movies, and I’m not saying “this is what they should’ve done,” this is revisiting my past more than anything else. So bite me.
THE UNCANNY X-MEN OF DENNY’S:
Professor X: Patrick Stewart was always a no-brainer. I can’t remember anyone daring to argue against him. He’s bald, and he’d already been in both ST: TNG and Dune, so he was already a member of the geek pantheon in good standing.
Magneto: I recall some heated arguments over who should play the Master of Magnetism, though for the life of me I can’t remember what anyone else’s picks were. My choice was always, and I refused to ever back down from it, Malcolm McDowell. He’s got that shock white hair, he’s certainly well-practiced at playing villains, and he’d already played opposite Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: Generations. Of course, at the time, I didn’t foresee the more “real world” direction the filmmakers would take with the movie. If the movie had been more comic-booky, I think McDowell would have been a good choice, but considering that I don’t think the guy’s done anything substantial since Clockwork Orange, McKellen was probably the smarter pick.
Wolverine: Mickey Rourke. I know, I know, he looks like hell now, but I thought at the time he had the right look to him, and the right attitude. Hugh Jackman does a fine job, but while Wolverine, I thought, doesn’t necessarily need to look old, I thought he should look more…weathered. I’ve got no problem with Jackman, though. The only thing about his performance that bothered me was that they had him wearing fucking bell bottoms in one of the first scenes in X2. Bell bottoms + Wolverine = Ninjas don’t even have enough to respect to try and kill him anymore.
Colossus:: Once again, a no-brainer. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Colossus doesn’t take a great actor to emulate. Just look sensitive, lift heavy stuff, and get the crap kicked out of you every once in a while.
Nightcrawler: Heh heh. Probably the strangest of my picks. I always liked Kevin Kline for the role. He had experience with goofy accents, and I thought he’d be great for Nightcrawler’s more fun-loving, swashbuckling aspects. But, they seem to have gone a different direction with the fuzzy elf in the movies.
Cyclops: Knock the arrows and let ‘em fly. My pick was Kevin Costner. Yeah, I know, everyone hates Costner, but in spite of many of his REALLY bad career decisions, I think he’s always been great at playing emotionally repressed characters. And “emotionally repressed” is fucking Latin for Cyclops.
That’s all the picks I can remember. I know, there were a few chicks on the team, but…they’re chicks. Who cares who plays them as long as their skirts are short?
;)
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June 15th, 2004
| 06:00 pm - Possible addendum to my picks for this week
I might pass up the Fallen Angel tpb for something else. There's an original graphic novel coming out this week called Hench. Someone posted a review at the Millarworld industry forum.
It's not that I don't want you check out FA, I'm just a little more interested in indie comics right now.
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June 14th, 2004
| 07:30 pm - What to review
Checking out today's shipping list is pretty revealing. My tastes have really shifted over the years. I started out reading nothing but Marvel, and now I can't find a damn thing those bastards are putting out that I want to read. Kind of sad. The only thing I'm even tempted to check out is THE INCREDIBLE HULK, VOL. 7: DEAD LIKE ME tpb, and only so I can rip it apart at CBG, and then put it on my trade list at Sequential Swap so I can get something good for it. But I don't have money to waste for the sake of hate, and every possible bad thing I could say about Bruce Jones has already been said a thousand times.
The Fallen Angel tpb is a promising pick. I've been curious about this series for a while, and actually checked out an issue but it was too far into the story for me to really get into it. Thankfully, I've read enough of Peter David's stuff to review his stuff without sounding like a dumb-ass. According to him, it's the best work of his career. We'll see.
The War Stories tpb is something else that piqued my interest. I'm not really into war comics, or Garth Ennis, but I remember the War Story: Screaming Eagles one-shot was one the comics I reviewed when I started at CBG, so it might be interesting to revisit it. At $19.95 though, with my limited budget, I'll probably leave it on the shelf. Fallen Angel, at $12.95, is definitely the smarter pick money-wise.
Sea Guy #2 is a must. I bought the first issue and don't really know what I think of it just yet, but it's definitely the weirdest superhero story I've ever read, so that alone is worth $2.95.
I've been looking forward to Ex Machina for a while. It sounds like an interesting enough concept, and with the writer of Y The Last Man on board, it definitely shouldn't suck.
I probably won't bother with anything else. Really, I shouldn't be buying any of it. But I want to keep reviewing.
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