Day 141

Today was a Wednesday, which means it was a New Comic Book Day:

Quick reviews:

• Angel and Buffy – I’m a big Buffy fan and the comic books have done a great job of carrying on the stories and developing the characters. The Angel story is very self-contained, personal story about Angel, while the Buffy story is focusing on how the whole world/USA is reacting to magic being real and how our heroes are responding to very dark demands the US is making of magic users and magic endowed/enabled creatures (e.g. vampires, demons, etc.).

• Head Lopper – I don’t normally care much for Conan/Barbarian stories, but Head Lopper is really well written (and drawn and coloured). It kinda feels, to me, like Die Hard crossed with Conan, you’ve got the swords and sorcery and wisecracks and a kinda blue-collar viewpoint, i.e. Mr Lopper is very much an everyman (except for his awesome fighting skills).

• Wildstorm – is a great reimagining/rebooting of the Wildstorm universe, that is slowly building up to a big confrontation/event, while also building a whole world for the events to happen in. While it’s fun/interesting to see the new takes or old characters, you defo don’t need to know the history to enjoy this story.

• Black Monday Murders – again you can feel this story building up to a big climax, but until then we get lots of tantalising hints and background. I feel that we know a lot about the emotional side of many of the characters, while not exactly knowing why they are doing what they are doing (aside from that it will make them more powerful/rich).

Not read Batman or Empowered yet, I’m saving Empowered for when I’ve time to read it all in one go.

I did have a pretty long vertigo episode/panic attack feelings, for most of the day, but was able to (more or less) go about my day as normal, but episode/feelings may have been due to or exacerbated by heat exhaustion (it was something like 34 C).

Later on, I watched Cross Of Iron and the documentaries (included as DVD extras). Cross Of Iron is a great film and does a great job of humanising German soldiers, showing that for many they were just professional soldiers and did not believe in/follow the Nazi ideologue of race hated. That they was a difference between the army and the SS. It also looks at the various officer classes and why they are fighting (the main character conflict is between James Coburn’s Sergeant Steiner vs Maximilian Schell’s Captain Stransky, who is desperate to win an Iron Cross). It also highlights the futility and horror of warfare and that there is no glory in battle, except for surviving. The documentaries add some nice background to the philosophical ideas behind the film and some nice stories of Sam Peckinpah acting crazy and all ‘old-school’ Hollywood.

I also finished Beast In The Basement and started Jon Ronson’s The Amazing Adventures Of Phoenix Jones. I really like Jon’s writing and I’m looking forward to this story.