Day 598

Aka Thursday 20^th September

The mice kept me from getting any decent sleep, so today I woke feeling pretty knackered and nonplussed. anyway...

…I did the G2 crossword:

…which went a bit worse than yesterday’s and I needed to cheat on a third of the clues, eight out of 26, but I did learn that ‘Singapore’ is an ‘Asian country, capital and mega-port’ and that the ‘hanging fold of skin on a person’s neck’ is called a ‘dewlap’.

…listened to James O’Brien on LBC, Orbital’s ‘Monsters Exist’, a great album and sounds like classic Orbital, going from ambienty electronics to hands in the arm techno, and Aretha Franklin’s ‘Young, Gifted and Black’, a beautiful soul album, with a great balance of slow, ballads and funky stompers.

…watched ‘El Dorado’, a great remake of ‘Rio Bravo’, but with Robert Mitchum and James Caan (yes, that James Caan!!!) co-starring along side John Wayne. There’s a bit more backstory this time round, the comedy is less broad (although Mr Mitchum does a great Loony Tunes face when he gets hit in the face), the action is a bit more believable, the music is more funky (at one point, when Mr Wayne and Mr Caan are walking down the street the soundtrack sounds like it’s escaped from an earlier Dirty Harry film, it’s that funky, very Lalo Schifrin) and a soupçon of anti-violence. 8/10. 

…and read:

‘Buffy: The Reckoning’ (aka Season Twelve) #1 – 4, the license to publish Buffy comics has now gone to Boom! Studios and ‘The Reckoning’ is the last Dark Horse Buffy comic and I think it ends the current Buffy timeline (all the current promo around the move to Boom! Studios suggest that Buffy will be back in High School). Anyway, lets put that to one side and concentrate on the story, which I really liked, in a nutshell, Harth, the brother of Fray, the future Slayer, travels back to Buffy’s time, to become all-powerful and rule the world. The future Fray and Harth come from is very dark and dystopian and Buffy and co. worry that this scheme is what allows that future to occur, so Buffy and co. and Fray and her sister join forces to stop Harth.

 Without spoiling anything, the good guys do win, and the story ends with characters stories concluded or left in a good, hopeful place. It’s a nice end to twenty years of Dark Horse Buffy comics. The only problems I had were that the story felt a little rushed in just four issues, it would have nice to have seen some build up to Harth’s scheme, rather than Angel announcing it to the gang, a page or two showing him arriving in his past/our present and set up his scheme; it would have been nice for some of the fight scenes to be longer, to show more detail, more of the epciness of these fights that could bring about the apocalypse; and some of the art in a few panels felt a bit rushed and amateurish.

But there are some really emotional scenes, on a level with the concluding episode if the TV series, and I really liked this as a conclusion of the Dark Horse Buffy story (even with the small problems I noted) and think that Joss Whedon, Christos Gage, Georges Jeanty and Karl Story have done a great job. 10/10 (although I should note that I’m a big Buffy fan and this view may not be entirely neutral!!!)

Erik Larsen’s ‘Savage Dragon’ is a fun superhero series, with the unique hook that it happens in real time, i.e. after a year’s worth of issues the characters are a year older, which can go from tackling typical super hero issues to very adult issues (e.g. it goes for biff-pow to full frontal's and threesomes!). In #238 Malcolm is recovering from injuries suffered in last issues fight, Angel, who was at death’s door, is healed and her face and hand healed, and Maxine is seeking help for possibly sex addiction (since Maxine was brought back from the dead she’s been trying to re-experience that feeling of joy and happiness). This issue focuses very much in the characters, there’s no fight scenes, but plenty of story/character development. 8/10.

'By Night' #4, by John Allsion, Christine Larsen, Sarah Stern and Jim Campbell, continues to be a fun read, the characters may be in a fantastical setting, but they are all believable and rounded people who you care for. Even Gardt the troll man, with his love of the ‘80’s. Heather, Jane, Barney and Chip explore the world on the other side of the portal, run into trouble with a cave of vampires and we learn that the last human(s) through the portal did, or had done to them something, bad and the issue ends with Gardt in trouble for interacting with humans again. 10/10.

In ‘The Wild Storm’ #17, by Warren Ellis, Jon Davis-Hunt, Brian Buccellato and Simon Bowland, pieces are laid for future issues/the conclusion (the introduction of two fan favourites, will the end of ‘The Wild Storm’ be the creation of ‘The Authority’?), but the issue starts with a nice long character piece between Lynch and Stephen Rainmaker. It’s quiet and just talking (and not talking) for half the issue, giving hints of the wider world of Wild Storm, and how it has affected these two men. It’s like an emotional/character version of a fight scene. 8/10.

‘Mister Miracle’ #11, the penultimate issue of Tom King, Mitch Gerads and Clayton Cowles journey with the world’s greatest escape artist and his family, in which Mister Miracle and Big Barba outwit Darkseid…or do they? This series has been an interesting mix of superhero and slice-of-life-sitcom (you know the Larry Sanders kind sitcom, which has loads of sit but not much com) and this issue ends with a reveal that could change how the whole series is viewed, i.e. it’s all in Mister Miracle’s mind and is just his latest escape. 7/10.