Days 1017 - 1023

Aka Monday 11^th November 2019 – Sunday 17^th November 2019

This week I picked up the new Spider-Man film, ‘Far From Home’ on DVD (with a free book to boot), which I thought was alright, when I saw it at the cinema, but a bit of a let-down/anti-climax after 'Avengers: Endgame', which was to be expected, how do you top all the heroes coming together, time travel, epic battles and saving/resurrecting half the Universe? 

 

…I also brought some New Comic Book Day comics:

…and caught up on some comics reading:

…capsule reviews (because I’m still trying to catch up and I’m writing this on 8^th December 2019!):

The Sandman Universe Presents Hellblazer #1 – an interesting update/revising of John Constantine, while keeping his past adventures intact, interesting enough to pick up the next issue…

Giant Days: As Time Goes By – the last time that we’ll see the adventures of Daisy, Susan and Esther for the foreseeable time and it’s a great (but bittersweet) end to the series, chock full of jokes and emotions…

Wyrd #4 – a suitably odd and violent end to the mini-series, looking forward to a second mini-series…

Once & Future #2 and #3 – the adventure, and stakes, deepen, with plenty of twists and action… 

Kaijumax Season Five #1 – a near-masterpiece, making the experiences of monsters in prison so relatable and human…

Savage Dragon #246 – tip-top super-heroics…

Fight Club 3 #7 - #10 – while it’s nice to be back in the ‘Fight Club’ universe, it feels like not much is happening, or at least not much advancing of the plot, unless that is how it’s meant to feel and the last two issues will be jam-packed with excitement…

…and I did this week’s G2 Crosswords:

…and Monday’s G2 Crossword gets the week off to a flying start as the little grey cells rage through the clues and only needed to cheat on one of the 23 clues. It was almost like dominos as the clue stumbled and the answers flowed onto the grid. And it should have been a clean sweep as I know that ‘ointments’ is a synonym for ‘emollients’, like there’s the old joke about what do you put on a sunburnt pig…onikment! I just couldn’t recall in time, but will this hot streak continue tomorrow and for the rest of the week? Only one way to find out…

…Tuesday’s crossword continues the “going pretty damn well” streak, as I only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 25). Good times! With the little grey cells having worked overtime to get the answers and, about from a few, they are flowing like wine at a Bacchanalia. And I learnt that the ‘flat surface forming the back of a boat’ is called the ‘transom’ and that a ‘melon’ is a ‘juicy edible gourd’…

…Wednesday’s crossword went a tad worse, I had to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 24), but still pretty great going. Well done the little grey cells, keep it up! A bit annoyed that I didn’t get ‘horsemen’ from riders’ and that I went for ‘remand prison’ and not ‘remand centre’, but I did learn that the ‘streamlined cover for an aircraft engine’ is called a ‘nacelle’…

…and the streak continues with Thursday’s crossword, as I only had to cheat on one of the 22 twenty clues – ‘confused situation (9)’, which I thought might be ‘hullabaloo’, I didn’t know how it was spelt, so didn’t know it was too long, and the actual answer was ‘imbroglio’…will the little grey cells be able to keep this up for another day or are they too tired now???...

…the little grey cells continue to knock it out almost out of the park with Friday’s crossword, as I only had to cheat on a thirteenth of the clues (two out of 26). The answers just came to me, like lightning flashes – I didn’t know what the answer was for 4d ‘Herb of the mint family, attractive to some pets’, but when I had the intersecting letters it was obvious that it was ‘catnip. The same with 5d ‘Shropshire market town’, with the intersecting letters ‘Ludlow’ just came to mind. And I learnt that ‘Offa’ was an ‘Eighth-century king of Mercia’ and that Dickens wrote ‘Hard Times’…

…Saturday’s crossword went a tad worse than the rest of the weeks, I had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 24). This grid was a bit trickier for the little grey cells and it took some chewing over to get most of the answers, like getting ‘came in’ for ‘entered’, but we got there for most of them. I guess the little grey cells were just a bit tuckered out, which might that we missed a couple of easy ones – ‘innards’ and ‘takings’, but I did learn that ‘Aikido’ is a ‘Japanese martial art’ and that a ‘cameo’ is a ‘brooch with an engraving in low relief’, so a pretty good week all in all!