Ex Libris

Well, I've finally married my wonderful Garm. Yup, he's stuck with me. And my wonderful Garm's wonderful parents gave us the best wedding present ever: an entire wall of bookshelves. "Entire wall" doesn't really do justice to the scope. The bookshelves literally stretch the width of the entire house. That's right. We've figured it up to about 166 linear feet of shelf space. And we've almost filled it up already .......

We began measuring months ago. There were charts and graphs and some more measuring as the piles of books in corners grew. The goal was to make the most use of the largest single wall in the house, so that we could combine both of our libraries into one place. After a while, the was a good deal of hoping along with the measuring.

Once home from our lovely honeymoon we settled in then took our happy, literate selves up to Ikea, home of all things for the home (some assembly required). We weren't sure how all of the bookshelves that we knew we needed were going to fit into the back of Garm's truck, but those clever Sweedes, they're so good at flat packing that everything fit with room to spare. Seriously, the next time I need to pack a suitcase, I'm finding a Sweedish person do help me! Here's what the truck looked like:

We got home and I had to go to work, leaving Garm to assemble 6 full sized Billy bookcases, one half bookcase, a DVD tower, and a TV stand. While I was walking dogs, he was busy in the garage, and this is the result:

It's amazing, how packages so small can be coerced into being such significant bookshelves. Each one is over 6 feet tall. Garm was so excited he even dragged the first three in and started arranging some of our books on them:

When I got home that night, I helped him carry in the others, and we began sorting the books onto them. SO MUCH FUN! I've had some of my books in storage for years and years, since I moved away from Newnan the first time, and they've stayed in storage in a closet at my parents' house while I was overseas with the Peace Corps, then they moved to the closets and under-beds at Garm's house. Finally, they're breathing air again!!

I had to go to work again the next day, but was able to help Garm get the electronics started. There wasn't too much I could help with this,
and I mostly just left him alone to untangle that, checking occasionally to make sure he didn't accidentally get strangled in the nonsense. He got it worked out, thankfully, and in time for the Auburn game, even. That evening he also secured the bookshelves to the wall and started putting the history and non-fiction out.

I came home to a lovely mess of books all over the house, and quickly set to work pulling out more boxes and fitting them in to where they belong. We have the books sorted by category -- fiction, anthologies, children's, literary criticism, general non-fiction, religion, mythology, poetry, history (by time period and then by author), biography, and political science. Poor Garm, he was exhausted but I was just so excited that I kept pulling boxes out from under beds and putting them into their respective areas. The history section was probably the most difficult, and I let Garm do all of those, though I did try to help. Getting the books into both chronological AND alphabetical order was such a chore ... I will never, ever shelve a book in that section: he can do it for me! I'll build a book drop first!

Exhausted, sometime in the middle of the night, we finally had to go to bed. The next morning, Sunday, I went back to Ikea with my BFF so she could browse the home of all things for the home (some assembly required) and I could pick up a couple more wall shelves. Garm and I decided that to give our wall o' books a truly built in feel, we would join the Bill bookcases over the TV with some matching wall shelves. We got 4 shelves on our original trip, enough to make 2 joining shelves, but we realized that our TV does not need to be mounted, like we originally thought we did. We also realized that the extra 5 feet of bookshelf was going to be crucial.

Especially since while I was at the bookstore, Garm found 2 more boxes of books under a bed I missed the night before in my excitement and exhaustion. These books, mostly history and non-fiction, required that we rethink where those sections ought to go. So, when I returned home from Ikea we mounted all 6 of the shelves and made 3 shelves above the TV, with the resulting effect of a single, custom unit. Garm claims he was 3/8" off on one of the shelves, but I defy you to find a flaw in these pictures!! Once we rearranged mythology, religion, and moved the yearbooks for the umpteenth time, the bookshelves are finally complete! Can you believe we managed to get our living room from this:

to this:

in just a few days? We've been looking forward to these ever since I announced to my new betrothed that I came with a dowery of a library as extensive as his own. One neat side effect were the duplicate books. Garm and I often had the exact same book, and we collected the doubles to turn in for credit at our local used book store. They'll only let us turn in one box at a time, so we have to make 6 trips to get them all gone. We've even been able to replace a few paperbacks for hardbacks, then turn the paperbacks in! Of course, if we keep lucking out and getting such good credit off these books, we may be needing more bookshelves sooner than we thought ....

Autumnal Candles

So the blog has been slacking a little. My bad. I'd like to blame the long hours at work in the horrible horrible heat, but mostly it's due to a slight writer's block and an epic laziness.

And of course so much of our time is taken up with wedding preparations. Mostly, those preparations are nothing to blog about, but this one is!

In an effort to keep costs lower, I decided to make my own centerpieces for the reception: gel candles. I'd had this idea in my head for a while, and last week Garm helped me to make that idea a reality. I'm so happy with the results that I want to do this again and again.

The overall theme of the wedding is fall, and the reception is at a restaurant that overlooks the Chestatee River. The candles I pictured in my head were basically frozen scenes from a river in fall: small river rocks on the bottom, fall colored leaves, berries, pine cones and acorns. Originally, I was thinking of just gluing those in place and filling the containers with water, then putting floating candles on top; however, when I did a bit of research on making gel candles I learned it wasn't too complicated. So I threw caution to the wind, covered the kitchen surfaces in cardboard, and bought the materials. More expensive than water and floaty-candles, but well worth it!


So, here's how it was all done!
Step one was to glue the wicks to the bottom of the bowls with a glue gun. I then added the rocks, and then glued the silk leaves and berries where I wanted them around the outside of the bowl. I didn't want them to get too close to the wick. I didn't bother gluing the rocks in place, figuring (correctly) that the gel would take care of that for me.

Step two was melting the candle gel. The first batch took a long while to melt because we were very cautious with how much heat we used. There were lots of warnings about the gel being flammable, so we started with the lowest setting and waited a while before turning it up, then up some more. We did finally figure out the optimum setting on the stove for melting the gel without exploding it. This was also the step where we got to add the scent. That's right! My candles smell like cranapple spice! The gel felt really funny on my fingers; I had to tear it out in bunches from the tub it came in, and I'm still finding little pieces of it in the kitchen.

Step three, as you might imagine, was actually pouring the gel. We learned a lot in this step. I learned that my precautionary step of heating the candle in a sink of hot water was unnecessary. I learned that an extra step of tying the wicks to a pencil resting across the top of the candle was necessary to prevent the waxy wick from melting and collapsing in the bottom of the candle. I also learned that the hot gel melts the hot glue, so I need to find a better way to affix the suspended objects away from the wick. And I learned that hotter gel makes for a more bubbly looking candle, while the cooler gel, when poured, makes for a clearer candle. Garm was wonderful in this step: holding the candles steady for me while I ladled hot gel into them and helping me get a uniform look. He's also very very good at tying the wicks onto the pencils so that they won't fall off again.

Step four, logically, was allowing the gel to cool and solidify again. I filled the sink with cool water and ice cubes to encourage this process. Above are two cooling candles, wicks still tied to pencils. Once the gel was cool, we wiped off the excess gel from where it had dripped and remelted it for the subsequent candles, cut the wicks, and stood back to admire our handiwork. They turned out exactly as I had imagined, which I think is pretty amazing. I had so much fun doing these that I want to do more! We even burned one to be sure they'll work, and they, in fact, do work as candles. Success!! Garm brought out his lightbox to get some nice shots; here are the best of those.

My Fall River Candles:

British Bluegrass??

So there's this great new band out there. I found them on Dave FM, and got hooked listening to the one song they played. So of course I did what any new fan would do: I got the album and set up a new Pandora station.

According to Wikipedia, Mumford and Sons began playing together back in 2007 and released their first album, Sigh No More, last year. It crossed the pond this year and has frolicked (do the English frolick?) its way up the charts and into our radios. The single I fell in love with, Little Lion Man, has a catchy chorus that isn't inane (coughkatyperrycough)  like so much new music out there. Also, who is rocking a banjo nowadays? Not enough artists, that's for sure.

M&S are listed as Indie Rock or Folk Rock, but the combination of instruments is begging me to call it Bluegrass Rock. But they're more than just the instruments. The lyrics and harmonies are darker and more serious than you'll find over the traditional airwaves. Broken hearts, revenge, regret and the state of your soul are all themes in their music. And yet there's something hopeful in the songs as well: "Lead me to the truth and I will follow you with my whole life."

All in all, this is a great new sound, and I recommend that if you're sick of the same 20 songs on the radio, which all sound the same anyway, to give these guys a listen.

Paper, Ink, Glue

Almost $500 worth of wedding invitations. Certainly more than the sum of their parts. . .

There's no crying in football video games!

Alabama video game nerds mock Tim Tebow in special edition cover

I chuckled. Also, I really miss football. Just a couple more months, thank FootballJesus Tebow.

Site issues

We're going through some site-code updates/housecleaning at the moment. All will return to normal shortly.

I hope. 


UPDATE: Everything's working the way I want, other than the massive space in the first post on the page. I have no idea why it's like that, but I'm working on it. 

New Blood

Just to prove that this little blog o' mine is still ticking, I decided to make a post. Genie Junkie and I have neglected Garm Howling for quite awhile, but hopefully that will change in the future. Recently I thought about this minuscule corner of cyberspace and wondered if I should create some new content. Fortuitously, my fiancée Kat mentioned that she'd like to start her own blog. I pounced on the opportunity and (short story, long) now she's going to cross-post here and at her own place: A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That.

So we have some new blood and soon, Cthulhu-willing, some new content as well.

iPad

iPad
iPad iPad
iPad!

Wake Up Sheeple! (or, How Buzz Aldrin is going to find you and punch you in the face)

I just read have just been enlightened by some truly amazing work. Really. I mean it. Of course, it's COMPLETE crap, but. . . it's an amazing job: easily, without a shadow of a doubt, in the wackjob-conspiracy-theory hall of fame. A sample of the masterpiece to which I refer:

It is important to note that the room in question was numbered 217 in the Stephen King version of The Shining. For unknown reason's Kubrick changed it to 237.

Those unknown reasons are about to be come known.

Danny is literally carrying a symbolic Apollo 11, on his body, via the sweater, to the Moon as he walks over to room 237. Why do I think this?

Because the average distance from the Earth to the Moon is 237,000 miles.

The real truth is that this movie is really about the deal that Stanley Kubrick made with the Manager of the Overlook Hotel (America). This deal was to get Kubrick to re-create, in other words, to fake, the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

EUREKA! 4 pages may seem long, but trust me (and why shouldn't you?) the words just fly by. In no time at all YOU WILL JOIN ME WITHIN THE RANKS OF THE ENLIGHTENED. Read the whole thing.

Need a bigger boat

I guess I abstractly knew that such a thing existed, but now I have a burning desire to be cited for "Unlawful Possession of a Great White Shark." I'm not sure how, but I'm pretty sure being able to say that I was cited for unlawfully possessing Jaws would enhance my life in many ways.

it'd be even cooler if the shark had a fricken' laser

So, you’re thinking of buying an AK-47?

Or AK-74? Or AK-101? Or AK-107? Or AKMS? Or any other Kalashnikov? If so, you should check out this introductory guide to the wonderful and often confusingly varied world of (semi-auto civilian) AK's. It's written for the novice enthusiast rather than the already-initiated, but for many people, the article will be quite helpful in explaining the basics. For example, the Father of Garm has a vast wealth of knowledge regarding handguns, but his knowledge of rifles is much more narrow, a fact he readily admits, which is why I've already sent him the above link.

Kudos to Cheaper Than Dirt for putting this on their site; I'll be sure to pick up some accessories from you next time I'm in the market for them.

Way too close to home

That's where this chart hits. It's easily the most simple chart of its nature I've ever seen. Who says trying to figure out to what genre of metal the band you're listening to belongs has to be a complicated and argumentative procedure.

No reason

Awesome

Just Awesome

Wonder Woman Review

The new animated Wonder Woman movie is good, heck it’s just about perfect.

First off, the animation is great, a nice blend of the JLU style and Anime with detailed eyes and shadow. Combine that with fairly top-notch voice acting and the characters become solid with ease. Wonder Woman’s origin story is quickly setup up with a bloody opening battle between Aries and the pre-Diana Amazons that puts the body-count in the double digits in the first five minutes. This opening battle is actually clever in putting the motive in a cast of Amazons, along with Aries, which drives the rest of the story.

It’s not a difficult plot to figure out, so the makers did something pretty smart. They invested in the characters. Aries is not some bahahahah villain, but has real reasons for what he does. Steve Trevor, who’s a little odd sounding just like Captain Malcolm from Fire Fly since Nathan Fillion voices him, is not just some chauvinistic idiot. Wonder Woman is not a man-hater, nor a naïve girl. Every time we come to a fork in the road for character they make an unexpected but good choice. And there’s banter, romantic comedy level banter mixed in with the decapitations.

Then there are the difficult choices. They introduce the bracelets verses the arrows instead of a rifle. They subtly suggest Wonder Woman’s mother intended for Trevor to find the island. The invisible jet is never explained, and that is wise since an explanation would only draw the viewer out of the story. So deftly, are these choices made that when the bookworm Amazon comes up with a key magic phrase to save the battle it is barely noticed—we’ve been hearing her spout on about reading ancient books the whole movie.

Then there are the battles: Monsters, nukes, automatic weapons, zombies with meat-puppet ninja skillz, and a whole heck of a lot of butt kicking. One problem you always face is how the hero is suppose to be threatened by the villain. Make him or her more powerful than Superman or Wonder Woman and they become fairly impossible to beat, but this Wonder Woman shows the guile of a warrior while being super powerful. So, while Superman slugs it out in battles that we really can’t see him losing; Wonder Woman manages to be in the fight of her life without relying on some McGuffin to pull out the victory.

All in all, this feature is a triumph. Buy it, rent it, support it. But be warned, this is a hard PG-13, and not for the kiddies. It’s simple, heroric, and not one part of it carries the shrill “I’m River/Buffy/Echo and I’m a suffering and abused” that some might implant in the Princess of the Amazons. She is a warrior born and a woman. This movie says men and women need each other, in life and in the fight against evil. Good story, good message, great fun, trust that you will laughing and clapping like a kid at the circus.

Status of socks: officially knocked off.

(This post is actually by genie junkie; he's lazy or technophobic or something, so I posted it. Also: Yeah, the WW movie kicks all kinds of ass. -Garm)

Well, that's just unfortunate

Talk about taking the wind out of your sails. Here I am, all geared up to read an exciting story about girls engaged in a pillow-fighting tournament, when I see something in the "related stories" section that just ruins the whole experience for me.* In case The Sun realizes what their automatic story fetcher has juxtaposed, here's a screenshot:

(click to embiggen)

*(After typing that I realized, again, that yes, I'm a selfish, selfish person.)

Taken: a thinking man's action flick

New to the screen is the Liam Nelson fueled Taken, which pits a retired "preventer" (read: bad mother) against ethnic mobsters who have stolen his daughter to sell into prostitution.

Sort of Daddy Knows Best meets Man on Fire, Taken starts out slow and picks up pace. Brian Mills retired to connect with his Californian daughter, who he barely gets to see at her birthday before the shrewish ex-wife starts busting his chops. Husband number two is a rich Nancy-boy that trots out the pony birthday gift making Mills' carefully chosen and wrapped gift a quickly forgotten trinket. All this middle-aged divorcee's issues nicely setups up Mills' character, skills, and emotional state. He will do anything for his daughter, even take a security job for a pop star just to ask her how his little princess can break into the singing business. Even letting himself be manipulated into agreeing to her trip to Paris.

So, said princess is taken by Albanian mobsters while on the phone with the father. He springs into intelligent action collecting evidence, reaching out to contacts, doing his homework. This is a prudent older gentleman, who doesn't even yell that much--and he barely repeats himself. Some leads don't work out, but quickly his efforts lead him to the grittiest levels a PG-13 rating should allow.

The skill craft is good. He's not superhuman, he's not a daredevil, his combat is subtle and realistic by movie standards. Car chases are practical if not a little fanciful, and the big stunt is what appears to be a live stuntman falling what must be the absolute distance limit. Sometimes he's lucky, sometimes he's quick, but Mills' eyes are always one step ahead of the viewer--watching who gives the order, noting who's got the key, measuring the distance to the next bridge.

Mills' says, "no," at first, to a 17 year old going to Paris without adults because he's not an idiot. But also, he's not the cool dad; in a word, he's kind of conservative.

And the negative characters in this film are kind of a conservative hit-list: the poor parent/mean ex-wife, the bitchy pop star, the pampered slutty influence on the daughter, the corrupt bureaucrat that enables crimes, the illegal immigrant gang, the French, and the evil, decadent Arab sheik. And oddly, it is the daughter's own values that seem to give her the few breaks she gets.

Taken doesn't have that "hero moment", it has cold blood and a warm heart. Not flashy, not abig popcorn movie, but way more refined than you'll get in most genre flicks.

FF 562 review

Fantastic Four number 562 is a boring issue and a so far good run. Sure, I kind of found the death of future Sue Richards predictable, but I was pleased that even if they created an easy target at least Dr. Doom got to kill somebody. With all that’s been happening with Secret Invasion and Dark Reign (or not happening), surely the book can be forgiven for an issue that has a funeral, a minor family tension setup, and “some one is coming” cliffhanger.

But it is hard to forgive what they did to Dr. Doom. Richards heads to the Hague to defend Doom from a death sentence, which is stupid for a number of reasons: 1) because the Hague does not do capital punishment anymore, and how would you execute a guy that can switch minds with people? 2) Dr. Richards killed a ton of Skrulls for kidnapping his family but now he’s all Christ-like and forgiving, didn’t he almost kill the director of SWORD and not even say “sorry?” 3) What exactly would he say to defend Doom? Doom helped deliver his child then tried to sell the child to the devil? Doom is a great leader whom Richards has deposed on a couple of occasions?

What’s worse than bad ideas is bad ideas done well. The art is fun if not perfect, the dialogue is well written. Every panel is clearly going to pay off—well, except for the trial of Doom since he was sent back to Latveria in Dark Reign number one. Doom as crazy evil, bad characterization but par for the course at Marvel these days when dealing with true super-human antagonists. But then there’s the “My Master” bit.

Doom has a master? A master that taught him everything? Come on! Let’s just re-write the whole character! And because this master has almost no earthly connection you can be sure it’ll have no earth universe wide effect. Are they going to put the Osborn Supremacy on hold so earth’s heroes can have a planet wide battle with the mysterious master, no!

I have to give it to the writers that one of the most interesting things you could do to introduce a new villain is have Dr. Doom call him “master.” But you know what? As fun as the Millar run on FF might be, it lacks accountability. Global Warming is going to destroy the earth but forget about that there’s a huge Captain America robot on a rampage. Cap-bot commits various acts of war of nuclear powers and beats up all the heroes (but doesn’t kill any of them), but all is set right with a newly invented FF robot that is basically a WMD. Heroes from the future try to kill Johnny Storm and Doom but they were trying to save the world so just send them all to Nu-Earth (but nobody debrief hooded Logan on the next hundred years of world events). And now Dr. Doom has a master? It’ll probably be the last we hear of his connection to the bad guy. Millar calls it “the masters of doom” in a November interview were he claims to have more to say about the New Defenders. They apparently trained Doom but I doubt they’re from Tibet. Way before that Millar did an interview with Marvel.com where he says 1985, FF, and Old Man Logan are all interconnected. Millar suggests that one of the Masters of Doom do have something to do with the Tibetan monks and one of them is the villain from 1985, which makes no sense. Maybe it’s the Monster in the Iron Mask from Tales of Suspense number 31, but really, Doom’s master? Seriously?

How about next story arc they try to find the formula Magneto made himself a mutant with? Or make contact with the aliens that really designed the Iron Man armor? Or maybe Richards will time travel back to WWII and plant a clone of Captain America in the arctic because he actually saves the real Captain America brings him to the present—wait that last one actually sounds kind of cool. Anyway, the point is Fantastic Four is good, but it reads like it’s the only book there is or ever was in the Marvel. These are my friends Mr. Kirby and Mr. Lee, they did more than just setup it up so they get a check every time you put pen to paper. Perhaps the tiniest illusion of respect is in order?

Then again, I do plan on buying the next issue. I mean, I got to find out who Dr. Doom’s Master is, right? Maybe it’ll not suck, but I doubt it.

Merry Christmas

Secret Invasion: worst. finale. ever.

Here’s what I predicted at the beginning of SI:

Possible Skrulls

1. Spider-Woman.

Called it.

2. Anybody who’s 1970s version didn’t pop out of the crashed Skrull transport (Spider-Woman, Iron Fist, Black Widow, Echo, Ares, and Sentry). In the Director’s cut, Bendis emphasis this panel but suggests it could be all Skrulls. all humans, or even half and half. First, all human would be stupid, and half and half is just cheating.

Called it. But then they brought back a bunch of them--that was weird. Maybe it’s a trick, but really it just seemed like a total cop out. The Skrull’s are a big threat, not big enough to kill anymore than maybe three major characters, but they’re a really big threat. Seriously. Really. Big. Whatever. But every loser that piled out of the space was, indeed a Skrull, but we quickly lost count of who was where and what--and interest. Like halfway through Reed Richards fixes the whole infiltration thing.

Skrull connections

1. AIM was hiding a Skrull in the last Ms. Marvel issue.

Remember when AIM and Hydra had something to do with Nazis?

2. Everyone involved in the Raft Breakout story.

I still don’t quite get why they needed the pterodactyl guy, but I did call the connection, which was almost stated outright by the writers—so, not much of a call.

3. Latveria was invaded by Fury (because they were supplying two-bit villains with super weapons, which was the plot of “acts of vengeance”, right?), and then Fury went underground, so maybe there’s a connection.

Well, not so much a connection as an easy way to write a bunch of SI Fury spy stories.

4. The Hood suddenly grows a spine puts together an evil organization…

Well, apparently this was the way to make him a player for Dark Reign. Whatever.

5. Anybody Kree is automatically connected by rule of lazy writing. Ex: Inhumans, Hulkling (half), Marvel Boy.

Yes, yes, and yes, they all got a taste.

6. Civil War…

Yeah, the Skrulls loved all this, and they made Stark look bad, hey I thought they hated Richards, but really the Civil War was just their “friend with benefits.”

What’s the likely outcome?

1. Somebody rides to the rescue (after a series of defeats that seem devastating). But the villain will do some interesting things.

Completely true. Actually, a couple people rode to the rescue, but the big one was Thor (although Reed Richards seemed to really save everyone). The twist was Osborn getting the credit, which is really kind of “the American people are stupid” as a plot device. And I can’t even figure out how it works considering he was dead, he knew who Spider-Man was (he works with Venom who knows who Spider-Man is! Everyone knew before Brand New Day—wait, didn’t Punisher kill two villains because of the Parker reveal? Are they dead? That was only a year ago and I’m completely confused), and lastly he was completely nuts. But we’re stupid, we’d turn to anyone waving an American flag in a crisis, just like we did with (insert political enemy’s name here). Whatever.

2. This event somehow leads to the next event, and that next event is when “all will be revealed.”

Yes. Except the revealing stuff is more about Osborn’s Dark Reign and the “secrets of the Marvel universe.” They’re gearing up to retcon Emma Frost and then there’s “whatever happened to baby cage” and what about all the Skrulls that didn’t die or get captured???!? All…will be…revealed…if you just keep forking over the cash!

3. Either they got the goods or not, but ultimately, even if they dared to do an occupation series, general status quo is coming back.

That “embrace change” ad run seems to be hype, but while there’s a few loose ends, come on, one battle in central park and we’re back to good guys and bad guys, in fact we have a great number of missing good guys back. The difference now is the gov’ment good guys are now clearly the bad guys, so, now there’s not even a suggestion that the conflict is complex… Osborn is now Stark. Stark is now wanted, just like Cage, Web-head, and the Hulk. At least, Osborn isn’t going to constantly show up, tell rogue super-heroes to “stand down,” and then let them walk. When was it that the gov’ment was the good guys in Marvel?

4. The purge continues.

The Wasp died, the Wasp. And why do we care? They didn’t even make it clear Thor killed her. Totally the woman in the refrigerator. Personally, I think Marvel is all about the Teen/Mature rating these days. Captain America may have bit it just so they could get the okay to have a new Cap waving a gun around on every cover. The other day in a book store a dad was about to show his little kids comics, like he use to read, and picked an issue up. I leaned over to warn him that particular issue probably wasn’t something he wanted to give his little kid—what with the murder and the torture and the overt sexuality. In a super-powered world Marvel’s moving into the government’s role and hopefully world-wide power struggles, which is actually reasonable except they ain’t Tom Clancy. Still, they’re moving things toward a more realistic world, one that’s not so divorced from the media and government. Trimming the fat is fine so long as there’s a point. Is there a point? All… will be… revealed… Whatever.

So, officially, it was an interesting story with a “whatever” ending. Kind of like Cap just stopping the Civil War or Hulk refusing to kill anybody in WWH, hmmmm.

Best of the Event: X-Men. While the X-Men’s new home in San Fran might secure them as the “alternative lifestyle” superheroes, the book’s SI run gave us some hardcore Scott Summers without Logan stealing the spotlight. Hit and run tactics, ruthless/lethal force, and the use of WMD, Scott Summers is actually cool, when did that happen? (Honorable mention to Thor).

But here’s why I’m buying Dark Reign: Dr. Doom may, in fact, have been given his balls back.

First, Fantastic Four had him kill future Sue Richards (which I also called). In the preview of Dark Reign, Dr. Doom scares Emma Frost, detects the Hood in inviso-mode, makes Loki as a God, and senses Norman Osborn coming to the room. Namor looks like a tool (seriously, terribly off-model), Frost a stripper, Loki a dominatrix, but Doom looks tough as nails—shows the artist has a little love for the Doctor. Maybe, just maybe, Marvel’s finally going to bring back the Master of Menace. But with the insulting way the Sentry yanked his mask off before SI, I doubt it. Keeping Doom on a team has always been difficult, and is Doom really going to put up with Osborn?

What possible goals could Osborn have? Complete power? Why, so he can run the world? Revenge? Look, Osborn is going to give freedom to act to his conspirators. Probably something like this: Emma Frost gets protection for mutants, She-Loki gets help in battling Thor, Namor gets his kingdom back and maybe revenge, the Hood (and Dorramu? or however you spell it) gets to rule the super-criminals if he keeps it quiet—and everybody (except maybe Loki) hates Stark. But what does Doom get? Does he need anyone’s help? Taking out Reed Richards? They gang up on each other’s foes? Wasn’t that also the premise of “Act of Vengeance”?

Oh, well, Doom’s in it, so, I’m in. Besides, next issue, all…will be…revealed…

Whatever.