What Does Sarah Connor, Spider-man, and Robert Plant Have in Common? (Not a thing).

I don't have much today. First off, The Sarah Connor Chronicles starts tonight on FOX. This is the show that actually starts right after T2 and kind acts like Claire Danes and pretends T3 never happened. I, for one, dug T3 but obviously the producers of this TV show didn't because they've been talking all sorts of smack about it to the press. But I like the fact Sarah Connor lives on and didn't die of leukemia inn 1997 or whenever, as T3 put forth. So I'll be tuning in. It's actually getting fairly decent reviews. Check some of them out here.

Also, I kind of wanted to say something about Spider-man's Brand New Day story arc. In a previous post I was fairly vocal about what I thought of the direction this comic was taking. Basically I thought it was a half-cocked idea and it was disrespectful to the past of the character and the previous creators. I thought the book was going to suck and from the rumblings around the net it seems that I was in the large majority.  Well, then I did something. I read the first issue of Brand New Day. Did it put the amazing back in spider-man? Quite frankly, no. But it wasn't that bad either. In fact it was kind of cool. Parker does ask his Aunt May about wheat cakes but it was a joke. J. Jonah Jameson does yell, "PARKER!!!!" But then he drops to the floor with a heart attack. The villain is not Doc Ock but some sinister badass named Mr. Negative who looks awesome and gin-sues two of his henchman to make a particularly bloody point. So basically it seems like Dan Slott (the writer) and Joe Q. (the editor) knew what the arguments against were and tackled them head on. It works. Well mostly. I think MJ is a superhero named Jackpot who runs around saying "Tiger" all the time. I know. Lame. But Greg Land did the art on Jackpot's bonus story so it was a little easier to stomach... but still. Regardless, they kept me around. I'll keep reading.

One final thing. Before turning in last night, I was flipping channels and came across VH1, one of the last "music" channels to actually play music (albeit sporadically) and I saw the Robert Plant/ Allison Krause video for "Gone, Gone, Gone." I had known Plant and Krause had done an album together and I had absolutely zero interest in ever hearing a track off it. But this song was awesome. It reminded  of something that would be playing on a roadhouse  jukebox in a Tarantino movie. It had that certain kind of seedy yet cool vibe to it. I ended up buying the CD of Amazon MP3. It's not something I would normally buy, (in my eyes, Plant stopped being a Rock God when Led Zepplin broke up and who the hell is Allison Krause anyway?) but I dig it. Check out the video below. I like the way Plant claps.

New Comic Day, Spider-man, and um...yeah, TRON

So another new comic day is upon us. So let's see what is notable, at least in my corner of the comic universe. The Amazing Spider-man starts it's thrice monthly schedule with it's Brand New Day arc. I'm looking at the cover and I hardly care. I'll read it. See what I think. But after the One More Day arc, we are back at square one. And that just sucks. I always liked the comics because it was like the comic readers had a little piece of the mythos that the movie fans and cartoon watchers didn't have. Peter grows up, gets married, still fights crime, lets his identify be revealed to Aunt May, reveals to the world that he is Spider-man (maybe this could have been erased), fights more crime. The character was about change and that's all gone. I'm sure the new arc will have Aunt May trying to get Peter to eat his pancakes because he's too scrawny and Peter will be having girl trouble and J. Jonah Jameson will be low-balling Peter on his pictures and yelling, "PARKER!" and Spidey will be fighting Doc Ock and the like. Make it stop. It seems so tedious. Maybe the new book will surprise but I doubt it. I'll stick it out for a few issues. Rant over.

Ghost Rider also came out. It's a fun book. The Mighty Avengers came out with the blurb Secret Invasion above the title. Wonder what that's about? Messiah Complex Chapter 11 in X-factor #27 is on the stands. I'm really enjoying this massive X-title crossover. Reminds me of the X-men titles of the 80s only written much better. And The Evil Dead issue 1 from Dark Horse is out today! This will make the second monthly starring Ashley Williams. I gave Army of Darkness a try, and a good long try at that, but eventually I had to drop the title. It just didn't feel like Ash, it felt like someone  writing Ash. Does that make sense? Kind of like someone describing a South Park episode to you rather than you actually watching the episode. It was just kind of phony. So I dropped it. Now I see Dynamite Comics is planning an Army of Darkness crossover with Xena. So I rest my case. Here's hoping that Dark Horse succeeds where Dynamite failed. Of course there were other titles that hit today but those are the ones I was most excited about. Not a bad week.

So, yeah... TRON. I remember a few years ago I was telling all my friends that Phantasm was the scariest movie of all time. It was hard to find so no one had really seen it. I happened to catch it on HBO when I was like seven and it remained ingrained on my imagination. The Tall Man, the metal sphere, the graveyard, the Jawas (still don't know what they were doing there), this was the stuff of cold sweats and sleepless nights. Anyway, long story short, I got my hands on a copy and I sat down to re-watch it. Let's just say the mind can play tricks on you. Horror movies had progressed at this point to make Phantasm seem silly and quaint. It was not the movie my mind had told me for years it was. And last night, I was reminded of this experience as I played TRON. The graphics are, of course, terrible but that's not what really sinks the game. The controls are awful, beyond awful. The right analog stick stands in as the little dial thingy that was on the cabinet and let's just say it doesn't works. At all. So that means you can't aim. At anything. Ever. You die. A lot. All the time. It's an exercise in frustration. Stay away. Far away. Easily one of the worst titles I've purchased on arcade. Which is disappointing since I was really looking forward to the game. TRON is easily the Phantasm of video games. Too bad.

Comic Day and Y the Last Man

Comic day. Yes, it's Friday but the new years holiday set New Comic Day back two days. Pretty slim week. The new Buffy Season 8 came out today and so did the new Star Wars Legacy. Had some other assorted titles in my pull box but nothing stands out.

I'm reading the graphics of Y the Last Man and all I can say is that I am so glad that I didn't read this as a monthly title, I don't think I could have handled the wait between issues. It never really interested me when it first came out because it just seemed like such a Skinemax-y premise. All of Earth's men die except, for one, so obviously for the sake of humanity he would have to sex, sex, lunch, then some more sex. Let the hot tub parties begin. Great concept for a late night pay cable movie but maybe not so much for a comic.

But then I started hearing rumblings about the book. I started hearing it was smart, fresh, funny, and political. I heard it was one of the best books no one was reading. So I bought the first graphic novel and I was blown away. Brian Vaughan is a tremendous writer. His view of a world run women is probably not what most people would think. I have heard the slogan and seen the bumper sticker, "If the world was run my mothers, there would be no war."  Not in Vaughan's universe, baby. His women are vicious and brutal and smart and brave and angry and sad and relieved and depressed and noble and petty and war-like and peace loving and murderers and philosophers. They can be anything and many things. The one thing the women are not are bumper stickers. They are incredibly well rounded and  3-dimensional. The world is not a peaceful Utopia but then again it wouldn't be. It's a world where fifty percent of the population has died and what that means to the survivors. This book is about the left wing, the right wing, cloning, feminism, how one faces loss, and hope. Do yourself a favor and read it. I'm only on Book 3 but already I'm a believer. Hopefully the rest of the series will hold up. I'll let you know.

I haven't said anything about the end of Straczynski's run on Amazing Spider-Man (One More Day). I'm still thinking about about it. I do know that I didn't like it but it was pretty powerful. That everything could be simply erased like that, with just a simply push of the reset button is almost disrespectful to all the creators that have come before. I'm not a continuity whore, but come on, we're talking about forty years of history here. That Peter's and MJ's whole relationship just never happened is ridiculous. But I can't deny that Straczynski did a masterful job. He's one of my favorite writers and I'll follow him on whatever he writes, so I feel bad about bagging on the guy, but this arc was just so damn ill conceived . Love it or hate it, people are talking about it.