Moving...

Sadly, things have been pretty quiet around here lately.  All for a good reason though, as I am moving out of my current living situation across town to a new apartment.  The BIG change is that I am switching up room mates in the process.  My epic bro, who I've lived with for long enough to rate a common law marriage, is heading to the Mid-West for grad school, and I'm sticking it out here in Seattle in a cool little apartment with my lovely lady.

One would think that I'd have anticipated this move long ago, and prepared for it by storing up lots of good blog posts to tide things over while I get settled in. The truth is, the search for this new dwelling took up so much of my precious free time, that I have barely blogged in the past month, let alone blogged EXTRA in order to keep up a regular blogging schedule.

So, things may be a little quiet around here while I get settled in, get steady internet, and all that jazz.  Fear not, I'll still be reading my eyes out in my spare time, so there will plenty for me to talk about in the near future.  Stay tuned! And thanks to everyone who takes the time out of their busy lives to read the things I write about.

Graphic Novel Review: Batman-Snow

Snow is a Batman story set during the dawn of Batman's career, and the Caped Crusader is feeling a little bit overwhelmed with the task of safeguarding Gotham City.  To help aid his war on crime, Batman puts together a team of specialists to help him.  These clandestine allies, recruited for their skills in electronic gadgetry, research, crime scene investigation, recon, and tactics, are supposed to help Batman do his job more efficiently, but will they be enough when Batman squares off against his first super-powered villain?

Snow is not only a retelling of Batman's early days, but also gives a new look at the origin of Mr. Freeze.  This story thread follows a brilliant scientist, Dr. Fries, who has been developing a new cryo-technology.  However, his beloved wife is terminally ill, and his attempts to save her using his new, and unproven technology goes tragically wrong.  This might sound like origin story ground that has been covered over and over, but the writing team of Dan Curtis Johnson and J.H. Williams III infuse this origin tale with a soft touch that makes it feel all too real and altogether heart-wrenchingly tragic.  I felt legitimately sad when all the pieces of this origin story came together.  The way they depict Fries' mental unraveling is quite impressive as well.

Overall, I found the story to be one of the best, if not the very best Batman story I've ever read.  A big reason is that the character of Batman is still very human and easy to relate to.

Nowadays, writers like to have Batman as this incredibly hardcore, intense, ultra organized, high-tech, crime fighting bad ass.  That's all well and good, and fun to read, but the Batman in Snow is still very much a still-learning-the ropes crime fighter who is learning how to best go about his business on the fly.  He isn't great buds with Jim Gordon yet, the D.A. doesn't fully trust him, and his whole operation has a very homespun feel to it.

This is a Batman that takes an occasional whoopin', the occasional fall, and the occasional gunshot wound from low-life criminals.  All this comes together to make this version of Batman a lot of fun to read, because he isn't gonna be perfect and he is gonna make mistakes...plus, perfect is boring anyway.

In addition to what is some really great writing is the wonderful artwork of Seth Fisher.  Sadly, Seth Fisher is no longer with us, but his amazing talent lives on in this work and some other DC projects.  Fisher's art style is not what you typically see on superhero books, let alone a Bat-title, but his art here is nothing short of fantastic.  His style is hard to put a finger on but I'd say his stuff reminds me a bit of Frank Quitely but there's other influences mixed in there that I can't totally put my finger on.  I could see how some fans might not like his Batman character design, who is not exactly rippling with muscles or rocking facial features that appear chiseled out of granite, but that all serves to make the character seem more human.

I really enjoyed how Fisher chose to depict the story in such a way that can only be achieved via the comics medium.  Take the above picture, which depicts a cut-away, top down view of Batman's highly cluttered, and disorganized home/batcave. A picture is truly worth a thousand words here as you can tell just from this how Batman is still in the early stages of his crime fighting career, and running a low-tech, "home-brew" style operation.  Not to mention, the cut-away allows the reader to see so much more than you could get in any other story telling medium, allow while being details the reader takes in peripherally and tacitly.  There are many other moments too where Fisher shows the story in such a way that can only be achieved in comics.

Not one to sit on his laurels, Fisher is also capable of delivering some great action and motion art.  He can deliver a great cinematic feel to these moments and create that larger-than-life feel, yet never making things seem too over the top or cheesy.

This is personal thing that I'm a fan of and maybe of no interest to other folks, but I love it when artists draw in their own sound effects and make them part of the art. It's sorta a thing that has gone away in this age of photoshop, as most sound effects are added in during the final stages of comic production, but not so here.  Fisher does his own, and they are a great blend of spot on perfect for the moment, and down-right silly.  I was a fan.

As I said earlier, this is probably the best Batman story I've ever read.  This one has that much sought after combo of great writing and great art that combine to work extremely well together.  The story you get is quite good, and even provides some touching and tragic moments.  Not your standard superhero fare, just a story that is about 100 notches above the standard.  So, yeah, highly recommended, and one of the best graphic novels I've read so far this year.

Grade: A+

Book Review: Blackbirds

Now, I'm not usually an Urban Fantasy guy, but I gotta admit, the sub-genre is starting to grow on me, ever so slowly.  So I thought I'd get a bit more Urban Fantasy seasoning with Chuck Wendig's Blackbirds.

Blackbirds is a straight forward, fast-paced novel that stars one of the most abrasive protagonists I've ever experienced.  Her name is Miriam, and she can tell when you are going to die.  All it takes is a single touch, and boom, she knows the exact time, and date of your demise, and can even see the event play out in her mind's eye.

Not the greatest of special abilities to acquire, not even close.

As you might imagine, given the nature of her ability, she isn't the kind of gal who seeks out the company of others.  She isn't a recluse though, more of a drifter; never staying in one place long enough to get to know names, let alone recognize faces.  That said, she doesn't go the Rouge, a la X-Men, route and wear gloves and avoid all human contact either.  On the occasions when she does make contact with another person she accepts their death for what it is, (after all, everyone dies eventually) and goes about her business.  That is until she meets Louis.

Louis seemed like just another trucker she was hitching a ride from but when she accidentally makes contact with him and sees his death, and hears him call out her name while he dies she knows his death is due to his association with Miriam...and chances are, she'll be the killer's next victim. Now, if she wants to stay alive, Miriam must find a way to thwart fate itself.

Blackbirds is a book that is, for better or worse, driven by the personality of Miriam. Thanks to her special ability, Miriam tends to fend off human contact by the sheer force of her abrasive personality.  She's very quick to drive people away with venomous words and put downs, which on the one hand, makes her tough to like, but pretty fun to read.  I found myself evenly torn between like and dislike.  Still, the fact the Wendig is able to make me feel strongly about Miriam shows that he is capable of writing a story with a memorable character.

Once you move away from Miriam, the other characters seem to pale in comparison.  This might haven been a deliberate thing done by Wendig to ensure that Miriam stands out as the driving force in the story, but it also means that the other characters that populate this tale seem to embody a specific, one-dimensional personality type and not much else.

On the pacing front, this is a story that zips right along. Wendig is economic in his ability to deliver the story, pertinent background info, and character development all while tying it into the narrative so that the reader never feels like they are getting information dropped on their heads. A nice skill to say the least.

In addition to this being a book that flows along like a raging river, it's also a damn quick read.  Blackbirds is one of those books that could easily be consumed in one fell swoop. I read this one on my Kindle, so it was hard to gauge length, but when I cross referenced where I was in the story with a hard copy of the book at a bookstore, I was surprised to see how much of the book I was able to devour in the small moments I carve out for reading.

So, in the end you get a book with an interesting premise, an engaging lead character, and an easily devoured, fast-paced read.  If I were to liken reading this novel to eating, I'd say it's a lot like eating a doughnut; Initially tasty, and easily consumed, but not exactly something that will provide the best sustenance.  Though Blackbirds is an enjoyable read, it is easy come, easy go, and not a book that I foresee living long in my memory.  It's hard to put my finger on what exactly it is missing, but it doesn't quite toggle all my switches.  Worth checking out, but not a must-read.

Grade: C+

SDCC News Round-Up!

In case you didn't know, San Diego Comicon, the most epic of all the comic conventions happened this past July 12th-15th.  As usual, there were lots of announcements being made, some cool and interesting some, not so much.  Here's the stuff I found interesting...to be honest, there wasn't a ton of stuff that was all that exciting to me.

First and foremost, the Eisner Awards were handed out.  I apparently have poor taste in comics, because out of all the things that won awards, I read a grand total of two and a half winners.  In truth it's only one and a half because I read the "Best Single Issue" award winner (Daredevil #7) and the "Best Continuing Series " winner, (Daredevil).  So, by reading a few issues of Daredevil, I managed to read two Eisner Award winners.  I got the "half" score because I've read a few of the Dark Horse Presents issues which won "Best Anthology", but not all of them.

I do hope to read Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal series, which won "Best Limited Series", as well as Green River Killer which won "Best Reality Based Work".  I've heard good things about that one.

Congrats to all the winners. For a list of all the winners, and pics of the actual work, check out this sweet Comics Alliance post.

In some publication news that I actually care about, Image, the comics publisher that seems to put out 90% of the comics I actually want to read, delivered a laundry list of future publications and the list looks to be pretty sweet.

Most notable among said list is Pretty Deadly, a western tale about an assassin with a scarred face. The story features a female lead, and promises western action, so I'm in.  Kelly Sue DeConnick, and Emma Rios are the creators for that one, and I'm excited to see what they have to offer. I'm completely unfamiliar with either of these creators, but an all-female creative team is a very rare thing in comics and I'm all for supporting their efforts. My issues with gender inequality in the field of comics aside, the concept seems pretty cool, so I'm excited to check out Pretty Deadly.  The cover looks pretty awesome too.

There's also a new Greg Rucka project they mentioned coming in 2013 and another Brandon Graham project, Multiple Warheads which will hopefully be as amazing as Prophet has been.  Multiple Warheads  looks to be hitting shelves in October, so I wont have to wait too long to get my hands on that one.  Check out the cover:

Looks pretty awesome to me!

Lastly, Neil Gaiman will be returning to his much loved comics series, The Sandman (which I haven't read...shame on me!) with an amazing partner in crime handling the art...Battle Hymns' favorite, J.H. Williams III!  The duo will be putting out a mini-series which will hit stores in 2013.  No word in how many issues, or an actual title, but I'm sure details will surface as the publication date draws near.  The JHW3 art they tease with the announcement looks to be pretty incredible.  

I guess this means I'll need to get off my ass and finally get around to reading The Sandman.

That seems like a pretty awesome way to wrap up a links post.  I know that doesn't seem like a lot to be excited about, but as I scoured the various comics blogs for SDCC news coverage, I honestly didn't find much else to be excited about.  There were TONS of other announcements, so which ones did you find the most interesting?

****Special THANKS to my two favorite comics websites, MULTIVERSITY COMICS and COMICS ALLIANCE for their awesome coverage of SDCC.  This post wouldn't be possible without their coverage, news, links, pics, and all that good stuff!  Cheers!****

Music Review: Red Fang- Murder the Mountains

Murder the Mountains, an aptly named album title if there ever was one, because Red Fang has created an album here that will topple the mightiest of snowy peaked mountains.

I've dabbled in Red Fang's music before, mostly via Pandora, and have been craving one of their albums for a while now.  When I'm exploring a new band I usually like to start at the beginning, but I haven't been able to track down Red Fang's self-titled debut album here in Seattle.  So I did the next best thing; I bought their second album.  And boy, is it good.

Allow me to describe Red Fang's sound via analogy: If music was a drug and Queens of the Stoneage and Mastodon were two varieties of a powerful stimulant, and they got combined into one wonder-drug, then had the purity of said wonder-drug cut for street consumption, you'd get a wonderful, highly addictive thing called Red Fang.  These Red Fang fellahs take the rock n' roll catchy-ness of QOTSA the heavy metal progginess of Mastdon and meld it into one absolutely fantastic album that is not quite metal, but  far too prickly and heavy to be called rock.

This is an album that starts out strong with the opening track, Malverde and builds up momentum and brutal-ness as it progresses towards the mid-way point and my personal favorite song of the album, Throw Up, a song that works in some awesome changes that go in exactly all the right places.

This is a band that can write a catchy riff, lyrics you want to sing/snarl/mumble along with and instrumentals that are guaranteed to rock the socks off any listener.  Throw Up is a song that has all of the above in epic abundance. The second half of the album has more of a rock n' roll feel than the first half, and though it shows a different side of the band's sound, is equally strong and impressive.  


It has been a long time since I've explored a new band and have it be one that I take an instant liking to. I like their no-nonsense approach to making great music.  I like their straight forward songs that are tightly composed and incredibly catchy. And I like that they are a heavy band from the Pacific Northwest, a region once known for turning out great music that has sadly deteriorated into a breeding ground for shitty emo and indie-rock bands.  Thankfully, Red Fang is neither.  They're just a kick-ass hard-rock/metal band that is making great music.  


One thing is for sure, as I age, I haven't lost my taste for heavy music.  However, I have noticed that I have a great appreciation for other (less heavy) varieties of music these days, and Red Fang is the perfect band to bridge that gap.  


Make no mistake, Murder the Mountains is a great album, but the crazy thing is, It gets increasingly better the more I listen to it.  It started out very good, and is well on it's way to great.  This is easily one of the best albums I've bought in the past few years, and it keeps growing on me.

For those who aren't total metal heads, but like to head-bang on occasion, or enjoy hearing some great guitar this is a great place to explore.  For metal lovers like me, who have been looking for their next new favorite band, well, Red Fang is where it's at.  With only two albums under their belts, this is a band that appears to be on the track towards great things.  I can't wait until their next album.  Until then, you'll find me listening to and loving Murder the Mountains.

Grade: A

Graphic Novel Review: Locke & Key Vol. 3 Crown of Shadows

Since I read the first volume in the Locke & Key series, Welcome to Lovecraft last September, I have been head over heels for this fantastic comic.  Each of the previous two volumes were special enough to rate a tie for second place on my 2011 Graphic Novels of the Year list.  Locke & Key is a comic series that's still in progress, so I've been trying to spread out my reading of the series so that I don't over-indulge, then wind up having to wait impatiently for the new collected editions to come out.  I guess I've done alright with the whole rationing bit since I've managed to hold out since last November.

This time around the Locke children must face not only Dodge, the malevolent spirit that plagues their home, an army of shadows under Dodge's command, but also their mother who is unraveling right before their eyes.

After the previous two volumes which were pretty much mind blowing comics of epic proportions, I'd have to say Crown of Shadows is a slight step back, but still, quite fantastic.  More so than the previous two volumes, I would have to say that Gabriel Rodriguez' art really shines through as the star in this one.  He's called upon to draw some really fantastical, unreal and even tragic things in this volume, from semi-substantial ghosts, to shadows that can take on any form, to the mental breakdown of a grown woman.  That's a lot of variety, but Rodriguez not only pulls it off, but he manages to make it look astounding as well.

I've become really attached to Rodriguez' style and I can't imagine this series with anyone else at the art helm.  Rodriguez is really good at adding little bits of detail to his panels.  These details serve to make the world really come to life, but on top of that, there are often little clues and plot details hidden in plain sight.  Hill and Rodriguez will often use this hidden-treasures technique to clue the reader into things that some of the characters may not be privy to just yet, or to hint at things that will be important in the future.  It is a cool little technique that I haven't seen used too often in other comics, and it can offer some rewarding moments to the reader when they discover cool hidden gems...though it does make me wonder how many of the buggers I've missed!

Once again, Joe Hill is at the top of his writing game.  The guy continues to impress me each and every time I read one of his works.  With the Locke & Key series, Hill is working magic with the ol' hidden cards technique.  Hill has been masterfully revealing crucial plot elements and story events (and magical keys) at just the right moments so far, and from what I can tell, there are many more great reveals to be had in the future. The man might just be playing with a dozen or so aces up his sleeves, but that's fine by me because I'm enthralled, and I want to see what's in store for this poor beleaguered family.  This might sound like the ravings of a fan-boy, but Hill's writing, scripting, and plot development in the Locke & Key series is some of the very best I've ever seen in comics.

So while I'm still wiping up drool and going through withdrawal from this last Locke & Key reading experience, I strongly urge those who haven't yet started in on this series to do so immediately.  This is one of the most rewarding, powerful, and downright entertaining reads out there comics or otherwise, and should not be missed.  We'll see how long I can hold out until volume four.

Grade: A

News: John Layman to write Detective Comics!

So the other day, while I was recovering from my July 4th celebrations, DC announced that they had selected their new writer and artist team for Detective Comics.  Much to my surprise, they went and named John Layman of Chew fame as the Dark Knight's new writer...Holy fucking wild card choice Batman!

Layman takes over with issue #13 and follows up writer/artist Tony S. Daniel whose run on the DCnU Detective Comics I could only tolerate about three issues of.  So, even though this is Layman's first real crack at mainstream big two comics, I'm thinking it's a positive turn of events.

Layman had this to say about the announcement:

"Obviously, this is a happily surreal and exciting turn-of-events for my career. Not only is this my first work within the DC Universe, but I get to work on one of DC’s undisputedly coolest and highest-profile characters. I’m going to take a look at the role of criminal organizations within Gotham City, hopefully from a perspective that does not get considered very often (if at all). From the symbiotic relationship a master criminal must have with Gotham in order to survive, to the lowly, often faceless criminal underling hoping to rise up the ranks. All that, plus Batman’s gonna play with a bunch of crazy new toys and kick all kinds of butt."

Joining him on the art front will be Jason Fabok, who I'm pretty sure has done some Batman art before, but I'm not positive, and I'm too lazy to look it up.  Either way, judging from that sweet cover, which features one of my favorite bat-villains, The Penguin, he looks like an improvement over Daniel's 90's style art which I wasn't a fan of.  


I gotta say, John Layman as the new Detective Comics writer seems like a total wild-card choice, but I think there's a very good chance he'll infuse some much needed life into a character who, though I love him, can be mishandled at the best of times.  I'm looking forward to seeing what Layman has in store for Batman.

Sources: John Layman's Facebook Page and DC Comics.