Category Image

May 19 2014

Shutter 2

shutter 2Today, Patrick and Greg are discussing Shutter 2, originally released May 14th, 2014

Patrick: Do you remember the first time you realized your childhood experience wasn’t the same as everyone else’s? My Grandparents lived in Florida over the winter, and my mother made it a priority to spend at least a week with them every year. That meant that she pulled us out of school in Wisconsin for two weeks every year (incidentally, it means we also spent a weekend at Disney every year before finishing the drive down to Anne and Elmer’s place). I had grown up assuming that everyone’s mother gathered two weeks worth of homework for their children before forcing a vacation at the least opportune time for everyone. This was a normal occurrence for the Ehlers family, and while it’s a simple and trivial example, it demonstrates how no one thinks their childhood is strange — or even unusual — until they grow up. Still, I think there’s part of me deep down that still feels like I should be able to take two weeks off to go to Disney apropo of nothing every winter. Katie’s childhood is undoubtedly stranger than mine, but she too has that creeping inkling of assumed normalcy. Only, y’know, it involves cat-gangsters, ghost ninjas and flying saucers. Continue reading →

May 9 2014

Rat Queens 6

rat queens 6

Today, Spencer and Shelby are discussing Rat Queens 6, originally released May 7th, 2014.

Spencer: If you asked me to describe the members of Rat Queens, I’d probably start by calling them “young punk rock Golden Girls as D&D characters,” and while there’s certainly an element of humor to that, I think there’s also more than a little truth. How many of you have actually watched Golden Girls? The four leads were the best of friends, close as family, but they didn’t meet until they were all in their 50s or 60s, meaning that they were constantly hearing stories or meeting people from each other’s pasts that they had never heard of before. I was reminded of this while reading Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch’s Rat Queens 6; it’s obvious how close our adventurers are and how much they care about each other, but it’s just as clear that they know absolutely nothing about each other’s pasts. Continue reading →

Apr 30 2014

Lazarus 8

lazarus 8Today, Shelby and Spencer are discussing Lazarus 8, originally released April 23rd, 2014.

The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

Traditional

The nail which sticks out gets hammered down.

Japanese Proverb

Shelby: Two opposing ideas: one, that speaking up about problems is the only way to call attention to them and get them fixed, the other, that maybe standing out from the crowd and speaking out is more dangerous than it’s worth. I am firmly in the former camp; I believe dissent is the first, important step to affect change. After all, if no one knows there’s a problem, how’s it going to get solved? But maybe I only feel that way because I’ve had the luxury of never being in a situation where that would be the more dangerous approach.

Continue reading →

Apr 30 2014

The Manhattan Projects 20

manhattan projects 20Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing The Manhattan Projects 20, originally released April 23, 2014.

“Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”

Robert Oppenheimer, actual American History

Patrick: J. Robert Oppenheimer repeated this phrase, which he had read in the Bhadavad Gita, when we witnessed the first test of the atomic bomb. This is recorded in actual history text books, and widely believed to be true, but what exactly he meant by invoking the passage remains up to interpretation. Is he calmly asserting his own will over the strength of human life? Is he mourning his eternal loss of innocence? The odd syntax and the double verb make it an ungainly sentence, and speaking it aloud feels just as strange as the realization itself. Manhattan Projects has long been a series about an alternate American History, but this is the first issue to make a point of a similarity between all universes: Robert Oppenheimer is the face of evil.

Continue reading →

Apr 28 2014

Zero 7

Today, Taylor and Drew are discussing Zero 7, originally released April 23rd, 2014.

Taylor: Beaches are memorable places. Most obviously, they are pleasant and warm — a veritable buffet of sensory delights. But beaches are also places of mystery and harbors of the strange. They’re the border between two worlds. On the one side you have dry land, man’s habitat and therefore a place of life. On the other side you have the wet desert of the ocean, a place that while beautiful, can’t sustain human life. However, long ago, man came from the ocean, making the watery depths paradoxically a place of life as well as death for mankind. For these reasons (and others) many gravitate to beaches around the world to enjoy scenery and delights as well as muse on the meaning of all things philosophical. Given these themes, it’s no wonder that Zero now finds itself musing on the sandy boundary. It’s the perfect setting for issue 7, which sees the tides of the narrative shifting in an unexpected and thought provoking direction.

Continue reading →

Apr 15 2014

Manifest Destiny 6

Alternating Currents: Manifest Destiny 6, Drew and GregToday, Drew and Greg are discussing Manifest Destiny 6, originally released April 9th, 2014.

Hell is a terrible place. Maggots are your sheet, worms your blanket, there’s a lake of fire burning with sulfur. You’ll be tormented day and night for ever and ever. As a matter of fact, if you actually saw hell, you’d be so frightened, you would die.

Miss Albright, “Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment”

Drew: Do you ever get the impression that people are trying way too hard to make hell scary? Fire and brimstone is exactly as generically horrible as harps and white robes are generically pleasant — I understand the gist, but holy crap do those rewards and punishments have no relation to my everyday life. I suppose the reason the over-the-top conception of hell is so frustrating to me is that it ignores a much scarier truth about a life of sin, one that remains true even if you don’t believe in any kind of afterlife: that you may be forever tormented by your own guilt. If you believe you are deserving of some horrible fate, you will spend your days waiting for the axe to fall, while someone at peace with their actions may lead a more serene, contented existence. In that way, Heaven and Hell aren’t destinations we move to at the ends of our lives, but mindsets we create for ourselves as we move through them. These are feelings that tend to lie dormant, but can be brought to the surface by something as big as a loved one passing, or as small as having one too many drinks. Manifest Destiny 6 finds Lewis and Clark confronted by both ends of the spectrum (if you replace the drinks with a potent floral hallucinogen), and shows just how differently they respond.

Continue reading →

Apr 14 2014

East of West 11

Alternating Currents: East of West 11, Drew and TaylorToday, Drew and Taylor are discussing East of West 11, originally released April 9th, 2014.

That’s when the attack comes — not from the front, no, from the side, from the other two raptors you didn’t even know were there.

– Alan Grant, Jurassic Park

Clever girl…

– Robert Muldoon, Jurassic Park

Drew: I’m not sure I can explain why, but some of my favorite movies feature surprises that are actually spoiled within the movie itself. Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy perfected this idea, basically using it to structure each film, but my all-time favorite example has to be the raptor attack from Jurassic Park. The attack doesn’t come until towards the end of the movie, but is actually explained, virtually point-for-point, by Grant within the first ten minutes. In the excitement of the scene, we forget what Grant said about raptor attacks, and can only piece it together after it happens — after we realize that we already knew what would happen. While Jonathan Hickman doesn’t hide anything quite as shocking as a surprise velociraptor in East of West 11, he does blindside us with an element that has been hidden in plain sight since the beginning: the Endless Nation.

Continue reading →

Apr 4 2014

Starlight 2

Today, Taylor and Drew are discussing Starlight 2, originally released April 2nd, 2014

Taylor: In Western society we have a bad habit of forgetting the elderly. Indeed, when we aren’t forgetting them, the aged are bothering the young with their healthcare needs, their devotion to voting, and their being a reminder of what awaits us all later in life. I have to admit, one of my deepest fears is growing old and being alone with no one around giving a crap about this old fart. The gut-punch that was the first issue of Starlight explored the way a meaningful life can wither into one of loneliness and with it, a tale of redemption was set. In the second issue of the series, Duke McQueen — senior citizen and planet saver — laces up his boots once again to save Tantalus and it is an absolute delight.

Continue reading →

Mar 25 2014

Zero 6

zero 6Today, Patrick and Taylor are discussing Zero 6, originally released March 19th, 2014.

Patrick: When you read a comic book, you’re opting in to a narrative. The same is true of watching a TV show or movie (or reading some kind of non-comic book, should just a thing even exist), but following an on-going series requires a kind of continuous buy-in that just isn’t there for most other mediums. There is a cost associated with picking up your serialized entertainment this way: and not just financial — getting the most out of any one issue of Zero requires a look back at all the issues that came before it. Great example: In January, Mike and I missed that the mindblowing flashforward in issue 5 was actually foreshadowed on the first page of the first issue. So we, the audience, have to make the decision to actively participate in the story from month to month. Like good little soldiers, that’s a choice we continue to make, even when our orders don’t totally match up with what we’re experiencing.

Continue reading →

Mar 24 2014

Sex Criminals 5

sex criminals 5Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing Sex Criminals 5, originally released March 19th, 2014.

Shelby: The honeymoon’s over. The cat’s out of the bag. Issue 4 of Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky’s Sex Criminals sees a confrontation between the sex police as well as uncomfortable secrets revealed between our favorite comic book couple. The issue opens with a charming limerick summary, so I thought it would be appropriate to open our discussion in the same fashion. Ahem:

There once was a blogger called Bee
Who loved the criminals sexy
The dirty stuff was the best
But as to the rest
It was actually pretty touching (heh) to see

Continue reading →