Tag Archives: Kurt Lance

Feb 15 2016

Black Canary 8

black canary 8

Today, Mark and Spencer are discussing Black Canary 8, originally released February 10th, 2016.

Mark: One of the privileges of adulthood is the opportunity to choose your family. Even if you love your immediate family, the family that raised you, as you grow older and move away you build another sort of family — a family comprised of friends, romantic partners, mentors, work colleagues, and so forth. This new family is your social circle, the ones your rely on on a day-to-day basis as an adult. No matter your childhood, this chosen family is an essential part of being an adult, of being independent.

The great gift and the great tragedy of life is that people can flit in and out of our lives seemingly at a whim. I moved to LA with no job and no friends, but have lucked into the most wonderful circle of human beings imaginable. Still, some friends with whom I was once super close have become more like acquaintances, and through no fault of either party. What can you do? Life moves you in one direction, and your friend in another. So even in adulthood, as much as we choose our family, life still finds a way to intervene. Continue reading →

Sep 24 2015

Black Canary 4

black canary 4

Today, Spencer and Mark are discussing Black Canary 4, originally released September 16th, 2015.

Marge: “You liked ‘Rashomon.'”
Homer: “That’s not how I remember it.”

The Simpsons — “Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo”

Spencer: By now, anybody with even the tiniest bit of pop culture-savvy is familiar with the concept of an unreliable narrator. Much like the various storytellers in “Rashomon,” an unreliable narrator believes their own personal version of the truth, even if it doesn’t necessarily jive with the experiences of everyone else present. Comics are a particularly fun medium through which to explore unreliable narrators, because the juxtaposition of words and images means that the creative team can explore two different versions of the truth at the same time. This seems to be Brenden Fletcher and Pia Guerra’s intention with Black Canary 4 as they recount Bo Maeve’s backstory, but unfortunately, the differences between Maeve’s version of the truth and reality are never quite clear enough to be effective. Continue reading →

Nov 19 2012

Team 7 2

Alternating Currents: Team 7 2, Taylor and Patrick

Today, Taylor and Patrick are discussing Team 7 2, originally released November 14th, 2012.

Taylor: Teams are in. Everywhere we look in today’s society, teamwork is emphasized as being one of the most important skills to develop. When you apply for a job, employers want to know how well you work with others and what your contribution to the team will be. Sports stars are lauded for the ability to swallow their ego and function as a member of a team that functions as one unit. And speaking of teams, we can’t ignore the recent Avengers movie which was one of biggest team love-fests to ever grace the silver screen. Hell, even Batman, the quintessential solitary dark night, learned to work on a team in Christopher Nolan’s latest film. Indeed, it seems that the way of the lone wolf — your Clint Eastwoods and wandering Ronin — is a thing of the past. Given this favorable disposition towards the idea of teamwork, it seems like DC’s Team 7 would be an instant hit. But as the second issue demonstrates both in its plot and it its execution, sometimes getting a team to work together effectively is harder than it would first appear.

Continue reading →

Oct 12 2012

Team 7 1

 

Today, Mike Logsdon and Shelby are discussing Team 7 1, originally released October 10th, 2012.

Mik: Hey all, Mikyzptlk here, but you can call me Mik (with a long “I”) if, you know, you’re into the whole brevity thing. With that out of the way, let’s get cracking. Going into Team 7, I know next to nothing about this team. I know that it was originally a Wildstorm book but that’s about it. Except for The Authority, I tended to stay away from most of what Wildstorm had to offer. That being the case, I normally wouldn’t be interested in this book but DC has done a few clever things to get me interested. First off, they’ve added a few familiar faces from the DCU into the mix and, more importantly, they’ve set the book in the early (and mostly shrouded) years of the The New 52. ZERO Month did a good job of filling in some of the details of the first 5 years of the new DCU but there are still A LOT of gaps to close. 
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Sep 24 2012

Birds of Prey 0

Today, Shelby and (special guest writer) Lindsey Peterson are discussing Birds of Prey 0, originally released September 19, 2012. Birds of Prey 0 is part of the line-wide Zero Month.

Shelby: A difficult aspect of writing a comic book has got to be maintaining the balance between new and old readers: specifically, keeping both sides happy. You want to keep the long-timers happy; without their readership, you wouldn’t have been successful in the first place. But, you need to keep your books at least a little bit attainable to attract new readers; if your readership doesn’t grow, you won’t continue to be successful. With half of zero month behind us, we’ve seen examples of origins that bore us with nothing new and origins that confound us with no background knowledge given. Then we have my favorites, those titles which have struck that delicate balance between old-hat origin and current story arc connections. Birds of Prey is definitely in that last camp.  Continue reading →

Sep 14 2012

Team 7 0

Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing Team 7 0, originally released September 12, 2012. Team 7 0 is part of the line-wide Zero Month.

Patrick: There comes a point in every heist movie where they assemble the team. Usually it’s done in a montage, featuring short (but implicitly characteristic) misadventures of various tech experts, combat experts, stealth experts — any kind of expert, really. And at the end of each little vigniette, George Clooney shows up and offers them a job.  Oh, and the whole this is scored by a poppy drum and bass loop with occasional horn accents. These sequences are always about as much fun as the heist itself and doesn’t suffer from the complexity and double-back-false logic applied to the climax of most of these stories. Team 7‘s zero issue gets us off to a breezy start, with enough action, humor and built-in mystery to prepare its audience for what promises to be dazzling run.

Continue reading →