Deep sea divers still hate cephalopods

While Michael's in San Diego for the Big Show, it's Cephalopod Week at the Adventureblog!



[By Richard Sala]

Captain Nemo still hates cephalopods

While Michael's in San Diego for the Big Show, it's Cephalopod Week at the Adventureblog!



[Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool]

Naked guys...sort of seem to be okay with cephalopods

While Michael's in San Diego for the Big Show, it's Cephalopod Week at the Adventureblog!



This was sent in by a reader. I don't know what's going on here, but it's Kaluta, so I'm not questioning it. It's awesome.

The 1% hate cephalopods

While Michael's in San Diego for the Big Show, it's Cephalopod Week at the Adventureblog!



[Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool]

Astronauts hate cephalopods

While Michael's in San Diego for the Big Show, it's Cephalopod Week at the Adventureblog!



[Pulp Covers]

Gone conventioning!

I'm leaving town early tomorrow for San Diego. It's part family vacation, part working gig for Comic Book Resources, but it'll keep me from doing any real blogging all next week.

Instead, we'll have a week of Cephalopod Hating and I'll update Twitter and Facebook as I can.

Hope you have a great week. If you're going to be at Comic-Con, let me know and let's meet up!

The Legend from the Volcano Depths hates cephalopods

Especially ones that shoot laser beams from their tentacles. [Pulp Covers]

Rest in Peace, Andy

"The Manhunt" is pretty much the perfect Andy Griffith Show episode. It opens with a wonderful scene between Andy and Opie and quickly turns into a showcase for the best comedy team in the history of laughing. Andy wasn't just a great straight man to Don Knotts' amazing talent, he was a formidable comedian on his own. I miss you, Sheriff.

Defending The Patriot

I didn't get to last week's League of Extraordinary Bloggers assignment about patriotic pop culture ("What movie, TV show, comic book, etc. makes you want to stand up and salute Old Glory? "), but if I had, I would've written about The Patriot. Today seems like a good day to catch up.

It's not cool to like The Patriot, especially these days after the Fall of Mel Gibson, but even back in the day it had a bad reputation as the American Braveheart. That's not fair.

I understand re-assessing Mel Gibson movies in light of his off-screen activities; I'm not going to say that people shouldn't do that. My problem is with faulting The Patriot for having a superficially similar theme to Braveheart. That's a shallow reason not to like a movie, especially when it has so much going for it.



I'm not going to defend Gibson's personal actions or statements, but there's no denying that the man can act and he brings it in The Patriot. I never related to Braveheart (I'm more of a Rob Roy man), but The Patriot goes into some themes that resonate with me in a powerful way. It's not just about revolution and fighting for what you believe in, it's about protecting your family and the sacrifices you have to make to do that.

Gibson's character, Benjamin Martin is deeply conflicted. He hates how England is treating the Colonies, but isn't willing to put his family in danger to support a revolt. As someone who never had to sacrifice anything for my privileges as a US citizen, I can relate to that. I can't think of anything that would make me sacrifice my family's security. What's amazing about Martin's experience is how it flips that protectiveness around and turns it into a reason to stay away from his family and join the revolution. Gibson struggles with his decisions in a powerful, relateable way, so by the time he's fully invested in the war, so am I. The Patriot helps me relate to grand themes like oppression and freedom by connecting them to something as simple and primal as love of family. It's a pretty obvious trick - and I can see why some are resistant to being manipulated that way - but even though I'm not easily roused by patriotic themes,it works on me.

The rest of the cast is as good as Gibson. Playing Martin's oldest son was the breakout role for Heath Ledger (10 Things I Hate About You was the only thing anyone had seen him in up to then) and Jason Isaacs grabbed more attention than ever by being the most deliciously evil villain since Alan Rickman in Die Hard. The kids are all good (Skye McCole Bartusiak has an especially memorable moment as Martin's youngest daughter) and Joely Richardson is an inspiring heroine who holds the family together while Martin protects them in the war. Think I'm going to go watch it again right now.

Pull List | Rethinking single-issue comics

Atomic Robo: The Flying She-Devils of the Pacific #1

I recently started buying single issues of comics again. Not because I feel like I'm hurting the industry by trade-waiting (I don't), but because it's more fun that way. A lot of writers and publishers are making obvious efforts to create a more rewarding experience out of buying single-issues.

The trouble is that I've just started adding series to my pull list willy-nilly without giving a lot of thought to what I'm doing. That's where this post comes in. I'm going to start assessing what I'm buying every week and make some choices. I need some limits, not only for budget reasons, but also to protect my time.

I've decided that a pull list of 20 series is pretty reasonable. That works out to about five, individual issues a week: a little over an hour of reading time and between $15 and $20. It doesn't include graphic novels and series that read better in collected form (BPRD, for instance). I'll have to assess those separately.

Saga #4

Last week, the single issues I bought were (in alphabetical order):

All-Star Western
Atomic Robo
Aquaman
Courtney Crumrin
Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE 
Saga
The Spider

Of those seven, I know that I want four on my final list of 20.

I've been a fan of Atomic Robo since it started and though I also want the collections on my shelf where they're easy to get to, it's a comic that's really made to be read as single issues. I resisted buying both versions, but it always hurts me when I pass up the monthly version on the shelves. That tells me something.

Courtney Crumrin is another series I'm going to want to keep buying. I love Ted Naifeh's work in general and it's great to be able to read about his terrifying, but so-cool, little witch girl on a regular schedule. Plus, the individual issues feel like complete units, even though they're parts of a larger story.

Courtney Crumrin #3

I just decided last week to check out Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staple's Saga instead of waiting for the collection. I'm glad I did, because it reminded me how much I enjoyed getting a new installment of a BKV comic every month. This one is a space opera with fantasy and horror elements and there's a huge feeling that absolutely anything can happen from month to month. It's a brand new universe that needs exploring.

Finally, David Liss and Colton Worley's The Spider is a fantastic pulp-superhero series that I don't want to wait for.

The other three series are all on the bubble for various reasons. I really liked Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE when Jeff Lemire was writing it, and loved Matt Kindt's first issue for what it was. The problem is that Kindt changed some things in a way that jolted me a little. It's a speed bump I expect to be able to get over, but it shook my confidence some.

The Spider #2

I'm also generally enjoying Aquaman (I'm behind on it, but catching up), but I'm not fully sold on it yet. I'm tired of the constant reminder that Aquaman's a pop-culture joke and the series' defensiveness about that. There was also a fill-in issue in which Mera is sexually harassed in an unbelievable, ridiculous way just so she can show how tough she is by beating the guy up. In other words, the comic feels desperate; like it has to cheat in order to make its heroes seem cool. On the other hand, Aquaman's teamed up with a jungle girl, so that's pretty great.

I'm almost positive I'm done with All-Star Western. It keeps retelling the same story in different ways and after ten issues, I'm looking for something new. As I keep adding series to my 20 every week, I expect All-Star Western to fall off the list pretty quickly.

Here's how I rank these seven:

1. Atomic Robo
2. Saga
3. Courtney Crumrin
4. The Spider
5. Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE
6. Aquaman
7. All-Star Western

Better living through The Hunger Games

I finally finished Mockingjay last week, wrapping up the Hunger Games trilogy. If you haven’t read the series yet, it’s as good as they say.

I have a couple of observations. First, it’s sad that some of the conversation around the series has gone off into Team Gale and Team Peeta territory. I’m tempted to also call it ridiculous, but honestly, I understand the temptation. Katniss spends a lot of time trying to untangle her feelings about these two guys and there’s no harm in hoping she’ll pick one over the other. In fact, I identified with Peeta early on and rooted for him.

But the books are about so much more than romance and it’s a crime to choose Team Favorite-Boy when the series is so obviously asking you to be on Team Katniss. Which lad she picks isn’t about who can make her eternally happy – an emotional state that’s never held up as a legitimate option in the first place – but about how Katniss sees herself. Gale knows her better than anyone else and she trusts him completely, but he’s so angry (justifiably so) at the state of the world. Choosing him represents taking comfort in the way she already sees the world.

Her other option is Peeta, a boy she doesn’t know except that he was once very kind to her. Peeta’s response to the world isn’t to rail against it, but to find peace within himself. Choosing him represents a huge leap into a scary and unfamiliar, but ultimately healthier world view. Yet another reason I wanted her to choose him. The better reason actually. I won’t give away what choice she makes (or even if she chooses either of them), but I will say that what she does felt entirely right for her when I read it. The series is nothing if not honest to its characters.



The books do have some issues though. Mockingjay has some exciting set pieces, but it also drags in several places. My biggest problem with the series though applies to all three books, even the consistently thrilling Hunger Games and Catching Fire. The trouble is that Katniss is kind of stupid.

By which I mean that it takes her a long time to figure out things that were pretty obvious to me, especially when it comes to trusting people who are trying to help her. And though it’s a problem because I’m yelling at the book, Suzanne Collins turns it into strength in a couple of ways. First, it’s entirely within Katniss’ character not to trust people. It's not really stupidity at all, but a strong survival instinct. She has no real reason to trust anyone except for Gale and her sister. I had to keep reminding myself of that, but my forgetting it doesn’t make it less true or less important an aspect of who she is and how she thinks.

Second, Collins kept fooling me too. She kept building my confidence (“Oh, that person’s totally on Katniss’ side. Why can’t she see that?”) and then breaking it down by throwing in something completely unexpected (“That person’s trying to kill Katniss? Where did that come from?”). Though I felt like I was mentally ahead of Katniss about 90% of the time, I was probably only right about what was going on about 50%. It’s that uncertainty that makes the series so captivating. I love not knowing what’s about to happen.



I’m a slow reader, so while I was working my way through Catching Fire (before I gave up and bought it on Audible to listen to in the car), a friend of mine read the entire series through about three or four times. I didn’t question her about it, but I wondered to myself what the attraction was. As I was reading, the series felt so much like it was about what was going to happen. Can Katniss change her world? Can she ever find peace? If so, how? With Gale? With Peeta? With neither? Once I reached the end, I expected to be done. Why would I want to re-read it when I already have my answers and can no longer enjoy being surprised?

But it was about two-thirds of the way through Mockingjay that I started feeling the desire to re-read the whole series again. Not for the mysteries, but just for the comfort of being in Katniss’ head in this fantastical, but completely real world that Collins created. It’s not a comforting world, but there are moments of comfort within it that – in contrast to the rest of what’s going on – brought me tangible serenity. It’s not that I’m learning by Katniss’ example (“If she can find a moment of comfort in her world, then I should be able to find some in mine.”); it’s that Collins is able to make me feel Katniss’ despair about the world, and then make me feel peace within that despair. That’s masterful. It creates a feeling and an experience that readers can take with them into their own lives. And who wouldn’t want to re-experience that a few times?

There’s a lot going on in the Hunger Games trilogy: commentary about war, about reality TV, about our attitudes towards those less fortunate than we are. Those are all important things for readers to think about and struggle with. But what the series is about to me is finding peace in the midst of suffering. Discovering joy within hopelessness. That’s something that everyone can use.