FINALLY BACK

No witty, pop-culture referencey, obscure jokey title today, however you do get a blog from me which is something you haven't had for two months, so erm, yay? Or BOO! depending on your perspective.


OK so in true Bullseye fashion here are some blogs you could have read (stuff I started writing, over-thought, got distracted and never went back to). There was one about my addiction to caffeine, which I now seem to be over, but just to give you an idea of how bad it was I was drinking a minimum of three cups of coffee and one can of some variety of energy drink usually this variety.


I also hand wrote a review of Tarantino's most recent release Inglourious Basterds that I had intended to write up, but never got round to. There were numerous sub-blogs I half-wrote about shit that I've been watching/playing/reading/listening to most notably one about the nature of Twin Peaks and why David Lynch is both fantastic and insane (see Eraserhead).


OK so stuff that comes to my head about shit I'm doing at the moment (by doing I mean forms of entertainment I consume).


Comics:
OK so a lot of Batman universe stuff since the whole Batman (Bruce Wayne) is dead thing gave me a point to get back into comics cuz a whole bunch of new storylines would be beginning under the Batman: Reborn banner (I did read the Batman RIP trade, but have very little idea what happened after that in Final Crisis and Battle for the Cowl). So first things first Q: “How can you have Batman comics if he's dead?" A: the original Robin, Dick Grayson, who grew up and became Nightwing has adopted the role of Batman.


So the first Batman comic I got into is the new Batman and Robin title. Now there's quite a bit of in depth story bullshit about different Robins which I never really got when I read Batman comics as a kid, cuz I always ended up missing issues, but let's just skip all that and say the current Robin is Bruce's son, Damian, who is the grandson of Ra's al Ghul and therefore grew up in the world of the League of Assassin's (a group who want to rid the world of evil by destroying it and starting again). This leads to Damian believing he is very skilled what with being brought up by assassin's and is a cocky little brat whom Dick must work hard to keep in line and make Damian respect him. The Batman and Robin comics are a great, fun series with darkness that stops it all from being trivial, but an archness to the villainy that keeps it firmly within comic realm.


Next is Streets of Gotham which to me has a much more interesting concept in that it is from perspectives of different characters of Gotham, rather specifically about Batman. It does take a little while to get into the swing of this (the best issue so far is definitely #4
which focuses on the Real Estate agent who sells the super-villains their lairs)


I’m going to hold back from gushing about the writing in the two comics I’ve already mentioned, but I will say they’re both written by to of my favourite comic writers Grant Morrison and Paul Dini (who wrote a bunch of Batman: The Animated Series) respectively. The writing is at worst solid and is usually extremely good and true to character, without any plots becoming too complex or crossing over into other series (at least so far)


Next is Batgirl, quickly, it seems pretty good, it stars a hot chick and goes through some similar teen angst stuff to the early seasons in Buffy where she’s living a double life in college and being a superhero, which she must hide from her mother and pretty much everyone else. I really liked Barbara Gordon being all pissy and jealous about Stephanie Brown being Batgirl, since she used to be Batgirl and now she’s a crippled geek, but apparently that doesn’t really make sense in the continuity (again I haven’t really read comics for quite a while).


Detective Comics, which I picked up from #854, the start of the Elegy storyline which is a Batwoman, rather than a Batman character. First off, I really like the character of Cassandra Cain as Batwoman, I like her look (in my opinion she’s the hottest chick in comics, cuz she’s got a lot of attitude which comes through in the way JH Williams III draws her. Plus pale skin and red hair is kinda my style). Also she’s a lesbian character that doesn’t seem to be all about gratuitous girl on girl stuff, she’s also not some kind of anti-man stereotype, but a real person. The best thing about this comic though is the art, which is really cool and absolutely beautiful, when she’s Katherine Kane the art style is very clean, simple inks, but as soon as she puts on her costume the art becomes painted, with a gorgeous amount of detail in light and shade and the colours used in the washes are absolutely gorgeous. The story of this is a little dumb, focusing on the villain Alice (does DC really need another Alice in Wonderland villain?) but it’s still at least solid and has a bit of an emotional pull with Kate’s father, I would like to see some more of Kate’s personal life in the next arc though.

Batwoman's clean trad comic art style
The painted style with beatiful colours and light and shade etc.


Outside of Batman, my focus is more on Marvel, just finished reading some Stephen King brand comics The Stand is basically just the novel in comic form, but it’s pretty well done considering the scale of that novel; the other is whatever the last Dark Tower story arc was, which tells the tale of Roland Deschain’s childhood from the point in Wizard & Glass on, I really like where the story goes and enjoy seeing more of that universe, but both of the two Stephen King comics occasionally annoy me with their art, which sometimes borders on the grotesque in its facial details.


Captain America Reborn. I really thought this would suck, I thought Marvel were really brave killing of Cap and obviously they were going to bring him back at some point, but I really did hope it would take them longer, however having read the series now it seems like this was part of the plan and the story is building up to be really cool. Captain America is not dead, but instead lost in time doomed to live through his life again and again with little control over his actions and the way events unfold, and a fear that any change may have catastrophic consequences. The art is kinda standard Marvel, it’s good, but not really anything special stylistically.


I also read Wolverine Noir which was cool and really captured Film Noir in its art and tone, the story did have its share of femme fatales and double crosses and Wolverine certainly got beaten to rock bottom, but I felt that it could’ve done with another couple of issues to allow the story to develop and be a bit more of a noir mystery, I didn’t feel like we saw enough of Wolverine the detective.


I probably read a bunch of other shit, but this is really long now and I can’t be bothered. I was gonna cover all the other stuff i.e. games, movies, TV etc. but I guess that’s gonna have to wait for next time, hope you enjoyed, my extended return to the blogosphere.


Oh yeah, also what I'm actually doing is I'm unemployed, I deferred my place on the Cinema & Photography course at Leeds University. Going to the Job Centre is stressful and demeaning, but I guess it's supposed to be. I'm applying for a bunch of jobs in a kind of random fashion and spending the rest of my time wasting time and thinking I should be writing something or filming something.