Marvel Comics and Peanut Butter Sandwiches
As previously mentioned, I've been on a bit of a comics kick just recently. I blame Thor.
So let me see, in the last few weeks I have: finally finished reading New Avengers, re-read most of the Steve/Tony fic I have bookmarked, written some fic myself, decided to start watching the entirety of Atop The 4th Wall, started reading House of M (and being happy about it because it means Steve and Tony are back together! YAY! Also snerking at Professor X and Magneto and looking forward to X-Men: First Class even more because of it) and discovered that 2am, me and Amazon.co.uk are 3 things that shouldn't mix. Despite wanting to buy all the things I was very good and only bought 3 Marvel Essentials books. I wanted to get Avengers Vol. 1 but it was out of stock but I decided to order it anyway. Instead I thought I would also order Avengers Vol. 2 because that was in stock, but only had a few copies left so I wanted to get it before they ran out. However, because I didn't want to start at Vol. 2, I needed something that would tide me over until Vol.1 arrived. So I also ordered Captain America Vol.1. This seemed a perfectly logical progression of ideas at the time. Now... eh.
Anywho, so after a small amount of package wrangling (they were too big to fit through the letterbox), I picked them up today.
Yay! Shiny!
So anyway, I started reading Captain America this morning. It is everything you would want from Silver Age Captain America. Seriously, page 3 and this happens:
Need I say more? It's also fun looking at the covers because, since these are Tales of Suspense issues, you also get the concurrent Iron Man covers. It's quite fun playing "guess the story" from the title and cover. Some day, I'm gonna have to get the Iron Man book with the corresponding stories in to play match up with.
Although, I'd also be quite interested to read about the adventures of Iron Captain and Man America
The stories are ridiculous but fun. Apart from the hideously racist one where Cap rescues a pilot from those awful Chinese Commies in Vietnam and fights a Sumo Wrestler. Yeah...
And at the moment they're retelling the adventures of Captain America and Bucky during the Second World War, so there are lots of Nazis who go around talkink like zis mit ze most ridiculous accents effer vitnessed outside of an episode of 'Allo 'Allo.
And Cap has a penchant for standing like this:
He's going to do himself a mischief if he's not careful.
But he's Cap and I love him. There is something so awesome about him taking on foes armed with just a shield. And I love how his fights are all about technique and style and not just pounding on your enemy until they give up because you're stronger than them. Whilst spouting awesome quips like this:
Take it easy with that gun, fella! If you stole it from the weapons room, it's government property! You're wasting the *taxpayer's* bullets!
So, yeah, my love for Steve Rogers increases. (SO CANNOT WAIT FOR THE FILM)
And then in town today, I discover that WHSmiths are doing a 3 for 2 offer on all books. Including all Graphic Novels. After realising I had a £5 off voucher that I'd left at home, I decided to make the round trip back to my flat to pick it up so that I could justify to myself buying these books. (Also to pick up some dry cleaning I had forgotten in the first place). My main reason for this is simple. They had 1602. I don't think I was ever going to not buy that, was I? After nearly half an hour of agonising I decided to also get Secret War and Civil War. So I guess they can also tide me over until Avengers Vol 1 turns up.
I guess you might like to pretend to be interested in what non-comics related things I've been up to? Well the answer is not really much work, that's for sure. Last week I spent 2 1/2 days at the Annual Graduate Conference, which was pretty fun, although I wasn't particularly impressed with the hotel. The organisers were amazingly innovative though, interrupting a rather boring keynote speech by fake kidnapping the speaker and then playing a video that showed all the company's senior management getting fake kidnapped too. The next day was spent doing activities to "train us to help rescue the VPs" which basically meant a day doing fun "team building" activities and playing with some of our company's tech. It was pretty cool.
Unfortunately, about two hours after I got back on the Friday I was ill. Not sure if it was food poisoning from the hotel's lunch buffet (although that was about 6 hours previous) or just some unfortunately timed bug. I spent most of Saturday in bed, sleeping and running a temperature. Luckily, I had recovered enough by the evening to go and see Avenue Q! YAY! And proving that laughter is the best medicine, I was feeling pretty much 100% again by the time I got home.
Show was, as ever, brilliant. There was a nice little local touch too. During The Money Song, after they get back from collecting from the audience, Brian pulls a piece of paper out of a hat and says "All I've got is this degree certificate from Oxford University. That's not worth anything!" Cue gales of laughter. Made me smile.
And then this week I spent one day on a training course, and a morning in a meeting, which we managed to stretch into having a site tour and meeting my dad for coffee.
So yeah, between the conference, meetings, training course, bank holidays and just plain me having time off, I won't have worked a full week in the office from the beginning of April til the middle of June. Further, I will not have worked more than 3 1/2 days a week in the entire month of May. Nice work if you can get it.
And finally, I watched another Love Film film:
Speed Racer (2008)
This was on my list because Roger Allam was in it. It's based on the cartoon of the same name, although I only know that because the cartoon's theme song is a musical motif in the film, and I only know what that sounds like because Ted's Band (The Worthless Peons if you cared) sing it on Scrubs. It's a film aimed at 8 year old boys, which, quite frankly, is a shame, because when it forgets this fact, it's actually a fairly decent family film, that managed to surprise me a couple of times plot wise. But then it remembers and pokes something irritating in our faces. Mostly in the form of the younger brother of the (bland, oh so incredibly bland) protagonist and his pet chimpanzee. Why he has a chimp is never commented on.
The plot is... umm... so in the future (or an alternate reality, it's never explained) motor racing is *huge* and cars are magic, able to get into crashes without blowing up, bounce over their opponents and follow really ridiculous tracks that involve turning upside-down. And then there is this kid who is as good as his dead brother and he races for his dad's independent company but one of the big names in racing want to sign him and actually the races are fixed in order to make more money for the companies involved and Speed Racer (yes that is his actual name) is setting out to fight for fairness and not betray his father and seek revenge for his brother and... aw who cares, SHINY CARS GO VROOM! The plot is convoluted, but kind of engaging, even if you forget it as soon as the credits roll. And only almost entirely predictable. Roger Allam has scenery for lunch, breakfast and dinner, completely enjoying himself and giving it the full panto villain, which is one of the things that prevents this movie from being utterly crap.
Stylistically, the film employs a kind of heightened reality with it's colour scheme that is very Tim Burton-esque. Very similar to Pushing Daisies; lots of bright primary colours and stuff. Which only makes Speed seem more bland.
In summary, not too awful kid's film, that would have been better if they stopped pandering to the 8 year old boys in the audience. Then it would have had more global appeal.
So let me see, in the last few weeks I have: finally finished reading New Avengers, re-read most of the Steve/Tony fic I have bookmarked, written some fic myself, decided to start watching the entirety of Atop The 4th Wall, started reading House of M (and being happy about it because it means Steve and Tony are back together! YAY! Also snerking at Professor X and Magneto and looking forward to X-Men: First Class even more because of it) and discovered that 2am, me and Amazon.co.uk are 3 things that shouldn't mix. Despite wanting to buy all the things I was very good and only bought 3 Marvel Essentials books. I wanted to get Avengers Vol. 1 but it was out of stock but I decided to order it anyway. Instead I thought I would also order Avengers Vol. 2 because that was in stock, but only had a few copies left so I wanted to get it before they ran out. However, because I didn't want to start at Vol. 2, I needed something that would tide me over until Vol.1 arrived. So I also ordered Captain America Vol.1. This seemed a perfectly logical progression of ideas at the time. Now... eh.
Anywho, so after a small amount of package wrangling (they were too big to fit through the letterbox), I picked them up today.
Yay! Shiny!
So anyway, I started reading Captain America this morning. It is everything you would want from Silver Age Captain America. Seriously, page 3 and this happens:
Need I say more? It's also fun looking at the covers because, since these are Tales of Suspense issues, you also get the concurrent Iron Man covers. It's quite fun playing "guess the story" from the title and cover. Some day, I'm gonna have to get the Iron Man book with the corresponding stories in to play match up with.
Although, I'd also be quite interested to read about the adventures of Iron Captain and Man America
The stories are ridiculous but fun. Apart from the hideously racist one where Cap rescues a pilot from those awful Chinese Commies in Vietnam and fights a Sumo Wrestler. Yeah...
And at the moment they're retelling the adventures of Captain America and Bucky during the Second World War, so there are lots of Nazis who go around talkink like zis mit ze most ridiculous accents effer vitnessed outside of an episode of 'Allo 'Allo.
And Cap has a penchant for standing like this:
He's going to do himself a mischief if he's not careful.
But he's Cap and I love him. There is something so awesome about him taking on foes armed with just a shield. And I love how his fights are all about technique and style and not just pounding on your enemy until they give up because you're stronger than them. Whilst spouting awesome quips like this:
Take it easy with that gun, fella! If you stole it from the weapons room, it's government property! You're wasting the *taxpayer's* bullets!
So, yeah, my love for Steve Rogers increases. (SO CANNOT WAIT FOR THE FILM)
And then in town today, I discover that WHSmiths are doing a 3 for 2 offer on all books. Including all Graphic Novels. After realising I had a £5 off voucher that I'd left at home, I decided to make the round trip back to my flat to pick it up so that I could justify to myself buying these books. (Also to pick up some dry cleaning I had forgotten in the first place). My main reason for this is simple. They had 1602. I don't think I was ever going to not buy that, was I? After nearly half an hour of agonising I decided to also get Secret War and Civil War. So I guess they can also tide me over until Avengers Vol 1 turns up.
I guess you might like to pretend to be interested in what non-comics related things I've been up to? Well the answer is not really much work, that's for sure. Last week I spent 2 1/2 days at the Annual Graduate Conference, which was pretty fun, although I wasn't particularly impressed with the hotel. The organisers were amazingly innovative though, interrupting a rather boring keynote speech by fake kidnapping the speaker and then playing a video that showed all the company's senior management getting fake kidnapped too. The next day was spent doing activities to "train us to help rescue the VPs" which basically meant a day doing fun "team building" activities and playing with some of our company's tech. It was pretty cool.
Unfortunately, about two hours after I got back on the Friday I was ill. Not sure if it was food poisoning from the hotel's lunch buffet (although that was about 6 hours previous) or just some unfortunately timed bug. I spent most of Saturday in bed, sleeping and running a temperature. Luckily, I had recovered enough by the evening to go and see Avenue Q! YAY! And proving that laughter is the best medicine, I was feeling pretty much 100% again by the time I got home.
Show was, as ever, brilliant. There was a nice little local touch too. During The Money Song, after they get back from collecting from the audience, Brian pulls a piece of paper out of a hat and says "All I've got is this degree certificate from Oxford University. That's not worth anything!" Cue gales of laughter. Made me smile.
And then this week I spent one day on a training course, and a morning in a meeting, which we managed to stretch into having a site tour and meeting my dad for coffee.
So yeah, between the conference, meetings, training course, bank holidays and just plain me having time off, I won't have worked a full week in the office from the beginning of April til the middle of June. Further, I will not have worked more than 3 1/2 days a week in the entire month of May. Nice work if you can get it.
And finally, I watched another Love Film film:
Speed Racer (2008)
This was on my list because Roger Allam was in it. It's based on the cartoon of the same name, although I only know that because the cartoon's theme song is a musical motif in the film, and I only know what that sounds like because Ted's Band (The Worthless Peons if you cared) sing it on Scrubs. It's a film aimed at 8 year old boys, which, quite frankly, is a shame, because when it forgets this fact, it's actually a fairly decent family film, that managed to surprise me a couple of times plot wise. But then it remembers and pokes something irritating in our faces. Mostly in the form of the younger brother of the (bland, oh so incredibly bland) protagonist and his pet chimpanzee. Why he has a chimp is never commented on.
The plot is... umm... so in the future (or an alternate reality, it's never explained) motor racing is *huge* and cars are magic, able to get into crashes without blowing up, bounce over their opponents and follow really ridiculous tracks that involve turning upside-down. And then there is this kid who is as good as his dead brother and he races for his dad's independent company but one of the big names in racing want to sign him and actually the races are fixed in order to make more money for the companies involved and Speed Racer (yes that is his actual name) is setting out to fight for fairness and not betray his father and seek revenge for his brother and... aw who cares, SHINY CARS GO VROOM! The plot is convoluted, but kind of engaging, even if you forget it as soon as the credits roll. And only almost entirely predictable. Roger Allam has scenery for lunch, breakfast and dinner, completely enjoying himself and giving it the full panto villain, which is one of the things that prevents this movie from being utterly crap.
Stylistically, the film employs a kind of heightened reality with it's colour scheme that is very Tim Burton-esque. Very similar to Pushing Daisies; lots of bright primary colours and stuff. Which only makes Speed seem more bland.
In summary, not too awful kid's film, that would have been better if they stopped pandering to the 8 year old boys in the audience. Then it would have had more global appeal.