Birthday-a-versary!

Once again I have allowed demiurgent to grow another year older. So that I may one day drain his Talent like a Skesis sucking down a Gelfling. But until that day he must stay well. So stop being sick!

New Comics Day 1/27/10

The final fourth book for Astro City: Dark Age is out, with the Williams brothers still chasing the murderer of their parents as very well-armed free agents. As always Busiek is someone I'm very envious of when it comes to original character concepts. This time around for Damien Teller aka Nostradamien aka the Bad Dreamer. A prophet who can only see the future of the wicked...

Avengers: The Initiative moves towards its finale as the book is ending when the latest event "Siege" closes. As Osborne's villain army attacks Asgard, Justice plans on leading his team of Avengers to take down Camp HammondHammer...

The Guardians of the Galaxy and The Luminals join together for a raid on the home world of The Universal Church of Truth to rescue their stolen team-mates. Plus a bad-guy reveal at the end that left me grinning...

Jack Frost manages to defeat some bad robots to gain the Fulminate Blade in the hopes of using it against the Empyrian Giant in Jack of Fables. Of course it won't help much if he doesn't learn to be a better judge of people...

And in Knights of the Dinner Table the Muncie gaming groups are all back home and up to the usual. Including The Black Hands Cattlepunk game where they're attempting to conquer the West one town at a time with the Herd of Mass Destruction. Also a 3-page from Heroes of the Hack-League comic. Haven't seen that in forever. Oh and Jim Davenport's "Gaming the Movies" column is both useless a movie review and a gaming resource. Rather than read his article on the "Underworld" trilogy of movies, you'd be better off just picking up an old copy of Vampire: The Masquerade and reading that...

The Lovely Bones

I had to think for a bit about what I was feeling at the end of the movie. And I'd have to say it was..dissatisfied. From the advertising I had the impression that the focus of the movie would be on Wahlberg attempting to find out who the killer is. With some kind of help from his murdered daughter. This doesn't really happen. Wahlberg does try to figure out who the killer is, but its all random flailing about at anyone even vaguely suspicious in town. And I mean really vaguely. Up to the point when dead girl psychically whammies him so he just knows who the killer is. The same thing happens with the younger sister. She just knows that the killer neighbor is super-creepy and that eventually leads to the single real investigatory scene in the movie...

The story also drops a girl who has some kind of sense for ghosts into the plot early on. And right up to the end you're pushed to think maybe she'll be used to bring down the killer. I mean there is a whole tension building scene with dead girl's remains and RIGHT at the payoff it swerves and the character is used for an entirely different reason. Annoying. I won't even get into the deus ex machina comeuppance for the killer...

There are some good scenes and effective moments. And Stanley Tucci was very good as the obsessive killer. Though until checking IMDB, I actually thought it was Sam Rockwell. Did not recognize him at ALL in that hair piece...