Remembering Newton, 1994-2013

Today Newton went to join his brothers Jefferson and Blackjack in that big cat window in the sky. Newton lived to be 19 years old, quite elderly for a housecat, but I think he was mostly happy up until the end.

I got Newton and Jefferson not long after I left grad school in 1994. The Humane Society in Madison thought they were six months old in October, but after seeing how big our current kittens were at six months, my guess is they were more like three or four months old when I got them.

Hi, I'm Newton
“Hi, I’m Newton.”

Newton was “the explorer” of the pair. I remember when we (my then-girlfriend Colleen and I) let them out of the carrier when we brought them home, they both immediately did a 180° turn and walked right up to a half-height mirror that was leaning against the wall. They both jumped back from the “other cats”, but quickly learned that there were no actual other cats. They spent half an hour exploring the living room, and then walked over towards the kitchen. Jefferson headed into the kitchen, but Newton noticed the hallway leading to the bedroom and bathroom and immediately turned and headed into the bedroom, with Jefferson following. I also remember going into the bedroom when they got bigger and finding Newton on top off the door. I guess he jumped onto the desk, onto the bookcase next to it, and then across the doorway to the top of the door, where he happily sat for who knows how long before I recused him.

Newton was also a very enthusiastic, high-energy kitty. I remember we would play with them and he would keep going long after Jefferson called it quits. Heck, he would keep going until we stopped, and would sit looking at the toy and panting. And if we started again, he’d keep going. We finally stopped for good because I was afraid he was going to hurt himself!

I got it!
“I got it!”

Pump and run
“If I put paws in both holes maybe I can get the mouse…”

Jefferson grew to be much bigger than Newton, and also became top cat, as I’d learn later. Newton topped out at a little under 10 pounds; I always wondered if he’d been the runt of his litter. Despite their size difference, Newton and Jefferson were pretty evenly matched. Newton was also the social one: I remember hosting a book discussion group at my apartment, and Jefferson stayed in the bedroom, but Newton eventually came out, jumped up on an empty chair, and loafed up as if he were listening to the conversation.

The three of us moved to California when I went to work at Apple. I started dating Debbi, and bought my townhouse in Mountain View. Jefferson may have resented Debbi’s taking my attention away from him, but Newton adjusted pretty well; he enjoyed getting attention from anyone, and got more and more snuggly as he got older.

I loves my brother
“I loves my brother!”

Debbi’s kittens came along in 2003 and changed the dynamic: Jefferson became top cat (though Newton could always pester him like no one else could), and Newton and Blackjack started their struggle for the second position, which I don’t think ever really got resolved. The two of them would sometimes wrestle with each other, and we’d call them “the silent wrestlers” because they would often fight without making a sound, just pouncing back and forth and circling each other. Newton would often roll onto his back to fight, which was funny since Blackjack was much bigger than he was.

Kitty friends
“Fighting? Us?”

Okay, okay, that's enough
“Okay, okay, that’s enough!”

Newton had some weird habits. One was jumping up on my desk when I was at it and putting his head directly under the incandescent bulb of my desk lamp, “baking his brain” I called it. He never showed signed of getting particularly cold, so I don’t know what was going through his head. He was also the cat who would spaz out at a second’s notice and go running through the house. At the townhouse he’s tear down the stairs to the landing halfway, and then wriggle under the railing to jump down to the floor directly, and then keep going. He’s also the reason I didn’t have house plants for many years, not because he’d eat them but because he’d dig in the dirt in the pot. Again, don’t know what was going through his head. For a few years he liked to lie in the sink; when he got older, he just liked to drink out of it. And he liked to bury his head in my armpit, sometimes making snorting sounds when doing so. It grossed Debbi out.

When Jefferson passed away, the cat dynamics changed again; I think Roulette sort of inherited the top cat position from Jefferson, because neither Newton nor Blackjack was willing to yield it to the other. We moved to our current house, and Newton again was the first cat out of the carrier to check things out.

Blackjack was diagnosed with lymphoma in early 2011, but by this time Newton was almost 17 years old and was taking medication for hyperthyroidism, so I think their struggle ended without really being resolved. Then early last year Newton spent a few days in the hospital, and was diagnosed as having slowly-failing kidneys (kidney failure seems to be a common way older cats die). When he came home he was not quite the same cat he was before, having slowed down a lot and lost a lot of weight. He spent more time downstairs, taking the center spot in the family room couch as his own, and didn’t sleep with us anymore. He went on a regimen of subcutaneous fluids and various drugs, which took a while to figure out how best to give them to him (especially the aluminum hydroxide; going with an oral syringe of it in gel form worked much better than adding a powder to wet cat food).

Last November we got our new kittens, Jackson and Sadie, and Blackjack passed away a couple of weeks later. Newton quickly laid down the law with the kittens, showing that he wouldn’t take any guff from them, but they could sleep with him if they wanted. I think they actually made him perk up a bit because there were now things going on in the house.

New brothers

I guess she's okay

We realized earlier this year that Newton couldn’t really run and could barely jump anymore, which meant it was now safe to let him out into the back yard with minimal supervision. This quickly became his favorite thing in the world, and he would sit at the back door meowing to go out, and also try to slip out with a human when the door opened. As long as he didn’t go under the deck, we let him have the run of the yard. He’d lie in the grass, sit on an edging stone, walk behind the Japanese maple, and then come over the rub his head against me, in thanks, I guess.

He didn’t make his last months easy, though. He stopped peeing inside his litter box, so we put puppy pads down in strategic spots for him to use. Sometimes he’d miss and we’d have to clean up the floor. These last couple of weeks he started peeing in other places (even on the blankets on the couch a few times, though we managed to save the couch from getting wet), and he was meowing more and more. Sometimes he’d put his head down, and then three minutes later lift it up and meow for thirty seconds. I don’t know whether he was sleeping very well, or eating or drinking. And his breath got really foul, which our vet says can be a symptom of severe kidney degradation.

So I made a vet appointment for today. I took him outside for one last walk around (the picture below is from this morning), and then in we went. After talking with our vet and thinking it over for a while, I decided that it was probably time. His meows probably meant he wasn’t very comfortable anymore, and I didn’t want him to deteriorate over the next week or two to the point where he was miserable and pathetic. The vet thought it was a good decision, that even if we treated his current symptoms it was likely he’d only have a few more weeks. I didn’t know going in whether that would be the decision, but I thought it was likely. Despite feeling like I’d said my goodbyes to him last year before his hospital stay, and the fact that he hasn’t really been the same cat since, it was still very hard to say goodbye. We snuggled with him until he was sedated and he seemed just happy to be in our arms.

Several of my friends had young cats around the time I got my guys, and Newton I believe outlived all of them: Scout & Smokey (Newton & Jefferson’s doppelgangers), Sarabi & Mufasa (Sarabi passed away earlier this year), Oscar & Spud. And all the “K” kitties two of my friends had, of which I only remember Kang, because he always wanted to snuggle with me when I visited.

Goodbye, little orange fellow. You had a long, full life, and I’ll miss you.

Onwards!
Onwards to new adventures!

A Remarkable Ceremony

Monday Debbi and I took the day off so we could attend a unique (at least in our experience) award ceremony: Our neighbor Juan was being awarded an Air Force Commendation Medal for his actions saving several people during a hurricane when he was in the Air Force back in the 50s.

The Mountain View Voice has a couple of articles with background on the award (with photos): one announcing the ceremony, and one reporting the events.

Juan has been active in the community for a long time, and he invited many of his friends and neighbors. Although the ceremony was not until late afternoon, Debbi and I decided to take the day off. Debbi asked me what I’d be wearing, and I said “probably a suit”. She said she didn’t think I had to wear a suit, and I said, “true, but I think our congressional representative is going to be there, and I don’t think she’ll be wearing a Hawaiian shirt.” It’s not that I enjoy wearing a suit, but I don’t do it very often, and this seemed like a good opportunity. It turns out I haven’t yet forgotten how to tie a tie, and it wasn’t an uncomfortable as I remembered (probably because when I bought my current suits and shirts I actually got them sized correctly). You can bet if it had been 90 degrees out I would have worn shirt sleeves, but in fact it was our usual cool low-70s temperatures for this time of year.

The ceremony was held at Moffett Field, at the hangar of the 129th Rescue Wing of the California National Guard – I expect because the medal was for a rescue act (Juan was a radio operator in the service, not part of a rescue team). While we were waiting for things to start, regular business was clearly still being conducted in the hangar as every so often someone would poke his head out of a door to see if things had started, and then dash out to head somewhere. A number of service people in fatigues attended the ceremony, and my guess is that anyone who was there and not busy was allowed to sit in. There were camera crews from a couple of local news stations, and they set up a Skype link so Juan’s daughters could watch the ceremony remotely.

Once everyone was settled things got underway. There was a formal presentation of the U.S. and California flags, and the playing of the national anthem. The master of ceremonies was a Lieutenant Colonel from the Rescue Wing, and then our congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, introduced Juan and spoke about him. And then Juan was presented with his medal by a Brigadier General. And then Juan gave a nice speech to wind things up. Afterwards there were refreshments and photo opportunities with Juan. We talked briefly with Ms. Eshoo, where I felt like my usual tongue-tied self. 🙂

Anna Eshoo & Juan Anna Eshoo & Juan again
I did not have a good angle for these pictures
(click for larger images)

I noticed a couple of interesting things along the way: Ms. Eshoo sang along with the national anthem, which made me wonder how many times per week she hears it. (I like our anthem, but I imagine I could get a little tired of hearing it if I served in congress for 25 years!) Also, the Lt. Colonel said that he’d been in the National Guard for (I think) 41 years and had never been part of a ceremony like this. That indicated to me that this really isn’t something that happens every day, even for long-serving military folk.

Attendees got to look around the main area of the hangar, where they had a large plane and a helicopter in view. The amount of stuff they had stashed on the walls of that plane was impressive! We also noticed a wad of cloth inside one of the things hanging from the wings, and Debbi and I agreed it looked like old socks, even when we got close to it. Debbi asked one of the people on-duty what it was and he said it was a parachute used to slow the plane down for in-air fueling.

Airplane Helicopter

I’m honored that Juan invited us to attend, as for a civilian like me this might be a once-in-a-lifetime event. I know that Juan was having the time of his life, and it’s great that the powers that be were able to put together such a nice event honoring him for his actions all those years ago.

The three of us

Refugee from Google Reader

It was just under a year ago that I chose a new RSS reader when Safari dropped its syndication support. But at the beginning of this month Google Reader was end-of-lifed. While my reader of choice, NetNewsWire, still works, I’d have to either start syncing my bookmarks myself (such as using rsync via Dropbox), or sign up for a new service for syncing.

(Why is syncing important? Partly so I can subscribe to a new feed in one place and it will appear in other places, but more importantly so I can read articles in one place and they will also no longer be unread in other places. “Places” for me mainly means my Macs at work and at home. I do read feeds on my iPad, but that’s not essential.)

TidBITs had a nice summary of available replacements. And by “replacements” they really meant the services providing syncing, not the desktop- and device-side clients. It seemed like Feedly and NewsBlur were the services which best matched what I was looking for. Feedly is a free service. NewsBlur is ostensibly free, but you don’t get a lot for free – in particular, you get a lot less than I use. But you can subscribe to it for $24/year.

For the time being I’ve decided to go with NewsBlur I was disappointed that Feedly didn’t support exporting your feeds to OPML when I was looking (though I guess they’ve added that), but NewsBlur had a couple of compelling points:

  • Its Web interface allowed me to get a “combined” view like NetNewsWire had – I really hate the master-master-detail interface that many readers have.
  • It supports nested folders, which I find useful.

It also has an iOS client. However, the only supports Mac client seems to be ReadKit. I would describe ReadKit as “bare bones”. It doesn’t have either of the NewsBlur web reader features I mentioned above, and I wasn’t too impressed with the interface overall. Perhaps it will improve, but I think it has some distance to go. Your mileage may vary. (I know people who chose other services because they’re supported by Reeder. I was not impressed with Reeder a year ago; perhaps it’s improved. I don’t think the Mac client has been updated for a while, though, and that’s the one that matters to me.)

So for now I’ll mainly be reading feeds through the web. And while it’s taken me a little while to adjust to the keyboard shortcuts in NewsBlur, and the fact that it’s not a separate app, I’m getting used to it. It’s pretty good, actually. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a syndication reader whose interface I’d characterize as “great”, so there’s an opportunity there for someone to seize.

Here’s what NewsBlur’s web interface looks like, in the configuration I’m using:

Newsblur web interface
(click for larger image)

And yes, I subscribed to Newsblur. I think it will give me value for my money, and I am increasingly skeptical that free services are worth my time investing in: I mistrust companies based around advertising and don’t want to get locked in to them. I would rather pay for the service. And I’m especially doubtful that free services which aren’t supporting themselves with ads and don’t seem to have a clear path to financial stability will be around in a year or two. (I’m not completely consistent about this, but I’m taking stock of the services I’m using over time. I recently bought the premium service for Evernote, for example.)

Marco Arment makes some good points about where syndication support has to go. In particular there will have to be syndication services with available, documented and supported APIs, and there will have to be clients which support multiple services. There’s some money to be made on both sides. It’s still early days, though. Five years from now I bet the landscape will be completely different.

Oh, and NetNewsWire? Arment had a few words about that at the link above, but I tried out the NNW 4 beta, and noticed that the combined view – the killer feature that made me choose it a year ago – is gone. So they’re going to have to really step up to get me back.

So overall I’m pretty happy where I’ve landed. I’d be lost without RSS feeds – how would I ever keep up with all the Webcomics I read? (And don’t say Twitter – I’d have to laugh in your face.)

Under the Broiling Sun

A week and a half ago we had an unusual day of rain showers – normally we’re bone-dry from May through November other than perhaps an early-August shower. That was Monday; they predicted even more rain on Tuesday, so I decided not to bike to work. I was cheated – no rain, just lots of humidity.

Worse, the strange weather presaged more than a week of high temperatures, peaking in the mid-90s around us, but getting even hotter further inland of us. Boy have we been glad we moved to the new house with its air conditioning, since we would all have been melting if we were still in the townhouse – especially Sadie with her longer fur. It didn’t stop me from biking in twice since then, but it hasn’t been comfortable to be outside.

One of Debbi’s cow-orkers gave mer a new cat shrub – a little round cylinder about a foot high with a door to go inside. All the cats have checked it out (apparently her cow-orker’s cats wouldn’t go near it), but Newton has used it to sit on top of in the morning when it’s in the full sun. I think the sun helps his creaky old bones (he is 19 after all), and it’s high enough that he can look outside while sitting there. It’s pretty cute.

In the middle of all this we threw our third annual open house on Saturday. Which might have been the hottest day of the heat wave. If I’d been smart I would have sent mail to everyone we invited telling them that we’d have the A/C on. As it was we had a smallish turnout.

We decided to try an experiment since the doors would be closed and not lock the cats up in a room this year. (This had the additional bonus of not having to deal with Newton’s don’t-want-to-pee-in-the-litter issues by sticking him by himself in a bathroom.) I spent some time trying to make sure neither of the kittens got out (I don’t think either of them really tried – Jackson seems to have lost his interest in darting out the front door). Roulette went upstairs and hid under the bed from as soon as the first person arrived until after the last person left, but the other three all stayed out.

We got quite a few kids under age 10 this year. While Newton I think got kicked out of his sleeping spot by them a couple of times, he did get some snuggling time with me and some guests. Meanwhile a bunch of the kids (and a few adults) spent a chunk of the party playing with the kittens, which they adored. Jackson actually got a little overwhelmed and retreated to the top of the stairs for a while at one point, but otherwise they had a lot of fun. At the end of the day they were about as tried as I’ve ever seen them; Sadie actually jumped to the top of the cabinets in the laundry room and curled up to sleep for a while.

It was a great party, and despite the small turnout neither Debbi nor I felt like we had a lot of time to chat with people, except for a few at the beginning and end. Before we knew it, it was 8 pm and everyone had headed out and we could clean up and collapse.

My other project recently has been to step up my skills at mixing drinks. I think I’ve mastered margaritas (I made a pitcher for the party, which used up one of the three bottles of triple sec we were given two years ago for our first open house), and next I’ll give mai tais a shot. After that, we’ll see.

And now it’s Independence Day here in the US, and I took tomorrow off to have a four-day weekend. We’ve had a pretty quiet day at home, hanging out with the cats and making an excursion downtown. Last year I was back east helping take care of Mom after her knee replacement surgery, so it’s been nice to spend the day with Debbi this year.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to finally cool off to more normal temperatures. At last.

Thor, God of Thunder #9

Thor, God of Thunder #9, by Jason Aaron & Esad Ribic, Marvel, August 2013

Thor, God of Thunder #9 If you’re not reading Thor, God of Thunder then you’re not reading the best title Marvel’s currently publishing (with apologies to Mark Waid and his excellent Daredevil series). To be sure, Thor sucked me in immediately because it takes place in three different time periods, but it’s got more going for it than that.

The premise is that an alien, Gorr, has decided to kill all the gods in all of the universe, earning the title “The God Butcher”. In the 10th century, Thor encounters him on Earth and manages to fight him off after being tortured by him. In the 21st century, Thor learns of him again and tries to hunt him down by researching other gods throughout the cosmos. And in the far future, Thor is the last survivor – and king – of Asgard, besieged by the God Butcher’s forces.

This issue is the middle of the series’ second 5-issue arc, “Godbomb”, in which Gorr in the future is building a bomb which will kill all gods. Through various machinations, the Thors of the past and present have ended up in the future, and the three Thors launch an assault on Gorr to stop his plan. This issue is essentially a big fight between Gorr and the Thors, and it’s quite well done. As it’s not the conclusion of the story, you can probably guess at the end of the issue, but it’s a good ride.

Jason Aaron (who wrote the great series Scalped for Vertigo) has been writing for Marvel for a while, but I haven’t read any of his titles. He knocks it out of the park in this series, raising questions about what purpose gods serve, the nature of an entity who can kill all gods, and where both sides fall on the moral spectrum. He also does a good (though not terribly nuanced) job of distinguishing between the brash young Thor, the professional modern Thor, and the world-weary future Thor. Artist Esad Ribic does a great job with the figures, but is light on the backgrounds (conveniently, most of this issue takes place in space). No artist that skimps on backgrounds ever achieves top-tier status in my book, but Ribic is good overall.

Thor consistently ends up on top of my to-read stack each week, and will as long as Aaron can maintain this level of storytelling.

Astro City #1

Astro City #1, by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson & Alex Ross, DC/Vertigo, August 2013

Astro City #1 It’s been two-and-a-half years since the last issue of Astro City (the Silver Agent two-parter), but it’s back with a new ongoing series. While one always wonders if they’ll rattle off another 12 or 14 issues and then go on hiatus for a couple more years, I’m willing to give them plenty of leeway since Astro City is to my mind the best superhero comic of the last 20 years (and it’s not even close).

This first issue of this new series feels like it’s trying to be a new phase in the comic’s history. Not only has the biggest mystery of past issues been solved (what happened to the Silver Agent?), but it kicks off with a mysterious character named the Broken man, a conspiracy theorist with purple skin and white hair, who spends the issue talking directly to the reader (or so it seems). He takes on a brief tour of the city, focusing on a giant door which materializes over the river. He also suggests that a shadow entity he calls the Oubor is behind, well, something going on in the city. The Broken Man is clearly a few guppies short of an aquarium, and who he is, what he’s doing, and how much of the truth he’s telling (if even he knows) is clearly going to be a component of this new series.

One of the neat things about Astro City has been that the “present day” tracks along in real time, so the earliest issues of the series occurred in the mid-to-late 90s, and this issue takes place in 2013. This means that some heroes have dropped off the grid, some have gotten older, and a few – like the Samaritan and Winged Victory – don’t seem to have aged at all. But we’re also reintroduced with Ben Pulliam, who was the main character in an earlier issue of the series, having just moved to the city with his two daughters. He’s older now, and his daughters are adults, and his mid-life crisis is a component of the story.

I’ve always characterized Astro City as basically being about what people living in a world with superheroes think about that, and how they react to it. And “people” in this case includes the heroes and villains. I suspect Busiek feels he’s writing about people living their lives in this world, but at its best I think the book is about how their lives are different from ours because of these changes. Sometimes they’re extraordinarily different, and sometimes they’re not (one could argue that The Samaritan is just an exotic sort of workaholic, for example). Astro City has a quixotic history (in my opinion) with mixing the cosmic and the mundane; the characters’ thoughts and reactions get lost amidst their actions – this was a problem I had with The Dark Age (which I reviewed in depth here). This issue takes a fairly cosmic turn towards the end, so I have a little trepidation regarding where the story is going. But overall Astro City (and Busiek as a writer generally) has such a strong track record that I’m willing to give it a lot of leeway.

Brent Anderson is one of the most underrated artists in comics, able to bring life to Busiek’s world, as well as character and setting designs by Busiek, Alex Ross, and himself. Occasionally his characters are not the most expressive (he does stern and sad expressions better than, say, joy or surprise), but that’s a nitpick.

Overall I’m just delighted that the series is back, and that they have almost a year’s worth of issues in the can. It should be fun.

Just a Few Things Accomplished

How about a good old-fashioned “what we did on our weekend” post? In preparation for some friends coming to visit later this week, we were quite busy:

  • Friday night I played poker. I didn’t win, indeed I lost rather spectacularly. That aside, I had a good time. I also learned that I can no longer pass for thirtysomething in the eyes of twentysomethings.
  • Saturday we got up early to clean the library for the arrival of our new daybed. The delivery truck showed up 35 minutes early (!!) so we had to scramble to clear and vacuum the room. Aside from the scramble, it was nice to get it done early. Roulette scratched up my right arm pretty good when I caught her to put her in a bedroom during the delivery.
  • I spent 2 hours at the barber shop waiting to get my hair cut. The line was just as long when I left as when I arrived, so I don’t think I would have fared better had I come in later.
  • Debbi vacuumed all the things while I was away.
  • Went to Ikea to buy some more shelving for our master closet, which I then assembled. Between this and the daybed I think this was the most exciting weekend the kittens have ever had.
  • Went to dinner at Su Hong in Palo Alto.
  • Before dinner we put my old papasan – which has been replaced by the daybed – on the curb for free. It was gone when we came back.
  • Visited with our neighbors across the street for about an hour.
  • Spent the evening sitting on the porch reading and listening to the Giants game.
  • Sunday we changed the sheets on our bed.
  • Went to the grocery store.
  • I finished changing all the cat litter in the house.
  • Opened some Magic card packs and catalogued them.
  • Went to our neighborhood’s annual block party, where we ate lunch and chatted with folks.
  • Spent a bunch of time trying to figure out why our steam cleaner wasn’t spraying any water. Finally got it working – though I’m not sure how – and cleaned two areas rugs downstairs. Then I went up to clean the guest room carpet and it wasn’t working again. Grr. Steam cleaning is not a big deal unless your steam cleaner stops working.
  • Called my Mom.
  • Grilled chicken & peppers for dinner. Debbi made a tomato-and-mozzarella-ball salad.
  • Trimmed the juniper around the edges of our back yard. Let Newton walk around the yard while I was doing so, which is his favoritest thing in the world these days.
  • Worked on some comic book journal entries.
  • This morning I arranged the roses I bought yesterday at the grocery store and forgot about until I was going to bed.

And then I went to work and watched the WWDC keynote.

Deathmatch #6

Deathmatch #6, by Paul Jenkins & Carlos Magno, Boom! Studios, May 2013

Deathmatch #6 I’ve been wanting to get back to writing weekly entries on comics again. This time around I’m going to focus on one comic per week. To start it off I’ll touch on a great comic that came out each of the last two weeks, and luckily for me there were two great comics for me to write about.

There are a couple of behind-the-scenes stories surrounding Deathmatch. First is writer Paul Jenkins’ statement on why he left writing for DC and Marvel – he’s now exclusively at Boom. Second is that Boom, like IDW, seems to be making a play to become one of the larger publishers, though in its case it seems to be angling to become more like Image (superheroes and science fiction), while IDW is taking the Dark Horse avenue (licensed titles and adventure books). One wonders whether what attracted Jenkins to Boom will stay in place as (and if) the company gets bigger and more prominent.

In the foreground, however, we have Deathmatch, which is Jenkins creating a superhero universe out of whole cloth, but then putting all the main characters in a mysterious arena where they’re forced to fight to the death in a single-elimination tournament. It’s Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars taken to the next level, without the preconceptions about who should win a particular bout.

It’s a hell of a hook, which is what made me buy the book in the first place, but the story is the characters trying to figure out who’s capturing them and why they’re being forced to fight (never mind how they’re able to mess with their heads to make even the purest heroes in the arena). With a large cast not every character shines, but many do, especially the unpowered Sable, Mink and Rat, who have been leading the investigation into who’s holding them and why.

This particular issue occurs just after the character had a chance to look behind the curtain as the complex’s power supply temporarily went down. Some scores were settled, and something awful was glimpsed in battle with Meridian, the book’s Superman equivalent. But the Manchurian realized the danger and reactivated the facility and the games went on. This leads to Dragonfly (a young man who’s retired but has been roped in nonetheless – that’s him on the cover) confronting Meridian, learning another piece of the puzzle in the issue’s cliffhanger.

The comics industry in my lifetime is littered with superhero universes created all at once which never panned out. Jenkins has wisely created a whole bunch of characters with sufficient backstories to make them characters, but doesn’t dive into flashbacks or a lot of detailed history. Rather, how the characters interact now is the focus. It’s made it to the top of my to-read pile each week it’s come out, and I’m eager to see where it goes. (And, assuming anyone’s left alive at the end of it, whether Jenkins gives us some insight into what the heroes’ world is like once they get back to it.)

Carlos Magno’s art is terrific. I recall his work as some of the better art in Countdown to Final Crisis (damning with faint praise, since hardly anyone else in that terrible series looked much good at all) He has a Dave Gibbons-like layout style (figures always drawn in freeze frame, with no motion lines) with an inking/rendering style a bit like George Pérez. He draws fully-realized backgrounds, too!

I’m not sure how long Deathmatch is slated to run, but 2 more issues or 6 I’m planning to enjoy it entirely.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Before I saw Star Trek Into Darkness I saw someone sum up the film as “A fun film. Not a good film, but fun.” While I tried to avoid learning too much about it before seeing it, I learned things here and there, and was not encouraged by what I’d learned. Finally I saw it last weekend, and I’d say it’s certainly not a good film, but it has its fun moments. It also drags in places, and the screenplay is a complete disaster of plot, pacing and characterization. It’s certainly a big step down from 2009’s Star Trek (which has grown on me since I originally saw it).

Spoilers ahead, Captain.

Continue reading “Star Trek Into Darkness”

Doctor Who, Season Seven

The latest season of Doctor Who is in my view the weakest of the relaunched series. The basic problem is that the scripts were generally quite weak, and failed to follow through on the promise of their premises, or contribute to the ongoing developments in the series.

As usual, my ranking of episodes this season from best to worst:

  • Asylum of the Daleks (written by Steven Moffat)
  • The Name of the Doctor (Moffat)
  • Cold War (Mark Gatiss)
  • Hide (Neil Cross)
  • The Bells of Saint John (Moffat)
  • The Rings of Akhaten (Cross)
  • The Snowmen (Moffat)
  • The Crimson Horror (Gatiss)
  • Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS (Stephen Thompson)
  • Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (Chris Chibnall)
  • The Angels Take Manhattan (Moffat)
  • Nightmare in Silver (Neil Gaiman)
  • The Power of Three (Chibnall)
  • A Town Called Mercy (Toby Whithouse)

(I’m excluding last year’s Christmas special, “The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe” from the list because I don’t think it’s really part of the season. But if you’re curious I rate it a “shrug”.)

Also as usual, there are spoilers ahead!

Continue reading “Doctor Who, Season Seven”