Heroes and Journeyman

So this new TV season: I’ll probably skip Bionic Woman, and not much else attracted my attention even a little bit.

Tonight we watched the first episode of the second season of Heroes. It takes place four months after the first season, and we catch up with what the characters are doing. I found the first season to be pretty slow, so I don’t know whether I’ll make it through the second season. This episode bored me when it came to the Claire-and-Noah stuff (Hayden Panettiere & Jack Coleman), and more than once I thought that I’d really just like to have a whole episode of Hiro (Masi Oka). The show spends too much time lingering on boring stuff, and the dialogue isn’t especially clever so there’s very little to carry the viewer through those scenes.

The episode kicks it up a notch at the end, though, with several intriguing scenes. If it can build on these bits rather than stepping back and taking its usual time-outs then it could keep me watching. But it has to keep moving.

I stuck around afterwards to watch the first episode of Journeyman. While watching the story of Dan Vassar, it struck me how much Kevin McKidd reminded me of Reed Diamond of Homicide, and who should show up playing Dan’s older brother Jack but – Reed Diamond. I swear, I had no clue!

In Journeyman, Dan is a journalist in San Francisco who starts disappearing from his present life and appearing in the past, apparently following the life of a man whose wife and child died some years ago. Meanwhile his marriage is falling apart since his wife Katie (Gretchen Egolf) and friends thinks he’s having trouble with drug abuse. The set-up is slightly reminiscent of the book The Time Traveler’s Wife, since Dan has no control over what’s happening to him, though at least he does travel with his clothes.

The episode started a little slowly, and I cringed a little at Dan’s encounters with people he knows in his travels to the past, but it grabbed me with two scenes late in the episode: A sudden appearance by a very unexpected character, and then taking the big step of having Dan act smart in explaining his dilemma to his wife. The implication that there’s something larger going on, and that Dan’s not going to be an oaf while forces manipulate him makes me optimistic that this could be a good series. So that leaves the biggest question of all: Is the series going to go somewhere?

Maybe not, but I’m motivated at least to watch the next couple of episodes to see.

Shopping Weekend

I managed to avoid jury duty last week, not through any doing of my own; they hardly called anyone for service relative to the number of people on call, so I just had to check the web site twice a day. It was kind of stressful wondering if I’d have to put things on hold for an indefinite time on fairly short notice, but happily it never came to pass. This is the third time since I moved to California that I’ve been on the wait list, which seems to be more often than most of my friends. Maybe I’ll get lucky and not get called again for five or six years.

We had a pretty laid-back weekend, which I really needed, mostly shopping for stuff. A couple weeks ago at Monday night Magic Chris and Alex made homemade french fries, and boy were they yummy! So I told Debbi I wanted to get a deep-fryer, and she said “Not until I get my food processor!” (Do you sense a long-standing point of contention between us? Maaaaaaybe.)

So we drove around to a bunch of places to look for a food processor, and were a little surprised to see that only Bed Bath and Beyond had much in the way of selection; weird, since everyone had a gazillion blenders. I guess food processors just aren’t as trendy as they used to be. Eventually we bought a KitchenAid machine from Fry’s, along with a deep fryer. So tonight we made french fries – and they were yummy! I’m not sure when we’ll break out the food processor – but our next trick will be figuring out where to store this stuff, since we’re getting short on space in the kitchen!

We headed over to Half Moon Bay today to have brunch at the Main Street Grill, which was yummy as always, but Debbi was feeling like having a lazy day at home so we came back and finished our shopping before coming home rather than going out for a hike. Next time!

So now we’re wrapping up the evening by hanging out and watching the new Jeff Dunham TV special. Not a bad wrap-up to the weekend.

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 19 September 2007.

  • Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #56, by Tad Williams & Shawn McManus (DC)
  • Countdown #32 of 52 (backwards), by Paul Dini, Tony Bedard, Keith Giffen, Al Barrionuevo & Art Thibert (DC)
  • Countdown to Adventure #1 of 8, by Adam Beechen, Eddy Barrows & Julio Ferreira, and Justin Gray & Fabrizio Fiorentino (DC)
  • Countdown to Mystery #1 of 8, by Steve Gerber, Justiniano & Walden Wong, and Matthew Sturges & Stephen Jorge Segovia (DC)
  • Ex Machina #30, by Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris & Jim Clark (DC/Wildstorm)
  • Armageddon Conquest: Quasar #3 of 4, by Christos N. Gage, Mike Lilly, Bob Almond & Scott Hanna (Marvel)
  • World War Hulk #4 of 5, by Greg Pak, John Romita Jr. & Klaus Janson (Marvel)
  • The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite #1 #1 of 6, by Gerard Way & Gabriel Bá (Dark Horse)

Countdown #32Gee, it’s a new artist on Countdown! Too bad he got stuck illustrating this piece of cow flop, which largely involves a bachelorette party for Black Canary, who’s getting married to Green Arrow soon, in what is surely one of the most pointless company-wide events in recent memory. Countdown has been pretty widely panned in the blogosphere, and for good reason: There’s really no coherent story in it, and random events from the DC universe – like the GA/BC wedding – intrude on it for no good reason and to no good effect. It’s everything that 52 wasn’t, and that’s not a good thing.

Meanwhile, I broke down and decided to try both Countdown to Adventure and Countdown to Mystery, which are both sorta-kinda tie-ins to Countdown, each with two stories.

Countdown to Adventure #1Countdown to Adventure focuses on the “space heroes” from 52: Adam Strange, Starfire, and Animal Man. Adam Strange gets some competition in his role as protector of Rann, while Animal Man’s wife isn’t too wild about the buxom Starfire crashing in their house since she lost her powers. The art is very pretty and the story has promise, although honestly I get tired of writers dumping on Adam Strange all the time. Can’t the guy ever catch a break? I think the best Adam Strange story in the last 15 years was the JLA story in which he manipulated the Justice League to save Rann, showing that, yes, he really is just really clever and he can think rings around other heroes (and villains).

The back-up story is about Forerunner, a supporting character in Countdown, and it’s basically a good tale about a completely uninteresting character.

Countdown to Mystery #1Countdown to Mystery was originally going to be Steve Gerber’s relaunch of Doctor Fate, but I guess DC decided it might sell better if tied in to the current ongoing event of Countdown. Who knows if it does, but the story here has absolutely nothing to do with Countdown. In it the helmet of Nabu lands on the head of Dr. Kent Nelson, failed psychiatrist. Does he have any relationship at all to the Kent Nelson who was the original Doctor Fate? Who knows? Gerber’s trippy, stream-of-consciousness narrative doesn’t really work at all – the thing feels entirely by-the-numbers, like one of the glummer moments of a Doctor Strange run over at Marvel. Justiniano and Wong’s artwork sometimes feels like Tom Mandrake, and sometimes like Kevin O’Neill, which is a bizarre mixture. It’s not bad, although the tweaks to Fate’s costume look kind of silly.

The back-up here is about the current incarnation of Eclipso, a silly DC villain from the 60s who’s now in the body of the ex-wife of The Atom, for reasons which emerged in DC’s event of a couple of years ago, Identity Crisis, which was a series which had very pretty artwork and a completely nonsensical story. All of which means that this series probably would have been better if it had been left as just a new Doctor Fate series.

World War Hulk #4I think I see how World War Hulk is going to end: The Sentry is going to finally join the fray, try to talk the Hulk down from his rampage, they’ll get into a fight, and then the Sentry’s evil opposite number, the Void, will get released. In the ensuing chaos, the other heroes get free and try to contain the void, the the Hulk slips away somehow – possibly injured and taken by his allies out of reach of Earth’s heroes. And the Hulk’s story diverges from that of Earth again. Which would leave the question of: What happens next?

But first there’s the even bigger question: Can Greg Pak surprise me and pull off a different ending from this?

The Umbrella Academy #1Fans of Hellboy must check out The Umbrella Academy. Gerard Way is the frontman of the band My Chemical Romance, one of those rare alt-rock bands that I’ve actually heard of. Irrespective of that, the comic is actually quite good. The book has a strong Victorian-era feel, although details of the story suggest that it takes place in sometimes between 1920 and 1960 (after the death of Gustav Eiffel, for one thing). In it, a number of infants are mysteriously born to women across the globe, and a prominent man named The Monocle goes out to collect them, but finds only 7, whom he raises himself in The Umbrella Academy. The seven each have one or more unusual powers, but their father dotes on Number One, who is a Superman-like figure, and denegrates the others. The first half of the issue takes place when the group is 10, and the second half focuses on Number One, now called Spaceboy, 20 years later, when an accident has left him with the body of a giant gorilla.

The book has heroes in domino masks, a talking ape, a boxer beating up an alien, and one of the kids reappearing after a long absence. Ba’s art is reminiscent of Mike Mignola’s work on Hellboy, and the whole thing is creepy and eerie and provocative. A very neat start, I’m very much looking forward to the next issue!

(You can read some previously-published solo adventures of adult members of the Umbrella Academy on the comic’s MySpace page.)

On a completely different note, if you’re interested in any incarnation of the Justice Society of America of the last 35 years, you might be interested in the extended debate Kalinara and I are having about them on her blog. We have completely different points of view on the subject, which is amusing even if I do find her point of view rather incomprehensible! 🙂

Well That Sucked

Magic draft tonight. Onslaught block – our first time drafting that block. We had 8 players.

And I had probably the worst draft I ever had. A green/black deck with big creatures and not enough stuff to let me survive to get them out.

I got kinda screwed because the first pack there seemed to be plenty of green and black going around, so I thought I was in great shape. Then the second pack had no black – because the guy on my left was filtering it out – and the green was very mediocre. And the third pack had no black – because the guy on my right was filtering it out – so I ended up with big expensive creatures and not enough removal and no real combat tricks. I got completely run over in both matches I played, so I bailed after that since I wasn’t having any fun playing.

I should have ended up in green/blue, since there was a huge amount of blue going around. But not in the first pack, so I assumed one or both players on my right were in blue. (They were actually in red/black and red/blue.)

I feel like my drafting ability is going backwards – both of my last two drafts have been awful – and I don’t know how to get better at it. It sucks.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Review of the novel Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

Deathly_Hollows.jpg
Harry Potter
and the
Deathly Hallows

The Harry Potter series wraps up at long last: After publishing the first three books in 3 years, it took another 8 years for J.K. Rowling to write the last four. Of course, each of the four is twice as long as any of the three, so there you go.

If you’ve surfed in here and haven’t yet read the book, be advised that there are spoilers after the Read More link below, although I’ve tried to keep the first half of the review free of them.

Deathly Hallows starts, as the other books do, at the end of the summer between school years, but this time the book promptly heads off into new territory: As Harry is enemy number one where the resurrected Lord Voldemort is concerned, and since his mystical protection will evaporate as soon as he turns 17 (which is the age of maturity for wizards), the Order of the Phoenix plans to hide Harry for his protection. Not everything goes as planned, but Harry finally ends up in a safe house.

While preparing for the marriage of Ron’s brother Bill to Fleur Delacoeur, our trio of heroes (Harry, Ron and Hermione) start planning how they can go about finding the remaining Horcruxes containing fragments of Voldemort’s soul, since if they can destroy them all, then they can bring about the dark wizard’s downfall. Unfortunately, the downfall of some powerful forces on the side of good in the wizarding world leave the three on the run from the ascendant dark lord’s forces, with precious little idea of how to proceed other than trying to stay one step ahead of their pursuers.

Their adventures on the road involve personal conflicts, a variety of traps, and learning some surprising facts about Harry’s family and Dumbledore’s history. They also learn of the existence of the Deathly Hallows, some powerful magical artifacts which could turn the tide against Voldemort, but which – like the Horcruxes – are well-hidden, if they even exist at all.

I freely admit that the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, sapped my enthusiasm for the Harry Potter series. It became clear to me that J.K. Rowling was no longer being edited, and she really needed a strong editor, because she too easily fell in love with her own typing. Phoenix badly needed to be cut at least in half, and Half-Blood Prince, though better, was also too long and had long stretches of boring in it. So I didn’t approach Deathly Hallows in a very forgiving frame of mind, since it was another giant tome.

That said, Hallows has some things to recommend it. It’s a very different book from its predecessors, having very little of the “kid’s stuff” feel of those books: It’s all deadly serious, and Harry and friends are mostly left to their own devices, as Rowling puts them in the role of the “last, best hope” for the good guys. The story has finality written all over it: The stakes have never been higher, and the story revolves around Harry’s and Dumbledore’s backgrounds (much as Prince revolved around Voldemort’s), bringing a strong feeling of coming full circle.

But, dammit, the book is still too darned long. It takes nearly a quarter of the book to finally get Harry and company on the road looking for Horcruxes; the pages before are a very, very gradual build-up of elements of the story, and once again I wished Rowling would just get on with it. Heck, the whole first chapter is completely superfluous and should have been cut. I’m still of the mind that Rowling simply fell in love with the sound of her typing, and had enough clout to keep her words from being edited, even though she really, really badly needed some serious editing.

The book takes some strange turns once Harry is on the road, and some of them don’t ring true. And then it still takes quite a while before the shape of the story becomes known. Eventually, the conflict becomes not just the one between the forces of good and evil, but the temptation of the Deathly Hallows for Harry: To follow the course Dumbledore set for him to destroy the horcruxes, or to go for the seemingly-certain victory by seeking the Hallows. This is actually a surprisingly sophisticated conflict for what is otherwise not a very subtle series, and I wish more time had been spent on it, rather than the noodling around which occupies the first half of the book. (The insight into Dumbledore is not uninteresting, but it’s not essential either. A lot of it is spun out of whole cloth just to increase the suspense in this volume, with little connection to earlier volumes.)

Deathly Hallows feels so divorced from the rest of the series that it makes several of the early books feel even less relevant: Goblet of Fire can be boiled down to Voldemort returning from the dead, Order is little more than giving Harry a reason to hate Voldemort because of what he does to Sirius Black, and Prince is partly Voldemort’s backstory and partly the set-up for this book. It feels like you could read the first three books, and then just skim the next three to get to the “good stuff” that’s in here.

And as usual I think the cover of the U.K. edition (pictured above) is much better than that of the U.S. edition. Mary GrandPré’s art is not at all to my taste, so I’m glad to have the British editions instead.

The bottom line in my opinion is that this book is more suspenseful than the two before it, and feels more necessary to the overall story, but Rowling still needed to be seriously edited to cut down the volume of extraneous material and make the story more streamlined and enjoyable. She could still surprise and delight, but not like she could in the first three, shorter books. My final feeling is that I’m glad the series is over because I don’t think I could have pushed through much more of her verbiage, and that’s not a good epitaph for any series. The core magic of Harry Potter was the feeling that Harry was a normal boy who found that he was really extraordinary, but that magic is far in the past. Deathly Hallows is just a straightforward adventure story.

Beyond this point are spoilers for the book, so don’t continue if you don’t want to be spoiled!

Continue reading “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”

This Week’s Haul

Comic books I bought the week of 12 September 2007.

A big haul this week!

  • Booster Gold #2, by Geoff Johns, Jeff Katz, Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund (DC)
  • Countdown #33 of 52 (backwards), by Paul Dini, Adam Beechen, Keith Giffen, Carlos Magno & Jay Leisten (DC)
  • Fables #65, by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham & Steve Leialoha (DC/Vertigo)
  • Justice Society of America #9, by Geoff Johns, Dale Eaglesham & Ruy Jose (DC)
  • Suicide Squad: Raise The Flag #1 of 8, by John Ostrander, Javier Pina & Robin Riggs (DC)
  • Welcome to Tranquility #10, by Gail Simone, Neil Googe & Scott Shaw! (DC/Wildstorm)
  • Nova #6, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Sean Chen, Scott Hanna & Brian Denham (Marvel)
  • Thor #3, by J. Michael Straczynski, Oliver Coipel & Mark Morales (Marvel)
  • B.P.R.D.: Killing Ground #3 of 5, by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi & Guy Davis (Dark Horse)
  • Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Others TPB vol 7, by Mike Mignola, Richard Corben & P. Craig Russell (Dark Horse)
  • Castle Waiting #8, by Linda Medley (Fantagraphics)

Justice Society of America #9The new JSA kicks off the storyline “Thy Kingdom Come”. Power Girl, as anyone who’s warped enough to be able to keep track of this stuff knows, is the last survivor of Earth-2 from before the Crisis on Infinite Earths, her cousin Kal-L (the Golden Age Superman) having died in the Infinite Crisis, making her feel especially alone. “Thy Kingdom Come” will feature the Superman from Kingdom Come, who’s a rather tortured soul who superficially resembles Power Girl’s cousin. This is also the world that current JSA member Starman spent some time in. So there’s a lot of interesting potential for character drama here. Is Geoff Johns the writer to realize the potential of this scenario? I tend to think of Johns as a plot-driven writer – characterization isn’t really his forte. But this could be the story in which he rises above his limitations.

Suicide Squad: Raise The Flag #1Weirdly, the first issue of Suicide Squad: Raise The Flag is missing both a chapter title and creator credits. I can’t remember the last time I read a book by a major publisher that was missing its credits. Must’ve been some oversight. I wonder if this is related to it being titled From The Ashes on the cover?

Anyway, this is the mini-series sequel to the 1980s series written by Ostrander and grittily illustrated by Luke McDonnell, who at the time was the artist of choice for hard-hitting series with a strong human component (e.g., Denny O’Neil’s Iron Man run when Tony Stark is overcome by his alcoholism, and the latter days of Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar run). The premise was that the government operated a covert squad with a few D-list superheroes, but which mainly consisted of incarcerated supervillains who would go on high-risk missions and have their sentences commuted if successful. Oh, plus they’d get their arms blown off by remote control if they tried to escape. The thing was a big balancing act among various personalities of varying degrees of stability, and it worked very well and is fondly remembered today.

Halfway through the original series, Rick Flag, one of the main heroic figures, died in a nuclear explosion in a foreign country. This series is based on the notion that he didn’t actually die. The first issue is a flashback in which key members of the old Squad travel to Russia to investigate a rumor that Flag is imprisoned there. It gives you a great feel for the original series – really, it’s like no time has passed at all – and ends on a cliffhanger implying what really happened.

Ostrander might never surpass his original GrimJack series (though it sounds like the Grinner might be moving over to a new site called ComicMix), but Suicide Squad is also excellent, and this looks like a terrific follow-on to the original.

Oh, and Javier Pina’s art is excellent – even better than his stuff on Manhunter.

Okay, each of the last three issues of Nova have ended with a cliffhanger in which things were worse for our heroes than they were an issue before. I don’t think it can go on much longer, though; I’m impressed it’s gotten this far!

Thor #3J. Michael Straczynski has been taking some flak for his portrayal of Iron Man in this issue of Thor (for instance, from Brian Cronin). I think this criticism is misguided, for two reasons: (1) Thor is justified, given that Iron Man created a subservient clone of him during the Civil War, and (2) Iron Man has been pretty much acting like a dick since the start of the Civil War, most of his actions have been morally indefensible, and frankly emotionally the reader wants someone to kick his ass: Thor, the Hulk, whoever. Iron Man’s not a hero anymore, and seeing Thor lay into him is just plain fun.

The real problem with this issue is also twofold: (1) The fight with Iron Man doesn’t advance the story, and (2) the story is boring. Thor going around to rescue his Asgardian brethren in the wake of, well, whatever happened to remove them from our plane of existence. The first issue was promising in that it suggested the return of the Thor/Don Blake dynamic, perhaps with actually giving Blake some characterization this time around. Blake hasn’t appeared since he changed into Thor at the beginning of #2, and “ponderous Thor” just isn’t very interesting. Kurt Busiek knew to lighten him up with “bombastic Thor” every so often, but Straczynski doesn’t seem to have learned the trick yet.

I figure if there isn’t some actual story advancement – and I mean more than just finding more Asgardians, because that’s just a boring old quest, not a decent plot – by issue #6 or so, then it might be time to give up on this one.

I’ve been less-than-kind to Mike Mignola’s comics recently, so I’m happy to say that Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Others mostly has the nifty stuff that I enjoy most about Hellboy: Hellboy kicking ass, making quips, and dealing with bizarrely inventive supernatural menaces. The centerpiece of the book, “Makoma”, is actually one of the weaker stories: A myth about Hellboy perhaps about one of his previous incarnations. The framing sequence, about a supernatural explorer’s club, is more interesting than the main story. The short stories are nifty, though. My favorite Hellboy stories seem to be those which feature or imply time travel so I think “Dr. Carp’s Experiments” is my favorite of the volume.

Though if you’re unfamiliar with Hellboy, you might want instead to start at the beginning.

The Season of Worry

Cooler air is settling in, which means that fall is coming. Which means, yes, I’m feeling a little depressed lately.

I guess this is a strange sort of seasonal affective disorder, although it bites me during the fall rather than the winter or summer: Things start dying, the weather turns gray, and I get glum. And it’s not like I dislike the weather, really: I prefer cool weather to hot weather, I like when the leaves change color, and I like getting clouds and rain in the winter, since the weather in California is so homogenous from April through October, for the most part. But still, I feel this way and I start worrying about lots of little things in my life.

For instance:

  • Registration for the ultimate frisbee started this week, and all of the spots for male participants filled up (and more than filled up) within 36 hours. Due to the league’s rules regarding who gets in, it’s quite possible that I won’t get into the league this year, which would be the first time since 1999 I hadn’t spent the winter playing Ultimate. That would be a real bummer. Subrata and I show up to nearly all the games, which we’re rather proud of, even if we’re not the best players on the field.
  • I’m on call for jury duty next week. I seem to get summoned about once every three years. I don’t really want to serve on a jury, but I imagine someday I’ll have to. Mainly I fear that I’d be bored out of my mind, and any trial lasting longer than a week would just drive me crazy. It frankly boggles my mind that all but the most complicated of trials ever take more than 2 weeks; how much information do they have to present, anyway? I imagine there’s a lot of redundancy and clarifications and bureaucracy.
  • And one of the bulbs in my house’s master bathroom went out. So I replaced it. And last night it went out again, and this one doesn’t seem to be busted. So I’m worried about the fixture needing to be fixed, which would be annoying since it’s a recessed fixture. I’ll try one more bulb in it first, though; maybe the new bulb was just bad.

Basically, little sources of stress get magnified. It sucks.

On the bright side, cool weather means pleasanter morning bike rides. And sometimes not having the sun in my eyes when I stop for a break (since I can’t stand wearing sunglasses when I exercise).

On the other bright side, at least I’m not worrying about the big things in my life!

For Better or For Worse Goes “Hybrid”

Last week, the comic strip For Better or For Worse started running some flashback strips, framed by Michael telling his daughter about how his parents met and his early childhood. Some of the strips were newly-drawn, but other were re-runs of the strip’s earliest days, from circa 1980.

Apparently this is because FBoFW was originally intended to end this month – creator Lynn Johnston had planned to retire once Michael’s children got to the same ages that Michael and his sister Lizzie were when the strip started. But plans changed, and instead FBoFW will continue as a flashback strip with occasional new material. Johnston said in an interview:

My initial plan was if I could not find someone else to continue the strip, I would not continue it at all and leave the space.

But they felt that because the strip had begun in only 150 papers that many papers had not seen that initial work and readers would probably enjoy it. So they talked to a number of their editors, and they were receptive.

But apparently another factor is that Johnston’s getting divorced, and so the motivation to retire to spend her retirement with her husband is no longer there.

I have mixed feelings about all of this. For a long time, FBoFW was an excellent comic strip, and Johnston was one of the best artists in the business. I think she’s disappointed a lot of her readers in recent years (as I’ve commented on before). Apparently the current-day strip is going to be “frozen in time”, so the story won’t move much further ahead. This is disappointing because it means there won’t be much closure to the strip, something which Johnston had a rare opportunity to provide in a comic strip: Certainly the strip was going to end with some dangling stories, but it could have gone out on a high note: Perhaps a wedding anniversary for John an Elly, or retirement (which they’ve discussed in some strips). Instead it’s going to go into “zombie mode”, with extensive reprints and occasional new strips. But even if the new stuff is enjoyable, it feels like it will be a strip dying a slow and uncomfortable death.

It’s hard to begrudge anyone from wanting to continue their career – as with sports athletes, I don’t believe stories of retirement until the person actually retires. But I hope she’ll either go back to doing all-new material, or just give the strip a big send-off and end it, because this approach seems like a sad fate for a once-great comic strip.

(Thanks to my Dad for pointing me at the links about the strip, both of which are worth reading.)