ohtani's jacket

You think the Walt and Jesse scenes are in the Gene timeline?

I liked the episode, but I can imagine a lot of people didn't. I wonder if that's the last we'll see of Gene.

Ian Foster survives for now. Two assistant coaches were thrown under the bus, and NZ Rugby pinched the forwards coach from the Crusaders, who ironically are coached by the man everyone wants to replace Foster, Scott Robertson. The All Blacks are flying to South Africa in a week or so for their first tests in the Republic since 2018. More losses on the way!

Something that keeps gnawing at me -- shouldn't Mike and Gus be upset at Kim for drawing attention to herself?

I kinda didn't love it. I'm hoping there's more to it than that.

Cinder and Ashe is another worthy Jose Luis García-Lopez side project from a time when DC was releasing a slew of mini series to the direct market. The artwork was nowhere near as gorgeous as Twilight, but it was a different genre. Conway has a reputation as a bit of a hack, but I thought he did a deft job of weaving together the narrative on this series, incorporating the use of numerous flashback devices to provide a backstory for the series while driving the central narrative forward. In fact, it felt more a leftover pitch from Conway's TV work than a regular comic script. The only fault I found with the series was the Master of Kung Fu style yellow coloring for Asian characters. I would have thought that was completely unnecessary in 1988.

He should resign. That's what Wayne Smith did after Australia broke New Zealand fans' hearts in 2001, and he's a much better coach than Foster's ever been. EDIT: Forgot to congratulate Ireland. Been a better team than us since 2016.

I'm gonna miss Lalo.

Even if we beat Ireland, I really want Ian Foster gone.

Rugby was the winner on the day.

I kind of want to see Kyrgios win Wimbledon just to see the tennis establishment lose its mind. People used to give Federer crap about how he won the majority of his Grand Slams against a weak field, and once he began being challenged by Djokovic and Nadal, he started losing, but where are the players challenging 35 and 36 year-old Djokovic and Nadal?? At this rate, they're going to succumb to injuries rather than younger players.

Ireland showed enough outside of the second quarter NZ blitz to show they can win the second test if they cut down on their errors. I will admit that the New Zealand backrow played better than expected. The result was somewhat of a surprise. The scoreline flattered the All Blacks a bit. I still feel that New Zealand gives the opposition too much possession. We live off turnover ball and our attack thrives in broken play, but our losses in recent times have shown the folly of relying too much on turnover ball. England played dumb rugby, and Wales weren't brave enough, as usual.

Remember the days when 378 was an insurmountable four innings target?

I don't trust anyone up two sets to love against Novak Djokovic.

I finished reading All-Star Superman. Personally, I thought it was kind of weird. I've read a lot of weird Grant Morrison stories, so you'd think that wouldn't be a problem, but I read that Morrison wanted to create a timeless Superman story and to me it kind of came across as a weird European arthouse take on Superman. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I was familiar with the Silver Age stories that Morrison drew inspiration from, but I kind of felt like Alan Moore wrote better Silver Age homage stories prior to Crisis, and possibly later on with those Image characters (I haven't read that stuff yet.) I did like the overall portrayal of Superman. He was extremely likeable. I didn't care for the portrayal of Lois or Jimmy, though, and I didn't like how Quitely drew them either. I suppose I'm not a big enough Superman fan to truly love a series like this, but it show plenty of heart despite how strange it was at times.

I liked the finale, but it was really long. No more movie length finales, please.

The All Blacks' build up to the first test against Ireland has been less than ideal with a COVID outbreak in the camp. The head coach and several members of the coaching team tested positive for COVID along with three players -- two midfielders and an outside back, the latter being try scoring sensation Will Jordan. The big news though is lock Scott Barrett being selected at 6, a move that backfired spectacularly in the World Cup semi against England. To be fair, there are some injuries influencing the selection, but the coaches are also enamored with the idea of having more size and physicality on the field. They want an extra lineout option since Ardie Savea is undersized at No.8, but this is what infuriates me about modern rugby. Scott Barrett, Sam Cane and Ardie Savea are three of New Zealand's better players, which is why the coaches want them on the field at the same time, but Barrett is a lock and Cane and Savea are both number 7s. The Irish backrow must be licking their lips at the prospect of taking on that All Black combination. Beauden Barrett was selected at 10, which personally I have no faith in. The All Blacks seem ripe for the picking. Ireland lost their midweek game to the Maori All Blacks, but I doubt that will have much bearing on the test match. Irish fans don't seem overly thrilled with their match day 23, either, but this is a weak All Blacks side. The only things in our favor are home field advantage and the possibility of a tired Irish team after a long Northern Hemisphere season. Not confident.

I enjoyed Umbrella Academy S3 a lot, but the ending didn't exactly floor me. It left me wanting more, but not in a holy crap sort of way.

I finished Martin Wagner's Hepcats. Ed Piskor unfairly shat on this series when Cartoonist Kayfabe were going through Palmer's Picks in an old Wizard mag. Wagner was a friend of Dave Sim's, and part of that small wave of self-publishers that grew up around Sim and clashed with Gary Groth all the time. Hepcats started off as a story about anthropomorphic college buddies and grew into a more ambitious story when one of their girlfriends tried to commit suicide and we slowly discovered the harrowing details about her past. On the surface, it was "famous" for showing nudity and having anthropomorphic characters have sex, but there was more to it than that. Unfortunately, like most self-published titles it was beset by poor sales and production delays and only lasted 12 issues. I actually read the reprint series, which contained new material and was supposed to restart the series with issue 13, but issue 13 never happened, and Wagner left the comics industry instead. Kind of a shame as I thought Hepcats had the potential to go down as one of the seminal books of the 90s instead of a footnote. There's an argument to be made that the writing was shallow. I wouldn't go that far, but I do think Wagner was still finding his voice. He only made 12 issues. Can you imagine how well regarded Cerebus would be today if it only lasted 12 issues? I couldn't find a lot of fault with the art. Wagner used a lot of cross hatching and screentone, and never short changed the reader on background details. In fact, he probably would have been a lot faster if like Sim, he had someone else doing the backgrounds. I'm not a huge fan of the way Wagner's anthropomorphic characters look, but then again, I'm not a fan of how Sim's humans look, so I can live with that. There's not a whole lot to recommend as Wagner never finished the series, but if you're interested in the early 90s period of creator-owned comics (Bone, Cerebus, A Distant Soil, Strangers in Paradise, etc.), it's worth checking out.

Tenryu's wife passed away at the age of 65.

The new Berserk chapters had pretty good art, but like I said, I'm a bit worried that it's going to be straight plot from here on out. The chapters were a bit thin on dialogue.

Fables 152 was a bit of a table setter, but it did introduce a new character that was meant to be in the original series.

That was a great line!

Netflix sent me an e-mail saying Season 3 of Umbrella Academy is out. Enjoyed the first episode a lot.