ohtani's jacket

I'm in disbelief, but RIP Dean.

The last issue was released in 2019. Shanower announced that it was the last floppy and that future issues would be released through Comixology. It was the first color issue and since then he's released color versions of the collected editions. In fact, he just released a new collection last week. What that means for the future of the book, I'm not sure, but he's still publishing it.

I made it to issue #34 of Age of Bronze. I don't know if Shanower will finish the series, but even if he doesn't, it stands as a monumental work. One of the best series I've read since I returned to comics. It's a cliche, but every panel is a work of art. I wish there was more of an audience for these types of comics, however putting them out so irregularly doesn't help with sales. Still, what an incredible labour of love. Hats off to you, Eric Shanower.

I finished Sex Criminals. In the end, it went in a direction that I didn't particularly care for, and I could have absolutely done without the coda which did nothing for me. It was a fun ride, even if it did feel like they were changing things as they went along, but fell short of being one of the best series of the Eisners era. Some nice character moments, but I gotta have that tightly woven plot.

It's stupid that they don't count the stats. These ain't no pre-season games. They should just add them to the playoff stats.

Slaughter Lord may be the noisiest Aussie band ever.

I've been on a huge Running Wild kick this past week.

I finished up Julie Doucet's Dirty Plotte. Wonderful stuff. Honest, surreal, funny. I wish she'd stayed in comics longer, but what a brilliant legacy to leave behind. Of all the great early 90s alternative comics, Dirty Plotte was the most fun to read.

The Black Caps win another thriller this time scoring the final run on the last ball of the Test. .

The reason the 2001 test was so amazing was that Australia had won a record 16 tests in a row, and then Laxman and Dravid put on their incredible stand that broke all sorts of records, and then the Indian spinners went nuts when a draw seemed the most inevitable outcome.

Amazing victory for the Black Caps, but nothing will ever compare to that 2001 test.

H-Bomb are my new favorite French band.

I quite like Mortal Sin too.

Hobbs Angel of Death are my favorite so far.

There's no way I'd call the '95 Rockets the worst team to win a championship. Even if you discount their incredible playoff run, they went back to back and had the best player in the NBA in Dream. You could maybe argue that they were the worst regular season team to win a title, but I don't think that really means much. The Nets were on a tear before KD got hurt and were climbing up the standings after their awful start. Now look at them. The Warriors finally gave up on Wiseman. What a bust. At least we got Payton back. Never should have let him go.

The Lakers got Mychal Thompson from the Spurs in February of '87 and won the next two titles, but I guess he wasn't a star. The Sixers traded for Mutombo in '01 and made the finals.

I didn't realize that Australia had a strong heavy metal scene. Though it makes sense I suppose.

RIP Tom Verlaine. It's been a while since I listened to Television, but I spun a couple of his solo records today and boogied away.

I finished Chester Brown's Yummy Fur series. Personally, I preferred the Ed the Happy Clown era to his autobiographical stories, but Brown was making up the Ed story as he went along and for some reason he grew frustrated with it. You get the sense that Chester was always a bit restless as a cartoonist, as he began experimenting heavily with panel layout as the series progressed (to the chagrin of some readers who didn't appreciate the small number of panels per page.) I enjoyed some of the autobiographical stories from his childhood. I'm sure a lot of fans our age can identify with trying to get their hands on a copy of Playboy each month and then figuring out where in the hell they're gonna hide it. I also liked his adolescent tales of dealing with coming of age and interacting with girls. The Drawn and Quarterly publisher, Chris Oliveros, convinced Chester to end Yummy Fur, which led to the ill-received Underwater series. Yummy Fur was one of the first alternative comics I was drawn to as a teenager, discovering it through the back issue boxes at my local comic shop. I was especially drawn to the Gospel adaptations where a grumpy and cantankerous Jesus spits fire at everyone. Looking back on it now, it was quite a bold choice for an alternative cartoonist to adapt the New Testament, but a natural thing to do for Brown to pursue as he was interested in alternative Gospel sources. From a comics standpoint, the Gospel adaptations represent his best cartooning work from the period, IMO, especially his Matthew.

I finally read Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan's Night Force. It's not bad, but it's not surprising that it struggled to find an audience. It probably would have done better a few years later when the direct-sales market was more established and there was a larger audience for mature readers books, however the biggest problem was that the cast of characters simply wasn't as interesting as the Tomb of Dracula cast, especially the Baron. If Wolfman's intention was to have the Night Force itself be a rotating cast of characters, then the Baron needed to be as charismatic and interesting as Dracula, but he didn't hold anywhere near as much appeal. The art was somewhat inconsistent. Lately, I have a hard time unseeing some of the criticisms that the likes of John Byrne made about Colan's artwork in the 80s, even if those comments stemmed from a ridiculous "us vs. them" mentality that Byrne seemed to have at the time, and later forgot about when it became one of "them." There are a lot of wonky elements to Colan's artwork at times. Some of it is no doubt intentional as Colan was always a fan of using interesting camera angles or perspectives, but sometimes there are some odd looking panels that aren't touched up or fixed by the inker. I can't say I really missed the series once it came to an end, and I don't have much desire to read the two volumes that followed, however I will praise it as a valiant effort to try something new.

I finished Scalped yesterday. I wasn't as thrilled with the final arc as some people seem to be, but overall I thought it was one of the best series I've read from the modern era, which, for my purposes, encompasses 2000-2023. What I liked about it most was that it dealt with a subject matter that, to the best of my knowledge, hadn't been addressed before in comics, at least not in a full blown series. That's a goal I wish more creators who strive toward instead of giving us their latest take on fascist superheroes. It's a shame that the TV series wasn't picked up, as it probably would have made an even more powerful TV show than a comic, especially if led by a full indigenous cast.

One of the best bullet topes ever.

Well, that's a crappy start to the year on both accounts.

Highest ppg by a player in their 20th season: LeBron James 28.5 Kobe Bryant 17.6 Dirk Nowitzki 12.0 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 10.1 Vince Carter 5.4 Robert Parish 3.9

I stumbled upon this blog site looking for information about the backstage fight between Kandori and Hokuto at Big Egg Universe. The blogger often includes excerpts from interviews and books when doing his match reviews -- http://konjyaku.blog.jp/