ohtani's jacket

I would'n't have expected LeBron to average 28.5 in his 20th season at age 37/38. Admittedly, his average is inflated because of Anthony Davis' constant injuries, but nevertheless, those are incredible numbers for LeBron's age. John Havlicek once said he wasn't completely surprised that Wilt scored 100 since every scorer has a night where they double their average. I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that LeBron scores 50 this season, and who knows how much longer he continues to play at this high level of scoring? LeBron doesn't tend to put up big scores that often, but if the Lakers are close to the play-in spot and they don't have AD, who knows?

LeBon will break that record.

I quite liked the early issues of Jemm, Son of Saturn, where Jemm first arrives on Earth, and Colan is being inked by Klaus Janson, but the story lost its way when it became a space epic, and I didn't think there was enough story to justify a 12 issue maxi-series. I mostly read it because I'm interested in Colan's 80s output. There seemed to be a huge difference between street level Colan and outer space Colan. I can't really claim that the Jemm character is all that interesting, either. He seems kind of redundant in a world where there's already a Martian Manhunter.

The Hansen/Williams hoss fight was a lot of fun. Has anyone shown this to JR? He might crack a smile for the first time in 20 years. Is this the best Steve Williams singles match up until this point? It's gotta be close. Loved Williams as the aggressor, especially that part where Hansen is prone on the mat and Williams is screaming, "Come on!" at him. When Stan was willing to sell for a guy, he was one of the best sellers of all-time. He'd probably tell you he was just copying Terry Funk, but the way he stumbled and tripped over every time he tried to escape or catch a breather was sublime. He was as reckless with his own body as he was with his lariats. That bump through the ropes after he missed the lariat was something else. And the finish... Jesus, he took off Williams' head. Has there ever been a better finish than the Western lariat?

I watched Kobashi/Williams. It was weird seeing a young Kobashi as the Kobashi I've been watching lately is from when he can barely walk and works epic main events based on charisma and strained facial expressions. It was clear that he didn't come from a wrestling background when they tried to do that amateur stuff at the beginning. The match followed a fairly typical AJPW pattern. Kobashi improved by leaps and bounds during the early 90s, and I'd have to say he wasn't that great in singles in 1990 (six-mans is another story), but interestingly, Doc also improved as a singles worker due to All Japan. His work here in '90 was a far cry from how good he'd become in '93-94. That said, they worked a decent match. Doc had to dig deep to put Kobashi away, Kobashi put up the kind of fight that Japanese fans like to see, and he grew a bit more as a wrestler and an athlete.

I was a bit disappointed with Dan Clowe's Lloyd Llewellyn series, though suitably impressed that he went from that series to the mind-bending brilliance of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and the rest of Eightball. Even more disappointing was Six from Sirius, which I'd have to classify as a dud. It's one of those sci-fi comics where the author tries to explain everything through expository dialogue instead of captions, which made it confusing and difficult to follow. There also wasn't a ton of story to fill a four issue limited series. Gulacy's art felt a bit static to me and didn't have the level of composition I've come to expect from him. I'd be interested in hearing from a fan of this series.

Attaboy, Matty. I will try to watch some of these matches over the holidays when I have more time.

Gotham Central = great series. Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker reimagine the Gotham Central Police Department as The Wire, or more accurately, Homicide: Life on the Streets. Spectacular ending too. Best Bat-book I've read in a long time.

I reached the end of the line for Ms. Tree, IMO one of the best characters of the 1980s and one of the best female characters in the history of comics. I'll admit that I preferred the stories where she fought the Muerta family more than the stories taken from the lastest issue of Newsweek magazine, but it was a tremendous run right up until the end. I'm feeling a bit wistful wondering what happened to the characters in their lives after the final special.

Maki Ueda was the other half of the Beauty Pair.

I'm almost two years in Mike Baron's Punisher run and it's just so... episodic. There's no overarching storyline. Nothing of consequence seems to happen. Even Microchip's kid dying didn't have any long term ramifications. And for a title that was presumably hot at the time, they didn't seem to give two craps about who was drawing it, handing out assignments to young talent like Whilce Portacio and Erik Larsen. I'll tell you one other thing: Jim Shooter may have been the guy who created the mandate about characters re-introducing themselves to the reader each issue, but Tom DeFalco continued to fly the banner high. It amuses me at times the parts of the story where Baron slots it in. I do kind of dig reading a comic from 1989, though, which was my first full year of reading comics. And I laughed at the issue where the Punisher goes to Australia and Baron tries to paint King's Cross as the most deadly place on earth.

I also finished X-Statix. The series never really lived up to that incredible first issue of X-Force, but it was still a lot of fun and a fairly daring thing for Marvel to publish. The best thing about it was that it allowed Mike Allred to play around with the Marvel characters. The series had a Giffen/DeMatteis feel to it at times, which I liked, but it was a bit too "on the nose" with its satire at times. That, and the fact that I don't really give a crap about celebrity culture, so it didn't really wow me in that respect. But mostly it was really hard to top that debut issue.

I finished Charles Burns’ Black Hole, which was published over a lengthy period of time from 1995 to 2005, first by Kitchen Sink Press, and then when they went out of business, picked up by Fantagraphics. Darker in tone than a lot of Burns’ early work, it retains the elements of surrealism you’d expect from Burns’ work but without the quirky, offbeat humour. Set in the 70s, it tells the story of a group of teenagers who catch a mysterious STD that causes strange mutations. It’s basically a metaphor for adolescence, sexual awakening, and coming of age, and largely focused on atmospherics over plot. The most striking feature of the book is the black and white art. Burns won the Harvey Award for Best Inker several times during the book’s publication, which is impressive given the black and white work of other artists during the time frame. The story isn’t as weird as it may seem at a glance, and the topic isn’t as weighty as a lot of other graphic novels at the time, but as a feat of cartooning, it rates as a seminal work among 80s and 90s cartoonists. Definitely worth a read for people who enjoy 90s comics as much as Ido. Burns, like many of his contemporaries, shifted to graphic novels after Black Hole was completed, and thus it represents one of the last floppy series of perhaps my favorite era of alternative comics. Paul Pope's Batman: Year 100 is okay. I prefer the projects Pope did for Vertigo (Heavy Liquid and 100%), and I actually kind of like the Batman stories he did in his issue of Solo more. Year 100 was all right as far as alternative cartoonist doing a mainstream superhero goes, but it didn't really add much to the Batman experience. Personally, I'm not that interested in seeing Batman in the future. I prefer modern reworkings of old Golden Age stories to future, Elseworlds stories. Pope draws a very distinctive Batman, though. He really plays up the bat element. He even has Batman use fake teeth to make himself look like more of a creature. I can understand why the series has its fans, but I'm far more interested in hunting down THB. I haven't read enough from this century to tell whether Asterios Polyp is the best work that's been produced thus far, but it's a major feat in cartooning. I think I may have mentioned that I was disappointed when David Mazzucchelli ditched penciling mainstream superhero comics to become an alternative cartoonist, largely because the change in style was so drastic, but it led a masterpiece. Mazzucchelli is one of the few artists who can claim to have created important works at both ends of the spectrum.

I may have been too hard on The Authority. I'm still not fond of late 90s superhero comics, but it's better than I gave it credit for. Hitch's art is beautiful even if it is at the forefront of the shift towards big panels and sparse dialogue.

Crazy that it happened the same night Darius Garland became the sixth player in NBA history with 50-plus points, 10-plus 3-pointers and five-plus assists in a game. Scored 27 in the fourth.

Crime and Punishment: Marshal Law Takes Manhattan is a 48 page one-shot that offers us Patty Mills' irreverent take on some of the most famous Marvel superheroes. Originally, Mills wanted to use the actual characters, but Marvel wouldn't let him. I think I prefer it that way as it lets O'Neill cut loose with some unhinged versions of Marvel's heroes. The story is standard "superheroes are bad" fare with a generous helping of bloods and guts. O'Neill's artwork is every bit as demented as you'd hope, and Mills provides some zingers, especially if you're a longtime fan of the Marvel supes.

I read the original Marshal Law limited series last month. It kind of fell apart in the final two issues, but in the wake of Kevin O'Neill's passing, I'd rather emphasize the great artwork. I really liked the coloring too. I'm mostly used to reading O'Neil's work in black and white. The color made his art pop on Marshal Law. RIP, Kev. Torquemada is still one of my all-time favorite villains.

Flagg is an old favorite. Badger is the First comic I never tackled in any meaningful way.

I made it to issue #50 of my re-read of Nexus. I don't know if I'd call Mike Baron the best plotter in terms of story development, but it was impressive for any indie title in the 80s to reach 50 issues (if you, in fact, consider First Comics an indie publisher.) Paul Smith may be the best guest penciller of all-time. He's so good that he can replace Steve Rude on pencils and the quality doesn't drop a smidge... Well, that is until Rude comes back and you remember how freaking amazing Steve Rude is. Elfquest had almost lost me with the long and drawn out Kings of the Broken Wheel, but the final two issues of that limited series were really good, and then the decision to go with color for Hidden Years was a revelation. The first four issues of that series contain some of Pini's most beautiful artwork, as well as some wonderful, self-contained stories. Unfortunately, this is the era where Elfquest splintered into separate titles, and Pini hands the creative duties to other people. That's a shame as I kind of like her short stories better than her drawn out epics. I finished reading First Comics' reprinting of Lone Wolf and Cub, which ended 45 issues into a projected 110 issue run. There was no fanfare or goodbye, but it's weird, even though it was a reprint of a comic from the 70s, it felt like the end of an era as the title was synonymous with 80s independent publishing and it truly felt lie that era was over by '91. At some point, I will have to pick up the rest of the series, but it's not a series that you necessarily have to finish to appreciate. I absolutely loved Sock Monkey! That is my kind of comic. So charming and inventive. Almost as good as Frank.

I love Jerry Lee Lewis' country albums.

Nah, that is Link. Gordon and Wray did a few albums together in the late 70s.

RIP Robert Gordon.

Nope. I'm not sure it made it to my shores.

Xenozoic Tales is a terrific series that ends mid-story arc with issue 14. Interestingly, the issues were released so far apart that you get a clear sense of the growth and development of Mark Schultz as an artist from '86 through to '96. He's released other projects since then, which I'll be sure to check out at some stage. Every once and a while, there's a tease that he'll finish the arc from issue 14 but nothing's ever come of it. It joins the pile with other great unfinished series like Tyrant and Vagabond. After the 80s black and white boom ended, Shultz only released one or two issues per year, but even at that slow pace, the book was constantly among the Eisner nominations and Shultz was highly regarded in the industry. That reputation has faded over time, but if you're interested in what the early 90s comic book landscape looked like, Xenozoic Tales was a release, along with From Hell and several others, that people eagerly anticipated. It's not entirely original, as a lot of people were doing riffs on similar ideas, but if you like dystopian sci-fi, it's a neat series.

I finished Kings in Disguise. The Great Depression is a topic that hadn't been covered in comics very often. The author, Jim Vance, was a playwright, who was adamant that this story could only be told as a comic. This was right around the time when all those articles began to appear about how comics weren't just for kids anymore, and you can feel that type of energy and enthusiasm in the book as the creators attempt to unlock the potential of comics as a storytelling medium. Kings in Disguise wasn't as influential as Maus, but it was part of the same movement that led to the rise of graphic novels, and inspired cartoonists to envision stories in different genres, which honestly speaking, is something that needed to happen if comics were going to continue to develop as an artform. I'm not sure why the series isn't as well known as other books from the era. It didn't sell particularly well, but it was critically acclaimed and drew high praise from the likes of Alan Moore, Wil Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman and Art Spiegelman. I'd never heard of it until I started this thread. Even as a kid, I was aware of the graphic novel books in my local comic store -- the Sandman books, Cerebus, Maus, Love and Rockets, etc. -- but I don't recall ever seeing Kings in Disguise. At first, I thought it might be because the art isn't quite as strong as some of those books. In fact, it's quite of striking when the early issues have covers done by some of the more popular independent artists of the day. However, the art grew on me when I read a letter from Mike Baron that pointed out the EC comics influence in the panel layout. Burr isn't as good as the EC guys, who were master cartoonists, but the EC style grid is a nice fit for the story and suits the tone of a period piece. I believe Vance and Burr published a sequel to the story decades later. The American had a lot of potential as an ongoing series, and then it ended abruptly, mid-storyline, which was the fate of a lot of intriguing indies during the boom and bust cycle. I'm not sure if the later mini-series picks up where the ongoing series left off, but after reading a handful of cancelled Eisner nominee/winners, I have a new found respect for creators who managed to somehow complete their series. Comics should be fun, and I had a blast reading Charles Burns' Hard-Boiled Defective Stories, Batman Adventures: Mad Love, and the short-lived, but delightful, Tantalizing Tales. Hard-Boiled Defective Stories was an attempt to cash in on the success of Maus by publishing Burns' short stories as a graphic album and sticking them in book stores. Unfortunately, for the other creators, Maus was the only book that sold, but the mix of pro-wrestling and weird pulp fiction/film noir stories was right up my alley. Mad Love was by far the best of the Batman related Eisner nominees I read. The other books were good, but Mad Love was a joy, and surprisingly dark at times. I absolutely adore Jim Woodring's Frank stories, but I also loved the issue of Tantalizing Tales that had Gerald Jablonski's Farmer Ned strips. Those were brilliant. Personally, I thought Bratpack was Rick Veitch's strongest work up until that point, even if it was a spiteful attack on DC and kind of nasty in that respect, but the ending was a massive letdown. He didn't stick the landing whatsoever. Fantastic art, though.