Walking on the Moon

My Sweet Baby is awesome.

• Jonah Hex #23: Another perfectly reasonably executed western tale. The thing about Jonah Hex that’s going to kill the series is that there’s no story. Every month something bad happens to some one, Jonah’s involved (and a cipher) and he rides off. There’s no inkling that there’s a story behind it all, or that anything different is going to happen in the book. It’s Gunsmoke with slower moving pictures. To an extent, that’s fine, but I may have seen enough Gunsmoke.

• Doktor Sleepless #2: Now, things are moving along. I found issue #1 not to be very enticing, but this issue’s worth it for the Transmetropolitan-esque commercial on page 1 alone.

  More importantly, Ellis and Rodriguez are starting to build a complex world up where it seems not even our protagonist understands it all. Seeing a villain’s face doesn’t hurt the dramatic tension level, either. There’s still a lot of scene-setting and exposition, but the creepy, incongrous bits are starting to burrow into my subconscious and look for things to connect to. I expect I’ll be surprised by what they find.

  Reading Doktor Sleepless is starting to feel like reading The Invisibles did; like Grant Morrison was distilling a mad worldview into pictures and beaming it into your brain. That beam, and I suspect Ellis’s and Rodriguez’s, was like a locked missle. After a certain point escaping it was impossible. Issue 2 may be that point for Doktor Sleepless.

  I don’t really understand how Ellis and Rodriguez picked up so much speed between the end of issue #1 and the end of issue #2, but it’s got the ugly feel of an exponential curve. If this title keeps getting stronger at this rate, the first trade paperback will be classified as a munition.

When I began trying to enjoy beer rather than just swill it, my guide to the beer world was Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion. It’s a great book for the aspiring beer connoisseur, or anyone who wants to know the basics about study of a beverage. It did a great job explaining everything without talking down to you, and communicated Michael’s enjoyment of the wide range of beers in the world.

Michael Jackson died last week in London, and the world is a poorer place. Lift one in his honor.

A Swiss court has handed down a verdict against air traffic control managers in the mid-air collision over Ãœberlingen. That the verdict cleared the controllers and found the managers guilty of manslaughter should give those who want to privatize ATC something to think about. If you don’t remember this accident, let Don Brown tell you all about it.

My review of Slaughterhouse-Five is up on Bell, Book, and Candle.

I’ve restyled all my pages to more closely match the look of the blog here. I’ve got more stuff up than I remembered, including a couple rants from the past that I liked some.

Let me know if anything’s illegible.

Looks a little more lunar here today. I finally found a look for the blog that I like. I’m sure I’ll occasionally tweak it some more.

I should mention that I was just flailing around until I fired up the old POVRay ray tracer to make the banner. From there it was pretty easy.

You may want to check out their Hall of Fame to see what the serious folks can do with it.

If you see something I missed, please holler.

Ylum is now running Apache’s http server version 2.2.4.  So far only a few minor bumps.  Let me know if you see something unusual.

I’ve mentioned getting spam from fictional characters before. Today’s correspondant: Huey Freeman.

A actually put stuff into the longbox this week, so comics aren’t strewn across the room.

• The Flash #231 – After Bart Allen got the shaft, we’re rebooting the Flash proper. I basically picked this up because it’s a Mark Waid Flash book, and I usually enjoy his take on the character. So far things are starting slow, which isn’t a great sign in a book about speed. Daniel Acuña is doing the art, and while it’s beautiful, it’s also a little static. Maybe I’m just longing for some Mike Weiringo art, which Acuña can hardly be blamed for. If it weren’t Waid, I’d be tempted to drop this, but I’m willing to let him find his feet.
• Black Summer #2 – Warren Ellis’s Black Summer continues to be a wild ride. We’ve met most of the surviving Seven Guns now, and the different viewpoints on John Horus’s deeds and their general position as the hunted are starting to come out. Still, the pace is fast and there’s not a whole lot of jawing yet. Definitely a thriller with something to chew on. Honestly I’m hoping to see a little more thinking before this is over, but there’s no reason to believe Ellis will disappoint.