Returned From a Wee Hiatus, Boyo

I've only just returned from a phenomenal trip from the emerald isle, so hopefully I'll get back to posting more items soon. I'll tell you one thing I learned from being in Ireland: Chris Claremont has never stepped a damned foot there.

Read This, Drink That #2

Read This:

Drink That:

            You’re drowning. You’re swirling round and wondering if there’s anywhere to come up for air just before you realize how warm it is. Trickling down your spine, what was first panic and confusion now slowly melts away and leaves you feeling comforted and wondering. You start to find the beauty in the inevitable tragedies and begin to piece together the larger puzzle. Both Daytripper and Delirium Tremens need to be experienced multiple times to fully grasp how ungraspable they can be.

Daytripper by the infinitely talented brothers, Gabriel Bá and Fabio Moon, is a special book that lovingly punches you in the gut and hugs you at the same time. To be honest, I’m a sucker for father & son tales and that’s at the heart of what’s happening here. On the surface, Daytripper follows the life and many deaths of author Bràs de Oliva Domingos. Witnessing the repeated deaths of Bràs as he travels to understand who his father was and who he is, the reader is swept into the flow of this tale’s journey of magical realism connecting snippets of the most important moments of his life.  I found myself choking up numerous times throughout the story; sometimes at the moments of heartbreaking loss and sometimes at the moments of beautiful simplicity. ‘This IS life’, I thought multiple times. Oftentimes the larger picture is obscured as if in a dream state, but each individual moment is an entire lifetime for Bràs. All those lifetimes, the friendships and romances, the failures and the determination to continue, culminate in the larger painting of what shapes Bràs. All the while you are absolutely awash in soft saturated color on every page thanks to the masterful work of Dave Stewart, who compliments that tandem of Bá & Moon’s pencils to perfection. The brothers are at the height of their illustrative craft with setting suns, underwater vistas and quiet rural moments. The art reminds you that we’re only just gingerly rooted in the real world, ready to be swept away with the flip of a page.

Take a sip of your Delirium Tremens and start trying to remember if you’ve been here before while fruits dance with cloves on your tongue before giving way to the alcohol warmth. A traditional Belgian Strong Pale Ale that balances spiciness with a rich full bodied malt flavor. It is hardly an attack on the senses, instead the complexities introduce themselves subtlety one after another each sip noticing something new atop familiar elements. Much like Bràs’ journey we are given an experience warm in color and aftertaste, a mix of comfort and wonder and a true life-affirming experience even after the bottle has emptied.

Read This, Drink That #1

Read this: 

Drink that:

It’s dark. You’re relying on your other senses to guide you through something that was once familiar, but now has you upside down. You thought you were prepared, thought you knew what to expect. You’ve gotten yourself in so deep that you can only now see a shimmer of the light in the blackness and you wonder whether it might just be easier to keep your eyes closed when that blindfold comes off. When you take that final sip and put the book down, the darkness fades as the blindfold is lifted.

This isn’t the G.I. Joe you remember and this doesn’t behave like a Black IPA you’ve had before. Chuckles doesn’t just stand silently on the sidelines and Blindfold isn’t relying on heavy hops to cover for roasted bitterness. Welcome to G.I. JOE: COBRA: The Last Laugh by Mike Costa, Christos Gage and Antonio Fuso and get ready to forget everything you thought you knew about America’s daring highly-trained special mission force. Say “hello” to Sierra Nevada’s Blindfold Black IPA and make sure to sip it in whispers.

COBRA is a noir spy-thriller that certainly gets darker and darker as the protagonist, Chuckles goes deep undercover to infiltrate a theorized organization that is only mentioned in hushed tones. Along the way through various missions across the globe the reader is introduced to the various capos and lieutenants serving in this furtive syndicate. It’s quickly clear the mission is not going according to plan and in order to maintain some semblance of order, Chuckles is willing to go very far into the deep end of the pool. The art more than just keeps the mood appropriately dark, Antonio Fuso renders figures and locales with such a wonderfully subtle grit that casually reminds the reader what a bleak world this is. Clever layouts never overshadow the quality of his storytelling ability, with the symmetry of the first Special issue featuring duplicitous characters outside and inside really standing out. Once he’s made some choices that cannot be undone, Chuckles begins to psychology scavenge for his moral center before he drowns. Watching it unfold takes a toll on you. Often you’re clueless as to who knows what, when they knew it, what they’re going to do with it and why. It’s nothing at all like you’re expecting and it is an absolute pleasure to discover this new world (and new world order) brought to life by Costa, Gage and Fuso. In the end it’s a straightforward spy story, but the journey Chuckles and you the reader take into the rabbit hole has you constantly wondering if we’ll all come out the other side; and if so, are we the same as when we entered?

Blanketed in darkness is an undercover light-bodied, citrusy IPA trying not to be found out. Typically the style relies on its contrasting blend of hop bitterness and dark roasted malts to overwhelm the senses. But Sierra Nevada isn’t covering up for the natural bitterness found in those roasted grains and instead uses those to compliment the more subtle (for this style) hop bitterness. Much like Chuckles, this ale is trying to fit into the seedy underbelly of the Black IPA crowd, but deep inside, you’ll find an unexpected lightness leading the way. Floral notes on the nose and medium body mouth feel end in a fantastic bitter chocolate bite for the finish.

Cheers.

Fashion Not A Factor

Just started reading ‘Mutant Massacre’ for the first time, as part of the larger goal of consuming the entirety of Claremont’s X-Men run and wowwie wow wow are we in the 80’s with this one, folks. Having completed the Uncanny X-Men Omnibus volume 2, there is a huge gap between where that left off and where Massacre begins. Fifty-seven issues to be precise. From what I can gather a whole bunch of good silly? Good and silly?) stuff went down including, but not limited to: Rogue joining the team (Ah’m so glad), Kitty Pride getting Lockheed and her Shadowcat costume (guessing the 4 part series with Wolvie in Japan happened), mohawk Storm (Fuck. Yes.) and, sadly, X-Factor happened. Hoo-boy, X-Factor, you sure are a comic with a premise that probably sounded great initially, but you have got some pantsuit-sized problems. Not to sound too much like a porcelain-faced E! personality, but Cyclops, Honey. What. Are. You. Wearing?

Look at poor Warren Worthington wearing that backpack like he’s a motherfucking early 90’s G.I. Joe action figure. That is one silly super-soaker wearing solution to hiding his wings. Jean Grey went from one of the best designing costumes ever:

to rocking a roomy full body blue skull cap with dark shades and her red hair sticking out underneath. Solid job turning the original X-Men into the Unabomber Squad everybody. Okay, to be fair these atrocities to fashion were only worn part of the time, while the team would don perfectly passable X-laden superhero costumes when they were posing as evil mutants. That’s right, they put on their costumes to look like bad guys and dressed up as Delta Burke to pass as “mutant-hunting” good guys. See, there are some very troublesome ideas with this book.

                X-Factor apparently started with the very admirable goal of reuniting the original X-Men, who at that point had mostly been doing a great job not being the cool new X-Men and forming other super lame teams with USFL-sounding names. Bob Layton and Jackson Guice were originally going to have it be the original four male X-Men and Dazzler because, y’know, Dazzler. This is all from an awesome post over at Brian Cronin’s Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed and it is fascinating. Anyway, problem number one emerges from its psychic cocoon nestled in Kurt Busiek’s head (per Wikipedia) in the form of bringing Jean Grey back. Which is fine, its superhero comics and popular characters don’t stay dead. Except they kinda did back then and the character died by sacrificing herself for fear of losing control and wiping out whole scores of humanoid-asparagus populated planets. That shit was emotional, yo. But that noble act of sacrificing herself, in addition to all the other acts she committed since emerging from the depths of Jamaica Bay in issue #101 were now no longer Jean Grey at all. It was the Phoenix Force just straight up cosplaying Jean Grey for 36 issues, while the real Jean Grey was placed inside some feel good pod at the bottom of the bay. That Jean Grey had also died heroically scarifying herself so her teammates could live. But sure, let’s lessen all of that emotional impact and sacrifice because fuck Thunderbird, amirite? Anyway, this is all pretty well chronicled information (comic book fans griping on the internet? Shocking!) and needless to say, all five originals were back together being a group of mutant heroes who fought bad guys once more. Wrong! Apparently now they’re going to dress up as “mutant-hunters” for their day job and then dress up as “evil mutants” named the…I can’t even…named the X-Terminators. Let’s strive for Xavier’s dream of peaceful co-existence between mutants and humans by hiding under the cover of humans who hunt down mutants and then secretly rehabilitate them to better pass as human. If Charley wasn’t nearly dead or in space or both, I’m sure he’d be super pumped at your interpretation of his life’s work, X-Factor. Cats and dogs living together, y’all.

                Despite the fact that I find those premises very off-putting I fully admit to having not read these early X-Factor issues and am looking forward to putting my foot in the water as I progress through my Clarmont-ian pilgrimage. But my initial reaction has not been positive, which is a shame because I generally adore both the Simonsons work. Really though, I just can’t get over the aesthetics. All of them are wearing my grandfather’s sunglasses that he wears while driving.

                

1-600-4-Manute

The Posthumous Tree Experience: The Effects of Confined Spaces on the Density of Paper

I am terrified to move. I have no plans to do so at this juncture, but that doesn't prevent this looming burden from hanging over my shoulders because frankly, I'll probably be moving again at some point. No, I don't know when. But it'll happen. And it is going to be fucking horrible. Here's a quick list of things that I do not enjoy: lifting heavy things, wrapping things in newspaper, taping boxes closed, removing items from their current locations, cardboard cubes, discovering how years of cleaning around and never behind and/or under an object leads to mini-civilizations of dust and microbes that have evolved to the point where they too dislike moving their shit across germ town. To be fair, packing is okay because that shit is like playing Tetris. Anyway, I worry about moving for those myriad reasons (actually not so myriad; all just relates to my laziness) but also because nothing, fucking nothing, is as heavy as books. Anytime a group of paper gets together inside a box, it somehow turns into a singularity wherein matter is crushed to infinite density, the pull of gravity is infinitely strong and space-time has infinite curvature. Space and time cease to exist as we know them and we are left to confront our new found Lovecraft-ian horror cognizance that there are still hundreds of thousand more pieces of paper awaiting. I love my comics, I do, but the thought of moving these:

not to mention the piece of furniture housing them, is decidedly un-dope. Anyway, I'm super lazy and big on complaining about theoretical moves that are in no way a reality yet, I guess was the point of this. Also, those are some of my comics in that picture up there. Word.

Days of Future Past, Passed w/Flying Colors

Spoilers Abound:

If only I could transport my consciousness backwards through time to visit my nascent comic-obsessed self at age 12 and whisper, “it is 2014 and I just stepped out of a movie where Warpath and Blink fought Sentinels while Wolverine and Quicksilver helped bust Magneto out of his Pentagon jail and OH MY GOD EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY LITTLE ALEX!!” We have arrived at the 7^th installment (7^th!) of what was, as recently as 5 years ago, feared to be a floundering franchise until Matthew Vaughn stepped on the scene and wonderfully mind-wiped the sting of The Last Stand from our collective consciousness. Three years later, working from a story co-written by Vaughn, a returning Bryan Singer more than just cleared a bad taste from our mouths, they straight-up said: “That shit literally does not exist anymore.” And the people rejoiced, for it was good.

                The film is not without its problems, sure, but it delivers an immensely satisfying experience ripe with strong performances, mind-numbingly clever action sequences and a story that puts a bow on everything (yes, everything) that has come before. The much maligned lack of diversity in the cast is valid, however, as the focus is once again on our white male leads. Hopefully this franchise, with whomever it may be at the helm, will take advantage of the rich cast of characters associated with the team (Young Storm? Young Jean Grey? Pixie? Boom Boom? No, not Boom Boom.) It was refreshing to see a little person actor play a role that had nothing to do with him being a little person, but rather an actor doing a phenomenal job of bringing Walter Peck-level villainy. Does Kitty Pride have powers that make no sense? Does it make any sense that the future and past are happening parallel to each other? Did Halle Berry and other Singer-era vets show up to primarily cash a paycheck? Guys, you just have to give in. Give in to this merry mutant romp and you will be rewarded.

                Nothing could have prepared me for the well of emotions that washed over me during the last ten minutes of this film. Fourteen years ago I saw a team of X-Men on a movie screen for the first time that didn’t feel quite right, but I didn’t care because they were close enough. Now though, after several outings with mixed returns, there projected in front of me was exactly what I held in my hands and my imagination as that young comic book fan. Oh, be still my heart, all of the X-Men are living under the mansion roof on Graymalkin Lane where they are teachers to young mutants. I had a dream and you were there, and you were there and you were there….To me, my X-Men!