COMICS!!!!

I've been missing out on most of my new books due to an issue with my (not-so)LCS, but here's what I went out of my way to pick up today:

Ultimate Spider-Man: Requiem #2: Ultimate Spider-Man was the book that got me back in to reading comics regularly after a years-long gap, the fact that it's only getting a numbering reboot instead of being cancelled is a source of much joy for me. As for that very last panel, OH FUCK YES!

Sinster Spider-Man #2: This book is twisted, bizarre, violent, and features an ersatz Doctor Manhattan, who goes one armed to try and fit in.

Ignition City #4: "SCIENCE WILL FUCK YOU!", god I love this book.

Green Lantern #44: A Blackest Night tie in, it features Hal Jordan and Barry Allen fighting a zombie J'onn J'onzz. I honestly haven't read any of the Final Crisis stuff, tie ins or the core book, so I don't know if this was established elsewhere, but the Oreo on J'onn's grave was a nice touch.

Dethklok Versus The Goon: ... Bwahahahaha! Go, read this, this book made me laugh so hard.

-James

I know some funny damn people.

James says:
- ... How have I not heard this before today?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pNCR3xubgU&e

Lily says:
- lol how did you not write it? XD

Okay, dammit... FOCUS! COMICS!!!!!

Booster Gold #22, Um... WTF? The Blue Beetle back up was awesome and filled with fighting robots.

Blackest Night #1: Seriously DC, WTF? This comic tore a hole in my brain and moved in. I only regret going to a shop that seemed to have no awesome rings. If I could add one thing, it has Cassie Sandsmark, Conner Kent, Bart Allen, and no Tim Drake. This requires fixing, but frankly would derail his nutty trip across Europe, so I don't expect it.

Dark Avengers #7, Utopia part 3. The Julian Keller I requested was delivered, the Norman maiming can certainly wait for. Especially if it means I get to see Cyclops put him through a wall. Speaking of whom, I liked the bit of bravado and swagger he was displaying in this issue. He's been more about the grim and dark lately, the whole Marvel Universe has, really, and the switch was great, used to excellent effect, and made me laugh out loud, on a crowded train.

New Mutants #3, Since no one told Cannonball this I will, an Ex-Valkyrie and the Former Ruler Of A Hell-Dimension only have two settings, off and melting faces. Can't wait for #4.

Calling it there, see you next week.

-James

COMICS!!!!

So, what old books did I pick up this week?

Batman & Robin #2, honestly, this feels like a REALLY typical Grant Morrison book to me. Put down the fucking pitchforks, I liked it, but it focuses more on the dysfunction of the characters then their strengths. Damian is a fucking nutbar and Dick is struggling to live up to the shadow of the man who raised him. Keep in mind, this is issue 2, it's very early in the series and I'm looking forward to the next issue. I'd still like to see the characters feel like they aren't drowning in their own hype.

Red Robin #2, I like Tim Drake, I like Chris Yost, and it's very early in the series. I have high hopes for this book, and it seems to be going somewhere interesting, but unless issue 3 blows me away I may have been better grabbing this as a trade.

Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth #1, Deadpool, Ka-Zar, Deadpool's ZOMBIE HEAD from another universe, if that's not enough to get you interested you should pass, I loved it. The reprint of Deadpool volume 1 #4(in which he fights The Hulk) was a nice addition and made the book worth it's $3.99 price tag for me.

Ms. Marvel #41, in which Deadpool kills 107 men off panel. The New Avengers also appear, stealing jars of... Alien... baby... things... to... There's lots of fighting...

Astonishing X-Men #30, boy am I late to this one. This issue ties up Warren Ellis' first arc as writer on the series. The dialogue is compelling, which is good, since this is a pretty talky issue. Simone Bianchi's art is stunning as always. I love X-Men comics, I love the creative team, the only two things that I could want paired more would be... oh, say, Todd Nauck drawing The Scarlet Spider.

Avengers: The Inititive #25, it's well established by now that I love this book. What's not so well established is how much I HATE Norman Osborn. The only fitting end I can see to all this Dark Reign crap is if someone, and there's a pretty long list of Marvel characters that could, would, and want to, tore off Norman's head and shit in his heart.

That's not quite all I got, but I'm calling it here. Before I'm done though, X-Men/Dark Avengers Utopia... I will only keep reading this if it has more Julian Keller trying to be like Quentin Quire. Marvel, you have my demands, if you want my money I want more Omega Gang and someone to shit in Norman Osborn's heart. I'm open to negotiation.

-James

Teach Me.

I'd like to talk about the education system here in Ontario. Someone got me thinking about it last week and now that I have the time you're all going to suffer.

It's no secret that I have A.D.D. and A.D.H.D. which, if you didn't know, is part of why my posting is sporadic. When I was diagnosed with them as a child they moved me in to a Learning Disabled program. While I can't speak to the current state of those programs when I was there it was not tailored to help me. It was a place to keep me away from the children who were easy to teach, since a ten year-old with the attention span of a gnat can be quite disruptive.

The class was filled primarily with children who were struggling to read and write at "their" level, and the program was structured to help them. I'm happy to say that of the classmates I've made contact with over the years they all seem to have gone on to be, at least moderately, successful adults. The system is not useless, not for them. I wasn't there to improve my reading and writing, I got bored, fast, and while I'm not above bragging about my intelligence what's important is that I didn't need help in the areas the class offered. The class had one exercise that I got anything from, everyday we would come in and there would be a poem on the board. Not always a whole poem, but enough that double spaced, in childishly large printing, it took up half a page in our notebooks. For the rest of the class it was about reading, writing, and repetition. To me it was about the power of words. I'd always loved to read and write, but this was the most recurring example in my early life that words could be beautiful and powerful. Some days I would do it twice, the only thing I liked more was my "30 minutes" of reading. While the rest of the class was working on their "chapter books" I was cracking away at Dracula, Animal Farm, and 1984(Thanks Mom), or if I was feeling un-ambitious a young adult book. My teachers always seemed hesitant to ask me to stop reading, I suspect that was because it kept me quiet and occupied. I spent three years in that class, because it wasn't broken up by grade level. Half my day was spent in normal level classes, but I walked in and out of those classes as "the L.D. kid" I was the guy who "needed" help. Not many of the other kids would let me forget that. Most of the teachers weren't much better, I was a handful and time I wasn't in their class was time I wasn't being a distraction.

What's the point of all this? The system is not designed to make it easy for people like me to be successful. It would be paranoid fantasy to say it was built to make me fail, but it didn't know what to do with me. I was strange, I asked odd questions, I got bored and frustrated easily. Those things together say trouble maker. Was I a bad kid? Sometimes. It felt like the world was stacked against me a lot of days. As an adult I see that the world is against us all, really, but as an eleven year-old I felt like it was just me. The daily reminder that everyone else seemed to fit in just fine is what I single out as the likely source.

When I moved on to middle school I entered an alternative program. A lot of my time there was spent wrapping myself in the fashionable alienation that my new peers were all already sporting. Black and military green, leather boots and silver chains. By high school I'd added electric blue hair, which I still dearly miss now that I've got a "grown-up" job, and my ubiquitous goatee, which is so 90's it hurts.

My time at school only ever really taught me that the world at large just wants the homogeneous bits. That I'd be welcome if I was willing to do and say the right things, even if they ground against the bits of myself that were precious to me. Smarten up. Dumb it down. Cut your hair. Keep the questions tame. Watch your language. Read a book. Not that book. Wear different clothes. Don't stand out. Stand up for yourself. Tattle on people. Get a job. Get a NORMAL job. Be a role model. Not that kind of role model.

I'm proud of the person my life has made me, even when I don't particularly like myself. Even if I'm never successful in the slightest.

-James

Really? Cool.